Something You Should Know - Instantly Improve Your Decision Making & Vices that Are Really Good for You

Episode Date: June 13, 2019

Every airport runway has a number and it is always between 1and 36. This episode begins with how airport runways get their numbers (it is not random) and what purpose those numbers serve. I’ll also explain 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/ When you make a decision, you hope you make the right one. And there are some decision making models that can help you make better decisions more consistently. Gabriel Weinberg has looked at these mental models and put them in a book called Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models (https://amzn.to/2F5c3re). Listen as Gabriel explains how these models work and how you can use them to be a much better decision maker. So often we’ve been told that things like alcohol, coffee and other vices are bad for you. That doesn’t always tell the whole story. A lot of what people consider sinful, may not be so bad in moderation according to journalist Erik Ofgang. Erik and his father Dr. Henry Ofgang have looked at the latest research and found some vices may actually be beneficial. They have putt their findings 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 joins me to explain what they found. With summer vacation season here, there is a phone call or two you need to make before you leave for your vacation that can save you a lot of hassle when you get to your destination. Listen to discover who you should call. https://www.popsugar.com/smart-living/photo-gallery/35113991/image/45008935/Call-your-bank This Week’s Sponsors -Paint Your Life. To learn more and get a 30% discount text SYSK to 48-48-48 -SimpliSafe. For free shipping and a 60 day risk-free trial go to www.SimpliSafe.com/something -Stroke of Genius Podcast. Subscribe to Stroke of Genius on Apple Podcasts, at www.ipoef.org, or your favorite podcast platform. -Lively. For $10 off your first order go to www.WearLively.com/something and use promo code: something -Linzess. For information about your IBSC symptoms go to www.ohmygut.info/podcast. -Capital One. What's in your wallet? www.CapitalOne.com -Geico. Save 15% or more on car insurance at www.Geico.com  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. 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 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. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS 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. 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. Something you should know.

Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome. 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 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 can do better next time, regardless if 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. 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, 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 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 of 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, 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 it in the public domain. And so not only that now, 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 Barbra 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 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 adaption of Occam's razor, which people may be familiar with, like the simplest answer, 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 than 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 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. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a co-founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited

to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lightning, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to

the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to something you should know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives,

and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. 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's greater than two like i 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 a the bigger 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 reversible decisions where, I mean, irreversible decisions where you can't really go back through the door. Once you go through, it's locked. Then think about 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, sunk 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 like 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. You're right. I mean, the hope with naming some of these, and you're right, it is extremely difficult. A lot of these are all about overcoming 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 whys 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 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's 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 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 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, 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. And 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 you'll be putting yourself 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. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover.

We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events.

Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. 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 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 people know they're supposed to exercise, and they probably don't get enough 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, 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 see huge impact on your health from just doing a little bit. One recent study that came out about a week or so ago 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'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, you know, with some sugar, you know, 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 is 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 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, sun has been demonized and 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 are 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 it'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 a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes for this episode. Thanks, Eric. All right. Thank you so much. Now that we're getting into summer vacation season, here is something you might not know that, by knowing it, can save you a bit of a hassle. 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. And before you go away and say goodbye, do me a favor and just hit the share button and share this podcast with someone you know. I'm Micah Ruthers. 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, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network.

At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.