Something You Should Know - One Proven Thing That Will Help You Live Longer & How Everyday Things Get Made

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Are you a doodler like me? I often doodle when I listen to a talk or a presentation – even when I interview people for the podcast. And it seems there is a real benefit when you doodle. This episode begins with the explanation. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-power-of-the-doodle-improve-your-focus-and-memory-1406675744 You may be looking at exercise all wrong. Health and fitness may be less about going to the gym for an hour or other formal exercise and more about fitting more movement into your day – all day long. That’s according to Juliet Starrett attorney, professional athlete, and podcaster who has worked in the health and fitness industry for over 20 years. She offers up the latest proven research that shows how small movements are so important to health, longevity and your overall level of fitness. And she explains easy ways to do it. Juliet is co-author of the book Built To Move (https://amzn.to/3ZwADHH) and her podcast is The Ready State (https://thereadystate.com/podcasts/). Every manmade thing you see or touch today was invented and engineered to work by someone. When you think about it, there is something amazingly creative about that process according to Bill Hammack. Bill is known as The Engineer Guy on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@engineerguyvideo) and is a professor of engineering at the University of Illinois. He joins me to take a peek into the fascinating world of invention and engineering to see how the things you use every day to make your life better, came to be. His book is titled The Things We Make: The Unknown History of Invention from Cathedrals to Soda Cans (https://amzn.to/3zhGpm3). As the weather warms up, poison ivy, oak and sumac will start showing up and causing irritating rashes on people who come in to contact. Listen as I explain a few myths and facts about these plants to help you protect yourself. https://www.aad.org/public/everyday-care/itchy-skin/poison-ivy/who-gets-contagious PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them and treat almost every condition under the sun! Go to https://Zocdoc.com/SYSK and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. Discover Credit Cards do something pretty awesome. At the end of your first year, they automatically double all the cash back you’ve earned! See terms and check it out for yourself at https://Discover.com/match Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The search for truth never ends. Introducing June's Journey, a hidden object mobile game with a captivating story. Connect with friends, explore the roaring 20s, and enjoy thrilling activities and challenges while supporting environmental causes. After seven years, the adventure continues with our immersive travels feature. Explore distant cultures and engage in exciting experiences. There's always something new to discover. Are you ready?

Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, what doodling does to your concentration. Then some very cool things about health and fitness you may not know, like the sit and rise test. And the sit and rise test is based on a great study that showed your ability to get up and down off the ground is a predictor of your longevity. Test basically involves crossing your legs and sitting down and then getting back up from that position without putting a knee or a hand on the floor. Also, what you might not know

about catching poison ivy and the fascinating world of inventing and engineering the products we use every day. I have always been fascinated by the two-liter soda bottle. The guy who invented that, his last name was Wyeth, and his father was a great illustrator, and his brother, Andrew Wyeth, was a great painter, and this Wyeth was an engineer. All this today on Something You Should Know.

This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please, read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat.

Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. 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. Hello. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Sometimes when I interview people for Something You Should Know, I doodle. And sometimes I feel guilty about doodling, I guess because I've been told throughout my life that, you know, if you're doodling, you're not paying attention.

But I think it helps me pay attention. And as it turns out, if you are in a meeting or listening to a presentation or in the classroom and you doodle, it may in fact help you concentrate. When researchers observed people who were asked to listen to boring phone messages, the people who doodled had better recall than the people who didn't. Why? Well, the researchers speculated that doodling took just enough attention

to keep the listener's mind from wandering, but not so much attention as to be distracting. The doodling gave kind of a mental break from the task of listening. And in this way, doodling might improve working memory. More recent studies have found that college and junior high school students who doodle recall more information than non-doodlers when listening to school lectures. So, doodle away. And that is something you should know.

It would be difficult to find someone, anyone, who didn't know that exercise and movement are good for the human body. Fitness is, by all indications, a very worthy goal because it has been linked to better health and longer life. But what does it mean to exercise? Is any exercise good? Is hard, strenuous exercise better? Do you really need an hour a day at the gym to do any good? Or does a walk around the block after dinner do something?

Well, let's take a look at this because I think the answers may surprise you. Here to talk about this with me is Juliet Starrett. She is an attorney, professional athlete, and podcaster and co-author of the book Built to Move. Hi, Juliet. Welcome. Hey, Mike. Thanks for having me. Sure. So people are certainly exposed to a lot of messages promoting health and wellness and exercise. So do you think, since you're in the has really taken off, it's become a trillion dollar industry. And yet simultaneously, if you look at literally any measure of health that you might care about, whether that's obesity, diabetes, sedentarism, depression, ACL tear rates in children, low back pain, We are not doing well. Most of those statistics are trending downwards in that we seem to be getting more and more unhealthy

and we are spending more time sitting and less time moving. And so it's not a pretty picture right now. And it seems like in the health and fitness and wellness industry of which we live and breathe and have been working for the last 25 years, I would say it would give us maybe a C grade in terms of how we're doing. I think we're trying to get the message out there that people should move more and take care of their health, but it somehow isn't resonating and it's not working in people's

time crunch lives. People are going to the gym, but they aren't moving enough throughout their day. Well, they're joining the gym, which is more proof that people get the message. They hear the message. But I'm told from people that work in that business that a lot of their profit comes from people who join gyms but never go or seldom go because they don't. You know, people really didn't start joining gyms en masse until the early 90s. You know, there was some aerobics and YMCAs in the 80s, but it wasn't until the 90s that people really started joining gyms.

And simultaneously, our obesity rates have continued to climb. So that really got us thinking, what's the message here what's going on here people are getting the message that they should exercise in a formal way like you know putting me and putting on their shoes and driving to the gym but somehow that's not moving the needle in terms of our overall health isn't it interesting that there is so much money spent promoting health and fitness on television. And just, you know, when you see all these fitness models in magazines and promoting, let's all get healthy. And some people buy into it. And yet, overall, we hear that we're heavier and less healthy than we used to be.

I think that this is yet another messaging problem we've had in the health and fitness business. If you look at most health and fitness accounts on the internet, you know, what people are touting is, you know, how strong your abs are, how ripped you look, or, you know, what kind of diet is working for, you know, working to calorie restrict and make people the most jacked and tan looking, right? But what most people actually care about is feeling good in their body and that's very different for different people and secondarily most people don't want to be in pain and that's a very common thing we see and I think we've really missed the mark in our business by telling but by suggesting that people should care about being extremely lean, having ripped abs,

strong butts, and that that's the way to feeling good and feeling healthy when it turns out it's not. And most people don't care about that. So here's a question I'd like you to tackle because it's one I've wondered about. If you look back at pictures, images, movies from earlier times, you know, 50 years ago and earlier, you don't see a lot of heavy people. And yet in those times, people were not joining gyms. There wasn't a fitness craze. It's more just the way people were,

and they seemed fitter and leaner. So what do you make of that? I would make two points here, Mike. The first is that we spend a lot of time reading about and researching the blue zones. And blue zones are those five or six areas around the world where people live the longest with the fewest chronic illnesses. And they've gotten a lot of attention in recent years. And there are some very common things that are common things among each one of the blue zones. And one of those things is that physical activity is built into their daily life. And if you contrast that here in this country or in Europe, in the UK, exercises become a formal thing

that we think we have to do in these one hour blocks, right? We have to strap on our gym shoes and get in our car and drive to the gym and do our orange theory class or lift weights. But what you see in these areas where people are living long without chronic illnesses, what they've done is create what we call a movement-rich environment in their life. So they're often not doing any kind of formal exercise, but instead they're continuing to move throughout their days and movement is built into their daily lives. They're walking to the grocery store, they're getting outside, they're, you know, they're moving throughout their day in various ways.

They're definitely not sitting all day long. And so this, this general movement is really common amongst cultures and people who live long and live without chronic illness. And this was really influential for us because I do think we've sent people the message that, Hey, look, if you go to the gym for an hour, you've checked the box and you're healthy. But what's really missing is this movement-rich environment and creating opportunities for ourselves to continue moving throughout the day and shifting our mindset from thinking that if we don't have a full hour to exercise, we may as well do nothing. Instead, that these little five, 10-minute movement breaks we take, little walks after we eat,

can really add up and they can be compounding. And so we, for example, are huge fans of taking three 10-minute walks after you eat dinner. And that's additional 30 minutes a day. And if you compound that day after day, month after month, year after year, that's so much additional movement. And there's so many reasons why walking and additional movement are good for us above and beyond exercise. And what would those be?

What would be the benefits of exercise beyond the benefits of exercise? Well, I'll start with something that may be a little obscure, but the lymphatic system is a little understood, but extremely important part of our body. And the simplest way to explain it is it's, you know, we have groceries in and garbage out, and our lymphatic system is how we get the garbage out of our body. And as one example, anyone who's had surgery knows that one of the first things that you do in the hospital after you have surgery is they get you up and move you around. And the reason for that is that's going to help clear your lymphatic system. The only thing that effectively clears your lymphatic system is movement. We're talking about health and fitness and exercise and movement. And we're

talking about it with Juliet Starrett, who is author of the book Built to Move. 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. Download Bumble and try it for yourself.

Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. So Juliet, address this idea because I think people have a sense that all these little things don't really add up. But you had said that there is a cumulative effect, that doing all these

little movements adds up. So explain, what does it add up to? What is the cumulative effect? So in the 1960s, there was a Japanese pedometer company that actually popularized the idea of the 10,000 steps. And they actually did that as a marketing ploy to get people to buy their pedometer. But since that time, a massive amount of research has filled that in to show that the more you move, the longer you're going to live and the fewer chronic illnesses you're going to have.

Now, what we know is the average American gets about 3,000 steps a day. And what we also know is that you can get most of the benefits of moving more at anything over 8,000 steps a day. And what we also know is that you can get most of the benefits of moving more at anything over 8,000 steps a day. We recommend that people move between 8,000 and 12,000 steps a day. But honestly, more is better. And that even though the 10,000 steps rule started off as a marketing ploy, there has been a ton of research to show that the more you move, the longer you're going to live and the less chronic disease you're going to suffer. And yet, despite those rather impressive benefits, exercise and movement is still at the bottom of the list on people's priority,

or not even on the list of people's priority. They would just rather do something else, maybe anything else other than exercise. One thing we know is that people cannot rely on willpower or motivation. That's been tried and tested in our environment. And we've learned that people don't, they only have so much willpower and motivation. And instead, they need to be able to rely on habits and creating environments where it's easy to make the right choice and it's hard to make a bad choice. The simplest example of that is that my husband, Kelly, loves cookies. And if we have cookies in the house, he's going to eat cookies. And so we do our best to make sure we have as few cookies around the house as possible, because if we have them, he's going to eat them.

But we've tried to take that same principle and apply it to movement in our own lives and try to help people figure out how they can apply it to movement in their own lives. And I'll give you a few examples. So we are huge fans of standing desks, but I think standing desks have been very misunderstood and they were popularized five or six years ago. A lot of people went out and bought standing desks. They stood up for eight hours, they felt terrible and they lowered their desk and they sat down again.

The reason that we like standing desks is not because we think sitting is bad or standing is necessarily good, but what we do know is that movement is good and that if we set up our environment so we're given more opportunity to move, we are more likely to do it. And so in our office, for example, every single desk is set at standing height. Now we also have stools here available where people can sit and perch, but the default is to have your desk in a standing position, which makes it easier to make choices about how we move throughout the day. So if there was a hidden camera following me all day long, you would see that I stand for part of the day. I'm actually standing during this podcast right now. I sit,

I perch, but the key thing is, is that I'm moving in small ways throughout my day and I'm changing my position. Similarly, if you look at our house, we've set up our house in our living room to give ourselves as much movement opportunity as possible. So in our book, our first chapter starts with what we call the sit and rise test. And the sit and rise test is based on a great study that showed that your ability to get up and down off the ground is a predictor of your longevity. And the test basically involves crossing your legs and sitting down and then getting back up from that position without putting a knee or a hand on the floor. Because we value this position and think it's a predictor of our long-term health, we've set up our house so that it's easy for us to choose

to sit on the floor and spend some time working on our mobility. I know you said that the more movement the better, but I think people like to have a sense of like, yeah, but how much? Like, what's the minimum amount of, what's the minimum that actually does something? Well, you know, I go back to the walking piece because to me, that is the place where we can best measure movement and the easiest way we can measure movement. Most people these days have a smartphone and or they're wearing some kind of smartwatch or some kind of technological tool where they can measure their movement. And the best way to measure that is in walking. And so we are fans of the 8 to 10,000 or 8 to 12,000

step rule. And that's the way that people can really test whether they're getting enough movement and it's quantifiable now we also of course our fans about fans of continuing to move throughout our day in the form of standing and you know getting up and down off the ground and practicing our balance but I think the easiest way for people to measure their overall movement is in their step count and everybody has a tool these days that can tell them where they are and it's the best benchmark of whether or not we're getting enough movement so i think sometimes the 10 000 step rule has has created an environment where people think well i'm not going to make that so i'm not even going to try but research shows that people can actually reasonably get 8,000 steps and they having to schedule a one-hour formal walk into the day.

It can add up to 8,000 steps and you can get all the benefit of that movement at that level. So that's why we put that as the benchmark. I know you talk about the connection between exercise and sleep. And since both are so important to health, and they're so related to each other, explain how that all works. One of the downstream positive effects of getting more movement is you actually can fall asleep well and have a deeper and more high quality sleep, right? So moving throughout your day is good for your overall health and longevity, but it also may help with your sleep. For example, we worked with Delta Force, an elite military unit, and when their unit is

struggling to sleep, when anyone in the unit is struggling to sleep, the first order prescription they're given is to walk 10 to 15,000 steps a day. Because what they've learned is that additional movement adds up and actually triggers people to fall asleep faster and sleep more deeply. And so while of course, all this movement throughout our day is good for our body, it clears our lymphatic system, it's good for our overall health and longevity, it also is good for our body. It clears our lymphatic system. It's good for our overall health and longevity. It also is good for your sleep. Which is good for your health. Yes, it's all connected. And interestingly, that feeling tired, lack of sleep is one of the excuses people use to not exercise. And at least my experience is that exercise rejuvenates you.

It gives you energy. Even if you don't feel like you're up to it, it'll make you feel better. The more people are able to actually incorporate these practices into their lives, the more energy overall they will feel. Because again, we're a connected system. We believe that if you get seven to eight hours of sleep, if you actually eat some fruits and vegetables and enough protein, if you spend a little time working on your mobility, if you walk enough, all these systems are connected. And in fact, you're going to actually have more energy.

Well, I think there's a real positive message here that it isn't all about strenuous weightlifting at the gym kind of exercise if you want to be healthy and fit. There's just so many more options that people don't think about or they just don't think they'll do anything. There is so much that people can be doing to improve their health and importantly, feel better and be able to do the things they want to do physically that don't involve formal exercise, going to the gym, following a really strict diet that so many things that can really move the levers of health and of feeling good can be incorporated into things you're already doing in your day, including during your workday. And I hope that that helps motivate people to realize that, again, you don't have to add a 20-item to-do list to feel good in your body, that there are so many little things that have compounding value that you can do to feel better in your body now and in five, in 20, in 25 years. Great. It's a really good message.

I've been talking with Juliet Starrett, who is an attorney, a professional athlete, a podcaster and co-author of the book Built to Move. And there's a link to her book and to her podcast in the show notes. Thanks, Juliet. Thanks so much, Mike. Thanks for having us. At Wealthsimple, we're built for whatever you're building. Built for Jane, who wants to break into the housing market. We're built for Ted, who's obsessed with what's happening in the global markets. And built for Celine, who just wants to retire and explore the world's flea markets. So take a moment and think about what you're building for. We've got the financial tools to help make it happen.

Wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. 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. If you take the time to notice, every single man-made thing you use today was invented by someone. Your microwave, the light switch, the airplane, the pop-top soda can. Everything went through a process of invention and engineering to get to where it works. And the stories of how those things go through that process is fascinating. Here to tell that story is Bill Hammack. He's known as the Engineer Guy on YouTube. He is also a professor of engineering at the University of Illinois, and he's author

of a book called The Things We Make, The Unknown History of Invention from Cathedrals to Soda Cans. Hey, Bill, welcome to Something You Should Know. Well, thank you. So I think when people imagine, when I imagine a new invention, I imagine there was this light bulb moment, this stroke of genius, moment of inspiration. And that's how something starts to be invented. And it makes for a great story, but you say that seldom is the way it happens. So let's start there. Pick an example of an invention and what people think is the story and then what the actual story is. There's a wonderful one about some engineers at Raytheon were playing around with radars and noticed it melted a candy bar in one of their pockets. And then boom, there completely.

We have the consumer microwave oven and it's invented and we're done telling the story. And if you really look into it, the story is just much deeper than that, much broader than that. And that's just at best, at very best, a simplification of what happens. In that case, there was 30 or 40 years of development. They tried to build a commercial oven, not a consumer oven. They tried to replace the conventional oven. It was only the first one appeared in 1946. The microwave began to appear in the home in 1968, 1969, 1970. In that period, it evolved into this consumer oven that is adjacent to and in addition to

our conventional oven. So is it safe to say that most successful inventions are engineered to fill a need? There's a problem and it's to solve that problem. Yeah. And in fact, I would say that's what engineers do. If you like, they have a problem and they're looking for a solution to it. And that problem is their desire to create a device, a process, a system, you know, a microchip, a chemical plant, an internet search engine. And the solution, of course, is how to manufacture that microchip, how to design that plant, how to create that algorithm for a search engine. So yeah, it's very much driven by the desire to solve some kind of problem.

So you obviously are very into this whole engineering and invention process. What is it that's so fascinating to you? I am struck by the creativity that goes into engineering. And in fact, I would almost argue that it's just the pinnacle of being creative. And I think that gets overlooked or it gets hidden. In fact, maybe a place to start, which is related to this, is to start that engineering isn't applied science. Because most people think that science discovered something, and then an engineer or engineering applies it. They do something with it. And that engineering may be, depending on the person, some vague notion of what they do, or maybe even a more detailed notion. But paradoxically, that is the opposite. The reason for the engineering method is to solve problems before

we have scientific knowledge, which I think is a counterintuitive way to think about it. Because the results of engineering, you know, are not the products of science. The scientific method creates knowledge. The engineering method, you know, creates solutions. And engineers actually use a lot of their ingenuity to get around scientific, a lack of scientific understanding, to have airplanes that fly long before we understand some of the principles of the flow over the wings. I was just going to say, give me an example of that.

Is that an example of that? Absolutely, that's an example, because let's just look at an aircraft wing. There are two kinds of flow. It doesn't matter if it's air or liquid, and you're familiar with both. One is laminar flow, which is a very smooth flow, and one is turbulent flow. So take your faucet, turn it on, let it flow slowly.

It looks glass-like. Make it flow really fast, and it just churns, right? Now, I used water there, but air also is something that flows. When you light a candle and you watch the smoke come off it, that smoke is tracing out the pattern of the air above the candle. And there you can also watch it be smooth and laminar and then become chaotic, turbulent. And over an aircraft wing, you want the flow to be laminar. You want it to flow in a particular way, and so you need a particular shape of an aircraft wing. And in the 19th century, an engineer figured out how engineers could determine,

with a great degree of likelihood, if flow was turbulent or laminar. And I should say, the idea of this transition is the most complex phenomenon in nature. And there's an argument to be made that it's the most complex phenomenon in nature. It is not to this day fully understood from a scientific viewpoint at a molecular level. It's one of the great mysteries. There's a place called the Clay Institute that offers a prize if people can solve the fundamental issue of turbulence and what you know, what does it mean fundamentally and scientifically? Yet, we have thousands of airplanes that fly over the Atlantic Ocean every day, right? Millions of people do. So I think that's a paradigm example where the engineering certainly

preceded scientific understanding. Wait, so are you saying that we don't really know how airplanes fly, but we just make them fly anyway? We know how they fly. We know how they fly. But what we don't know is a detailed scientific explanation of why air will travel in a particular way. So we know now how to shape a wing. We've done it empirically. We have what are called phenomenological, which means we're measuring various properties of the phenomenon. But we don't know necessarily at a deep level of why that particular kind of flow occurs. I mean, I think an even better example, well, equal, equal, is cathedrals. The cathedrals built in the 12th and 13th centuries, long before we had knowledge of strength of materials, long before we had theories of

elasticity. They built these cathedrals where the engineers, called masons at the time, didn't know mathematics, didn't know material properties, couldn't read, didn't even have a marked ruler, yardstick, measuring stick. You know, they would have a rod that would be what they called the standard length for their building. But it was not something that was marked with 10 inches, 12 inches, meters, centimeters, or so on. on so what's it what's another really great invention thing that somebody engineered from the past that that illustrates one of one of these things that people don't maybe really grasp about how this this whole world works well i have always been fascinated by the two liter soda bottle. These large bottles that you use every day. And the guy who invented that was, his last name was, I believe, Wyeth. And his father was a great illustrator. And you can still find his father's illustrations in books. And his brother, Andrew Wyeth, was a great painter. And this Wyeth was an engineer. And he made the

argument that what he did is as creative as what they were doing, and claims he used his father's notions of creativity and the way that his father's worked to do this. And he made that plastic bottle by taking a lump of plastic, making it molten, and then blowing air through the top so that it filled the mold quickly. And when it filled the mold, the plastic went in all sorts of directions, so it kind of formed this woven or interlaced like a piece of cloth. And that's what gives those bottles strength. So not only can you make them quickly, but the process of making them quickly makes them strong also. In fact, the first one he made, they blew the air in there. They didn't think they had made a bottle and it was just so thin that they couldn't see it. And that's the two liter bottle we see today. It's the one you go to the grocery store and buy.

And he was Andrew Wyeth's brother. Yes, yes, yes, it was Andrew Wyeth's brother. I haven't told that story in a long time, and I'm in my studio right now, and I have one of the blanks somewhere, and we've been meaning to tell that story, but I haven't thought about that for a very long time. Well, what you said a while ago about the airplane wing and really inventing an airplane wing without having that piece of knowledge about how air flows is so fascinating. Are there any other stories like that of where something's invented without the whole explanation at the start? Well, there's a fantastic one.

There's a lovely story about an engineer named Frances Arnold. And she, in the late 90s, was studying enzymes. And enzymes are molecules that exist in nature, they exist in our body, and they make chemical reactions happen, they break bonds. Everything that our body does in enzyme helps the reaction occur. And I mentioned breaking bonds, and breaking bonds is something that engineers, particularly chemical engineers, want to do because that's how you make chemicals, plastics, pharmaceuticals. And she wanted to use these enzymes industrially.

Now, here's the problem that she faced. An enzyme in your body works only at about body temperature. We know that you don't want your body temperature to go too high or too low. You stop working, right? And she wanted them to work in really harsh solvents because that's what you often have to dissolve things in industrially. So think paint thinner. So she took an enzyme that exists in nature, and what it does is it will break up organic matter. In fact, I have some of it in my lab here. We put some gelatin in it, and it will break up the gelatin and just dissolve it completely.

And she wanted to engineer that so it would work in paint thinner instead of water. Now, she used some 21st century science for sure, late 20th century, early 21st century. Most of your listeners will know that you can sequence a protein now, that a protein is made of amino acids, and that if you get those amino acids in the right order, then you have a particular protein. And she was looking at 275 amino acids in this particular protein. And the way that they were ordered worked well in nature, but she faced the question of how do you change those in order to make it work in paint thinner. All right? 275, 20 amino acids, that's 20 to the 275th power, that's 200 trillion combinations, more than there are numbers of stars. So what she did was she did what she called directed

evolution. She mutated the naturally occurring enzyme 10 different ways, stuck them in paint thinner, put a little bit of Jell-O in, and watched if anything happened. And most of them just died. But one of them did okay, just a little bit. So she took that one, mutated it again, stuck it in paint thinner with gelatin, a little more or less dilute paint thinner. And she repeated this maybe 10 times until she evolved a protein, an enzyme rather, that would work in paint thinner as well as it worked in water. She won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for this, though she is a chemical engineer. And she said in her Nobel acceptance speech, which was only two or three years ago, we don't know to this day how those evolved enzymes work. And they're used today to diagnose and treat disease, to reduce farm waste,

to improve textiles, to synthesize industrial and pharmaceutical chemicals, and remove stains. They're a common ingredient in laundry detergent. And so there's a 21st century example of where engineering preceded the science everybody has an idea everybody claims oh you know or says oh i wish i had invented that or i thought of that a long time ago or something like that but there's a difference between coming up with the idea and engineering it to work that is one of the things the things that fascinates me the most, is manufactured items and their reliability, which is what you just got to. The way that you make a microchip so that it's reliable, the way you make a pop can so that it's reliable. I mean, our pop cans don't normally leak, right? And I think you've really caught on to something there is you can have a proof of concept, but then to turn around and ask, how do we mass produce? This is a whole fascinating set of engineering.

What about the inventions that don't work? I mean, do most inventions start out as this isn't going anywhere and then somehow it gets refined or does the process usually have a lot of roadblocks or does the process usually just take a methodical trip to success? I think usually a lot of roadblocks and engineers are constantly adjusting to what the goal is. I mean, it seems like the microwave oven is my favorite subject now, but I did many years ago interview about 20, 25 people who developed it. And you know, essentially that was a story of failure for 20 or 30 years until it wasn't right.

And then we go back and we tell this success story about it and prune out the parts that, that, that, that didn't work. For example, the microwave oven, when they were developing it, they also developed a device called diathermy, which you took a microwave tube and you pointed at your arm and you heated it like a heating pack. Now, not a good idea. Listeners, don't try this at home. They got that off the market. But if you look, they were trying all sorts of different things to do with microwave heating. And in fact, a lot of those things they still do industrially. We just don't know about them because we only think about the microwave oven.

Well, you know, what's interesting to me is how, you know, everything that you look at that's man-made had to have been invented, and yet we tend to talk about very few of them. There's always the story of the microwave oven, or the Post-it note, or whiteout. People always talk about the same few, and yet everything has a story. Yeah, it absolutely does. And in fact, you know, I've mentioned the soda can here. About 20 years ago now, I dug out the patent of the person who invented that stay-on tab. So it used to be, and you know, it depends how old our listeners are, but it used to be you pulled the tab off and it was detached and you threw it away. And this was a huge litter problem.

And so somebody invented that tab that stays on that we use every day and never think about it. And I actually traced him down, called him, and interviewed him to ask him that story. And he was rather surprised, you know, that I had found him. And you're absolutely right. I mean, a lot of this is anonymous, that we don't know who invents a lot of it. We don't think about it. I mean, in the age of Edison, you know, we kind of knew, we knew very much what he was doing. But we almost take it for granted now. In fact, there's a way in which successful engineering is invisible. And by that, I mean, you probably haven't thought about your furnace at all until it fails,

right? And when it's working, you're not thinking about it at all. And I had one that failed and found out it was built in 1988 and it was based on some kind of interesting German technology from the 40s. And as they hauled it away, talked to the last guy who could repair it. But of course, I had no idea until it broke to even think about it or even question it. Well, that happens to me every time the electricity goes out. You never think how much you rely on electricity. You don't give it a second thought

until it goes off. And then you realize how important it is. Absolutely. I think that's a prime example. And what I love about that is that's a 19th century story. The device that makes your electricity is called a steam turbine. And we all think of steam as the oldest technology and steam trains and steam ships. And now we're somewhere else. And yet one of those turbines is turning away almost for sure, making your electricity at this very moment. You burn fossil fuel, you boil water, you make steam,

you run it through a turbine, you spin magnets, and there's electricity. It's happening four blocks away from me or 10 blocks away, I guess it is, at the Abbott Power Plant. Well, I've always admired the engineering mind. My dad was an engineer, and that ability, just that way of thinking is always something I never had. And I always admire it, and I love to hear these stories. I've been talking to Bill Hammack. He's the engineer guy on YouTube. He is a professor of engineering at the University of Illinois,

and the name of his book is The Things We Make, The Unknown History of Invention, From Cathedrals to Soda Cans. And if you want to buy it, there's a link to that book in the show notes. Appreciate it, Bill. Thanks for being here.

Are you allergic to poison ivy or oak or sumac? Probably. Most people are. All three plants contain an oil called urushiol, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, and most people are allergic to that oil. Here are some common questions. First of all, what's the difference between the three, poison ivy, oak, and sumac? Well, the plants look different, but the rash is the same. And if you're allergic to one, you're probably allergic to the other two.

Can you get the rash from someone else who already got it? No. The rash is not contagious. If someone has the rash, touching that rash won't cause a rash on your skin. However, you can develop a rash if you touch the person's skin or clothing while oil from one of the plants is still on it. Can you get the rash from a dog or a cat? Absolutely. The oil that causes the rash can stick to just about anything, including fur. So if your pet has brushed up against one of the plants, you can get that oil from their fur and develop the rash. But your pet likely will not get the rash. Most pets are not allergic to those plants.

And that is something you should know. Telling your friends about something you should know is about the best thing you can do to help support this podcast, because that helps us grow our audience. So tell someone and ask them to listen. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? 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.

The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures? You got this.

No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either. Of course, I'm just a cicada. I'm crying. I'm so sorry. You win that one.

So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run. 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times,

we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him,

but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.