Something You Should Know - Secret Languages We All Speak & Amazing Changes in Nature You Never Knew

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

Just thinking about itching can make you start to scratch — but there’s a reason for that. Scratching triggers a powerful neurological loop called the itch-scratch cycle, which can actually make the problem worse. Listen as I explain what’s really happening in your brain and skin when that irresistible urge strikes to scratch that itch. https://www.news-medical.net/health/Scratching-the-Surface-Uncovering-the-Neurological-Mystery-of-Itch.aspx? We all speak secret languages — whether we realize it or not. Families, professions, and social groups develop their own slang, codes, and private phrases that only make sense to insiders. From kitchen slang in restaurants and bars to cryptic police radio chatter, these hidden languages are everywhere. My guest Ben Schott, author of Schott's Significa: A Miscellany of Secret Languages (https://amzn.to/3LdTmqg), uncovers where these coded words come from, how they evolve, and what they reveal about belonging and identity. The changing seasons bring obvious signs — leaves turning, snow falling, flowers blooming — but nature also changes in ways most of us never notice. The color of sunsets, the murkiness of rivers, even the speed at which days lengthen or shorten all follow astonishing seasonal patterns. Tristan Gooley, author of The Hidden Seasons: A Calendar of Nature’s Clues (https://amzn.to/4ohNNpu), takes us on a fascinating journey through these overlooked natural shifts and shows how to read the signs of the changing world around us. Finally, the humble banana — praised by some as a perfect health food and shunned by others for its sugar and carbs — gets a scientific verdict. I’ll share what nutrition research really says about bananas and whether you should eat more of them… or less. https://time.com/4017962/banana-nutrition/ PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! AG1: Head to ⁠⁠⁠https://DrinkAG1.com/SYSK ⁠⁠⁠ to get a FREE Welcome Kit with an AG1 Flavor Sampler and a bottle of Vitamin D3 plus K2, when you first subscribe!  INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! QUINCE: Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with Quince.  Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! DELL: It’s time for Black Friday at Dell Technologies. Save big on PCs like the Dell 16 Plus featuring Intel® Core™ Ultra processors. Shop now at: ⁠ https://Dell.com/deals ⁠ NOTION: ⁠⁠Notion brings all your notes, docs, and projects into one connected space that just works . It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and actually fun to use! Try Notion, now with Notion Agent, at: ⁠https://notion.com/something⁠ PLANET VISIONARIES: In partnership with Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative, this… is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, the strange science of itching and scratching. Then, the fascinating world of secret languages. Every family, every group, every industry has its own secret language. I mean, the language of the stunt world. I mean, you need to describe different types of camera movements. You know, we're going off sticks. It means we're taking the camera off the tripod. The martini shot.

The martini shot is the last shot of the day. and people find it amusing and pleasing, and it just enters the language. Also, what's the deal with bananas? Are they healthy or not? And some of the most fascinating clues in nature you may have never noticed. So a really nice simple one is, if a cloud is taller than it is wide, it's a classic sign that the atmosphere is unstable. That makes rain showers more likely, particularly if you see them in the morning. It makes thunderstorms more likely. It makes hail more likely. All this today on something you should.

should know. When they were young, the five members of an elite commando group nicknamed the Stone Wolves raged against the oppressive rule of the Kradarokian Empire, which occupies and dominates most of the galaxies inhabited planets. The wolves fought for freedom, but they failed, leaving countless corpses in their wake. Defeated and disillusioned, they hung up their guns and went their separate ways, all hoping to find some small bit of peace amidst a universe thick with violence and oppression.

Four decades after their heyday, they each try to stay alive and eke out a living, but a friend from the past won't let them move on, and neither will their bitterest enemy. The Stone Wolves is Season 11 of the Galactic Football League Science Fiction series by author Scott Sigler. Enjoy it as a standalone story,

or listen to the entire GFL series beginning with Season 1, The Rookie, Search for Scott Sigler, S-I-G-L-E-R, 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. So when I tell you that we're going to start this episode by talking about itching, the fact that I just said that may have already caused you to start itching, which is part of what we're going to talk about. Hi, and welcome. I'm Mike Carruthers, and this is something you should know.

So we all know there's nothing more satisfying than scratching an itch. Yet what's interesting is researchers have uncovered what they call the itch-scratch cycle. It's a loop where scratching might feel good for a moment, but scratching actually makes the itch come back stronger. here's how the loop works. When you feel an itch, you scratch it, and that scratching triggers mild pain signals, which momentarily distract you from the itch. But here's the catch. The pain signals from the scratching prompt your brain to release serotonin and other chemicals, which don't just reduce the pain, they amplify the itch. In other words, you scratch, you get serotonin, you feel itchier, so you scratch more. On top of that, there's a lot of that, there's, this phenomenon of contagious itch. Seeing, hearing, or even imagining someone scratching or being

told about an itch can make you feel itchy. So yes, your mother was right, don't scratch that itch. And one practical tip is that instead of scratching, try gentle rubbing or stroking around the itchy area. Some recent work suggests that soft gentle strokes can disrupt the itch signal without triggering the whole cycle again. And that is something you should know. When you were a kid, or maybe with your own kids, you probably had a secret language, a few strange words or phrases that only people in the family understood. Maybe it came from a mispronunciation, or a family inside joke, or it's just a word that's stuck. But secret languages don't just belong to kids. Every field, restaurants, retail, even podcasting has its own private code. It's not exactly

secret, but it's meaningless to anyone outside. So where do these special languages come from and why do we love creating them? My guest, Ben Shot, has been exploring that question and he is the author of a book called Shots Significa, a miscellany of secret languages. Hey, Ben, welcome to something you should know. Thank you for having me. So I'm obviously aware of secret languages and I've participated with others talking secret languages, but I never thought of it so much as something to study and yet they're everywhere. So we are surrounded by secret languages and we interact with them all the time without knowing them. So every time you go into a bar, the bartenders, the guys behind the bar will have their own language. Every time you go to a restaurant, the kitchen and the

front of house will have their own language every time you interact with all sorts of groups. You are interacting with the language and you often don't see it or hear it because it's private. So when you look at all these secret languages and the worlds in which these secret languages are used, what do you get from it? The more I dived into any one of these worlds, the more I felt a tremendous empathy with the people involved. And it was a really interesting way because once you get into the language, you get into the mindset and to the perspective. So for example, Starbucks, Starbucks baristas, I thought I was a perfectly polite Starbucks customer, coffee shop customer. I am so much more respectful and

polite now, knowing what they have to deal with, with, you know, the Gertrudes and the crusties and the touches and the hecklers and the TikTok guys who come in and they just shove the TikTok video and go, make me the secret menu. There is no secret menu, but, you know, TikTok creates these bizarre hack drinks. And so realizing, like, the language of Starbucks allowed me to really kind of, you know, get into the mindset. And when I go in, I'm a much better customer. So give me, because I know what you mean by bars and restaurants, but like, what are some of the words in pick a language and some of the words in that language that we might be familiar with to give us a better flavor of this? So I'll give you an example of a world you won't be familiar with, which is the

Diamond District of New York. And it's a language that a lot of it is Yiddish. There's some Hebrew. There's some Hindi. There's all sorts of different languages. And there's some English. So, for example, the word G. The G is the customer. And one of the diamond dealers I talked to talked about the G. And then another one said, oh, well, do you know about Kitty with the G? So Kitty with the G is something they'd say to one of their colleagues. They say, hey, kitty with the G, which means talk to the guy, don't let him leave the shop, because I've got to go and check something in the back. So that's great. And armed with that, I go to another dealer who says, oh, well, if you know about Kitty with the G, do you know about Sherry the G? And Sherry the G

means get this guy out of here. It's like this guy's an idiot. Sherry the G, get him out of him. And that all came from this single term G that I then kind of zigzagged from diamond dealer to building up this composite. And you really get a sense of how they think about customers from the language they use. So why do you think we have these languages? Is it a bond? thing that the people in the group that use the language feel closer? Or is it an efficiency thing? It's easier to say these words that we all know what it means rather than explain it or why? Most of them, I think, are designed in order for people to sort of communicate quickly. So it's really about speed and efficiency and an esprit core.

So for example, doctors and nurses. And some of that is just for speed. Some of that is to communicate politely in front of a patient. So you might say query mitotic lesion rather than saying query cancer, because cancer is a very scary word. And if you don't know what it is, you might use euphemism or a technical term that only other medics will know. And some of them are designed to sort of create an esprit of core in a dark, difficult situation. So sometimes it's about being in the weeds and overwhelmed and like black humor and dark comic terms are a way to sort of bring people together. So different groups, different professions, different organizations have secret

languages. I get that. But they're secret to them. Only they know what they mean. And they're probably the only ones who really care about it. So why are we talking about it? Why is this significant? Well, there's this book that I saw as a school child. And it was written in 1959. It's called The Law and Language of Schoolchildren. And I remember reading it because it was on my parents' bookshelves. And this husband and wife team in the late 1950s went from playground to playground across the United Kingdom and they interviewed children about their playground games. So skipping games, iny-mini-mony-mo, hopscotch, all of these things. Now you might say, well, who cares? This is literally childish. I mean, like, why does this matter? And the reason

why it matters and the reason why I coined this term significant is this is things that are normally overlooked. And actually, they tell us a tremendous amount about a time and a culture. These words will often just disappear and they will never be used again. And if you don't write them down, it's gone. So there's a language of black cab drivers in London, the London cabby. And a lot of this language is fading away because what was a kind of white working class, small, soci-elect group of drivers. There's now huge diversity and Uber's taking over and this kind of thing. So the kind of the old cockney rhyming slang and some of the old terms are fading out. So if you don't write them down and collect them, it just disappears.

And on the other side of the equation, I think if you really understand how people communicate, you also understand how they think. And I think there's a really interesting way of diving in using languages the key to unlock thinking and experience and how professions operate. Good answer. And so, as you just said, you know, you watch children and they have their own language. And I would imagine every family with children has their own language. They have words for things that nobody else uses,

that maybe the child said trying to pronounce something as a young child and came up with another word. And they linger. I mean, we still use words just for fun. My son's 20 now, but we sometimes use the words that he created that's part of our family's secret language. language because we really like them. So every family has a sort of idelect or a sociolote.

I mean, one of the quick ways is ask different families, what do they call the TV remote control? So often there will be like a word that people use for the remote that is different from, you know, family to family and across the country. And in Britain, you know, whether you have tea or supper or dinner depends on your class and where you are in the geography and what time it is. So there are all sorts of private words and terms that people use. So Wittgenstein, because obviously he had to pop up, had this theory of the picture theory of language. So he's a philosopher who wrote about the theory of language. And he had this great quote.

And he said, the limits of my language are the limits of my world. And he was positing the idea that language sort of constricts and defines how we think and communicate. But the limits of my language mean the limits of my world actually is interesting because it also means that language defines our world. So how we communicate about our job really explains how we do our job. So, for example, like understanding the language of, say, sommeliers or fox hunters, small groups of people across huge parts of society, it's a way of diving in. It's a shortcut to understanding.

A lot of the languages, as I think about them, like the restaurant language and other things, You can sort of, even if you're not in their world, you can sometimes figure out what they're saying or what they mean by those words. And so it's secret and it is theirs, but it's not so secret. No, and I think if you worked in one of these places, pretty soon, you know, you would join the gang. So, you know, it's not necessarily to keep people out. I think it's a way of creating a kind of espreed a core, creating a kind of in-group that we'll do. and you know reality TV editors have their own terms because it's just easy for example they call it one of the terms they use is the chicken count so the chicken count is you come back from a commercial break and you have a quick chicken count so you say well ben is in the diary room and Alan is in the snooker room and whatever and you count all the chickens so people who are viewing know where all the different characters are before you go into the next segment and that's just a really kind of quick easy way of understanding how they think about constructing each news. sort of section after a break.

Well, I would use the word recap rather than chicken. Well, they also use pre-cap, recap, recap, I mean, they have dozens of them. But the chicken count is by going sort of character to character. There's one of like 150 terms I have from reality TV editors, including my favorite, which is, of course,

of the wine slap. The wine slap is now the overused trope of people hurling glasses of Pinogrigio into the faces of their fellow contestants. Yeah, that seems to happen a lot. Well, it's a very easy way to basically be aggressive without really sort of having to call the police. We're talking about the secret languages people speak. And my guest is Ben Schott.

He's author of the book, Schott's Significa, a miscellany of secret languages. Of the Regency era, you might know it as the time when Bridgeton takes place. Or it's the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. The Regency era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals, and maybe the worst king in British history. Vulgar history's new season is all about the Regency era, the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal. Listen to Vulgar History, Regency Era, wherever you get podcasts. Hi, I'm Adam Gidwitz, host of Grim, Grimmer, Grimmist.

On every episode, we tell a grim fairy tale. Not the cute, sweet versions of the fairy tales that your children have heard so many times, No, we tell the real grim fairy tales. They're funny. They're weird. Sometimes they're a little bit scary. But don't worry, we rate every episode, Grim, Grimmer, or Grimmist. So you, your child, your family can choose the episode that's the right level of scary for you.

Tune in to Grim, Grimmer, Grimmist, and our new season, available now. So, Ben, how do these words in these secret languages, where do they start? Like, where do they come from? Do they just show up or how? I think they show up. I think probably, you know, sometimes they get borrowed from other groups. I mean, the language of the stunt world. I mean, you know, you need to describe different types of falls.

You need to describe different types of fights. You need to describe, you know, different types of camera movements. And sometimes it's just like pleasing slang. And sometimes it's just, it's a way of like, you know, we're going off sticks. It means we're taking the camera off the tripod. And it's like, well, off sticks, you know, someone says it once and people just go, oh, that's cool. And they just gets used and used and used. The martini shot.

The martini shot is the last shot of the day because, you know, we'll have this and then we'll make the shot and then we'll have a martini. And people find it amusing and pleasing. And it just enters the language. So I think probably it's just like all slang, something strange happens. And people go, oh, that's useful and fun. And it just clicks. Yeah, that seems right. That seems really right.

That you hear something and it just, that's really cool. I know exactly what he means, even though he doesn't have to explain it. Let's use that. Indeed. No, absolutely. And the world is full of it. And it evolves all the time. And so, you know, one of the joys is like keeping track and realizing that, you know, you nothing stands still.

The language is constantly evolving. And the internet is the great evolution machine because it's constant slang, constant memes, constant new ideas. And just like, you know, it's like playing tennis against a hailstorm. I wonder, too, if there's ever a thing in an industry because the industry evolves and there's something that doesn't have a word. And here's an example. So in podcasting, which didn't exist, you know, much in 15 years ago, there's commercials before the show starts in the middle of the show and after the show is over. And there was no word for that. So somebody came up with pre-roll, mid-roll, and post-roll.

And that is the term. Those are the terms that we use in podcasting. But there was no other term. It wasn't like there was a term and this became a cooler term. There was no term. Yeah. And technology is the great driver of neologism. So technology means, you know, you're constantly have to, you know, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Bluetooth.

I mean, you need words to describe new technologies. And that's kind of the joy. And what's fascinating is to see what sticks and what doesn't stick. And you wonder, like, who comes up with the ones that stick? And is it just chance? Or are they the ones who come up with lots of words because they're clever that way? I don't know. I mean, I'd like to be the guy who gets a dollar for every time someone on TV says,

could we have the room and everyone else leaves. Whoever said that, that strikes me of being something entirely made up by scriptwriters. Has anyone in real life ever said, could we have the room? Well, and I remember hearing, too, that the term that we use, just people use when they want to sit in the front seat next to the driver is, you know, I got shotgun. I got shotgun. And the theory is that it goes back to the Old West. But it doesn't go back to the Old West. It goes back to movies of the Old West where it was first used.

It was never used in the Old West. It was used in a like a John Wayne movie. And that's how it caught on. Absolutely. So one of my favorite terms in the book is from the language of bartenders. And there's a thing called the boomerang. Now, the boomerang is a drink that one bartender will make. So they'll make a drink and they will take the glass and they'll wrap it in saran wrap or

they'll put a kind of rubber glove over it in order to kind of stop it from spilling. And they'll give it to a customer, a loyal customer, to take to the next bar they're going to. So bartenders can have drinks with each other during work. So the boomerang, I mean, it's completely illegal because it's a whole license. issue, but a bartender will create, you know, an old-fashioned or whatever, and he will send it via a customer to another bar. And the boomerang, it's one of those things that in the bar world, you know, amongst mixologists and bartenders, like everyone knows about it. But like, people will go into a bar all of their lives and never know about the boomerang. And my job

and my joy is trying to spot these things and saying, hang on, wait, what? You have this boomerang? I need to know about this. I've never heard of the boomerang until just, now. Well, and there's also, I mean, there's all sorts of phrases. So I quite like the bartender's handshake. So there are certain drinks, you know, like Chartres, Furnabranca, the Ferrari, which is half Furnabranca, half Campari, that, you know, if you order it, it's kind of code, like, yeah, I'm in the business. Like, you know, I'm drinking Furno Branca. And it's one of those, like, you know, bartenders to bartender. It's what the industry drinks, rather than, like, you know, other liquor that, you know, civilians like me drink. Well, the boomer.

thing is a great example of like you could explain it the way you explained it but wouldn't it be great to just have a word like boomerang and everybody knows what you what you're talking about well I mean everybody does in that world but it's not for me it's not for the customer it's for you know the people in the industry right right you know 86 in the weeds I mean there are all sorts of I mean what's fascinating said I don't know if you seen that the TV show the bear about this restaurant and they've introduced lots of restaurants slang that was kind of back of house

and now people are much more aware of it so every now and again TV does kind of open the kimono as they say in business to a little world and I think the bear gets it really right and when these private words and pieces of language become mainstream does that have an effect on it does the industry that has it then abandon it and come up with something else because now everybody knows That's a good question. I don't think so. I mean, the fact that everyone knows what 86 means in a restaurant doesn't mean they don't use it or in the weeds or, you know, dying in the past. Some of these terms, I think they still use them, but because they're incredibly useful and it's just part of the kind of the lingua franca of the industry. I think things like technology is the biggest driver. So the language of crypto, for example, you know, is driving new words. But, you know, the language of NFTs, do you remember NFTs? No one talks about

NFTs anymore. There was a whole little world of non-fungible tokens that was huge and sort of dominated the media for six months. And like tulip fever, it wilted and died. Yeah, whatever happened to those. I don't know. I sincerely hope, I mean, my entire pensions in NFT, so you know, you've got to hope somebody's going to happen to them. But no, no, exactly. And so there's a huge churn in technology. But things like kitchen slang, I mean, it's been around for decades. So I think it's going nowhere. Well, it's probably going nowhere because it's essential. I mean, it's fun and interesting to hear, but it also plays a real role.

It's efficient. It's shorthand. So when I was researching restaurant slang, so each, there's kind of a universal restaurant slang. So things like 86 or all day, whatever, that everyone uses. And then lots of, basically, all restaurants have their own slang. So, for example, there's a restaurant in Manhattan called The Little Al, and they have a term, which is the two-hour weight phase. which is when people come up with that reservation and they say how long for the next table and then they're told a couple of hours and the two-hour wait face is the look of kind of stricken horror when they realize how long they have to wait for a table so each little restaurant has its own little slang and I was talking to one restaurant and the general manager goes we don't really have any slang really and I'm like I bet you do and he's like no and then over like a course of 15 20 minutes talking to him he gave me five really great terms that were specific to his restaurant but because people use it every every day, they don't think of it as real or significant or it's just normal.

I mean, it's sort of, it's so instinctive to them. They don't think as an outsider that it's special or interesting. And I'm here to tell them that it is and to try and extract it from them and to really kind of dive in. So they then think what they do every day is actually curious and strange and fun. Yeah, well, I can understand that because if it's the word you use all the time, it's not slang. It's the word you use all the time. So there's no slang about it.

There's no other word that they would think to use. It would probably take a sentence or two when that one word will explain. Precisely. Exactly. In all the research you did for this, is there any little word or thing that we haven't talked about that just jumps out as like the coolest, most interesting thing that came up? One of the things we haven't talked about, which I really enjoyed is

there's a whole sort of number of sections on hand signals and gesticulations. Because, so for example, there's the hand signals of open outcry oil traders. Now, you may not know what that means, but when you see on TV, the guys in the pit and they're shouting and they've got their hands and they're making all these wild, odd gesticulations, that's called open outcry trading. And it's essentially disappeared. So I photographed an open outcry, an oil trader explaining how all the hand signals work. So, for example, for heating oil, you draw your hand across your forehead because it's hot in here.

For gasoline, you pinch your nose because of the bad smell of gasoline. And that's one of two of like a hundred different sort of hand signals they use. So there's the hand signals of African American church ushers who have the whole system of hand signals so they can deal with large congregations seamlessly and silently because hand signals are a way of communicating during a service. Well, you know, I've never thought about this, but it is so straightforward. to think how many secret languages there must be. And although they're secret, they're not really secret. It's just they don't matter to anybody except the people who use them. And we've all used some of them. I've been speaking with Ben Schott. And he is author of the book Shots

Significa, a miscellany of secret languages. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Ben, thank you for being here. Not at all. It was an absolute pleasure. This episode is brought to you by Peloton, a new era of of fitness is here. Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ. Built for breakthroughs, with personalized workout plans,

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quality price, on link on C4 or in magazine. The nature around us never stands still. Leaves turn, snow falls, flowers bloom, but beneath those familiar shifts,

there's a hidden rhythm most of us never notice. Did you know, for example, that sunsets change color and timing with the seasons? Or that water becomes murkier at certain times of the year? The natural world follows a detailed calendar full of subtle clues if you know how to look for them. My guest, Tristan Gouli, has spent more than two decades studying those patterns. He's the author of several books about nature and navigation, including his latest, The Hidden Seasons, A Calendar of Nature's Clues.

Hi, Tristan, welcome to something you should know. Hi, Mike. Great to be here. So I want to start with you explaining what we're talking about. You have a great line in the beginning of your book that some of the most rewarding observations are seasonal, Which I've never thought about that, but when you think about it, when you think about the autumn leaves or the snowfall, a beautiful snowfall, it's all very seasonal. These things kind of come and go. They're not constant. And I've never thought about any of this this way.

So explain what this is and why it's important. Yeah, all of my work is based around the idea that everything outdoors is a clue. It's a sign. It can reveal something else. Once we pause and just question something and say, What does it mean? You mentioned leaves turning. That's a good example.

Fallen leaves, before the leaves have fallen, they start turning. You know, people start saying, oh, the leaves have turned. But actually, they would have been turning for a month before somebody starts saying that in conversation. If we know where to look. So if you look at the highest southern part of tall trees, you'll see the leaves change color weeks before the low northern parts. That's because autumn accelerates with thirst. So in fall, we see the seasons start high on the warmest part, which is the southern part. of the tree and then work its way down.

And certainly one of the most beautiful seasonal changes that people notice and enjoy is springtime when flowers come up. And what are some of the things, the details of that that I would find interesting? Yeah, sure. So if we start with, as winters, you know, losing its grip, we start to see some of the very early wildflowers popping up. and it's sort of obvious that there's certain flowers appear at certain times of the year. So in the case of very early flowers, we can say they are prudent savers.

They have saved energy from the previous season. Now, that's a clue. It's telling us it's a perennial plant. So the earliest flowers have typically got bulbs underground or something like that, which allows them to go early. So it's a very simple clue in that sense. The first flowers you see each year, you will see it in the same place the following year. They are perennial plants.

It just doesn't work. If you're going very early, you have to have something in the battery from the year before. And your plants have to wait until the sun is higher in the sky. The way I put it is punctual means perennial. If something's very early, you'll see it in exactly the same place the following year. Are there other examples of that besides flowers? Yeah. So stinging nettles, there's a good general rule in nature that however distant somebody feels from nature,

if a plant causes pain we tend to know its name so so stinging nettles most of us kind of you know still have some relationship with now for for decades i've had a fun relationship with stinging nettles because they form a good compass they'll lean towards the light so we find the sort of leaning towards the south where most the light comes from but they're they're also making a map because stinging nettles will only grow in places where there's a nutrient a nutrient spike in the soil and human beings change the soil. The way we live, the way we work, the way we farm, the way we die, changes the soil, makes it richer in nutrients like nitrates and phosphates. And so stinging nettles are a sign, they're making a map that we're near human beings. We're near

either a farm, a town or a city or something like that. So we've got a compass and a map from the plant already. And the seasonal thing with stinging nettles is they are perennial. So they can go quite early because they've been saving from the year before. So they're telling us something about direction. They're making a map and they're telling us something about time. They're letting us know we're in the early part of the growth year. There are kind of a warning that a lot of other stuff is about to get going. Great.

So what's another example of one of these nature signs that we probably completely miss? One of the most powerful things to tune into for all of us is the really rapid change in late March. So in late March we have the Equinox, which is a word everybody's for, familiar with, but it's true meaning, I think, has been lost. And what's happening in terms of the signs out there is the length of day changes more in one week in late March than it does in the whole of the months of June or December. So it's really, it's a truly dramatic change in the relationship between length of day and night. And all the plants and animals tune into that. So that's why we get that really, I mean, we all feel it. And we've all had that sort of experience

where you go, felt like winter two weeks ago, it's feeling much more like spring now. And that's part of that. Because we are, of course, animals. And so we're tuned into that. So I've always thought, because I've had that experience where I thought, well, how come it's getting dark so early or how come it's getting, staying light so late? But I've always thought it was a gradual every day gets a little bit longer or every day gets a little bit shorter. I didn't know there were jumps in it.

Yeah, and that's part of what my work is all about, is taking these things that our ancestors were really tuned into because they had a much rorer experience. You know, winter, even 2,000 years ago, was not an easy time. And so they were tuned into the patterns they could see in the sun because it gave them reassuring cues that things were following the cycle. So if we take the word solstice, it comes from the Latin words meaning sun standing still. And that's because if you look at the the eastern or western horizon, as you get into midwinter, the sun is rising further south and setting further south every day, but as we reach late December and the solstice, it appears that journey appears to stop. And that for the ancients and our ancestors was a wonderful time because they're going, wow, wow, if the sun just stops moving south, at some point it'll start coming north again. But for a couple of weeks in late December, it's very, very, very,

very hard to see any movement in the direction of sunrise or sunset, hence the word solstice. But the opposite of that is the equinoxes. Late March, late September. The direction the sun is rising and setting is changing at its fastest possible rate. And that is just the other side of the coin that the day is getting longer or shorter at a rapid dramatic rate. Do you think most people know that? I know they don't. And I know that because I've been out speaking And I've given enough talks now where I can see the things where people sort of eyes kind of, you know, they get wider. And that is one of them. And I think it makes sense to people, but I think it's one of the many things that we've lost.

So there are lots of things we can do in the modern lifestyle that our ancestors couldn't. But we have lost a few things along the way, and that's definitely one of them. So something I've always wondered about is, as you notice the changes in the season, you notice there's a schedule, right? and it's a fairly predictable schedule. We know when the leaves are going to turn color and fall off the tree. We know when flowers will bloom in the spring. And I've always assumed, well, it's temperature, right? That the plants and probably some animals are responding to the change in temperature.

But sometimes the temperature changes erratically. There'll be a heat wave when it should be cool or there'll be a cold snap when it shouldn't be that cold. And what does that do to the schedule? We all kind of know if you have one really hot day, it doesn't suddenly change everything around you or if you have a cold snap, you're not expecting. Things don't change by the hour. But what the plants and animals are doing

is counting something that's known as degree days. So for every day, the temperature is above a certain threshold. That counts. So let's say it's five degrees above a line. Then you have three days of it, five degrees above a line. The plants and animals count that as 15, whereas if it was 8 degrees for three days, they count that as 24. So it's amazing. They've got this kind of, this hidden kind of abacus where they're counting the warmth over a period. And so all the things we think of as seasonal will be tied

to both the length of the day and night and the cumulative change in temperature. And each species is different. It has its own gauge. That's why some kind of like a small heat wave, has a massive impact on small flying insects. That's why we suddenly get a cloud of flying insects in front of us. But it won't change, for example, the number of horses in a field. Those animals are much more wedded to the length of day. So, wait, why do we get a swarm of bugs when it heats up suddenly? It's a good question.

The way in, I think, is to think about reproduction strategies. So we can think of there being fast reproducers, And these tend to be very, very small insects who have, you know, short lifespans, high numbers of offspring, or the slow reproducers. So slow reproducers, a killer whale, a horse, a human being. If you can count the number of offspring, it's a slow reproducer. If you can't, it's a fast one. Now, what's that got to do with the seasons? Well, what we find is that the slow reproducers are tied to the length of day.

So whatever the temperature is doing, it will only change things a very small amount. Whereas the fast reproducers are much, much more tuned into temperature. So if we have a little heat wave in spring or maybe a cold snap a little earlier than we're expecting it towards the end of the year, that will have a massive impact on those fast reproducers. Then all we have to do is notice that whenever we're in a landscape, there's going to be places where the fast reproducers are concentrated and a place where the slow ones are. So let me give you an example. If you're in a small woodland and you're in the heart of that woodland, you will be surrounded by slow reproducers, tall, mature trees, you know, maybe some larger mammals, like a deer or something like that.

Whatever the temperature does, whatever the weather does, those numbers are not going to change. If you walk to the edge of the woods, you're going from a slow reproducing to a fast reproducing area, you're suddenly seeing lots and lots of little wildflowers and a massive cloud of midges or other flying insects. the fast reproducers have picked up on the temperature change responded to it so every landscape is a mixture of that slow and fast and once you kind of tune in and know to look for those you can see why you know you might walk for 10 minutes and not notice a strange seasonal event but then you move into a different area a fast reproducing area and you go oh wow this this feels like a different season is there a quick answer to this because i understand what you just said and i have experienced that but I don't understand why temperature change makes insects swarm.

Like, why do they do that? So the smaller an organism is, plant or animal, generally speaking, the more of an opportunist it is. So if there's a narrow window of like a week of mild weather in spring, smaller animals have evolved a kind of smash-and-grab strategy. They're like, let's go for it. You know, we can get through, you know, the whole reproductive sort of part in this small window.

window. So it makes sense for small, you know, warm patches, for small animals to go for it. Whereas the bigger ones, the whole cycle is too long. So there's no bother trying to jump on a little temperature change. Well, that's really interesting. I've never thought about that, but a short heat wave will increase the number of mosquitoes in the air, but it doesn't increase the number, as you say, of horses in the field. What's another example of some seasonal thing that I've probably missed. I talk about, you know, the clear phase in June, where if you've got a patch of fresh water, you get to look at regularly, a pond or a lake or something like that. What you'll notice is at some times of the year, it looks quite murky, and sometimes it looks transparent.

And that's part of a seasonal rhythm that lots of people don't spot, but it's very easy to spot in June. What happens is, in spring, as the temperatures, as things warm, the, the algae start, you know, reproducing, and we get a kind of murky appearance in France. Then the tiny animals, they have their spike in June and they slightly overtake the algae and they gobble it all up basically. And then the water just suddenly goes very clear in June. So it's ecologists, you know, know it's the clear water phase in June. It's where just fresh water just suddenly goes very clear. It only lasts a few weeks.

Very easy to spot if you look for it, but hardly anybody knows to look for it. I would never look for it. I don't know. I would have never thought of that. But if you say it's true, it's true. But I would have never thought about how the leave, the northern part of a trees, leaves are different than the southern. I just, I would never think to think that. We started this conversation talking about autumn leaves, which are very apparent if you're in New England or wherever leaves change.

But what else is going on in autumn? because it seems like things are kind of shutting down for the winter. That's kind of the sense I get, anyway, from that this is the beginning of everything's closing up shop. One of the great joys of looking for clues and signs in nature is that we are not tied to living nature. So, abiotic nature is just as fascinating. So once we get into autumn and winter,

what we find is a whole series of maps made from things like dew on the ground frost and mists so if we just take mists as one example it's very easy to kind of look out in a landscape you you see some mist in one place and not in another and just go well that's just kind of random that's but nothing is random in nature so mist in the in the autumn when we see mist in the morning that is a sign that's where the coldest air is cold air is denser than the mild air so it rolls downhill so the morning mist in autumn is making a map of the lowest parts of the landscape for you. If you walk down into a morning mist, you can feel the temperature change. Do I remember correctly, you write about twinkling stars, that white stars twinkle at sometimes

and not others and where they are in the sky and all that? So what I encourage people to do is when you're first using twinkling stars to forecast weather, is cheat, cheat like crazy. Look at the forecast. If you've got three or four clear nights forecast, and then there's something worse coming in, like a front, then watch the stars for three or four nights and try and pick the moment when you notice the amount of twinkling change. That is one of nature's earliest warning signs of weather change. Again, our ancestors would have been all over this because they didn't have the opportunity to cheat. But what's happening is moisture in the upper atmosphere, when that starts going up, that's one of the earliest signs that changes is on its way. So as the starlight hits our

atmosphere, the more moisture, the more twinkling. So we just put those simple, pieces to go together and we get more twinkling in the stars, ah, there could be some bad weather on the way. And that is what causes the twinkling is just moisture in the air between us and the star? Exactly. So in space, stars don't twinkle. So you can look across a million miles of space and you won't see the stars twinkling. Not many of us will get that opportunity, but that's theoretically true. But from the surface of planet Earth, we're of course looking through our atmosphere and even even dry it even dry atmosphere are you not much weather out there there will be some twinkling because there's this this little particles that the light is

bouncing off but the second the moisture levels go up it's like pimble for the for the light and that's why the more moisture the more kind of bounces that the light is taking the more the star appears to twinkle or in as a scientist say scintillate here's something you write about that I never knew. Maybe other people know this and I just haven't been paying attention. But you say that sunsets, the kind of sunsets we have, change with the seasons. Yeah, we would, if we had no atmosphere, our nearest star, the sun, would appear as white light. So when we're seeing colors, it's a sign that our atmosphere is filtering out some of the other colors. And the reason why, as the sun gets lower, we know those sunsets.

colors, we start to see more yellows, oranges and reds is because the other colors aren't reaching us. And late in summer, as we reach the harvest season, what happens is we reach a time a year when we have the most particles in the atmosphere. And they filter out most of the blue end of the spectrum. So we get much, much deeper reds. August is an absolute classic there. And sometimes there'll be other things like there'll be fire events. So if there's something, you know, if there are, if there are forest fires or something like that, you'll see notably redder sunsets and sometimes sunrises. And if there's a lot, if there are a lot of particles in the air, you'll see a tint in the moon as well. How about one more thing about fall, autumn? Because, well, it's one of my

favorite times of year. And it's also a very dramatic change in many places where the leaves change and all that. So one more of those kind of things would be great. A really sort of seasonal moment for lots of people is seeing the leaves on the ground, brown leaves on the ground. And it's a good opportunity to appreciate that nothing is random in nature. So the second the leaves fall onto the ground, they are shepherded by the wind.

Now, if you tune into where the wind's coming from in your part of the world, you'll start to notice these rather beautiful, simple patterns. Around the base of the tree, let's say your winds come from the west. You'll notice it's clean all around the western side of the tree trunk at the base there. But on the east side, there's a wind shadow

where the wind can't get to, and that's where the leaves fall out. And it looks like somebody's got a broom and swept a pile of leaves onto the eastern side at the base there. It's weird. It looks like somebody's typing up, but actually it's just a nice leafless a compass. Well, and clouds tell us things, right? If you know what to look for in clouds, you can determine whether and whatnot. So a really nice, simple one is if a cloud is taller than it is wide,

It's a classic sign that the atmosphere is unstable. That makes rain showers more likely, particularly if you see them in the morning. It makes thunderstorms more likely. It makes hail more likely. But as a general rule, you know, it's hard to go a whole week without there being a fantastic pattern to decipher in the sky. Well, I've said this before, but this is one of the great things about being able to do this show

is I get to talk to people and learn things like this. I would never seek this information out, but when I hear it from you, it's really interesting and it's stuff I'll remember. I've been speaking with Tristan Gully, who has spent more than two decades studying nature and navigation, and he's the author of several books, including his latest, The Hidden Seasons, A Calendar of Nature's Clues, and there's a link to his book at Amazon and the show notes. Tristan, I appreciate you coming on. Thank you. Thanks so much, Mike. Thanks so much for having me on, and congrats on such a successful show. Have you heard that if you are watching your weight, you shouldn't eat bananas?

After all, a banana has about 27 grams of carbohydrates and 14 grams of sugar, which is kind of a lot. So some people stay away worrying that it might trigger weight gain. Even a zoo in Britain once suspended bananas for its primates, citing their high calorie and sugar content. But here's the thing. In a Time magazine interview, five leading nutrition experts, every one of them, said bananas are not just okay, they're great. Bananas are packed with potassium, about 12% of the recommended daily allowance in one banana. And most of us don't get enough potassium. Low potassium has been linked to elevated risk of stroke.

Bananas also act like nature's own recovery drink. A banana is full of nutrients and it's effective at refueling your body. post-workout. If you're still tempted to skip the banana, well, then opt for half a banana. But don't skip it entirely. And that is something you should know. Supporting this podcast is easy. Just help us spread the word. Tell people about it. Share it with people you know. Get them to listen. You do that and I ask you nothing else. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.