Something You Should Know - Separating Fact from Fiction in Nutrition & Why Humans Must Explore

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

Something strange happens when most people read emails and texts and it could cause a health problem. Listen to and discover what it is so you can see if you do it – so you can stop doing it. https://www.businessinsider.com/email-apnea-how-email-change-breathing-2012-12 Nutrition advice can be confusing. Is there an actual diet that will help you lose weight? Are salt and sugar really that bad for your health? Why is so much of the nutrition advice contradictory? Here to discuss the science of nutrition and offer some advice on how to navigate through all the information is Dr. Joe Schwarcz, Director of McGill University’s Office for Science and Society and author of the book A Grain of Salt :The Science and Pseudoscience of What We Eat (https://amzn.to/2PqB18N). Sometimes you need an alarm to make sure you wake up on time but it may not be the best way to wake up. There is a better and often easier way that isn’t quite so jarring. Listen to find out what it is. http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/53710/why-do-i-always-wake-5-minutesmy-alarm-goes Human beings like to explore. We have explored most of our earth and now we are exploring space. Why are we so curious? Why is exploration so important? And what will we explore next? Andrew Rader is an aerospace engineer who works as a mission manager at Space X. He has written a fascinating book about human exploration called Beyond the Known: How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars (https://amzn.to/2Ry05NH) and he joins me to tell some exciting tales of exploration – past and present. This Week’s Sponsors -Fetch Rewards. Download the Fetch Rewards app and use promo code SYSK to receive 4000 points when you scan your first receipt. -Finance Pal. Start you free trial today by going to www.FinancePal.com/something  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks Daily wherever you get your podcasts. Today on Something You Should Know, you probably do something kind of strange when you read your emails that you might want to stop doing. I'll tell you what that is. Then conflicting nutrition advice like salt and sugar. Some experts say they're bad for you. Others say they're not. Chemicals, whether it's salt or sugar or whatever

else, are not good or bad. There's no such thing as a safe or dangerous chemical. There are safe or dangerous ways to use them. Contact is very important. Amounts are very important. Also, if you wake up in the morning with an alarm clock, there's something you need to hear and human exploration. We've explored most of the Earth.

Now we must explore space, our solar system, the planets, and even asteroids. Some asteroids are almost solid gold or platinum or iron nickel. So some relatively small asteroids have more materials than we've ever used in the entire history of our civilization. All this today on Something You Should Know. 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. 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. Hey, welcome to Something You Should Know. I have an all new and really interesting episode for you today. So let's get right to it. Have you ever heard of something called email apnea? It's when you hold your breath while you're checking your email. You probably do it and don't even realize it. And when I read this, I realized that I, in fact, was doing this. A study found that 80% of us experience email apnea.

It's the temporary absence or suspension of breathing while reading or writing email. And it can actually be a problem if it happens a lot. Shallow or irregular breathing rhythms can throw your body's oxygen levels off. And it can also disrupt your heart rate and put unnecessary stress on your system. So knock it off. And that is something you should know. Every day you make choices about what to eat,

and maybe more importantly, choices about what not to eat. And you don't have to look very far to find a lot of people offering advice to you on what you should and should not include in your diet. The problem is that there is so much advice, and often contradictory advice, and also advice that doesn't seem to make any sense, it's hard to know who's right. Every diet has success stories of people who have lost weight or lived to 100. But who knows if they kept the weight off,

and who knows if the reason they lived to 100 had anything to do with the diet. And who knows if the diet is even safe or something you should try. Still, despite all the wacky diet advice, there is science. And yes, even the science about nutrition and diet can be confusing, but it's probably a good place to start in understanding what to eat, especially if you have someone who can sift through all the science and make it understandable. And that's just who we have today.

Dr. Joe Schwartz is director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, which is dedicated to demystifying science and separating sense from nonsense, and he's author of a book called A Grain of Salt, The Science and Pseudoscience of What We Eat. Hi Joe, thanks for coming on today. Hi. So why do you think people are so confused about what to eat? Well, generally, there's such a tsunami of information that comes at us every day that people have a difficult time knowing what to believe, what not to believe. And it isn't only from self-proclaimed bloggers,

but also the science itself can be confusing because there are so many articles that are published. There's about five peer-reviewed scientific papers published every minute of every single day, some of which are very good, some are very bad, most of them are mediocre. But the interpretation of these papers, as far as the public is concerned, is very difficult. And they are left at the mercy of the media to interpret these. And very often, reporters are not so adept at understanding the science. And they sensationalize the stories. You know, people legitimately are confused because, you know, they hear, well, one day butter is bad for us. We should not be eating saturated fats.

We should be switching to margarine. Then you find out margarine contains trans fats. We shouldn't be eating that. And they get the impression that scientists don't really know what they're talking about. And that is actually not correct because the science of nutrition can deliver a lot of very valuable information. It's true that we never come to an absolute conclusion. That's science. Science is not white or black.

It's various shades of gray. And we constantly modify. But the basic tenets are really quite sound when we tell people just to watch their overall calorie intake, to watch their saturated fat intake, to minimize added sugars, and to eat lots of fruits and vegetables.

And that has not changed. But when people go online, they'll find all kinds of miracles. One day they are told that celery juice is the answer to all of their problems. And it's certainly understandable that people are confused by all of this. They don't know whom to believe, who not to believe. But it isn't always that extreme. It isn't either it's all scientific or it's celery juice. There's a lot of in the middle of one day coffee's good for you, next day coffee's bad for you.

Absolutely. And that's where I think people really get confused is because there's arguments on both sides. There are arguments on both sides, but it is rare that the arguments on both sides have equal validity. And, you know, this is something that is very difficult in journalism because journalists in journalism school are taught always to give both sides of the issue. When there's some nutritional problem that comes up, they'll interview an expert on one side and an expert on the other side, and then write an article on it. And it seems as if the two sides have equal validity, which is very rarely the case. It usually is an instance where the majority of the scientific community is behind one, and some outliers are behind the other. So you always have to take a look at the big picture.

One single study doesn't mean anything in science. You have to take a look at all of the studies, and don't cherry pick the data, but shake the cherry tree, pick up all the cherries, mash them together, and see what that delivers. So since your book is called A Grain of Salt, let's start there. Let's talk about salt, because there are conflicting theories out there that A, salt is bad for you. B, that salt is only a risk for people who already have or are predisposed to high blood pressure. It can make it worse, but it has no effect on people who don't have high blood pressure, and C, that salt's okay. So who's right?

Chemicals, whether it's salt or sugar or whatever else you want to talk about, are not good or bad. There's no such thing as a safe or dangerous chemical. There are safe or dangerous ways to use them. And context is very important. Amounts are very important. Amounts matter. It's not a question of eating salt or not eating salt. We have to look at how much salt.

And there's a plethora of evidence for cutting back on the amount of salt that most North Americans eat. The current recommendation is about 2,300 milligrams of sodium a day. That roughly translates to a teaspoon of salt. North Americans eat far more than that. Most of them eat double that or 50% more than that. And we know that that is linked to high blood pressure. And we do need to cut down on that. Another issue is that the foods that have high sodium content generally are poor nutritional foods for other reasons as well. They tend to be highly processed. They tend to have a lot of sugar as well.

So cutting back on salt, but certainly not eliminating it because salt is an essentially electrolyte. You know that, for example, marathon runners will lose sodium and they have to replenish it. But the average North American consumes way too much sodium. And there's no question that that is linked to high blood pressure. And high blood pressure is a significant risk factor for stroke and for heart attack. What does the current science say about artificial sweeteners? As far as safety goes, there's no real risk. There are a number of artificial sweeteners that are on the market today.

The most widely used ones are aspartame and sucralose. Now, food additives, before they go onto the market, have to pass through a whole range of regulatory hoops and hurdles. It's not a question of a company saying, well, you know, this thing tastes sweet. I think we'll add it to food. No, it isn't like that. In Canada, it's Health Canada that regulates this. In the U.S., it is the FDA. And they have to be satisfied of the risk-benefit profile. As with any other component of food, it is possible for individuals to have an idiosyncratic

reaction to an additive. So, for example, it's possible that people will get a headache from aspartame. It's very rare, but it's possible. So, you can never ensure that anything, any aspect of food supply is safe in everyone because people are biochemically individual. But as far as our studies go, there really is no safety issue. Now, that being said, I'm not a fan of artificial sweeteners. One is that they have not done what they were supposed to do, which is to reduce the rate of obesity in North America. That hasn't happened. Artificial sweeteners have been around for a long time. Aspartame and sucralose sales have skyrocketed since about 1980, and yet we do not see any effect on the rate of obesity. Now, exactly why that is, is a matter of some debate.

Some researchers suggest that using artificial sweeteners just increases our taste for sweets in general and that people then will eat other sweet stuff and increase their caloric intake. The other possibility is that someone will be so pleased with themselves for having put an artificial sweetener into their coffee that they will reward themselves by having that piece artificial sweetener into their coffee, that they will reward themselves by having that piece of cake with the coffee that they might not have had had they put sugar in the coffee. And the cake will have more calories in it than the sugar would have had. So I think in general, artificial sweeteners are not the answer to the obesity problem. But I don't think they

pose a significant risk to health. Well, there's been a lot of talk lately about sugar and how horrible sugar is, and it is the new devil. And so what do you say? Well, it's the added sugar that's the problem. Sugar that is present as the natural component of fruits and vegetables is not the issue. The sugar that is added to soft drinks, for example, is the issue. When you consider a sugar-sweetened soft drink, it contains about 40 grams of sugar,

and that is the amount that, according to the World Health Organization, should be the sum total of all the added sugars that we consume during a day. So just one soft drink will put you at that limit. And sugar is linked to overweight, it's linked to obesity. And in turn, obesity is linked to increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and several types of cancer. That's quite clear. So we certainly do need to cut back on the amount of sugar that we are consuming in North America. It's not a question of totally eliminating it.

As I said, no single food should be looked at as an angel or devil, but consumption is what we need to look at. We're talking about the science of nutrition today, and we're talking with Dr. Joe Schwartz. His book is called A Grain of Salt, The Science and Pseudoscience of What We Eat. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce

a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast,

it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue.

It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on There's so much for you in this podcast.

The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, Joe, why do you think we have the obesity problem that we have today that we didn't have 40, 50 years ago? Why are people so much heavier now, and it just didn't used to be the case? We are consuming more calories. I mean, that's the bottom line, and there's no question about that. Various surveys have shown that their total calorie consumption has just increased. Why has that happened? One reason is that, you know, back about 30 years ago, when we had all of the talk about the evils of fat, and people were resorting to eating all kinds of fat-free foods. Well, the fat had to be replaced by something in the diet, and it was mostly replaced by simple carbohydrates, sugar being an example, refined flour being an example. And as we now know,

carbohydrates certainly contribute to obesity. It isn't only a question of total calorie intake. It also matters where those calories originate. And as we have learned recently, the easiest way to lose weight is to cut back on carbohydrate consumption. This is why the keto diet has become so popular. So it was the switch from fats to refined carbohydrates that I think was instrumental in increasing the obesity in North America. And also the very heavy advertising by the fast food industry. And as you say, I don't think anyone goes to these,

you know, fast food places thinking that, you know, they're going to eat a healthy meal. But I think the taste is seductive, partly because there's so much salt added to it, so much sugar in the soft drinks. And people like the taste of sugar and the taste of salt. Are there any diets, and diet meaning eat this way, not that way kind of diet, that you think is pretty on the mark? Well, it depends on what you're aiming for. If you're aiming for rather rapid weight loss, there's no question that the keto diet can deliver that. The keto diet is extremely low in carbohydrates, and study upon study has shown that you can lose significant weight very quickly.

The problem with that diet and with any other diet is whether or not you can maintain it. And again, the studies show that after about a year, people tend to stray away from the diet and go back to eating the way that they were eating. The success rate for conquering obesity is about 5%, which is less than the success rate for treating most cancers. So it's a very, very significant problem. But if you go on a keto diet, you will lose very significant weight over the first few months. But then you have to switch to a diet that's sustainable for you.

But I think it's worth giving the keto diet a shot over the short term. Over the long term, the answer is moderation. People don't like to hear that. They want magic. You know, they want to be told that, oh, if you just consume raspberry ketone or green coffee bean extract or whatever new miracle Dr. Oz has offered up, that you're going to, you know, significantly lose weight. It doesn't work like that. You need to have a proper balanced diet. And the proper balanced diet means mostly fruits and vegetables. I mean, the closer we are to a plant-based diet, the better. And the diet that has received significant attention in that regard is the

so-called Mediterranean diet. Although there are questions about that because there really isn't one Mediterranean diet. People in Lebanon on the Mediterranean don't eat the same way as the Greeks do. But as a general rule, they eat less red meat. They eat lots of nuts. They eat lots of fruits and vegetables. And most dramatically, they consume almost no refined sugar. So if one were to push one specific diet, I think it would be the Mediterranean diet. And the key to that is very little red meat and very little refined sugar.

What about supplements? Numerous studies, of course, have been done on that. The conclusion is that unless someone has a demonstrated deficiency in a nutrient, there's no advantage to taking a supplement. Now, of course, there are numerous supplements out there. There's the multivitamin supplements. Those are the most popular ones. But then there are many other different kinds of supplements,

supplements like maca root or elderberry extract or garlic extract. I mean, you know, almost an infinite number of these things. Each one of them would have to be examined in, you know, in detail. But as a general rule, the overall nutritional information is that someone who has a balanced diet does not need any kind of supplement and they will not be benefiting from it. Now, of course, if someone is diagnosed as having low vitamin B12 levels or low iron levels, that's a different story. Then a physician can recommend a supplement. But we have just no scientific evidence that the random taking of supplements delivers any kind of benefit. You know what I find somewhat confusing is why is it that human beings are attracted to food that basically can do them no good? Nobody overeats broccoli or Brussels sprouts. We overeat foods that are high in fat and sugar. And you would think evolutionarily maybe that we would be predisposed to want things that

will help us stay healthy and live longer, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I tell you why. It's because people talk health, but they eat taste. You know, everyone would like to be healthy and they read and they know mostly what they should be eating. But the taste buds have their own demands. And unfortunately, that demand is for sweet foods and salty foods. It is not, as you said, it is not for broccoli and for kale. Those tend to have bitter compounds in them. And that is not what people like. There has been the suggestion that there is an evolutionary explanation for that

because as people's diets were evolving, and of course they would pick berries and fruits and grains, etc. And the ones that were the least healthy in terms of containing toxic compounds were the least healthy in terms of containing toxic compounds were the bitter substances. And people learned to gravitate towards sweet tasting things to stay away from potential toxins. Well, today, of course, that no longer applies. We know that while kale and broccoli may have some bitter compounds, they're not toxic. But we have evolved to like sweet tastes. One of the areas that I think people get confused about is red meat,

because we hear that you should eat lean meats, that that's a good thing. Eating lean meat is a good thing. And then we hear, well, there are problems with meat, that a plant-based diet is better. So what's the deal with meat? There is, unfortunately, a lot of evidence coming out against red meat. I say unfortunately because, you know, it tastes good. Most people like the taste of meat. Now, exactly why we are seeing these problems with particularly red meat, it's not all that clear, but it probably has to do with the way that we cook it. Because when you cook meat, you tend to broil it, grill it,

and that produces compounds called heterocyclic aromatic amines and various polycyclic hydrocarbons, and those are linked to cancer. So it's the cooking process that may be a problem. If you stew meat, it's much safer than if you barbecue it or broil it. And then with processed meats, we have a different issue. Processed meats, as you may know by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is an arm of the World Health Organization, have been listed in category one, which is known human carcinogens. But guess what is the fastest growing food in North America right now? It's bacon. So even though the evidence is out there,

and the popular press certainly talks about this all the time, and yet it doesn't seem to have an impact on the average person, even though I think most will tell you when they're eating bacon, they know that it's not a healthy thing to eat. But nevertheless, they eat it because people eat taste while they talk health. Well, I think you nailed it. I think that's exactly what's going on is that people talk health. They talk about eating healthy. They say they want to eat healthy, but the taste buds have a mind of their own, and that's a battle that's going to be hard to win. Dr. Joe Schwartz has been my guest. He's

director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, and he is author of the book A Grain of Salt, The Science and Pseudoscience of What We Eat. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Joe. Yes, thanks, Mike. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice.

Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle.

On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things human beings do is we explore. We like to know what's around the corner, over the next hill, behind that fence, and beyond the horizon. And we should all be thankful that our ancestors did and our contemporaries continue to explore because exploration often leads to good things.

Andrew Radner is an aerospace engineer with a Ph.D. from MIT. He's also a mission manager at SpaceX, and he has researched this whole concept of human exploration, why we do it, and what's the result. Andrew is author of a book called Beyond the Known, How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars. Hi, Andrew. Welcome. Thanks for having me.

Sure. So explain why you think we're talking about this in the first place. Why is exploration so important? I think exploration defines who we are as humans. It's one of the things that makes us unique from all the other animals on earth. Exploration is the reason why we live in climates other than Africa. We evolved for millions of years in Africa, and we were restricted to a small territory for millions of years. But then we set out to find new opportunities, new resources, new lands. And through that process, we developed technology that enabled us to live in other places, the command of fire and shelter and animal skin clothing. And exploration is by definition, placing ourselves at the leading

edge of the possible. Look around and at the technologies we have for transportation, airplanes, boats, automobiles, almost all of these things come about as a desire to move around, to transport people and ideas and goods. And that all ties into exploration. I think exploration has been the primary motivating force for humanity throughout history, and we're still explorers. So what do you think are some of the big milestone landmark moments in exploration that have really helped to define who we are today and how we got here? There's actually really three kind of waves of human exploration. The first is when we set out around 100,000 years ago. That's when our species, Homo sapiens, first left Africa. And people walked through Asia and Europe, and they walked through Siberia into the Americas. Actually, they probably took boats. This is something I talk about, but along the coast. But it's quite close between Alaska and Siberia. It's only about 50 miles of water. So they probably took boats there and Australia as well. So humans actually settled the entire world apart from Antarctica and a few islands far out at sea long before anyone sort of started, you know, formal exploration, but that's

part of our wanderings, right? We're basically a wandering species, but then the ancients connected our world. So the ancient Greeks and romans they traveled to india they traveled to china they built the silk road to transfer ideas between india and china the chinese went explored the indian ocean went to india went to east africa went to the middle east the polynesians settled the entire pacific and traveled across the indian ocean all the way to east africa in fact the culture of madagascar is based on the Polynesians. So this world was connected for the first time about 2,000 years ago. But then we went through the Dark Ages.

People kind of forgot about it. And then the Age of Exploration, what we think about as the age when the world was connected, was actually kind of a rediscovery of what we already knew with Columbus and then Magellan sailing around the world and the Portuguese who went to the Indian Ocean and went as far as China and Japan. And that's when the world became globalized. One of the things that I've never really understood about explorers in the early days is how do you decide to go explore when you don't know anything is out there? How do you, if you're a Polynesian standing on the Polynesian beach looking out at the ocean,

and you see nothing but ocean, how do you decide, yeah, let's go get a boat and just set sail and see what's out there without knowing if anything is out there? Without a map, I imagine maps had to have been a really big deal. Yeah, maps were a really big deal. And the other thing that was a really big deal was Compass, actually. The Compass, which came from China originally. But the Polynesians actually did not have maps. And they based everything on oral tradition.

And there's some famous stories of Captain Cook who went to Polynesia and he had a navigator from Tahiti basically. And the navigator could recite the names of 300 islands, but he didn't have a map. I mean, they didn't have maps, but what they did have was elaborate oral traditions and really good knowledge of the way kind of ocean currents work and clouds travel and birds, like they would actually take birds out and then let them go. And the bird would fly up into the air. And if the bird saw land, and of course the birds way up in the air, so it can see much further. If the bird saw land, it would fly towards land and then say, oh, okay, well, land must be over there, even though I can't see it, all these things. And they could tell just by like the pattern on the water and the waves that an island or a big landmass will break up the waves in a certain way. And they can kind of look at the water and see, oh, well, it looks like there's kind of a disruption in the waves here. So there must be an island 200 miles that way. It's

incredible. Wow. I never knew that. And so, so is there a story about maps, about how that came to be and how that changed this, how that changed the game? Maps originally were made for religious purposes. They would mark Jerusalem, sort of the center of the world, and they weren't to scale. They were just kind of pictures of, you know, Mary and the donkey or something like that in the Middle East in Jerusalem. And then they might have Europe or something like that, but they were just kind of intended to tell a story, but they weren't really intended to be directions to follow. But then the first maps that were sort of very useful were so-called Portolan charts,

and they were first made in Genoa around 1400s and these were the maps actually columbus's brother bartelome worked as a map maker and this is one of the things that almost certainly inspired columbus he had access to kind of the first maps that were really intended to mark accurate distances and directions and they were really intended for navigation. I've never really understood how you can make a map if you can't get up in the sky and look down, but clearly people have been doing it for a long time. Yeah, so it's dead reckoning. So what this is, is basically if you know your speed and you know your direction and you know how long you're traveling, then you can tell how far you've traveled, because distance is just speed multiplied by time. So say you're traveling,

you know, five miles per hour, for one hour, you know, you've gone five miles, right? And so this is actually how they would do it. And this is why you might be familiar with, for boats, we actually call speed knots. We say knots, and it's a nautical mile per hour. And it actually literally comes from knots on a rope that they would let out into the ocean, and the rope would unravel at the speed that the ship was traveling. So you had a certain amount of knots let out in a certain amount of time, and that was your ship speed. And this is why ship speed is based on knots. And that tells you how fast you're going. And then you have an hourglass, which tells you how long it takes. And you just multiply the time times the speed and you get distance. And so that's how you would do it. You would chart, you'd, you know, see a coastline, you say, okay, well, we've been traveling along this coastline for five hours at five miles per hour. So this coastline is 25 miles long. And they would just draw you know, little bays and things that stick out and,

you know, that kind of detail that somehow somebody figured out. Yeah. If you see an inline, you got dried on the map and you kind of guess, I mean, people were guessing all the time and that's why all these maps are distorted. And originally, for example, California for hundreds of years was marked as an island because people had never gone all the way around it. So they kind of figured, well, it's pretty, it's kind of like a peninsula, especially Baja, California. So they, oh, it's probably an island. So they just marked it as an island on the map. So a lot of this was just guesswork. So they filled in what they knew and they kind

of guessed about the rest. So there had to come a point where we had been everywhere or pretty much everywhere we could go and so that the exploring had to stop right i mean that or at least it had to change because we weren't exploring new places we were exploring places that other people had been to and now maybe we'd like to go to like like a tourist even after the world was completely mapped, basically, people started to fill in the details. And so you can go to a place and appreciate it at a whole different level. There's this famous explorer named Alexander von Humboldt, who we don't really think about today because he kind of invented everything. He did a little bit in every field.

But he went to South America and cataloged all the animal species and the plant species. And kind of he was the founder, basically basically of our modern science, our biology. And this is what it really inspired Charles Darwin. He, Charles Darwin said that he was the biggest influence in his life because he kind of opened our eyes to the details of what's really there rather than just, oh, let, here's a map of something, right? So, So then people start filling the details. And then there was this famous Austrian traveler named Ida Pfeiffer, who traveled around the world with a safari suit and a pistol. And she wrote about the land she traveled to. And she really inaugurated our world of travel. So she brought travel home to people of Europe and people started traveling around the world for the first time. And I think it's true to say that she invented the tourism industry.

And when did that happen? When did this change happen that people started thinking travel could be fun rather than some sort of dangerous adventure that who knows if we'll ever come back kind of thing? Yeah, basically it was in the 1800s when people had steamships, so they could travel around the world in a matter of months, and it wasn't super dangerous anymore. I mean, originally, people would set out in these voyages of exploration, and most of the people would die. Like when Magellan circumnavigated the globe, he took five ships, and only one made it back with 22 people, and he set out with 170 or something like that so it you know it was dangerous exploration was normally dangerous but now as soon as traveling became safe with our modern

technology which was largely inspired by exploration uh people started traveling the world just for fun and so when did when did human beings then look to the skies and say, well, maybe we should go up there? People were always doing this. So there was this Roman writer 2,000 years ago named Lucian of Samoset, and he wrote about a voyage to the moon. And he thought that you could just take a ship maybe and you could figure out a way to propel it through space. He was kind of imagining like a sailing ship and the Roman crew would go off and they had encounters with extraterrestrials on the moon. So this is an old idea. For hundreds, people have always been kind of writing about space, actually. But it only became sort of, you know, slightly realistic around the 1860s. There was this famous science fiction writer named Jules Verne, who wrote all

kinds of wonderful science fiction books. And he wrote about the first sort of plausible way to get people into space, which is fire them from a giant cannon, which would work, except it would shred them at the cellular level because the accelerations required for a giant cannon would be ridiculously extreme. So you would not survive the cannon shot, but it might actually get part of you into space. So then it took this recluse named Tsiolkovsky, who basically invented everything about rockets and space travel. And he wrote 100 books. He was a schoolteacher in rural Russia. And he invented basically the methods of getting people to space. And one of his disciples, an American named Robert Goddard, started testing rockets. And he developed the first liquid propelled

rocket that could be a propulsion system. And the rocket that Goddard invented in the 1920s was the ancestor of all the rockets we have today that we use to travel to space. And so since space travel has really been possible, which I guess really started in the 50s or late 50s, early 60s, at least when people really got excited about it, we've looked at space travelers, astronauts, those kind of people as great, you know, explorers themselves and pioneers and heroes to some degree. Part of that is actually intentional. It was the story that America told about a space program. And it was actually quite different from the way the Soviets viewed their space program. America emphasized kind of the individual pioneer hero going out to space on a dangerous mission,

whereas the Soviets emphasized kind of mechanization. And this is like a sign of the Soviet Union's modernity. And in fact, Yuri Gagarin, who was the first person in space launched by the Soviet Union, never touched the controls. He was locked out of his controls. He was just a passenger. And the Soviets considered this to be a good thing because it meant that our spacecraft are so sophisticated, we don't even need a pilot. It was kind of showing the world how sophisticated they were. Whereas Americans, they said, well, our boys are true heroes. So, you know, they're going to fly this thing and they're going to be the pioneers that go out and conquer the space and all that kind of stuff. So it was really kind of this different message. And I guess we're kind of left with both of those legacies, the technology, but also the kind of still hero astronaut. And so now, now that we know a lot more about how space works and what we can and can't do and the limitations of the speed at which we can travel, it clearly is still exciting to some. And it must be exciting to you because you work at SpaceX and all. But really, we can't go too far, can we?

That's right. So the universe is absolutely enormous place. And there are more Earth-like planets we know now than grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. I mean, there's just, look up at the sky and you see thousands of stars, but there are billions. There's 400 billion stars in our galaxy. There's billions, hundreds of billions of galaxies. So the universe is absolutely enormous. But the difficulty of traveling to another star is pretty extreme. It's not really feasible right now. I mean, it's a long time.

You'd have to have people in a spacecraft. Even with our most sophisticated technology, you'd have to have people traveling for over 100 years. So we're left with our solar system. But our solar system is actually a really big place. There's like 300 moons in our solar system. All the gas giants have like 70 moons. Well, Neptune and Uranus have fewer, but Jupiter and Saturn have a lot of moons. And some of them are really interesting.

And the solar system is really varied. And it has a lot of resources. On Earth, almost all the metals and materials that we have used throughout the history of civilization have rained down on our planet after it was formed because earth was sort of this molten bowl of magma and as it cooled all the heavy stuff sinks to the middle so earth's crust was a resource poor place all these heavy metals like gold and platinum and iron and nickel and so almost all of these came down later to earth from asteroids, because asteroids contain important compositions of these resources. Some asteroids are almost solid gold or platinum or iron nickel. So some asteroids have, some

relatively small asteroids have more materials than we've ever used in the entire history of our civilization. So this is one of the reasons I think we should go to space is because it would actually bring tremendous benefit to our civilization on earth. Well, as Captain Kirk said in the opening credits of Star Trek, you know, it is the final frontier. Our urge to explore has taken us all over the world. Now we must look to the heavens and explore up there. That's true. But one of the most important reasons to go is because the reason we are the way we are today is because of exploration. Exploration has always driven our technology. And by going out into space, by doing what we can with what we have, that creates the process

that stimulates our technology to improve. So if we want to go to another star in the future, what we have to do is go to closer destinations now and figure out how to live in space for long periods of time, how to develop better propulsion systems to transport people across space. So by doing things in space with the technology we have now, it creates the incentives that drive our technology further. With exploration and actually just the history of progress in general, you always set a goal first. You set some goal. We choose to go to the moon. Well, when Kennedy said we choose to go

to the moon in 1961, they had no idea how to go to the moon. But within eight years, they figured everything out. You set a goal and then you figure out how to accomplish it. And by doing that, it drives all kinds of technology, even in fields you never imagined. So this is such a critical thing that we need to set goals first and then figure out how to accomplish them. And this is what has always been the major incentive driving our progress throughout the history of civilization. And so what are the goals do you think people are striving to reach now? In space, settling people on Mars. That's the thing?

Yep, absolutely. Yeah, Mars is the best place to go because it is the only place that we could reach with our technology today that could support long-term human settlement. So Mars is a planet. It has resources similar to Earth. It has lots of water. It has metals and all the other kinds of resources we would expect to find on a planet. It has a usable atmosphere, so carbon dioxide, which can be converted into oxygen and methane for fuel.

It has a day-night cycle similar to Earth. A day is 24 hours and 39 minutes on Mars, which is very similar to 24 hours on Earth. Whereas the moon, for example, is 14 days of night, 14 days of day. And if you had to guess, when are we going to do that? I don't like to put timelines on things, but I think we essentially have the technology to do it today. It's just a matter of developing the actual vehicles that we're doing. And that's what we're currently working on. So I think it's possible within a decade. Well, I think there's something really exciting and adventurous about the whole concept

of exploring. And this has been a fun conversation about how we as humans have explored the world and now are exploring space. My guest has been Andrew Radner. He is an aerospace engineer, a mission manager at SpaceX, and author of the book Beyond the Known, How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars. Thanks, Andrew. Thank you very much, yeah. When you get up in the morning, do you wake up on your own, or does the alarm clock get you up?

Hopefully you can do it on your own at least once in a while. Research found that those who wake up naturally, usually a few minutes before the alarm goes off, are less groggy than those who are jarred back to reality by the horrible noise of the alarm. Sleep scientists have found that if you tell yourself what time you need to wake up, your body will actually anticipate it before it happens, which will soften the blow. You'll also be better off if you skip the snooze button. The mixed signals of get up and don't get up

can really confuse the body, and some experts say it is the worst way to start your day. And that is something you should know. You can do your part to help support this podcast by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. We have a couple thousand, but

I really would like to get to a million before I die. So leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced.

She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family.

But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, 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.