Something You Should Know - Serious Health Concerns with Kitchen Spices & Shortcuts to Solving Problems

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Finding the right holiday for co-workers can be a challenge. You don't want to spend too much but you want to give something that shows you put some thought into it, at least. Listen as I begin this episode by making this gift-giving task easy while still giving people something they will actually like. If anything in this world is safe, you would think the spices in your spice rack would be. I mean what kind of danger could a little oregano or basil pose to you or your family? Well, you are about to find out and you will likely be very surprised. In the December 2021 issue of Consumer Reports magazine is an article about how many spices in your kitchen likely contain heavy metals such as lead, arsenic or cadmium. Lisa Gill, investigative reporter for Consumer Reports authored the article and she joins me to discuss the shocking findings of their tests on spices. Here is a link to the story which contains the chart Lisa refers to that explains how each spice tested - good and bad. https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/your-herbs-and-spices-might-contain-arsenic-cadmium-and-lead/ We humans are pretty good at solving problems. Yet sometimes we make the solution harder than it has to be. If you can change the way you look at the problem, you may find a shortcut to the solution you are looking for. That’s according to Marcus du Sautoy, professor for the public understanding of science and professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford and author of the book Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut in Math and in Life (https://amzn.to/3qOlbZM) Marcus joins me with some fascinating ways to approach problems better. The day after Thanksgiving is a big day for shopping. It is also a big day for plumbers. Calls for plumbers spike on Black Friday. Listen as I explain why that is and what you should do so you don’t have to call a plumber in the first place.https://www.pmmag.com/articles/101718-black-friday-is-busiest-day-of-the-year-for-plumbers PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Go to https://stamps.com click the microphone at the top of the page, and enter code SOMETHING to get a 4 week free trial, free postage and a digital scale! Go to https://FarewayMeatMarket.com promo code: SYSK to get $100 off The Butcher's Holiday Collection and site wide free shipping! Firstleaf – the wine club designed for you!! Join today and get 6 bottles of wine for $29.95 and free shipping!  https://tryfirstleaf.com/SOMETHING Go to https://backcountry.com/sysk to get 15% OFF your first full-priced purchase! Helix Sleep is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders AND two free pillows for our listeners at https://HelixSleep.com/SYSK Get a $75 CREDIT at https://Indeed.com/Something Omaha Steaks is the best! Get awesome pricing at https://OmahaSteaks.com/BMT T-Mobile for Business the leader in 5G, #1 in customer satisfaction, and 5G in every plan! https://T-Mobile.com/business Discover matches all the cash back you earn on your credit card at the end of your first year automatically and is accepted at 99% of places in the U.S. that take credit cards! Learn more at https://discover.com/yes JUSTWORKS makes it easier for you to start, run and grow a business. Find out how by going to https://justworks.com Visit https://ferguson.com for the best in all of your plumping supply needs! https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, it can be hard to find the right holiday gift for people at work. I've got some simple solutions they will love. Then, the spices in your spice rack. Who knew they could have dangerous levels of heavy metals?

We looked at 15 different kinds of spices, and we tested 126 brands. And of those, we found 30% of cases concerning levels of arsenic, cadmium, or lead. That is shocking. Also, Black Friday is a big day for plumbers. I'll explain why and how to avoid the need for one, and a different way to look at problems that have simple and surprising solutions. If I put a certain number of people in a room together, how many people do I need for there to be more than an evens chance that two people in that room will have the same birthday? You actually only need 23 people.

All this today on Something You Should Know. From the kitchen to the laundry room, your home deserves the best. Give it the upgrade it deserves at Best Buy's Ultimate Appliance Event. Save up to $1,000 on two or more major appliances. Shop now in-store or online at BestBuy.ca. Exclusions apply. Something you should know. Fascinating intel.

The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi. Welcome to Something You Should Know. As we get into the holidays, you realize you've got gifts to buy, and buying the right gift for family and friends is hard enough.

But then there's people you work with. Buying holiday gifts for coworkers can get tricky and a little expensive. But research shows that people have pretty low expectations when it comes to office gifts. So don't worry too much about what you give. Here are some suggestions to make the task a bit easier.

Focus on presentation. Gift bags, tissue paper, and something sparkly will show you put some time and attention into it, even if it's not a very expensive gift. Give something they can take home and use. Don't give them something they could easily just take out of the office supply cabinet at work. Things like mugs or mouse pads are fine. Give food. People like to get homemade cookies or gift baskets or really any kind of food. It's inexpensive and always appreciated. And gift cards always work.

Even $10 at someone's favorite store or coffee place will be appreciated. And it's really easy. And that is something you should know. If you like to cook, or more importantly, if you like to eat, this next segment is important for you to hear, because so much of the food we make and eat is made with herbs and spices. And what could be more harmless than a little oregano or some basil? Or so you'd think.

However, in the December 2021 issue of Consumer Reports magazine is an article about spices that is really rather shocking. Many spices that you buy at the supermarket have concerning levels of heavy metals. Things like lead and arsenic. And heavy metals stay in your body. They don't pass through, so it's cumulative over your lifetime. So you might figure, well, then the solution would be to buy the spices that don't have heavy metals. Yeah, well, that turns out to be not so easy. Lisa Gill is the investigative reporter for Consumer Reports who wrote the story and is here to explain the problem and what you can do to protect yourself. Hi, Lisa.

Hi, thanks so much for having me. So first, I'd like to know how you came up with the idea of this story, the idea of investigating spices in the first place. I mean, what made you say, hey, let's look for heavy metals in spices? Yeah, good question. Actually, a handful of states had given us signals from their own testing of spices. And in one case in the state of North Carolina, a couple of years ago, some school children had lead poisoning. And, you know, lead shows up in a lot of places. It's not just in food or in spices.

It's in the environment and paint and all sorts of other parts of our environment. And when they started taking a closer look, they found it particularly in turmeric. You mean just that bright yellow, orangey spice that many of us have in our spice rack, turmeric, gave people lead poisoning. And at the same time, the state of New York, just in the last couple of years, has recalled over 100 spices due to different types of heavy metals. So they had given us some signals, too, that we should be looking for heavy metals in spices. And so the whole concept was to do a spot check. And what we wanted to understand is, you know, in the top spices, you know, commonly used spices that people purchase all the time in the grocery store, are there appreciable levels of heavy metals? And we also, I should say, too, we checked for salmonella.

So we were looking at bacterial contamination as well. And the really good news is we did not find any bacterial contamination, but we did find some concerning results in terms of heavy metal. And so let's define spices. Do you mean just spices, spices, or does this also include like oregano and herbs as well? Yes, herbs as well. So that's exactly right. So I'm using the term spices very loosely. And actually what we really looked at were cooking spices. So we's exactly right. So I'm using the term spices very loosely. And actually, what we really looked at were cooking spices. So we did not, for example, look at cinnamon or nutmeg, which are typically used in baking. So you did not look at cinnamon? Correct. And the idea, and I'll tell you why, for cooking spices, it's not uncommon that people

use cooking spices weekly or even daily. In the case of baking spices, it's far less frequent. We really wanted to look at things that consumers use all the time. And just overall, snapshot, condensed version, two sentences, what did you find? We looked at 15 different kinds of spices, and we tested 126 brands across those 15 spices. And of those, we found 30% of cases concerning levels of arsenic, cadmium, or lead. That is shocking. And not only that, there was no single clear predictor of which brand and which spice is safe. So, for example, organic doesn't, there were organic spices that had troubling levels of heavy metals. Also, you can't tell by the origin, you know, the country of origin.

That was another problem. And there's no particular brand that was left untouched and there's no particular spice. It's kind of across the board. And what about time? In other words, if you tested somebody's cumin now and it had lead in it, would it maybe not have lead in it six months from now? Yeah, that's possible. So that's what I mean by spot check. The spot check is just like a snapshot in time. Just trying to capture

really looking for market signals. So it's not the same as, for example, as testing a car that was just released on the market and it's the same car that will be built for the entire year. No, you're correct. It's different. It will change. The

lot numbers will change. And, you know, that's sort of a known issue when you test food products. And so what's your sense of how it gets in there? Where does this lead and arsenic, because you think of a bottle of spices that you buy at the supermarket that what it says on the label is pretty much that's all that's in there. So how is heavy metals getting in there? Yeah, the most likely way is through the environment, through water and soil. That would be particularly true for plant-based herbs like thyme or basil or oregano. They can leach easily, more easily, heavy metals out of the soil and through the water. The next obvious question is, well, how do those get into our soil and water? And there's a couple of ways. One of them is,

some of them are naturally occurring. Actually, arsenic can naturally occur. But in other cases, it's environmental. I'm sorry, it's manufacturing waste product. Basically, pollutants are contaminated and dumped into rivers and streams or into the soil. Over time, it will make its way to topsoil that's used to grow our food. So you have a chart, and anyone who's read Consumer Reports knows you guys are very good at charts, but you have a chart in the article both online that people can access, and there's a link to that chart, that article in the show notes for this episode. You have a chart of spices by brands of which one you tested that did well and which ones you didn't. So I guess that's a

place to start. Well, there's a couple of things. I mean, in the immediate, our first piece of advice is take this list and just check it against what you have in your spikes cabinet today. And I agree with you, it's not going to be the same lot numbers, but you do have a, you have a good sense, I want to say that if you buy, I don't know, a particular brand that they're sourcing it from at least a similar source or a consistent source. I mean, these large companies want consistent sourcing. So it's not, it's not unreasonable to think that other lot numbers of a product may have appreciable levels of heavy metals. The second step would be today, as you go buy spices for maybe a holiday gathering or even just because you're trying out different recipes or you're even restocking, take our list along with you and just double check. As you noted, there mean, there are some, you know, thyme and oregano, basically all the ones we tested had appreciable levels of and worrisome levels, I should say, of heavy metals.

So don't buy those brands is the second piece of advice. And then the third would be, you know, if you use a lot of oregano or thyme in particular or even basil, I know it sounds like a stretch and a lot of work, but actually you can grow your own, you know, in little window boxes. You don't necessarily need a garden or outdoor space. You don't even need to live in a warm climate. You can do it inside your home. So I think if you use a lot, that might be an option. The other thing I'd like to say too, is that, you know, one problem with, and the reason that heavy metals are so concerning is that they accumulate in the body over time. You don't metabolize them like you might other chemicals. And so you care a lot about the cumulative long-term effect and you care a lot about how much you get of heavy metals in a day and if you've got young children or babies

in your home i would i would really look at you know what spices are you giving them um and really either cut back or make sure that they are not exposed or overexposed to heavy metals and then the other and i know this sounds not spice related, but this is important. And again, if you have small children or babies in your home, you might want to test your water and make sure that you don't have lead in your water. So when we think about the cumulative effect, you think about water, soil, and food. Sometimes, because the recipe will call for it, I will buy fresh oregano or fresh thyme in the supermarket. Did you test those? You know, we did not. And I can say a few things just from my own personal experience, not necessarily from Consumer Reports experience, but fresh herbs, you use less of them. I would say the risk is probably, in the aggregate, maybe less.

But it may not be less. It may not be. But at the same time, you have to really ask yourself, well, how often am I using them? We all eat foods with heavy metals. I eat raw tuna and sushi all the time. But I take it easy. I kind of look at my weeks, the amount I eat in I eat in a week and try to not exceed, you know, once or twice a week. As you look at the spices that you tested, were there any across the board that were just plain fine? Do you mean brands or the actual spice? The name of the spice. Oh, yeah.

That is a fantastic question to help people feel secure. You know, black pepper is a great example. Black pepper did well across the board. And that's great because that's probably one of the most popular spices in the United States. Coriander also did well. Chili powder, almost all but one brand did well. Curry powder and garlic powder, all safe. White pepper, sesame seed, and saffron,

all green check marks, which is really good news. And were there any that were just horrible? Yeah. So really, unfortunately, thyme and oregano, every one that we tested, got into the dangerous levels of heavy metals. And then I would say in addition to that powdered ginger, all of them did poorly except for one, dried basil. Dried basil, again, all of them did poorly except for one. But that one that did well could do poorly next week. It could. Yeah. So this is the trouble. Spot check, like I said, is tough because you're just getting a snapshot about what is available

in the market at the time you send out the shoppers. And you're looking for signals. And really, really, I think the important thing to think about is that the FDA does not regulate the space in the way you might expect. I mean, they don't test for heavy metals. They don't require companies to test for heavy metals in spices specifically. They do stop the import of certain spices if heavy metals have been found, but they're not looking for them. They are looking for salmonella contamination. And that's their efforts actually have have really substantially reduced the risk of salmonella and spices. At the same time, a few states, and New York State in particular, and California maybe more generally, have really stepped forward to try to regulate this space a little better. So this kind of research helps, I would say helps regulators get a snapshot of what's going on in the market and maybe look a little more closely at the absence of regulations and what that means for people's health.

Lisa Gill is my guest. She is an investigative reporter for Consumer Reports and author of an article about heavy metals in kitchen spices. 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.

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The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Lisa, do you know that if you waved a magic wand and passed a law that said to all the spice companies that this had to stop, is the technology available or is the sourcing available or whatever it would take to fix it available? I love that question. I love that question. And I'm going to hedge it a little bit. The technology, I can't speak to directly, but what we do know is that companies, based on their responses to us, could do more in terms of testing. We asked all the companies all the same questions,

and one of them was, do you regularly test for heavy metals? And a handful got back to us and said yes. Another handful came back and said, well, we require the suppliers to test but we don't test and then another handful didn't respond at all so i would suggest that you know even just the simple act of getting all manufacturers to require suppliers testing or doing their own testing would be a huge step and maybe publishing it on the label so consumers know, or creating a symbol so that consumers know what they're getting. Right now, quite frankly, as you pointed out here several times, a consumer just cannot tell. They don't know which.

So you go to shop for dried basil or dried oregano. You have no idea maybe where it's from, but you also really may not know what's in it in terms of heavy metals. You should at least be able to choose your heavy metals to some degree. I mean, I'm not directly answering it, but it would suggest to us based on how the companies responded that self-policing in this area could definitely improve. You know what I wonder is, so if you went to the spice companies and said, look what we found, would they go, oh my God, or would they go, yeah, we know. It's a known problem in the spice industry.

The spice trade industry talks quite a bit about it, you know, in their annual meetings. And part of the reason is that the majority of spices that you see in our grocery stores are imported. And I hesitate to give you a number, but it's nearly all. There's only a handful that really aren't. But basically everything that we tested comes from overseas. And it comes from all over the world, China, Vietnam, India,

places where environmental contamination by companies is a problem. And it's a known problem. And honestly, now I can't confirm this. This is what the spice trade industry tells us. The United States actually gets the best, you know, highest quality spices when we receive imports. And so spices that are left, you know, to other countries may have actually higher levels of contamination. The brands that you tested, were they pretty much the name brand ones that you would find

at the supermarket? No, totally. Yeah, I'm happy to name a few. I mean, it includes McCormick. I mean, they're probably one of the biggest sellers. It includes Kirkland, which is from Costco, Penzies, 365 Whole Foods Market, Morton and Bassett, Spice Island, and Simply Organic. These are ones that you and I could walk probably to the closest supermarket and find on the grocery store shelf.

Isn't Trader Joe's on your list too? Yes. Thank you. What I'm wondering is, there are storefronts, you know, specialty spice stores. Would there be any reason to think that their sources are domestic or different or better? Or I know if you didn't test them, how would you know? But you know more about this than I do. So would that be like a little bit of insurance if you went there or no? No, no. And, you know, so I think, I think maybe you're, might be asking about like bulk spices,

like bulk spices, you might be able to purchase it. Our indicators, you know, and this isn't like official advice, but our indicators are that bulk spices contain even higher levels of heavy metals. And then the advice we've given in the past, and even for this story, is spices that you bring from overseas, we would suggest, other research suggests those have the highest levels of heavy metals. So if you go on vacation and you're in India

and you think, oh, this is going to be great. I'm going to get curry here and I'll bring it back and it'll be wonderful. Just know that statistically speaking, previous research suggests that there will be higher levels of heavy metals in that spice. I wonder if, has Consumer Reports, or are you aware of any other testing that was done maybe 20 years ago or 10 years ago and compare it to this, or is this kind of a new revelation? This is the first time we've ever done this. And we were bolstered by New York States testing, North Carolina's testing, and other state health agencies that were really

trying to get a grip on what was happening with lead, especially. So what happens in New York when New York says, there's too much lead in your spices, so you can't, is that what they say? They say you can't sell it? Yeah, so they can do a recall. They can do a recall and remove those spices off the shelf. It's interesting in this food safety space, we often think about recalls in terms of the federal government, right? The FDA or the USDA. And for a state health department or a state food safety

department to specifically issue recalls just in that state is good. It's good for public health. So really the only solution to this is either grow your own, but some of those spices you can't grow or don't use them because otherwise it's a bit of a crapshoot. It's a bit of a crapshoot and also maybe best try to understand other sources of heavy metal in your home and particularly water. And, you know, for households with young children, you know, this area is super sensitive, and taking extra steps, I would say, is important. I think for adults, you know, in my case, I look at these and I don't use enough dry. I'm like you.

I buy fresh herbs, and I don't use them in quantities high enough to warrant massive concern. My heavy metals come from fish, unfortunately. Yeah, which is, you know, another concern. Yeah, same problem. But it still doesn't, I mean, I think this comes as a surprise to a lot of people. I think people know there's heavy metal in fish. But this is really, I was, when I saw this email from your organization, I was shocked because it seems like, what? Why would that be?

I know. I was stunned that one out of three tested at high levels that were high enough that could cause concern for health. That's just not the outcome I thought we would have. Well, the good news there is that two out of three didn't. Yes. Yeah. And that's exactly right. So it's not, I can hear my editors in my head. It's not a total crapshoot. I mean, you can sort of ascertain a few things from the list of spices that did well. And I think you should have confidence, you know, with green check marks next to some of these. I mean, you know, Spice Island chili powder, simply organic chili powder, you know, those, they all did well. Well, anybody who is concerned, and I guess we should all be concerned because we all eat food that has herbs and spices in it, should check out that list,

that chart that is on your website, the Consumer Reports website, as well as in the December 2021 issue of Consumer Reports magazine. Lisa Gill has been my guest. She is the investigative reporter for Consumer Reports who wrote this story. And you will find a direct link to the story on the Consumer Reports website in the show notes for this episode. Thank you, Lisa. Thanks so much for having me. It was really a great discussion, and I hope it's helpful. 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

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your podcasts. When you have a problem, you try to figure out the solution. And sometimes that's easy and sometimes it's hard. And sometimes the hard problems may actually have a shortcut. It's all in how you look at the problem, how you frame it, how you reconsider it. That's according to Marcus de Sautoy. He's professor for the public understanding of science and professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford

and author of the book Thinking Better, The Art of the Shortcut in Math and in Life. Hi, Marcus. Thanks for being here. Great to be on. So explain what you mean by thinking better and solving problems better, because I think people believe that generally we're pretty good at solving problems, or if we don't know the answer or we can't figure it out, we're able to get it somewhere else, right? I think that the human species has got very good at finding cunning solutions to tough problems.

And rather than doing a lot of hard work, which can take you a long time, be very boring, I'm trying to encourage people to think better. Think of a way to look at a problem which kind of gets rid of all that boring hard work and gets you to your solution as efficiently and quickly as possible. And so give me an example of that. Well, one of the examples that got me very excited when I was a student was when a teacher told me a story about a mathematician who came up with a very cunning kind of shortcut to what looked like a very difficult problem. The problem was add up the numbers from one to a hundred. Now there's a very boring, slow way to do that, which is you start at the number one, plus two, plus three, plus four. It's going to take you a long time, probably make a lot of mistakes on the way. But this mathematician called Carl Friedrich

Gauss, one of my mathematical heroes, he was at school when he was given this problem. And he said, oh, no, there's a cunning way to think about this, because I can add up the numbers in pairs. I can add 1 plus 100. That's 101. 2 plus 99. That's also 101. 3 plus 98. Again, 101. And what he saw was that there were 50 pairs of numbers all adding up to 101. So the answer to the teacher's question was, well, 50 lots of adding up numbers from one to a hundred. Think about it in a different way. Think about the beginning and the end of the journey together. And suddenly you've got this shortcut, which gets you the answer much more efficiently. And the power of this shortcut is even if the teacher had cranked the problem up and said, OK, what about one to a million? The trick still gets you very quickly to the answer, whilst the rest of the class is kind of adding up the numbers in turn and taking

forever to get there. So I think my subject of mathematics is somehow the art of the shortcut. It's about these wonderful techniques for looking at problems that at first sight look incredibly laborious, difficult, long, tedious, and coming up with a clever way to look at them to get to the answer quickly and efficiently. Okay, so that's a great example, but so seldom am I asked to add up the numbers between one and a hundred or any academic mathematical problem like that. So bring that into the real world and tell me how these shortcuts work for like more real life problems. Okay. So I think, you know, each problem has its own kind of individual shortcut that will work for it. So for example, finding a pattern in numbers is a very powerful way to kind of predict

what might happen next. So, for example, a colleague of mine, Jeffrey West, discovered a pattern in the way that things in cities grow as the city gets bigger and bigger. And this pattern is very powerful when actually applied by citizens in a city. For example, he discovered that if you double the population of a city, then actually you don't get double the number of cinemas or restaurants. You seem to get always 15 percent more of all the things in that city. So the larger the city, somehow you get an extra bonus 15 percent every time you double a population.

And this also applies to salaries. So, for example, if you're doing the same job in a city of a million citizens, if you move to a city with two million citizens, you might say, well, surely I'm going to get paid the same amount of money for doing the same job. But no, there seems to be this bonus factor that this pattern has revealed that you get an extra 15% of salary. Now, for me, that seems like a very useful shortcut if you want to increase your salary by just doing the same amount of work. Just move to a city with double the amount of inhabitants. It seems like this pattern in the numbers reveals

that you just get more for your kind of work in a city with double the population. One shortcut you talk about that I think is really interesting is it's a shortcut to solve a problem if you get other people to solve it for you. So talk about that. What is that? I mean, this is something called the wisdom of the crowd. So, for example, if I give you a jar full of jelly beans and I ask you to guess the number of beans in that jar, you'll probably be way off.

But if I actually ask 200 people to guess the number of jelly beans and then I take the average of all their guesses, it's extraordinary that actually that average very often is very close to the true number of beans that are in that jar. It seems like that what happens is the people who terribly underestimate the number of beans is cancelled out by the people who overestimate, and we get actually quite close to the true value. So I think that's quite a useful strategy. Use the kind of crowd to help you find a solution. And in fact, I had somebody who wrote to me after I'd talked about this one time, and he said, I actually use this at a local fair that I went to, and I waited till the end of the day. And then everyone was guessing number of jelly beans in the jar. And he said he took the average at the end of the day, put that in as his entry, and he won the jar of jelly beans. He actually sent me

10 jelly beans as my kind of payment for telling him about this shortcut. Yeah. Well, that's really interesting because as you say, with the jelly beans, when you average out all the guesses, you get something close to the truth, which sort of gives credence to the idea of managing by committee. Ask a lot of people, get a lot of people's input, and you'll get a consensus. But that often isn't what happens. You having worked in organizations that manage by committee, it's often a big mess. So I wonder what's going on there. I think what it's saying in a way is that collectively as a species, we have good

intuition about some problems, but kind of individuals don't. It's the collective that do have a good intuition. Well, it's also, it's kind of like why companies beta test because no one person or small group of people will ever figure out all the problems of everything. But if you throw it out there to the world, eventually somebody is going to find everything. Yes, but there's an interesting challenge here, because it's clear that not every problem is amenable to this kind of wisdom of the crowd, because I don't think I'd want to go on an aeroplane, which is being collectively flown by the passengers. Then I really do want an expert who knows what they're doing. So again, it's this challenge of knowing when the shortcut is useful to apply in particular settings, good for estimating the number of jelly beans in a jar,

but perhaps not so good if you're wanting to try and fly a plane. Well, but that brings up, so let's say the pilot ate some bad fish and he's dead. And so now you've got this group of passengers, maybe collectively they could figure it out or die, or do you leave it to one guy who said, well, you know, I flew in the war back in, you know, I mean, what would be the better solution? Yes, I think that's, it's an interesting challenge. Actually, what we found is that the good crowd is one that has a very wide range of backgrounds such that you get variety. It helps you rather than very specific knowledge. I think in the case of flying a plane, then I'd go for somebody who had perhaps flown

a plane before and just let them get on with it. Talk about the probability shortcut, because I think people have a, or believe they have a pretty good sense of how probability works, but not always, right? Yeah, I think that probability is something that we have a very bad intuition for. And so finding shortcuts for how probable is something to happen or not is really important. I think one of my favorites, and it's somehow counterintuitive, is if I put a certain number of people in a room together, how many people do I need for there to be more than an evens chance that two people in that room will have the same birthday. Now you might think, well,

gosh, for two people to have the same birthday, sure you need probably 150 maybe, because what you're thinking of is, well, what's the probability that somebody will have my birthday? So you might need half the days in the year, but it turns out not to be the case. If you look at the probability of how the people can pair up, you actually only need 23 people people up in that room very quickly means that there are more ways that people will share a birthday than there are that they won't share a birthday. So only 23 people in a room, and you're more than likely to find two with the same birthday. That makes no sense to me. How could that possibly be when there's 365 days in the year that 23 people would be all it would take to come up with a common birthday? It makes no sense to me. I think that's why these shortcuts are really important because if you use your kind of intuition, you'll say, well,

I think there should be like 150. You need like half the year or something. But I think the mistake that people make is that they think about their own birthday. And if I go into that room, well, there's hardly going to be somebody with my birthday there. But what one isn't considering is there are different ways to pair them up. When you start to count the different pairs that you can make out of those 23 people, then there turn out to be many more ways than you might have expected at first sight. And that's the kind of power of mathematics to count your intuition and say, that doesn't make sense, and to see why actually it does make sense.

And that will be a shortcut. If you're trying to find two people with the same birthday, you only need to take 23 people and you'll have a good chance of finding two with the same birthday. What's the data shortcut? Well, I think that one of the things that we're being faced with on a daily basis. It's just the onslaught of the amount of data that we have to navigate. I think we're finding it increasingly difficult to find messages inside that data. But again, mathematics has come up with some very good shortcuts which show that even though the data may look immense, a good sampling can reveal actually what's going on in that data with just a small number of examples in the data. My favorite example is an advert that I used to watch as a kid, which said,

eight out of 10 cats prefer this brand of cat food that we have in the UK called Whiskers. And I had a cat and nobody had ever asked my cat about its preferences. And so I began to wonder, there are 7 million cats here in the UK. How many cats did they actually have to ask in order to be able to be confident in making that claim that 8 out of 10 cats prefer their particular cat food? And it turns out you only need to ask about 250 cats to be pretty confident that 19 out of 20 times that sample will be 5% away from the true value in the 7 million cats. So I think that's a very important kind of shortcut to know about that even though you might be overwhelmed by data, being able to just sample a small part of it

can get you actually insight into what's happening in the larger data set. Well, that's how they take opinion polls, right? I mean, they take a sample, supposedly a random sample of people to represent the population. Yes, that's right. But you really want to know, well, what's the kind of critical value such I can be confident that the poll that I've done is representative? But the other thing you have to be very careful of is not biasing your choice of data. There's a very classic story of very early on in doing polls, people use the telephone. And it turned out that, well, not many people had a telephone in the kind of 1950s um and so they were actually biasing the sample because they were just phoning people who

are rich enough to own a telephone so you have to be careful in this sampling to make sure that you you aren't sort of biasing the people that you're asking yeah, but it's easy to lump all cats in one category, because I don't know very much about cats. But there's probably a lot of differences in cats. There's, you know, gender, there's breed, there's age, there's all these things that so eight out of 10 cats may be true, but it may not be that true for your cat because of some of those variables. That's certainly true. And that's one of the problems with going from a kind of global statement like that to the particular. I mean, it's almost like the challenge of probability that there's one in six chance if I roll a dice that it's going to end on a six. But, you know, when I roll it, it just makes one choice of a side to be on.

So, you know, there is an issue. It doesn't say anything particular about your cat. But still, you know, to know that most cats do like this, it gives a higher chance that your cat might like this brand. And so you very well might buy it. You know, I like this kind of discussion because it opens up your thinking. It makes you realize that there are so many other ways to think about a problem or to attack a problem or to find a shortcut to a problem that maybe you hadn't even considered before. And it's interesting to think about all the ways that problems can be solved. My guest has been Marcus de Sautoy.

He's professor for the public understanding of science and a professor of mathematics at Oxford. And he is author of the book, Thinking Better, the art of the shortcut in math and in life. And you will find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Marcus. Thanks, Michael. It was great to be on the show. Thanks for having me. Most people know that the day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

It's also one of the busiest days of the year for plumbers. Estimates are that calls to plumbers spike by about 50% on Black Friday. So what's all the clogging about? Grease, potato peelings, rice, celery, and poultry skin in the disposal, and lots of clogged toilets. So rule number one is avoid putting fats and cooking oils down the drain. They might go down easy, but they'll turn solid and create clogs in your pipes. It's also true that stringy and starchy waste in the disposal can mess things up. So it's better to put food waste in the garbage can instead of the garbage disposal. If you've got guests staying over, try to wait 10 minutes between showers

to allow slow drains to have time to do their job and drain. And that is something you should know. Well, I know I learned a lot in this episode of the podcast, particularly the segment about spices and the potential for heavy metals in spices, you'll probably end up telling somebody you know about it. And when you do, tell them about the podcast. Ask them to give a listen. I'd appreciate it, and it helps us grow our audience. 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. Lauro, 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. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God

and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available.