Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How DNA Predicts Our Psychological Traits & Why People’s Sense of Direction Varies

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, some people fill their car tires with nitrogen. Should you? Then, understanding how your DNA really works and how new advances are changing everything from education to medicine. That is where DNA is unparalleled in its power. To be able to prevent something like a heart attack rather than trying to cure that after it's happened.

Starting point is 00:00:58 Or obesity or alcoholism or any of these other things. Also, do you know how to tell if a pear is really ripe? Most people don't. And how good is your sense of direction? I mean, people vary a lot in how good they are at getting from A to B. And when someone says, I have a great sense of direction, they probably have a lot of experience of successful journeys. All this today on Something You Should Know.

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Starting point is 00:02:01 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. Not too long ago, I got a new car. And I noticed when I got the car that the little valve covers on the tires where you put the air in, they were green. And I asked the guy who sold me the car, you put the air in, they were green. And I asked the guy who sold me the car, I said, why are they green?

Starting point is 00:02:29 And he said, that's because your tires are inflated with nitrogen. And very often when you get a new car or when you buy replacement tires, you are offered a nitrogen inflation. In other words, filling your new tires with nitrogen instead of plain old air. Usually at somewhere between $5 and $10 per tire. The theory is that it can help your car's tires last longer and improve mileage. So does it?

Starting point is 00:02:57 Well, in large trucks and commercial fleets where nitrogen is used routinely, it does seem to help reduce air loss and the aging of the rubber in the tires, and it also helps to cut down on wheel erosion. This is according to the National Highway Safety Administration. But do those benefits translate to your car? Eh, a little. Some of the regular air loss in tires is the air seeping through the rubber. The fatter nitrogen molecules can't leak out as easily, so your tires stay fuller longer.

Starting point is 00:03:32 But it's not much of a difference. So should you do it? Well, according to the tire manufacturers, it's definitely not necessary. But it will do no harm to your tires. Depending on the cost, it might be worth it and you might see a slight improvement. But regularly checking your tire pressure, whether air or nitrogen, once a month, would go a long way. And more than half of us don't do that. And that is something you should know. How much do you really understand about your DNA exactly? I think we all have a sense of what it is that we have genes and they came from our parents and they make up who we are

Starting point is 00:04:15 and influence who we are. But there's a lot about genes and DNA I bet you don't know. And there are some myths about how it works that a lot of people believe. We are about to clear all this up, set the record straight, and get a really good and fascinating understanding about all of this from Robert Plowman. He is a professor of behavioral genetics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at King's College in London. He previously held positions at the University of Colorado and Pennsylvania State University, and he is author of a book called Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are.

Starting point is 00:04:53 Hi, Robert, welcome. Pleasure to have you here. Well, thanks, Mike. I really look forward to talking to you. So we do hear a lot about DNA. You know, we see it on television. We see ads for companies where we can, you know, spit in a tube and get our DNA results back. So we have a sense of what it is, but what is DNA exactly? Well, that's a great question because I think, you know, everyone thinks they know what it is. It's the inherited material in all living organisms. And in humans, it consists of 3 billion steps in the spiral

Starting point is 00:05:27 staircase of DNA, the famous double helix. And each of those steps has information. 99% of all of those steps in the double helix of DNA are the same for all of us, but 1% differ. And it's those 1% of the differences that we're studying to ask to what extent do they make people different? So at some level, everybody knows hair color is inherited and eye color. And when we say they're inherited, we mean there are DNA differences that we've inherited from our parents that make us have either brown hair or blonde hair. So DNA is the material that we inherit from our parents that is responsible for what we talk about as genetic influence.

Starting point is 00:06:19 And so when you say that we're 99% all the same, basically, that means that that's why we all have two arms and 10 fingers and because we're all the same. Exactly right. That's what makes us human, the 99%. Doesn't it seem kind of weird that there's only this 1% that creates such huge differences in people? Maybe, but 1% of 3 billion is still many millions. So there's still a lot of differences there. And the differences are things like hair color and eye color and that kind of thing, height and all that. But what else is it? People know, I think, have a sense that they inherit things about their hair and their voice or whatever. But what are some of the other things that we're inheriting?

Starting point is 00:07:10 Well, when I started out in graduate school 50 years ago, in psychology, you couldn't even mention genetics. No one ever thought genetics could be affecting your personality or your mental health or your ability to learn in school. And so it was a real, you know, amazing finding that over those few decades, we began to realize that just about everything shows genetic influence. Things have changed so much from the environmentalism of the 1970s to an acceptance of genetic influence now that the real question now is what is not heritable? We don't know of anything that differs reliably between people that is not heritable. Personality shows genetic influence, mental health and illness, cognitive abilities and disabilities. Just about everything shows genetic influence well that

Starting point is 00:08:07 really surprises me because it's not the conventional wisdom it's not what most people believe i think and i've always thought that yes some things are genetic some things are inherited but other things are because of the environment that you are in or you grew up in. You know, it's the nature versus nurture argument. Yeah, it is surprising. I've done surveys, though, of the population, and people are much more accepting of the notion of genetic influence, not just for simple physical things like height and hair color and eye color, but for more complex things,

Starting point is 00:08:46 you know, like something that you know you can measure well, body weight, for example, body mass index. You know, people are surprised to learn that it's so heritable. None of these things are 100% due to genetic influence, but weight is about 70% due to genetic differences. Now, that means it doesn't mean 70% of your weight is due to genetics and the rest of the environment. What it means is the differences between people in the population in weight, about 70% of those differences are due to inherited DNA differences. It is surprising, especially when you get to things like, you know, personality or how well kids do at school. From Freud onwards, we always thought that what's

Starting point is 00:09:33 important is the family environment. It's what your parents, how your parents interact with you that's important, what we call nurture. But now most psychologists accept that genetics, that is nature, accounts for about half of the differences on average across all traits in psychology. So that is a dramatic change in how we think about the origins of differences between people. Doesn't it have to be though that you may be genetically predisposed to something but there also has to be some sort of trigger and by that I mean your parents may be diabetic and you may be predisposed to getting diabetes but if you don't eat a lot of sugar if you

Starting point is 00:10:21 don't eat what diabetics tend to eat, you won't get it. Exactly right. You know, for example, weight is heritable. And I know from my DNA, I actually have a high genetic risk for putting on weight. But does that mean I'm destined to be a genetic fatty? No, not at all. Because along the lines of what you're saying, if I didn't eat like a pig, I wouldn't put on so much weight. So it's a genetic propensity. It's probabilistic. It's not hardwired deterministic.

Starting point is 00:10:52 When we talk about complex traits like weight or common disorders like diabetes, which you mentioned, it's not a single gene. If it were a single gene, it would be deterministic. You know, there's thousands of single gene disorders. And if you have one of those genes, you will develop the disorder. It doesn't matter what your environment is. But when we talk about common disorders and complex traits, we're not talking about one gene or 10 gene or 100 genes. We're talking about thousands of tiny effects of many different genes. So it's not one gene, which is deterministic.

Starting point is 00:11:34 It's many genes, which makes it probabilistic. Is the genetic risk, though, what is the genetic risk, meaning what's the mechanism? So let's say you are predisposed to put on weight is that because you're predisposed to not be able to control your eating or you would eat the same as a thin person but you would put on the way what what's what is the gene doing yeah well that's the thing is it's not the gene. That's the way people used to think about it. If it's genetic, what's the gene? But we're talking about thousands of genes, each which have little effect. Now, there are some major mechanisms like the one you mentioned where your metabolism is such that you tend to put on weight more. That's what people used to think

Starting point is 00:12:22 was important, but it actually is probably of little importance. More important are psychological mechanisms like satiety, whether you feel full. You know, I mean, most normal people, when they're full, they don't want any more food. But if I'm at a restaurant with friends and there's food on the table, I say, oh, I don't want anything more, I'm full.

Starting point is 00:12:43 But then as we continue talking, suddenly all the food starts disappearing. And you know where it went. The other mechanism is called responsiveness to food cues. And that's like if I pass a bakery, it takes all my willpower when I smell those fresh page threes not to go in the shop. But I've learned that if I go in the shop, it's deadly for me. So there are many mechanisms involved, and it isn't going to be simple. But now that we are able, thanks to the DNA revolution, to identify some of these genes, we can begin to use them to predict behavior,

Starting point is 00:13:19 even if we don't know about the mechanisms responsible for those genes' effect? If you inherit, let's say you inherit your eye color from your mother, well, what determined that as opposed to inheriting your eye color from your father? Do we know, or is it just random, or what? Now, again, that's a single gene, but I think the general point you're making is that you get about half of your genes from your mother, half from your father. And it's really the point of sex is to randomly mix up those genes. So that, I mean, for example, I just got a dog that's a crossbreed. And if you look at that, that's a mix between either a mother or father who's of one breed and the other. So, let's take a cocker spaniel and a poodle. And if you mate them together, you'll see that they have about

Starting point is 00:14:12 eight pups, 10 pups on average. And you see that normal distribution from pups that look almost just like cocker spaniels to pups that look almost like poodles, but most of them are in the middle with weird combinations of them. Some have the Cocker Spaniel ears, you know, the floppy ears, and some have the tail of a poodle. Well, it's the same with us. We're mixtures of the genes from your mother and your father. And that's really interesting to me because I particularly am interested in learning abilities and how well kids do at school, for example. And when you think about nurture, my sister and I both have the same parents, right? So we have the same nurture, basically. Yet we differed a lot in how well we did at school. I love school and found it easy. My sister didn't like school

Starting point is 00:15:05 and found it hard. It's hard to explain that environmentally, actually, because we always thought nurture is the systematic environment provided by your parents. But genetics predicts differences within families. Yeah, but it seems like there are some things that happened that you couldn't predict that I want to ask you about in just a moment. My guest is Robert Plowman. He is a professor of behavioral genetics, and he is author of the book Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world.

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Starting point is 00:16:02 That's BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit FlyPorter.com and actually enjoy economy. So, Robert, what happens, though, when there are things that seem so unpredictable? And, you know, like the heartbreak of, let's say, you know,

Starting point is 00:16:46 two very healthy parents from very healthy families, no history of anything, and then their child gets cancer. And it can't be environmental because the child is too young for it to have been environmental, most likely. So where did it come from? A lot of cancers are not heritable. They're not due to DNA differences you inherit from your parents. Many cancers are due to mutations that happen after conception. So one that's easy for people to understand is skin cancer, for example.

Starting point is 00:17:22 If you expose your skin to sun a lot, what that radiation does is it causes mutations, changes in your DNA in your skin locally. Now that is not inherited. Maybe your propensity to suffer from these mutations might show some genetic influence, but basically it isn't very heritable. The mutations that occur there can go crazy, and that's what cancer is. It's a mutation in mechanisms that occur when our cells divide. But you won't pass that on to your kids either. You didn't get it from your parents, you won't pass it on. The only mutations and DNA differences that you pass on are in your sperm or eggs. Well, so often you hear people who say, or the advice is that if your mother had breast cancer,

Starting point is 00:18:17 that your risk of getting it if you're a woman is higher or ovarian cancer or prostate cancer for men. And you're saying that the link isn't there. It's a very weak link. These are some of the least heritable things, much less heritable than the psychological traits. And that's because a lot of cancers are caused by these, what we call spontaneous or de novo, new mutations that you did not inherit. Now, with Angela Jolie, for example, most of these disorders, though, have rare and very severe types that can be caused by a single gene. So, with breast cancer, there are these two genes, they're called BRCA1 and 2, that greatly increase your risk so that you don't need to be a geneticist to see it

Starting point is 00:19:06 because you'll often see that women develop very severe breast cancer early in life in their 30s or 40s. Their sisters tend to have it. And it's also bilateral, both sides, and ovarian. So this is, you know, very hefty, sledgehammer-like genetic effects. But the thing is, these are rare, very rare. I remember hearing that the real magic of DNA is or will be when we're able to tell somebody's propensity for getting diabetes, heart attacks, those kinds of things, and be able to do things to prevent them as opposed to treat them later. And that is where DNA is unparalleled in its power, because you can detect at birth what someone's risk is. It's a no-brainer for medicine to be able to prevent something like a heart attack, rather than trying to cure that heart attack, you know, after it's happened, or obesity,

Starting point is 00:20:14 or alcoholism, or any of these other things. They're very hard to cure once they've occurred. But prevention, you know, as Benjamin Franklin said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And so, all of medicine is moving this way. So, many countries, as Benjamin Franklin said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And so all of medicine is moving this way. So many countries, including the UK, are now offering DNA testing, not for these fun things that people do on 23andMe and these other direct-to-consumer companies, but to predict important medical disorders so that we can begin to prevent them. Since, as you've clearly pointed out, none of this is a single gene. These are all lots of little whispering genes that are combining to do these things. Will it ever get to the point where you'll be able to nudge these things? Or is each one so unimportant by itself that it's just too many fish in the sea?

Starting point is 00:21:13 You know, never say never. But how are you going to change thousands of genes? And even with a single gene, you've got to worry about unintended consequences. Because a gene doesn't do a single thing. Like we talk about the gene for type 1 diabetes, but that gene isn't a gene for type 1 diabetes. It's a gene that does many different things. So you've got to worry about changing it because you want to change its negative effects like type 1 diabetes because it's likely to have very unintended consequences.

Starting point is 00:21:50 You said that your interest is in genetics as it relates to education and I don't think most of us have any understanding of that, that your genes determine how well you'll do in school. Education has been the backwater of genetics. It's now suddenly the star so that we can predict that better, how well kids do at school. We can predict that better with DNA than we can any other trait in the behavioral sciences. The only things we can predict better is not medical disorders like heart disease. It's about the same

Starting point is 00:22:26 as heart disease. The only things that are better is we can predict height about twice as well. But we can predict 15% of the differences between kids and how well they do at school using DNA alone. So that for me has been the most exciting finding is to see education go from the backwater of genetics to suddenly, just in the last couple years, being the star of genetics. So you can look at someone's DNA and predict how well they'll do in school. You know, again, people might be surprised. You know, what do you think determines how well kids do at school? Well, 20, 30 years ago, people would say, well, it's their parents. It's how well their parents brought them up and how much they focused on education. And then also the schools, how good the school is that you send your kids to.

Starting point is 00:23:19 But the biggest systematic effect, accounting for about 60% of the differences, is inherited DNA, genetics. And now with the DNA revolution, we can't predict all 60% of that, but we can predict about a third of it using DNA. And this is only from research in the last few years, last three or four years. So that's going to get more and more predictive. But even now, DNA is a better predictor of how well kids do at school than how good the school is the kid goes to. And do you know why? What's going on?

Starting point is 00:24:00 Why does this kid do better because his DNA is different? Because what's going on in his head that makes him do better in school compared to this other guy? Environmental measures that we use in psychology, like how much parents read to kids, even how many books you have in the home, they show genetic influence. Now, the reason for that is, say, books in the home is the single best predictor of how well kids will do at school. And it's reasonable to think, well, that's just nurture, right? Books in the home means the kids learn more and they do better when they go to school.

Starting point is 00:24:34 But I hope after hearing me, people will say, well, what about genetics? Those books don't get on the shelves by themselves. Parents put them there. What kind of parents have more books on the shelves than other kinds of parents? You know, presumably parents who are more educated. So, when you say more educated parents have more educated kids, the genetic hypothesis begins to loom large there. Maybe it's genetic, and it is. There's a strong genetic component there. So, there's a correlation between kids' genetic propensities and their environments. Kids who get the genes from parents who are highly educated are more

Starting point is 00:25:14 likely to get environments that are also correlated with that genetic propensity. So, that's a big area of study now. But what interests me the most is that this is directly, and I'm finally getting to the real answer to your question, you know, is how does this work? Well, the genes aren't there at birth changing your neural wiring. The way the genes work is to make you use your environment differently. So, if you study, say, these really bright kids, for example, or even easier, musically gifted kids, it's almost as if you can't stop them from being musical. Or I've studied mathematically gifted kids. You know, they see the world in mathematics. They hang out with math-oriented friends. They tell math jokes to each other.

Starting point is 00:26:15 They're using their environment to foster their propensities, their genetic propensities. So, increasingly, I think of the way genes work is to change our appetites, what we like, rather than our aptitudes. It's not like hard wiring in the brain. It's more like how we use the environment to develop our genetic propensities. Well, so much of what you've said I've never heard before, and it is so exciting to think that we'll be able to, or can even now in some ways, predict what illnesses people might likely get and to be able to prevent them. I mean, that is such a huge, huge game changer.

Starting point is 00:26:53 My guest has been Robert Plowman. He is a professor of behavioral genetics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at King's College in London. And the name of his book is Blueprint, How DNA Makes Us Who We Are. And there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:27:11 Thank you for explaining all this, Robert. Really enlightening. Good. I enjoyed talking to you, Mike. 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.

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Starting point is 00:29:53 and other times when I have been way off and totally turned around. Do you have a good sense of direction? What is a sense of direction? I mean, is that a real thing? That's something Michael Bond wanted to know. Michael is a science writer and former senior editor at New Scientist, and he's author of a book called From Here to There, The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way. Hi, Michael. Hi, thanks very much.

Starting point is 00:30:18 So when someone says, I have a good sense of direction, or someone says, I have no sense of direction, what are they talking about? What does it mean to have a sense of direction? They're probably talking about several different things. I mean, people vary a lot in how good they are at getting from A to B. And when someone says, I have a great sense of direction, they probably have a lot of experience of successful journeys. But largely it has to do with experience. If you grow up having to find your way around and you grow up with the confidence to do that, then as an adult, you're more likely to have a little problem finding your way around the city or the countryside. But sense of direction in practical terms, it's getting to where you want to go. But along the way, there's things like how anxious you are, how good you are reading a map,

Starting point is 00:31:19 how attentive you are to your surroundings and how good you are at keeping track of where you've been. All these things contribute to that. Some might think that, well, I don't even need a sense of direction anymore because I've got a navigation thing in my car. I got Waze on my phone. I can find my way anywhere and I don't even have to look. I mean, that's absolutely correct. If you're always going to be in areas where you've got satellite coverage, you've always got a phone, you've always got the technology, then you're going to be pretty safe in that way. There's going to be times when all that goes down, when the system crashes. And if you've been relying totally on that, then you're going to be pretty

Starting point is 00:32:05 lost in those situations. But for the most part, yeah, you're going to get away with it. It's worth being aware that our spatial system, the system in our brain that we use to find our way is also used in other areas of cognition, such as memory, creative thinking. And what we don't know is if we completely cut off our spatial system in our brain, which is what happens when we use GPS to get around, what's happening to that area? And is that going to impact our abilities in other areas of our cognitive life? We don't know the answer to that. So is sense of direction really a sense?

Starting point is 00:32:52 Or you said earlier that if you have experience finding your way around, then you'll have a better sense of direction. Well, to me, that sounds more like a skill you develop than some sort of, you know, God-given sense that you might have, like the sense of taste or smell or sight. It's more the potential to have an ability to develop a skill set like any other skill set. We have the capacity to be good at it. Partly it is experience. I mean, it can come down to where you grew up. People who grew up in the countryside tend on average to be better at finding their way around than people who grew up in the city. And that's simply because in the countryside, the environment is messier. There are more circular routes, there are fewer straight lines. Also, the way you grow up,

Starting point is 00:33:45 if you grow up in a city or in the countryside, being allowed to roam around and develop that experience, then you end up being better overall than someone who is confined to their home, for example. I think I have a pretty good sense of direction. I'm pretty good at finding my way. But I think everybody's had this experience of you think you know where you are or you're about to be where you want to be and you realize you've completely missed the boat. You're all wrong. You're turned around. You're in the wrong place.

Starting point is 00:34:21 So when somebody with a good sense of direction gets it wrong, what went wrong? What probably went wrong is your attention was taken up by something else. The one thing that is more important than anything in tracking your way across an area that you're unfamiliar with is attention. Even if we start off knowing where we're going, we've got to remember where we've been in order to update that internal map, if you like. So people who are good, generally who have a good sense of direction and who are good at finding their way around,

Starting point is 00:35:04 are just as liable to get completely turned around and find themselves disorientated if they have been distracted. So being disorientated by itself is not a measure of your overall ability because there are so many factors involved in finding our way from A to B, but attention is probably the most important. Anyone who has gotten lost, whose sense of direction has failed them, who thought they knew where they were and then realized they are now lost, knows the feeling of panic. That sense of, I don't know where I am. And being panicked when you don't know where you are can't possibly help the situation. But it does seem to be uniquely human to do that.

Starting point is 00:35:56 When people get panicked, get anxious even, they tend to lose the ability to navigate because we're all taken up with other things that we're worried about, our safety or what we should do and our decision-making and sort of where we are and where to go rather gets lost. So once that fear sets in, it does seem to scramble our sense of direction. And people who get lost in the wilderness and get very seriously lost will always tell you that this is the primary impulse that they felt on realizing that they're lost,

Starting point is 00:36:42 that generally become extremely fearful. When it comes to our sense of direction, how do you think humans stack up to other animals? Because, you know, we hear the stories about, you know, the dog that was 20 miles from home and somehow found its way home or just, you know, how birds migrate and they have an incredible sense of direction. How do humans measure up? We're often compared with birds and other animals who are great navigators in a negative way, but actually humans are extremely good at navigating in the environments that they need to. So across long distances, wide open spaces, if we have the necessary kind of cues in the landscape to help us, we're generally pretty good.

Starting point is 00:37:43 Well, I wonder, because I have a son who just started driving. And up until then, I mean, as a passenger in the car, he never really paid much attention to where we were going or what because he always, he could say, well, I'll find it and he would just use Waze in his phone or use the navigation in the car and I'm just wondering, is his sense of direction going to be hampered by the fact that he never really needs it? And if someday he does need it, it isn't going to be hampered by the fact that he never really needs it. And if someday he does need it, it isn't going to be there. Well, almost certainly, because there have been studies done on people while they're

Starting point is 00:38:16 navigating using a GPS device. And that spatial part of the brain around the hippocampus that we've been talking about, when you're using a device like that, that's pretty much dead. I mean, I don't mean dead, it's just inactive, passive. So if you don't use something like that in the brain, then it's not going to get any better. And it's very likely that we will lose our navigation ability if we don't use it. But it's not to say that you can't learn it again. You can't start to get better at it.

Starting point is 00:38:54 But, you know, when you're using Waze driving your car, there's nothing going on in the navigator brain, if you like. And when you suddenly, if that device stops working, then you've got nothing to fall back on. Yeah, well, I've always thought there's this, you know, I don't know, sense of comfort of knowing your way around, of knowing the lay of the land, of knowing how to get here from here to there all by yourself, that if you're using electronics, you never really get to experience. There's the question, what are we losing? Part of it is to do with, I think, how you experience the world around you.

Starting point is 00:39:40 If you have to navigate through it, then you have to pay attention to your surroundings. You have to interact with it. And in doing so, you learn something about it. And so in a way, I'm talking about a sort of an aesthetic, I suppose, rather than a practical need. In navigating, you're somehow connected to your environment in a way that you're not when you're using technology. So I think it's, for me, it's not, you know, it's clear that the spatial part of our brain

Starting point is 00:40:17 is not doing anything when we use a GPS. But I don't think that's necessarily important because the brain reassigns its resources elsewhere. And that's fine. But it's worth, I think, us to be aware of what we're losing when we do that. You said earlier that if you want to build up your sense of direction, it's better if you grew up in a rural area that has a lot of unique landmarks that help you develop that sense of direction. But on a practical level, in terms of getting around, it's a lot easier to get around in a city, like, say, New York, where, you know, the streets are numbered and they're parallel and perpendicular.

Starting point is 00:40:58 Now, it's easy to confuse, you know, 38th Street with 39th Street because it kind of all looks similar. Some would say that there are some cities that every block looks the same. So it's easier to be able to count streets to get from here to there, but your sense of direction is better developed in a rural area where things aren't so neat and organized. So if you're walking along a street and it looks the same as another street that you know that you've walked along, then the brain is going to be confused as to which street you're on. But if every street looks a little bit different, perhaps has different kinds of trees in it, or the doors are painted a different color, this kind of variety really helps. And this is one area where neuroscience

Starting point is 00:41:45 clashes with architecture and urban planning because architects love symmetry. And in psychology, it's pretty clear that the brain doesn't like symmetry, particularly when it's trying to navigate. Yeah. Well, I think when you say that, it rings right that it's a lot easier to find your way around if this block doesn't look exactly like the block you just came from because it all kind of runs together and then you don't know where you are. Exactly. So that grittiness that I was talking about, it's useful in one respect because you don't have to worry about whether you're veering off on a curve and you can count your streets. But at the same time, if you're in a gritty city and you come up out of the subway, there's a four-way junction. That's one of 2,000 identical junctions in the city. And what you really need

Starting point is 00:42:47 are landmarks, iconic buildings that you can see, or houses look different in one district compared to another. You want things to be broken up in that way. So what else in looking at this whole topic of finding your way and getting lost and what else did you find that was really interesting? What did you want to accomplish here? I was really interested in talking to people whose job it is to find lost people. So search and rescue experts I talked to in Canada and the US and Britain, all in different environments. But the one thing that they all say is that when they find someone who's been seriously

Starting point is 00:43:36 lost, they are always in the same kind of emotional state, which is really terrified. And being lost, being really lost in a wilderness area where you have no real means to find your way back, you're relying on luck or someone to come and find you. That has a similar effect on everybody, even people who are highly trained and who know what they should do if they're lost, end up being absolutely terrified by this experience. And it's a sort of panic attack that people suffer. And they usually imagine that they're going to die. And it's probably something that our early ancestors also felt when they got lost. It was almost certain death where they'd be in a place where there would be fearsome predators and, you know, no one was going to come and find them. So that's something that fascinated me, that sort of common experience that people have today and is quite likely also shared by Homo sapiens living 100,000 years ago.

Starting point is 00:44:55 And when you are lost, is there any sort of general advice that people who do search and rescue find that, you know, the best thing to do if you're lost is this. The best thing to do if you're lost is to stop whatever you're doing. Be still, sit down, and try to wait for that feeling of panic to leave you. That's the thing that everyone is told. Very few people are capable of doing that. What most people do, the vast majority of people, when they suddenly realize they're lost, is to walk faster, run, move, do anything to get out of where they are. And of course, because they're in that panic state, there's no way they're going to make a sensible decision.

Starting point is 00:45:49 They're not going to go the right way. They're not going to be able to remember where they've come from so they can't retrace their steps. Nothing's going to work in that state, which is why just stopping for as long as you can to collect your thoughts, you've got the best chance, but it's hard to do. And then what do you do? Because even if you do calm down, which you say is obviously pretty important, you're still lost. So once you've let that feeling of panic go by,

Starting point is 00:46:19 what do you do next? Absolutely. So if you succeed in stopping and getting over this initial panic attack, then trying to retrace your steps, remembering the direction you came from, very sensible, looking around and seeing if you can recognize any landmarks, the shapes of hills or certain trees that you might have seen from a different direction. So it's basically trying to think about your situation. Part two of the advice is, okay, you stop and you really can't work out where you are. The thing to do is to stay where you are. Now that, of course, is sensible when you've told someone where you're going if you've told someone that you've you're going off into a certain area and they know when you left then search and rescue

Starting point is 00:47:16 teams in these areas are highly uh skilled and experienced at finding, if they have some ideas as to where they might have gone. If you've done none of those things, if you haven't told anyone, if nobody knows you're there and it's useless waiting, then you're on your own. You've got to just use whatever wits you can gather. And it's about engaging your rational mind and going with that rather than the stream of emotions. Does our ability to navigate our sense of direction,

Starting point is 00:47:54 does it get better with age or does it get worse with age? You're at your peak in your late teens, early twenties. And then after that, steadily, on average, people get a little bit worse with age. And that could be to do with all kinds of things. And it doesn't mean to say you have to allow those skills to get worse. I mean, if you pay attention to them, and you exercise them, then you can be a great navigator into old age. But in old age, of course, the disease that afflicts a lot of people is dementia. And the very first ability to fall away in dementia is spatial ability. When someone starts to feel disorientated in places that they're familiar with, then that's an early sign. So I think the effect of age on spatial ability

Starting point is 00:49:00 is something that I wasn't aware of. And another thing, just quickly, is how navigation abilities differ from country to country. In Scandinavia, Finland, and Sweden, people are very good navigators, and there's no difference between male and female navigation skills in those countries. There are some very surprising findings on this, and we don't have all the answers yet. Well, when you think about it, where would the human race be if we hadn't developed a sense of direction, if we hadn't figured out how to find our way from here to there, from point A to point B? And yes, today it does seem less important because of GPS. But still, I bet everybody listening has had at least one and probably several times when their sense of

Starting point is 00:49:53 direction has helped them find their way. And it's nice to know we have it. Michael Bond has been my guest. He is a science writer, former senior editor at New Scientist, and he is author of the book From Here to There, The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Michael. Okay, Mike. Thank you. Cheers. Bye. Ever try to buy ripe pears at the store?

Starting point is 00:50:23 It's almost impossible. Why? Well, pears bruise very easily, so it's better to pick and ship them when they're unripe. Plus, pears don't ripen on a tree, they just turn mushy and mealy, so it's actually better if they just ripen on your kitchen counter. But when you're choosing pears to eat, you don't feel a pear all the way around to see if it's soft. If it is, it's too late. To test for ripeness of a pear, press down lightly on the stem end. If it gives a little around the stem, then the pear is ripe.

Starting point is 00:50:56 Pears take a little advanced planning, but if you do it right, there's nothing like biting into a perfectly ripe pear. And that is something you should know. I would love it if you would tell your friends about this podcast, even just one friend or two. Okay, three. But just tell somebody. Ask them to listen and let's see what they think.

Starting point is 00:51:16 I'm Mike Carruthers. 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,

Starting point is 00:51:45 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.

Starting point is 00:52:04 Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How DNA Predicts Our Psychological Traits & Why People’s Sense of Direction Varies

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