Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How Your Instincts Can Get You in Trouble & Why There’s No Center of The Universe

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

You have probably heard that poinsettia plants are poisonous to people and pets. Really? How poisonous? Can you die from eating them or what? Should you be concerned and keep them out of your home? This episode begins with an explanation of just how dangerous poinsettias are – and are not. https://www.stranges.com/are-poinsettias-poisonous/ Our keen human instincts have helped us survive all these years. However, some of those instincts are not so practical in today’s modern world. This is according to evolutionary biologist Dr. Rebecca Heiss, author of the book Instinct: Rewire Your Brain with Science-Backed Solutions to Increase Productivity and Achieve Success (https://amzn.to/3oxbQTq). Rebecca joins me to discuss how instincts such as the instinct for self-deception and variety and the fear of others can really sabotage your success. She also offers strategies to help override those instincts when you need to. What’s inside a black hole? What exactly is a multiverse? At what point will the sun stop burning? These are just a few of the fascinating questions I explore with Daniel Whiteson, professor of physics at UC Irvine and author of the book Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe (https://amzn.to/3oCeTtR). Listen as Daniel takes important and complex concepts about the universe and makes them interesting and understandable. Your sense of touch is more complicated than you realize. What you touch and how it feels can actually alter the way you think. Listen as I reveal some fascinating research about how your sense of touch works. https://news.yale.edu/2010/06/24/touch-how-hard-chair-creates-hard-heart PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! MasterClass makes a meaningful gift this season - for you and anyone on your list - because both of you can learn from the best to become your best - from leadership to effective communication to cooking. Right now you can get Two Memberships for the Price of One at https://MasterClass.com/SOMETHING PrizePicks is a skill-based, real-money Daily Fantasy Sports game that's super easy to play. Go to https://prizepicks.com/sysk and use code sysk for a first deposit match up to $100 Dell's Black Friday event is their biggest sale of the year! Shop now at https://Dell.com/deals to take advantage of huge savings and free shipping! Spread holiday cheer far and wide this season with a new phone! Everyone can get the gift of connection at UScellular. Get any phone free, today. UScellular. Built for US. Terms apply. Visit https://UScellular.com for details.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, people think poinsettia plants are poisonous. But are they? Then, human instincts. They've helped us survive, but now they can get in the way. Like the instinct for variety or sex. I'm not trying to pick on you men, but you are wired, biologically wired for sexual

over perception. Where you think that women are into you a lot more than they are. Right? And I'm not trying to pick on you guys, it's just biology. Also how what you touch can change how you think, and facts about the universe that will amaze you, how black holes work, or how the universe is expanding. Well, it turns out the expansion of the universe, we think, is the same everywhere. So there's new space being created between our galaxy and other galaxies,

and there's also new space being created between me and you, and between the atoms of your body. All this today on Something You Should Know. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so.

Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hello, welcome to Something You Should Know. And now that we're into the holiday season, perhaps you've thought about getting some poinsettia plants for your home to make things more festive.

But then you hear, as pretty as those plants are, they're poisonous. I mean, even doctors and veterinarians have cautioned us from keeping poinsettias too close to children and pets. The leaves of the plant have always been believed to be toxic, but are they? A research study conducted by Ohio State University revealed that poinsettias are not actually poisonous at all. In fact, the National Capital Poison Center in Washington, D.C. and other poison control centers list poinsettia plants as non-poisonous plants. The rumor that they were poisonous started back in 1918 when a child in Hawaii was falsely believed to have died from poinsettia poisoning.

But experts no longer believe that the plant had anything to do with the death of that child. Poinsettias are actually good to have around. They're pretty effective for absorbing pollutants and improving indoor air quality. And they look nice. And that is something you should know.

Like all creatures on the planet, we have instincts. We do things to survive. That's how we have survived as long as we have. Yet in our modern world, survival instincts are not always so helpful. They can actually get in the way of your success and happiness and cause you undue stress. According to biologist Dr. Rebecca Heiss, she's author of a book called Instinct,

Rewire Your Brain with Science-Backed Solutions to Increase Productivity and Achieve Success. And she's here to talk about these instincts we all have, how they work, how they get in the way, and what you can do to make sure they don't sabotage your success. Hi, Rebecca. Welcome. Well, thanks so much for having me on, Michael. I'm thrilled to be here. So I think everybody understands that we have instincts to survive and to keep the species

going. So why is it important for me to understand my instincts and understand what they're doing? My background is in stress physiology, and it occurred to me that our brains really aren't optimized for great decision-making today. And in fact, they're really not optimized for the entire world that we live in, because our brains aren't built for health or happiness. They're built for survival. And the world that we live in doesn't really require most of us to survive. You know, that's not our biggest drive. We typically have food in the fridge. We can turn up the thermostat. So most of the things that we're reacting to aren't actual tigers, for example. They're not life and death situations. But our brain still treats them that way. So

my big argument is that our brains simply aren't built for the world that we live in. for example. They're not life and death situations, but our brain still treats them that way. So my big argument is that our brains simply aren't built for the world that we live in. And so our instincts are often driving us down a path that isn't super useful for us. And so an example of that would be what? Well, my favorite one, because it's pretty relatable, is that, you know, we crave fats and sugars. So we're really excited to have that hamburger and fries and that extra frosty shake. And the problem is the number one thing we die of is heart disease. And so we're craving the wrong things. So let's name those instincts that get in the way that sabotage our success. What are they?

Sex, variety, the crave for variety is incredible. So we think we know what makes us happy and we want as many choices as possible in all the different varieties. And it turns out, actually, less variety makes us happy. We're more satisfied with our choices when we have a single choice to make rather than dozens. And the fear of the other, in that we fear people who look different, act different, operate from different rules and regulations than us. And we end up in these sort of tribal groups, whether that's around race or age or gender or political affiliation. We tend to stick to our own because that feels safe. Our need for belonging is an instinct and a positive one.

But sometimes it drives us to these really tribal outcomes. And then last is the need for information. So we are an information gathering species. We forage for information and we can never have too much information. Well, at least we couldn't have had too much information in ancestral times. But now we're faced with a world where we're getting 400 billion bits of information every single second. And that's more than our brains can process consciously. So again, don't necessarily serve us well. So let's talk about variety because that's really interesting to me. I've always thought that people struggle when you give them lots of choices.

Like they don't know what to do with that. Whereas if they only have to choose between two things, it's a lot easier. So what is this instinct and where's the trouble? And then what do you do with it? I mean, you're absolutely spot on with the idea that fewer choices actually do make us happier, but our brains will lie to us and say, no, no, no, I actually want all the choices. So most people believe the more choices they have, the happier they'll become. And in reality, it's the exact opposite. And again, our brains are set up like that because in ancestral times, the more variety we have in

sexual partners, in foods that we eat, the more opportunities we have to father more offspring or have more offspring or have more people providing for us. And so those instincts for variety are very good and baked into our brains. But now you put those brains in this modern world where there's just endless possibilities and it quickly goes to a space of overwhelm and stress for all of these extra opportunities. So that's kind of the mismatch is what was healthy in the ancestral environment is now really pulling us to stressful extremes. The way we get around that is actually by self-limiting. And, you know, I recommend having a routine and really sticking to that

routine to see, oh, you know, what if instead of waking up and having to make the choice of what do I want for breakfast? Do I want coffee? Well, sure. Do I want decaf, espresso, tall, medium, large, almond milk, oat milk? There's endless possibilities. And the more decisions we have to make, we end up in this space of decision fatigue, where actually the big decisions now feel like we don't have the brain capacity to make. This is famously why a lot of authority figures throughout history have stuck to a single outfit. You know, you look at President Obama had an outfit, a gray suit that he wore, Albert Einstein, gray suit. Steve Jobs famously wore that

mock neck, turtleneck, black turtleneck every single day. And the fewer decisions that we have to make throughout the day that are not important, the more brainpower we have in reserves for those bigger decisions later on. Yeah. And you can see that struggle people have when they're given a lot of choices. Like when you go to a restaurant, there's always somebody at the table. Oh, you go, you go, I need a few minutes. Well, but if you came over to my house for dinner, this is what we're having. It's one thing. It's, you know, we're having this. But you go to a restaurant and it's like, oh my God, do I want the chicken?

Do I want the, oh, maybe I'll just have a salad. And people just like, it's like overload. That's exactly it. And then we're looking to our neighbor and we're saying, oh man, he made a better choice than me. I want that chicken. And we become less satisfied with the decision that we made, independent of whether or not it really was the best choice and the more optimal choice. This is a term called maximizing. And it's really easy for us to fall into as humans. We're trying to make the very, very best decision possible instead of saying, well, this is what I want.

This is the minimum criteria. Like, I want food. And I'd love some good company. So going over to your house now and getting served whatever I get served is going to be wonderful because it meets that kind of minimal viable decision making criteria. And that's really the ticket for humans to recognize is instead of trying to maximize every decision and pull out every optimal little bit that we can get, let's be happier and give our brains a little more breathing space by just saying, okay, this is what I need.

Some of the best advice I think I've ever gotten was when, I think it was in an interview actually, where somebody said, in most cases, it's not the choice you make, it's the commitment to the choice you make. So whether or not you get the chicken or the salad or the fish or whatever, it doesn't really matter. Just make your decision and stop fretting about it once you've made it. Don't, oh, God, oh, look, he had the beef and that looks so, oh, I wish I'd gotten that. No, I don't do that. Because there's no value in it. Yeah, going all in is one of the biggest recommendations that I have for people. Make that decision, make it non-reversible, go all in and enjoy what you have. There's always something to be enjoyed. So you mentioned sex. You mean not gender, but you mean sex like sex, sex. Yeah, actually a little bit of both. So I talk a lot about how gender and biological sex

actually influences us significantly based on our ancestral time. So in ancestral times, you know, there were really a gender division in roles. You know, women were staying at home, cooperating, working together to raise offspring. Men were typically out hunting, more individualized, often in more leadership roles. And when we look at how society has sort of progressed 200,000 years later, we're still seeing a lot of that holdover and leadership being defined very clearly by very masculine characteristics. Nothing inherently wrong with that. I think men make great leaders. I also think we haven't defined leadership from a feminine perspective very well either.

So, you know, seeing some of the ways that sex and gender influence us in the modern world is fascinating to me. The other thing I talk about is actual physical sex, the act of, because that is quite a power thing as well, that throughout evolutionary history, women are the choosier of the species, as well we should be, because we have, well, bigger risks. But it also means that when we don't get to choose, when there's sort of a power dynamic, a lot of the things that we don't talk about are affecting us significantly in the modern world. So sexual harassment, rape, some of these terrible things that are occurring still in the modern world, we haven't talked about the physiology

behind. So when we talk about the stress response, typically we talk about fight and flight. What we leave out frequently is freeze. And freeze is the response that most women give when they're under threat. About 70% of women under threat will freeze. And that looks often like standing there and smiling, which seems really backwards to everything that they should, quote unquote, should be doing, like run, fight, get out of there. But in reality, it's how our brains and bodies were set up to survive. Because back in ancestral times, and even today, you can't typically outrun a man. You can't typically out fight a man.

So fight or flight really off the table there. The best thing you can do to protect yourself is something known as freeze and appease. You smile and try and stay still. And unfortunately, that physiological response doesn't react very well with the male response. And I'm not trying to pick on you men, but you are wired, biologically wired for sexual overperception, where you think that women are into you a lot more than they are, right? And I'm not trying to pick on you guys. It's just biology. So when a man sees a woman standing there smiling at him and she's frozen, it's really important that we have these conversations to understand how our biology

has set us up to survive and be protected and how that often conflicts with the messages that we have these conversations to understand how our biology has set us up to survive and be protected, and how that often conflicts with the messages that we may be sending unintentionally. And it's really important that we have this awareness so that we don't get into trouble in the modern world. We're talking about human instinct, the good and bad parts of it, with evolutionary biologist Dr. Rebecca Heiss, who is author of the book Instinct, Rewire Your Brain with Science-Backed Solutions to Increase Productivity and Achieve Success. 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,

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Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online talk about self-deception. That's one of the instincts you say we have. And I don't think people would think of self-deception as an instinct so much. But clearly, there are some people who are a lot more self-aware than others and some people who are just clueless. And so what is that all about?

And how is it an instinct? Is it just that, that, you know, it would be hard to get up in the morning if you realized what a jerk you were? Well, close. You kind of nailed it, actually, Michael. Having this self-deception allowed our ancestors to go out and actually face the day. If you thought about the tremendous odds that were against you to survive the predators, the climate, childbearing in those times, there's no reason to even get out of the cave, right? It is a pretty dismal outcome. But if you have the self-deception instinct to say, oh, no, I'm probably pretty good at this. I'm probably pretty good at this. You actually set yourself up physiologically to go and face the day and charge forward. And so this can help us. It know, it boosts our confidence. It boosts our self-esteem.

But it also gets us into positions often where we feel like we know what we're doing or we faked it until we've made it to a certain point. And then suddenly it's like, oh, how do I now back out of this and start asking questions and not have to be the expert? Because our brains will say to us, well, listen, you better know it all because if you fail, you're going to die, right? People will reject you. You'll get kicked out of the tribe and all that's left is death. So our brains really take this to an extreme when in reality, oh, well, if you don't know everything, then, oh, that means you're human. So being able to self-deceive and say, no, I can do this. I can absolutely step into this role and run a company or step into this role and become a parent.

I think if parents knew what they were going into from the start, nobody would ever have kids. I think if CEOs knew what they were going into from the start, they'd never step in. You know, it is a really scary space to step into any role. But our power to self-deceive actually helps us face the day. So how is that a problem? How is that? It seems like that instinct serves us well even today. Well, I mean, it is not a problem to a certain extent. But now in the modern environment, once you're in that space, we have to be willing to ask why a lot more than we do. Because, you know, when you look

at the statistics, something like 95% of us believe that we are self-aware. And the reality is only 10 to 15% of us actually are. You know, not everybody is above average in their IQ. Not everybody is above average in their looks. Not everybody is above average in their driving ability. But if you ask Americans that, we'll all say that we are. And so having a good sense of self-awareness of where our weaknesses are, I think is one of the most essential things that we can do so that we do actually learn, so that we do continue to push ourselves and grow as a human. So often we get into this mindset of, no, no, no, I know it all. I am

just fine as I am. And it stops us from questioning. I mean, it stops us from being a kid again. I think the best human beings that I know are very childlike in being willing to raise their hand and say, I don't know what's going on here. Or, you know, having beginner's mindset and asking why, why, why are we doing it like this? Why is the world like this? Why don't we change that? And that's really powerful, I think, to have that kind of mindset in the modern world. Well, also, when you think about the people, the know-it-alls who think they know everything,

they're a bit off-putting. Whereas the people who admit that they need help or that they don't know at all, that they have a question, those people are much more attractive and much more fun to be around than the guy who's just bloviating about how he knows it all. It's true. And I think, you know, there's something called pluralistic ignorance, which is that we all actually feel that way. We all feel like we don't know what we're doing. You know, it's imposter syndrome, right? We're all kind of like, oh gosh, please don't discover that I'm actually a fraud and I don't know why I'm here having this conversation with you on this podcast because it's a really big deal and I don't belong. And okay, when we take a deep breath and realize

everybody else is feeling that way, we can start to tick away on that pluralistic ignorance and say, actually guys, I don't feel like I belong here either. And what that does is it drives new beliefs and drives real creativity in solving new problems rather than just saying, well, this is this is how it's always been done. And this is we'll just continue doing it this way because that's what that person says. Yeah, but here's the here's the problem. If you're one of those people who doesn't who thinks, you know, it all. Well, then there's nothing to fix. I mean, the people who need to maybe take a step back and look inward, are they exactly the people who won't?

I think you're correct. And I'll push you a little bit on that, in that often those are the people that know very much, very deeply that they are unsure of themselves. And this kind of braggart kind of way of showing up in the world and saying, I've got it all, I know all the answers, is really just a cover. So I think truly when you have this imposter syndrome, when you recognize your own humanity and your own instinct for self-deception, you can look at people like that and say, ah, okay, I can exercise an empathy here because I know what that person is doing. They're trying to show up to be right rather than to get it right. They're trying to show up and have all the answers because they're scared and they have to prove themselves. I think actually recognizing our tendency for self-deception allows us to have more empathy and really embrace those people and help them see, you know, it's okay. It's okay to let that guard down.

So you say that our human instinct for wanting information is a problem. But given that we now have all the information we could possibly ever imagine, and certainly much more than we have in the past, I would think that that instinct could be a good thing. Because if you want information, boy, there it is. It's pretty much at your fingertips. Let me ask you this. The last time you had to go out to a restaurant, did you get on Yelp? Did you check the reviews? If it's a new place often, yes. Sure. And then did that influence you to check other restaurants' reviews? And then maybe you were debating as to whether you should go to this restaurant or that restaurant and it

comes back to variety now and you're starting to go, Oh my gosh, who can I actually trust? Do I trust this information? Do I trust that information? And now we have so much information from so many sources. There's, um, it's really difficult to sort through it all and actually take action on anything. You know, one of the fun things is anytime you're trying to buy something new and you go on consumer reports or you go on the Amazon reviews and you might spend an hour, depending upon how large the purchase is, trying to decide if you're even going to buy it. And then you're so exhausted and overwhelmed by all of the mixed information you're getting. You're like, ah, forget it. I don't even,

I can't even move forward at this point. So information for our ancestors was always helpful, right? It was always helpful because it was limited information. You basically were talking to your tribe every day and it was, well, there's good food over there. You want to avoid those red berries there. Information was always valuable and useful. Today, there is so much junk information. It's almost like junk DNA. There's so much junk information. It's almost like junk DNA. There's so much of it. It's hard to sort through and say, that is something that I need. That is something that I don't need and is actually just weighing me down. You could sit and watch the news cycle 24-7 and constantly be getting updates. Same thing with email. This is one of the biggest

ways and most obvious ways that information overload affects us is if you want to, probably, I'm guessing, Michael, for you and your listeners, you could sit there all day just answering emails that come in. And instead of actually being productive, instead of actually driving purpose in our lives, we spend a lot of time just processing information. The place where it bothers me the most is TV. I was just the other day, I was sitting there going through Netflix, and then going through Amazon, and then going through Hulu, looking for something to watch. And I realized that 20 minutes had gone by, and I'm still not watching anything. I'm still looking. I'm looking at ratings and I'm looking at how long is it? And, you know, there's so much choice. There's so much information about each of those choices

that I'm not getting anywhere. Yeah. And you probably end up with some FOMO, right? Like, oh my gosh, well, if I watch this, then that's an hour and a half that I wouldn't have. And I could watch three episodes over here of this. And, you know, I'm a big fan of reframing FOMO to JOMO. So this idea of, you know, this fear of missing out, like if I do this, then I'm going to miss that. And if I don't have this information, I'm going to make the wrong decision. Well, what if it was a joy of missing out? What if it was a JOMO? What if you're like, okay, this is the decision. This is the information that I have. I'm moving forward. Life is all about making decisions and choices with the limited information that we have and moving forward with that.

I think very infrequently do we not have enough information to actually make a logical decision. Typically, we're spending way too much time. And like you said, still flipping through the channels 30 minutes later, doom scrolling on our phone. And meanwhile, our life is kind of passing us by. Well, these instincts are, you know, pretty strong, and they are hard to fight. And it does seem that they serve us poorly in the modern world. And yet, you know, the more we are aware of them and more conscious of them, the more we can do to counteract them and really live a more fulfilled, purposeful life. Well, by definition, though, if we have instincts that are driving these things that we've been

talking about, it would seem that those would be hard to overcome that because they're instincts, they're like, they're baked in there. This is what we default to do. One of my favorite things to tell people is to remember that your brain is highly trainable. We know this because, do you remember the first time that you drove a car, Michael? Yeah. Were your hands at 10 and 2? Of course. Yeah. And you're like looking at the pedestrians and the speedometers and all the streets and you're like, oh my gosh, there's so much to pay attention to. And then today, if you drove, one hand on the wheel, my guess is you're listening to your podcast on the way over.

You're on the cell phone. You're hardly paying attention. And that's amazing because what that means is that we're capable of training our subconscious brain to drive for us. And if we can train our subconscious brain to do these complex and ever-changing modern tasks like driving, we can certainly train them to override these instincts and fears and biases that no longer serve us in the modern environment. Well, that's a positive and empowering way to put it, and a good place to end it. Dr. Rebecca Heiss has been my guest. She's author of the book Instinct, Rewire Your Brain with Science-Facked Solutions to Increase Productivity and Achieve Success.

And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Rebecca. Hey, fantastic. Thanks so much, Michael. This was fun. 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. 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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more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Every day, science is learning more and more about the universe. Sometimes it's a little hard to get your head around it. After all, the universe is a pretty big place. But I find it so interesting that, you know, we live on this little dot in this little solar system in the corner of the Milky Way galaxy in this incredibly huge universe. And I think it's fascinating to try to understand it all better. And one person who explains it really well is Daniel Whiteson. He is professor of physics at UC Irvine.

He co-hosts a podcast called Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. And he is author, along with Jorge, of the book Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe. Hi Daniel, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi Michael, thanks very much for having me on. Excited to chat with you. So a good place to start, because it's something I've always wondered about, is do we know what the universe is made of? Do we have a pretty good idea of all that makes it up? What is the universe? Great question. I wish I knew. So far, we have figured out that the kinds of things that we are made out of, me and you and stars and hamsters and bananas, we're made out of atoms. And those atoms are made out of nuclei, which have protons and neutrons inside of them, which have quarks

inside of them. So basically, you and I are made out of quarks and electrons, but that's not what the whole universe is made out of. It turns out that the kind of stuff that you and I are made out of atoms is only about 5% of what's actually out there in the universe. The rest of it is something else, something weird and mysterious that we don't really understand. Talk about black holes, what it is, what's in a black hole, how they work, what's that all about? A black hole is an incredible, mysterious little corner

of the universe. What happens when you have a lot of mass in one place like the sun or the earth is that space actually bends around that object so that the paths of object change. If you shoot a flashlight near the sun, for example, it doesn't go in a straight line past the sun. It curves around the sun a little bit because space is bent. And if you have enough mass, like a huge amount of mass, thousands of times the mass of the sun for example it compacted into a really really small space then space is curved so much that even light cannot escape it light is trapped because space is bent and twisted in weird ways so that's what a black hole is it's a corner of space where the shape of space is bent so much that light cannot escape it. If you went inside a

black hole, you would discover that space, instead of having multiple directions where you can move, it only lets you move closer to the center of the black hole. Space becomes one directional inside a black hole. Sort of the way that time is one directional outside a black hole. You can only move forwards in time and not backwards. Inside a black hole, you can only move one direction towards the center of the black hole. But a lot of this is speculation because nobody has ever seen inside a black hole because nothing can escape a black hole, not even light. So we can't take pictures of what's inside a black hole. Time is one of those topics that I just find so fascinating. Why is it that we can only go

in one direction? Why can't we travel back in time? We just don't know. It's funny because you think that we've made a lot of progress in physics. We understand so much about the universe, but there are also these really basic questions that we just don't even really begin to know how to answer. And, you know, we know that there are a lot of connections between space and time. Relativity tells us, for example, that space and time are connected in the time. You can sort of think of it like the fourth dimension of space, but then you can wonder, as you did, if you can move back and forth in space, why can't you move back and forth in time? And most of the laws of

physics actually don't even mention time. Like they don't care about time. They work the same way if you ran time forwards or backwards. Except for one. One of the laws of physics prefers to go forwards in time. And that's the one about entropy, the one that says that information and energy and heat, all these things like to spread out. So it's the reason that it's easier to break an egg than to unbreak an egg, or to spill milk than to unspill milk, or it's more natural for the cream in your coffee to come to the same temperature as your coffee, rather than for them to separate into hot and cold bits. And so that tells us that there's

something about that that likes to go forwards in time, but it's definitely not an answer. And some physicists think, for example, that maybe at the Big Bang, time was created, and there were two universes, one going forward in time and one going backwards in time. If those sound like crazy ideas to you, then you're right. And that's because we're at that point in exploring it when we're just sort of like throwing stuff against the wall and seeing what might possibly make sense. In a thousand years, people will look back at those ideas and think that's ridiculous.

Well, since you mentioned that there might be another universe that travels back in time, there has been this talk of, and I don't know very much about it, of there being multiple universes. And in all those universes, there's multiple you. You're in all of these in different versions. Can you explain where that comes from? How does anybody know that to be true or not true? And just kind of paint that picture. we can't explain. Like our universe is described by the laws of physics, but the physics laws that we've discovered have a bunch of numbers in them. You know, like the speed of light. It's just a

number. Nobody knows why the speed of light is what it is and not twice what it is or one-tenth of what it is. There's lots of different numbers. In fact, there's about 20 of those numbers that determine the nature of our universe. And people wonder why those numbers and not other numbers. And so one way to make it seem less arbitrary that our universe is the way it is, is to imagine that maybe every value of those numbers exists. Maybe there are other universes with different values. So that's the idea of the multiverse. It could potentially explain the sort of arbitrary things that we see. But there are also lots of other ways to potentially explain that.

Some people say maybe the numbers just are the numbers they are. And only because they are those numbers do we exist to ask why are the numbers the way they are? Like if they were anything else, we wouldn't get chemistry and biology and life and physicists and silly books about physics and podcasts and all that stuff. So nobody would be around to ask those questions. Other people think, well, maybe there is an explanation. Maybe there's a reason the speed of light is what it is. We just haven't figured it out yet. But it certainly is fun to imagine that there might be other universes out there because they would all be a little bit different. They might have different laws of physics.

They might be only a tiny bit different. They might be dramatically different, like unrecognizably different. So how long do we have, would you guess? How long will humanity survive? Will the Earth survive before everything? And what will happen when it stops surviving? It's a great question and an important one because there are dangers around every corner. There are immediate dangers, things like the threat of nuclear war that could take us out

almost any time. And there are deeper dangers in 500 years or 1,000 years. And if we want to survive to the very end of the universe, there are many other things that we have to survive. The crazy thing is that to get there, to have humanity survive for trillions of years or all the way to the end of time, you basically have to get all of them. You can't be exterminated once. You don't get any points for only getting wiped out once. You have to survive all of them. So to me, one of the most important dangers in the near term are things like climate change,

right, where we are making our planet inhospitable. I think that's unlikely to wipe out humanity, though, of course, it could dramatically decrease our population or change our way of life. On longer timescales, you know, we have to worry about things like if an asteroid would hit the earth. We know that one came 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. And these things happen periodically. There's a team at NASA that's constantly scanning the skies and looking for a rock that might be on a trajectory to hit the earth. They're pretty confident that we're clear for the next hundred years or so. But their projections beyond that are harder to be confident in. And one thing that they can't really see are comets. Comets can come from deep outside the

solar system in the Earth cloud and zoom in really fast down to the center of the solar system and impact the planet. In fact, we saw this happen about 20 years ago when comet Shoemaker-Levy slammed into Jupiter, making fireballs bigger than the Earth. The problem with these comets is that sometimes their period is like hundreds or thousands of years. And so we haven't been looking into the sky long enough to have seen them before, so we might not even know to anticipate them. Even deeper into the future, we have to worry about things like the fact that the sun will expand and heat up over the next billion years, maybe making the earth inhospitable. And eventually, in five billion years or so, the sun will fizzle out. It will no longer be a source

of heat. So we have billions of years to go there. And if we survive all of that and somehow get humanity off of the earth and onto a new fresh star, then we have to worry about things like, will the universe be hospitable to life in the deep, deep future? Will all the stars fall into the black hole at the center of the galaxy? Will the universe just become nothing but black holes? Is that a place that we could live? So it's sort of fun to imagine how the universe will evolve on cosmic timescales and to wonder what life would be like in all of those scenarios.

So lately there have been stories in the news about, you know, UFOs and things traveling in directions and changing directions in ways that we don't have the technology to, which, you know, gets everybody stirred up about there must be aliens. What do you say? I think that it's very likely that there is life out there in the universe, and it'd be hard to imagine that we are alone in being the only intelligent life in the entire universe. That said, I don't find any of the footage that we've seen or the pictures or the interviews really that compelling. We had an expert on the podcast help us go through some of those videos, and it turns out that there are pretty compelling boring explanations for almost all

of them. You know one video where it seems like something's moving super fast over the water could just be forced perspective where it turns out it's a smaller object much closer to you. Another one where they change directions it could actually just be that the camera is flipping over in order to track the object and so unfortunately unfortunately, you have to have a pretty high standard before you conclude that what you're looking at can't be described by earth physics or earth technology. That being said, I want to believe, right? I want to meet these aliens. I hope that we do get visited by aliens because it would mean that we're talking to a civilization that has more advanced technology than we have because we can't go to nearby stars. We don't have that technology. And if they have

that technology, probably they understand the universe better than we do. And maybe they can answer some of these questions. Some of your great questions about time and space and what's inside black holes, that would be fantastic. The weird thing is that we haven't been visited as far as we know, and the universe is really big and there are lots of planets out there. So it's a bit of a puzzle why there are so many good planets out there where life might start, and yet we have not been visited. So everyone's heard that, you know, the universe is always expanding. But do we know, do we know like in those newer parts of the universe today that weren't there yesterday?

Like, how is it different? Are you able to identify, oh, there's a new part of the universe or it doesn't work that way? That's a really interesting question. Well, it turns out the expansion of the universe, we think, is the same everywhere. So there's new space being created between our galaxy and other galaxies. And there's also new space being created between our planet and the sun, and between me and you, and between the atoms of your body. Now we don't notice it in the atoms of our body or between ourselves and our car, for example, because the amount of new space

being created there is very small. It's sort of fractional relative to the distances involved. And because the bonds in your body and the bonds that hold the earth to the sun are stronger. And so they, they keep us together, sort of like a gentle wind is blowing, but we're all holding hands and sort of staying together. So it's only sort of between galaxies where there aren't strong forces binding things together, and the distances are really vast, that we notice that it adds up to be a significant effect. So most of the new space that's being created turns out to be between galaxies because that's where most of the space is. And it's fascinating

to sort of see this happen, to look out into the universe and to see space itself getting bigger, right? Most people think of the Big Bang as like an explosion of stuff moving through space, but now we understand that it's much more of an expansion of space, that this new space is being created everywhere. And that has really important consequences. It suggests that the universe, for example, has no center. There's no place where the Big Bang was, that everything is coming out from. Instead, we think probably the Big Bang happened everywhere all at once, like all through an already infinite universe, which is pretty hard to get your mind around.

So much of this is so hard to get your mind around because it doesn't, you know, it's not our reality. It's not what we see every day. That's right. And that's the joy of physics, right? Physics is about confronting that reality, forcing it to tell us a story that makes sense to us, even if that story is very, very different from the story we thought was the truth about our universe. But, you know, we want to know the truth. We don't want to just tell ourselves silly stories about gods in the sky, you know, shooting thunderbolts at us. We want to know how things actually work. And so it's marvelous that we have this method, this technique for like systematically building knowledge and telling us mathematical stories about the universe.

And then we have to grapple with them. You know, when physics tells us actually the universe is not deterministic, there's a random element to it. It's quantum mechanical. That if you do the same thing twice, you will get different outcomes every time because somewhere the universe rolls a die. That's pretty hard to grapple with, but it turns out to be the truth. And it's much more important that we grapple with the truth than that we stick to stories that we find comfortable. Can you give me an example of that, of doing things multiple times and getting different results? What are you referring to? Yeah, well, you're used to thinking about physics as being a set of laws that predict the future. Like if you throw a baseball,

you know where it's going to land. And if you threw it exactly in the same direction twice with the same speed, it would land in the same spot. And that goes for even things like flipping a coin. Flipping a coin seems random, but it's not really. The way it lands depends on exactly how you flipped it. It's just sort of hard to predict. But if you had a supercomputer and you flipped that coin and you knew exactly how you flipped it and the speed of all the air molecules and the shape of the table, you could predict exactly where it landed. And if you flipped it twice exactly the same way, it would land heads exactly the same way every time. But that's not true of quantum particles. So for example, when we smash protons together at the Large Hadron Collider, we do it every 25 nanoseconds

all day long, all year long. And what comes out is not the same thing every time, even though it's the same interaction. We shoot protons in at the same angle and the same energy every time, but different stuff comes out. So it just, it draws from this random probability distribution. It says, you know, it's not like anything could happen. You couldn't just get like purple elephants appearing, but the laws of physics don't say exactly what will happen. They only say what the various probabilities are. They say there's an 80% chance of this happening and a 10% chance of that happening, a 5% chance of this, et cetera, et cetera. And so that's actually a huge advantage in looking, in trying to understand the universe, because it means that if you smash

particles together many, many times, eventually you will see all of the possibilities and it's sort of nature showing you the full menu, giving you a sense for what is possible. On the very likely chance that my questions are probably a bit simplistic, what are the questions that someone like you finds really fascinating about the universe? To me, one of the deepest questions is how the universe got started or if it got started. For me, really the joy of physics is that it informs the philosophy of our lives, the reason we live and the way we live in the context of our lives. Sort of like discovering that the earth is a tiny little dust moat in this vast cosmos tells you something about our importance, right? In the same way, wondering about how the

universe got started. And if you knew exactly how the universe began, because it began in one way and no other way, right? There is a true factual story. This is not a philosophical question that you could just smoke banana peels and talk about forever. There is a real story about how the universe got started. If you knew that, it might change the way you live yourels and talk about forever. There is a real story about how the universe got started. If you knew that, it might change the way you live your life and feel about the whole context of our existence. If you knew that it started in one way, or if you knew that it had been here forever, or that there had been infinite cycles of big bangs and big crunches. So to me, that's like a huge open question about the nature of our existence. And it makes me feel prehistoric.

It makes me feel like in a thousand years, people will know the answer to that question and they'll wonder what it was like to not know the answer, to be so ignorant. The way that we look back at cavemen and cavewomen who looked up at the stars and they had no idea what they were seeing. They had no idea the context of their lives. They didn't realize how old the earth was. So many basic things they didn't know. That's who we are today. And so if I could ask the Oracle or be granted the answer to one question, it would be that is how did the universe start or did it?

Well, because my experience is everything has to start. You have to start somewhere. I mean, everything starts somewhere. So for the universe not to have started, well, then what was before it? It's fascinating because 100 years ago, scientists thought it was much more natural for the universe to not have started, to always have been, to be like just the way it is and always have been that way. That was before we knew that the universe was expanding. People thought the stars are out there, they've always been out there, and that's all there is. Then we discovered, oh, the universe is expanding, which means it's not static, it's not just like hanging out, it's dynamic, it's changing. And we could look back in time and see

that there was once a moment when it was like infinitely dense. So now that sort of seems to make more sense. And the reason that scientists used to think that an infinite universe made more sense is that like having a beginning or a boundary is sort of odd. It asks, it raises more questions, questions like, well, why did it start then? You know, it's sort of like imagining that the universe has an edge, right? What's more natural, the universe being infinite in space or the universe having a boundary, a wall? Like you might ask like, well, why is there a wall? And why is the wall there? And what is it made out of? And what's past it? If it just goes on forever, you don't have those questions. In the same way, if the universe goes on forever forwards and

backwards in time, then you don't have to answer the awkward questions of like, why did the universe start then and not a billion years before? Or, you know, what was before that? Well, it certainly is not only interesting, but it's fun to like let your mind imagine and try to contemplate and get your head around some of these questions. We've been talking with Daniel Whiteson. He is a professor of physics at UC Irvine. He's co-host of a podcast called Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe. And he's author of a book called Frequently Asked Questions About the Universe. You'll find a link to his podcast and to his book in the show notes.

Thanks, Daniel. Thanks for being here. It's fun. It seems we underestimate the power of our sense of touch. According to a study from Yale, it can have a really big effect on how we perceive things and on the decisions that we make. Participants were asked to do two puzzles. One had pieces that were rough to the touch, and the other had pieces that were smooth. The rough puzzle was perceived as more difficult, even though it really wasn't. And it's not just texture. Weight counts too. Judges were given resumes to look at, one on

a heavy clipboard and the other on a lighter clipboard. And the resumes on the heavier clipboard were rated higher than those on the lighter ones. The study also revealed that people sitting on a hard chair were much less flexible while negotiating than people sitting on a soft chair. And that touching a soft blanket can actually make us feel warm and fuzzy towards another person. And that is something you should know. I know I'm always asking you to tell a friend about this podcast. Sometimes I ask you to tell two friends, and sometimes three. But it really does help. It really helps grow our audience, which helps keep the podcast alive, and so we can bring you a lot more episodes.

So please share this podcast with someone you know. 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, 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.