Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: The Psychology of Luck & Weird Earth Conspiracies Debunked

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

During the holiday season, there are more occasions and opportunities to drink alcohol. So, it’s worth noting that not all drinks are created equal when it comes to how they affect you. This episode begins with some interesting information about the differences between beer, wine and hard liquor that could have a definite impact on you and how you feel the next morning. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2006.00190.x Are people born lucky? Or unlucky? What is it about some people that causes them to appear to be lucky a lot of the time? Here to explore the topic of luck is Richard Wiseman. He is one of the top researchers on the science of luck and author of the book, The Luck Factor (https://amzn.to/3EMLy6r). Richard is here to explain what makes lucky people lucky and how we might attract more luck. It’s not magic – it’s all in how you think. How can some people actually believe the earth is flat – and still others believe it is hollow? Some people believe we never landed on the moon – it was all a hoax. Still others are convinced that aliens walk among us. What causes people to believe what seems like nonsense to most of us? That’s why you will want to listen to my guest, Donald Prothero. Donald is a geology professor who has taught at Caltech, Columbia, and elsewhere and he is author of a book called Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas about Our Planet (https://amzn.to/3GOsTc9). Listen to hear his explanation as to why some people cling to what appear to be very odd beliefs and why the problem appears to be growing.  Do you know what the word quantum actually means? Interestingly, 4 out of 5 people could not define it correctly when asked in a survey. Listen to discover what science and the dictionary say it actually means. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quantum#examples PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Zocdoc is the only FREE app that lets you find AND book doctors who are patient-reviewed, take your insurance, are available when you need them! Go to https://Zocdoc.com/SYSK and download the Zocdoc app for FREE. 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! Let’s find “us” again by putting our phones down for five.  Five days, five hours, even five minutes. Join U.S. Cellular in the Phones Down For Five challenge! Find out more at https://USCellular.com/findus Planet Money is an incredible podcast with stories & insights about how money shapes our world. Listen to Planet Money https://npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money wherever you get your podcasts! 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, some important intel if you plan to drink during the holidays. Then, understanding the science of luck and how to be luckier. What people shouldn't do is see luck as something that doesn't change. I think it's one of the most dangerous beliefs you can hold to see yourself as unlucky because what you think you'll do is fail in every single circumstance. And that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Also, do you know what the word quantum means? Most people don't. And why do some people believe the Earth quantum means? Most people don't. And why do some people believe the Earth is flat, or that we didn't land on the moon, or that aliens are visiting our planet? Almost all the stories about UFOs and aliens date back to the beginning of the last century, about the same time science fiction became a part of our culture. And that's one of the strongest evidence we have that those things are not real,

or they're not what people think they are. All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad for better help. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. 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 chat. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more. That's BetterHelp.com. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi there. Welcome to Something You Should Know. As we move into the holiday season, it is natural for people to drink more alcohol.

Because that's what people do during the holidays. And there are some things to consider that maybe you haven't really considered. First of all, it really matters what you drink. A lot of people lump beer and wine together, but the alcohol by volume, or ABV as it's called, the alcohol content for beer is about 4.5%, while most wine is around 11 or 12%. That's a big difference. Then, when you get into harder stuff like vodka, you're up to around 40%. When you do the math, even when you mix vodka or other hard liquors with something else, that drink or two could be a

lot more powerful than a couple of beers. Be especially careful with festive spiked punches, too. It's hard to know how much liquor is in there, or if there's more than one type. That real sweet liquor can really sneak up on you, especially if you then switch to something else. And that is something you should know. really sneak up on you, especially if you then switch to something else. And that is something you should know. The subject of luck fascinates me. Why is it that some people seem to be so much luckier than others? And why do other people seem to have a lot of bad luck?

We've talked about luck a couple of times on this podcast in the past, but one person we haven't talked with about it is Richard Wiseman, who is probably the leading researcher on the science of luck. He's also the author of a book called The Luck Factor. Whether you consider yourself lucky or unlucky or somewhere in between, you're probably about to become even luckier when you hear what he has to say. Hi, Richard. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Pleasure to be here. So how do you look at luck? What is luck to you? I would say it's when seemingly chance events seem to consistently work out well for you. So if you're a lucky person,

then you seem to always be in the right place at the right time, get lots of chance opportunities. If you're an unlucky person, then life is a catalogue of disaster. It doesn't seem to be your fault. So I'd place it very much around the role of chance, or at least the role that chance appears to play in our lives. I know the answer to this next question isn't a simple one, and probably it's unfair to ask you to answer it quickly, but try to answer it quickly. What is the basic difference between a lucky person and an unlucky person? Prior to our work, a lot of scientists rejected the idea of any kind of science of luck. They said, you know, this is just chance.

And it's like winning or losing the lottery. Some people, life works out well for them. Other people, not so much. And that's all there is to it. And then we took a very, very different take on it. We looked at the psychology of it. We looked at the notion that to a very large extent, you're creating your own luck by the way you're thinking, the way you're behaving. And that's where I would sit with my interpretation. So I think

to a large extent, you know, it's unconscious, but it's to do with the way you think and behave. Well, I've always thought of luck as being, you know, there's like three kinds of luck in my view, and you get your comment on this. So there's good luck, there's people who have good luck, there's people who don't seem to have much luck one way or the other. And then there are people who seem to have really bad luck. And so it's like a spectrum, I guess, of luck. Yeah, I think that's a fair way of looking at it. I mean, of course, it depends on the context of your life. Some people will say, I'm lucky in my career, but I'm unlucky in love and so on. In our research, we really focused on people who said, look, in pretty much every part of my life,

I'm either exceptionally lucky or I'm exceptionally unlucky. And when you look at the numbers to that, there's a sway towards the positive end. So around about 12% of the UK, about 12% of folks in the USA describe themselves as extremely lucky, and only about 9% describe themselves as unlucky. But they're at the extremes. You are right. It's a continuum. When you ask people to self-describe as lucky or unlucky, doesn't a lot of it just depend on their outlook on life? You know, I'm lucky to be alive. I'm lucky to breathe the air today. I'm lucky to see the sunset. Well, you know, I don't know if that's really luck.

Absolutely. I mean, these things are self-determined by your self-perception. But that really matters. And so often in our work, you'd have two people who experienced exactly the same life event. And one would go, my goodness, that was lucky. The other would go, that's terribly unlucky. And the reason that matters is if it was a negative life event, it's related to resilience. It was related to whether to bounce back or not. So in our work, we weren't just looking at people that consider themselves lucky or unlucky. We're not just

looking at their perceptions, but the impact it had on their lives. And when you looked at the lucky people, across the board, they were doing well, higher income, higher longevity of relationships, fewer trips to the hospital, and so on, and the opposite for the unlucky people. So those self-perceptions, which, as you say, very subjective, but they absolutely matter because they convert to objectivity, if you like, in your life. Those kinds of observations, though, about your life that, you know, I'm lucky in love, that's kind of a general throughout my life I'm lucky in love as opposed to I won the lottery, which is an event and a very lucky event if you win the lottery. But it isn't a lifelong I'm lucky in love or I'm lucky in my career.

It's I was really lucky I picked the winning numbers. Yeah. And I think when you speak to people about their lives, you know, lives are complicated and messy. With the lucky people, they would say everything works out well for them. They pick the right numbers and lottery tickets. So they're the ones that always get the parking space. They're the ones that bump into people at parties

and it completely changes the course of their life and so on, and the opposite with unlucky people. So you are right. Sometimes it's about a single event. Sometimes it's about multiple events. Sometimes it's something that's trivial. Sometimes it's something that's really important. But their claim was that those things, when there was some kind of chance, as involved in most events,

when there's some kind of chance, it consistently played out in their favor, or with the unlucky people, it consistently played out against them. And so why is that? I mean, that's the big question here. Why is it that things turn out so well for some people, and other people report that things tend to not turn out so well for some people and other people report that things tend to not turn out so well? Well, some of it is chance. Some of it's to do with factors beyond their control, where they're born and so on. But a lot of it was to do with the way they were thinking and behaving. And we carried out studies with them over a decade, and you could see those factors unfolding. So, for example, the lucky people would say, you know, I get all these opportunities, and the unlucky people would say I never get a break.

And so in one of our studies, we invited them into the lab. We asked them to look through a newspaper and count the number of photographs in there, a fairly tedious thing to do. And what we didn't tell them was there's two big opportunities inside the newspaper. One of them was a half-page ad saying, stop counting, there's 50 photographs in here. And the other was a half-page ad saying, tell the experimenter you've seen this and win 100 pounds. And the lucky people spotted those opportunities. The unlucky ones went straight past them. And that's to do with the fact that when we're cheerful and relaxed and happy, we tend to have quite a big attentional spotlight. We're literally seeing more of the world. When we become worried and anxious,

that spotlight becomes really small. And so when you're unlucky, a little bit worried about the world, you're not seeing so much of your surroundings. It's a good example of the way in which your psychology is then playing out. So you're seeing opportunities or you're missing them. So if you, by nature, are just more anxious, more cautious, more nervous, are you destined to have bad luck? No, I mean, there's all sorts of things you can do to change your luck. And that was the second part of our research. So if, for example, before you go to sleep, you jot down some of the positive, lucky things that happened to you that day, no matter how trivial it is. And over a two-week, three-week period, that starts to change

how you see yourself. And once you see yourself as a luckier person, then again, that has a knock-on effect on how other people see you and how you interact with them and so on. So luck is something that changes. You're not born lucky or born unlucky. It's something like every other psychological attribute that we have that is open to change and open to growth. And I think that's probably the key message from our research. Well, that brings up an interesting question because I think a lot of people believe there is bad luck, cursed people. And often in that conversation, you'll hear someone mention the Kennedys. The Kennedy family seems to have had an awful lot of bad luck in terms of death.

You know, Robert Kennedy and John Kennedy were assassinated. Their older brother was killed in World War II. John Jr. was killed in a plane crash. I mean, there have been a lot of tragedies in that family that makes you think there's a curse. Again, all these things, it depends on how you look at it. I mean, it's also a very high achieving family in many ways, of course. And so what people shouldn't do is see luck as something that doesn't change. I think it's one of the most dangerous beliefs you can hold to see yourself as unlucky because what you think you'll do is fail in every single circumstance. And then you become

fatalistic and then you stop trying and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I would always argue against any notion of curse, paranormal, any of those sorts of things which are telling you actually you're not open to change. It doesn't matter what you do. You're always going to fail. What are some of your favorite, because you must have encountered a lot of them, some of your favorite luck stories? I interviewed one of our lucky participants twice. And in between the two interviews, they'd fallen down the stairs and broken their leg. So they came in, second interview, with their leg in a cast. And I said, well, do you consider yourself quite so lucky now? And they said, you're kidding. They said, you can never tell whether an event is lucky or unlucky for a long

period of time. They said, I could do some time off work. And also the last time I got sick, I went to hospital, met a nurse, fell in love. We're happily married 25 years. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. On the other end of it, we had a multimillionaire because he'd won the lottery, hit the jackpot, and he's in the unlucky group. And I said, well, it's kind of astonishing you're in the unlucky group. And he said, just my bad luck. When I chose my numbers, somebody else chose the same numbers that day. So I had to share an 8 million pound jackpot by splitting the pride. How unlucky is that? Again, it shows this is all about self-perception. You can find the downside in

absolutely everything if you try hard enough. You won't be much fun to be around. And that's the other aspect of this. Our emotions are contagious. And so people like being around lucky people who are lucky and people who are unlucky. So what else do you take away from what all these people have told you? Yeah, we had many lottery winners involved in the study. And I was always interested in the way in which those events, where they won the lottery, what it made them do was feel lucky. And then suddenly that kicked off a whole chain of positive events in their lives. The same with the unlucky people. I can remember there was one person involved who, unfortunately, on the day they were born, two family members died.

They were seen as an unlucky baby. Nobody wanted to be around them. And that set their course for life. And so these events and the notion of luck really do affect people and affect lives. And of course, we aren't responsible for all of the success and failures in our lives. There are many, many other factors. I say where we're born, the opportunities we're given, and so on. But we do have control over a large amount of it, and luck is surprisingly important within that domain. We're talking about luck and

how to make you luckier in life. My guest is Richard Wiseman. He is one of the leading experts on the science of luck, and he is author of the book, The Luck Factor. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and the luck factor. The skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. 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.

So, Richard, I've always considered myself pretty lucky. I have a lot of things to be thankful for. But I've also had some bad things happen in my life, some very bad things. My mother died very young. But it's more of a step back and look at your life rather than find one thing and say, oops, see, I'm unlucky. I think that's right. And it does depend how one looks at all of these events. In some of our studies, we gave people fairly ambiguous events and asked them what they made of them. So in one, we said, imagine you go into the bank and in bursts a robber and they fire a gun and the bullet hits you in the arm. Are you lucky or unlucky?

And our lucky people would go, well, of course I'm lucky. It could have been my head. It could have been my heart. The unlucky people would go, why are you even asking the question? I've just been shot in the arm. Of course I'm lucky. It could have been my head. It could have been my heart. The unlucky people would go, why are you even asking the question? I've just been shot in the arm. Of course I'm unlucky. And that's to do with what's called counterfactual thinking. You generate the other outcomes. And if you always generate outcomes where, well, actually, it could have been better. The bullet could have missed me altogether. Then you'll think the universe is always picking on you. Well, if you're the sort of person who generates a worse outcome, you know, a bit in my head,

a bit in my heart, then you'll think you're lucky. And so, you know, the psychology of this, I find endlessly fascinating. So the lucky and unlucky people involved in the studies, it was just magic. You know, things worked out well for them or they didn't. But actually, there's a lot of psychology sitting under that. I would imagine that mixed into this discussion on luck, you have to include superstition, that a lot of people seem to think that they can get luck by, you know,

having a rabbit's foot or knocking on wood or, you know, never walking under a ladder. So how does superstition play into this? There's certainly that argument that's made with superstitious behavior. And we looked at that, and there's certainly something to it. So in our work, we separated what we called positive superstitions away from negative ones. So with positive ones, it's like touching wood,

crossing your fingers, things that bring about good luck. Those are the ones which lucky people tend to endorse. The negative superstitions that you walk under a ladder or you smash a mirror, and this is going to bring you bad luck, those are the ones which unlucky people tend to endorse. So it's a double-edged sword. I think there's no harm in carrying out some of these positive superstitions, particularly if they make you feel more confident, because that, again, affects how you interact with others and perform. So yeah, I'm actually not quite as down on superstition as perhaps I should be, given I'm a scientist. Well, but I remember hearing some story about golfers who were given what,

and were told that this ball is a lucky golf ball and that they actually performed better because they believed they were playing with a lucky golf ball. That that's correct. And, and that, that work comes out of Germany. And it's very interesting research. There's been other work where you put lucky mascots on students' desks and they perform better in exams. You give people a pen that another student did really well on the test using this pen, and the student does a little bit better

in the exams. So these are all positive superstitions. You will do better because you've done this. And we know that elite sports people carry out superstitious rituals. Very well-known actors do as well. Confidence is important, and these rituals probably help with that. What you don't want to do is get into a position where you go, well, I haven't got my mascot, or I didn't tie my shoes up in a certain way. Therefore, I become especially anxious, and it actually disrupts performance. So it's a fun thing to do if it helps, but not to get too worried about it if you haven't got your lucky mascot with you. So given what you know and what you've researched about luck, if somebody wanted to deliberately go about trying to improve their luck, what would you recommend they do?

I think the luck diary is very important. Jotting down the positive thing that's happened that day, no matter how trivial that is. I think teaching yourself to be resilient, to realize that events could be worse is good. I think connecting with others and getting out there and creating those opportunities and also just get used to doing different things in your life. So if you go the same route to work every day, well, just vary the route. Try and eat different types of food,

watch different types of films, whatever it is, get used to being a flexible person so that when those opportunities come into your life, you're ready to make the most of them. When you ask people, and I guess it's all in how you ask people, but if you ask people, do you consider yourself lucky or do you consider yourself unlucky, I don't know that people think of themselves in those terms, that, you know, good things happen and bad things happen,

but that most of us have both, so we don't necessarily identify as lucky, or do we? Well, most people would say lucky. There's around about 60%, 70% that would tick the lucky box. In general, when you ask that question, in general, do you consider yourself a lucky person? But that's true of most positive traits. In general, do you consider yourself to be a safe driver? Yes. You've got an above-average sense of humor. Absolutely. We are overly optimistic creatures. It's one of the things that gets us out of bed in the morning. And that's that's good in its way. So, yes, there's a shift towards seeing yourself as lucky rather than unlucky. but they're not particularly optimistic. They claim not to be particularly pessimistic.

They just see things for what they are. I think that's right, and you are right. Often it is heavily related to pessimism. I mean, if you see things as they are, it's perhaps not surprising you're pessimistic about the world. I think that there are real advantages to putting on the rose-tinted spectacles, even if you know that you're to some extent kidding yourself. The fact is that optimism

is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It enthuses others. It means you keep on going when the going gets tough because you're convinced there's going to be a good outcome. As I say, it gets you out of bed in the morning. Even though you are kidding yourself, even though it may be irrational, in a sense, when you take the bigger view, it's rational to be irrational. I meant to ask you when we were talking about superstitions, I don't know if you looked at this, but my guess is, and I'd like to get you to comment is if you ask people i bet everybody has some sort of you know if if this light turns green in the next three seconds it means the interview is going to go well kind of superstition at some point that there's nobody that doesn't do that i think that's

right we did some work in superst superstition and we looked at superstition among scientists, amongst people who said they were extremely rational, even people like myself who are sceptical about the paranormal. And you still find it's in the 90% in the UK that are touching wood, crossing their fingers. And I think the reason for that is it costs nothing to do. It makes you feel good. It probably reduces a little bit of anxiety and may have a real impact. And of course, those things have been around all of recorded history. Every single society has some sense of a lucky charm or whatever. So I think it really is something that's deeply embedded within us, this notion of trying

to control chance. And I think now that we have a greater us, this notion of trying to control chance. And I think now that we have a greater understanding of the psychology of luck, we can do that more effectively. But we're not going to stop people touching wood and crossing fingers. And maybe, you know, it's good for them anyway. Do you consider yourself lucky? No, not at all. It's been disastrous. No, no, no, I'm just kidding. I think I spent most of my career hanging around with these lucky and unlucky participants. And being open to opportunities and open to change and flexible, yeah, that's rubbed off on me. And I think I've benefited from that. So yeah, overall, a very lucky person. Well, it's such a great message because you really give everyone

permission to be luckier by just doing the things that lucky people do and being open to opportunity. Richard Wiseman's been my guest. He's a leading researcher on the science of luck, and the name of his book is The Luck Factor. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Richard. Thank you. Pleasure speaking to you. 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.

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. I've never been a big conspiracy guy. I don't really understand how some people believe that the Earth is flat, or that we didn't land on the moon, or that the Earth is hollow, but I respect the fact that people are entitled to believe whatever they want. Still, why they believe these things is something interesting to explore,

which we're about to do with Donald Prothero. He's a geology professor who has taught at Caltech, Columbia, and other schools, and he's author of a book called Weird Earth, Debunking Strange Ideas About Our Planet. Hey, Donald, welcome. Thanks for inviting me. So let's start with whether or not the world is flat. I mean, I've been led to believe that it is not. I'm pretty sure it's not, but I know some people believe it is. So why do people

believe the earth is flat? It's a combination of things. Remember before we had the birth of science and the understanding of the earth was round, which actually the ancient Greeks knew, and then it was rediscovered, of course, in the Renaissance. People are used to having their own senses tell them what's true, right? We're prisoners of our own senses and our own sense of time and our own sense of space. So we have an impossible time imagining the immensity of the universe that we now know it has. But more to the point, we have a hard time imagining the Earth is round, when most of the time, wherever you stand, it looks like it's flat. We have a hard time imagining the Earth is not the center of the universe when you see the sun and the moon and the

planets move around us. And so that's the intuitive and logical way most people think. And it was not until the breakthroughs of science in the last several centuries that we were able to understand that, in fact, that's not the way it is. Science is often counterintuitive. Science often operates on scales that we as humans don't grasp, whether it's a microscopic scale or the gigantic scale of the universe in the geologic time. So that's the main thing. It's just counterintuitive to imagine the Earth is not flat until you're taught otherwise. But we have been taught otherwise, and with some pretty convincing evidence. So it's baffling to me why people would deny that evidence. Yes. Well, but we are in a world now where we now know that 40 percent of Americans believe in weird conspiracies that baffle most people and that believe there are strange things going on. And the governments are running these giant hoaxes and giant conspiracies

to do this or do that. And then, you know, scratch your heads at things like QAnon and other things out there. But it's just shocking how many Americans buy into this now and other people around the world too, but Americans, especially in the last four years. And flat earthism is part of that. It starts with the conspiratorial thinking process that everything you've been told is wrong, that every image you've been told is wrong, that every image you've been shown is a hoax. You have to start with that premise before you can get any further. My sense is from talking to people who will sometimes spout out conspiracy theories and whatnot, is that it isn't either or, where they're completely anti-science, they're completely buying into

every conspiracy theory on earth they do pick and choose there is there are people who believe one thing or two things but don't necessarily buy into the rest of it right yeah it is it's very much a spectrum there are some people who are deep into the conspiracy world so almost all they think about is conspiracies they believe everything they've They believe everything they've been told on conspiracies. And so there is a high correlation between believing one conspiracy and believing another. And then you get sort of the intermediate things, like, for example, people who believe in Bigfoot, but don't believe in UFOs, because UFOs are crazy, but Bigfoot is not. And that the evidence for both is about the same. And then there's people who just selectively just reject certain things.

And then we see this probably the majority of Americans like that. They will accept science and accept technology because they recognize their lives are better because of science and technology. But then they'll reject just the things they don't want to believe. So you'll have creationists who reject evolution, but they will happily use electronics and modern medicine. So since you brought up aliens and there has been in the news lately more stories about, you know, pilots and people seeing things, what about that? Does seem to fuel the fire when that stuff happens.

Yeah, we go through phases where there's lots of reports like that and then dies off for a while, then it comes back again. It's very much a pop culture phenomenon. Almost all the stories about UFOs and aliens date back to the beginning of the last century, about the same time science fiction became a part of our culture. And they're very strongly correlated. Ideas that appear in science fiction eventually appear in the public media, and then that's when people copycat and believe it's going on.

And that's one of the strongest evidences we have that those things are not real or they're not what people think they are. But the major thing to take away from the recent reports is that, remember, UFO stands for unidentified flying object. It means they don't know what it is. It doesn't mean they've identified it as a spacecraft or done anything to prove it's nothing more than something they don't know what it is. Lots of people don't know what's flying in the sky. People identify all sorts of craft up there as UFOs, and they're just identifiable once better data come in. People even identify the planet Venus as a UFO, okay? Just because they don't know what it is doesn't make it a totally alien craft. And in the skeptic society,

one of the models we say, just because we don't know what it is, doesn't mean we won't eventually learn what it is, right? A scientific position and a skeptic position is, do not jump to a conclusion just to give yourself a convenient explanation, except that we don't know certain things yet, but sooner or later,

science does get around explaining most things. So it's a cop-out to say, oh, it's an alien spacecraft. Yeah. But but it's also pretty interesting when these reports come in of of something in the sky maneuvering in ways that we don't have the technology to maneuver. Yeah, they say that. And then whenever it's finally tracked down as to what it is they're talking about, it turns out that there was either misperception on their part or they just didn't understand these things are out there. For the longest time, for example, most of the UFO sightings from the 1950s through the 1990s and later were basically spy aircraft. We had a ton of spy aircraft, the SR-71 Blackbird and the U-2 before that. My dad was a the Lockheed employees entire career and worked on both those planes. And they were top secret. So even airline

pilots would see these things happen and would end up saying, oh, I saw a UFO. Well, it was a plane flying at 80,000 feet of Mach 2. You wouldn't know what it was. And of course, it was top secret back then. And there's lots of other things that can easily explain these things. But again, the position we take as scientists and as skeptics is that the unexplained is not necessarily unexplainable. We just have to wait until more evidence is there. And as scientists, especially, we're always comfortable with the fact we don't know everything. And we don't put in a stopgap, crazy explanation for something just because we don't know the answer yet. Why is it and where does it come from that people believe that we never landed on the moon?

Yeah, that's one of the weirdest conspiracies of all. And the funny thing about it is no one believed that to be true anywhere near the 1969 landing or the years that followed. It was something I originally hatched out of a silly science fiction movie plot, and it was mentioned made into a movie in France, and then was picked up by various types of conspiracy theorists and then carried along. And again, this is really part of the great sort of conspiracy mindset that you have to believe that there's malevolent forces, government forces, or other secret large forces, whether it be Illuminati or whatever you want to believe that there's malevolent forces, government forces, or other secret large forces,

whether it be Illuminati or whatever you want to blame it on, that are out there doing these actions. People cannot accept that things just happen. And so then they get into this great conspiracy mindset. And then once you do that, you start to go down that rabbit hole. Every other thing you don't understand sounds like a really reasonable thing. And so they become very much embedded in lots of conspiracies. The basic thing about the moon landing conspiracy is that, of course, they want to believe that we were being all tricked and that it was all fake because it

makes them feel better. But the irony is, of course, the larger the conspiracy and the more people involved, the harder it is to ever keep it under a lid. Sooner or later, people blab. My dad worked for Lockheed. He actually was part of the space program. His company contributed parts of the Apollo missions. All those people, millions of people, are involved in the space program, and they all apparently did not find a hoax once, which makes it pretty improbable that it is. Not only that, of course, we have lots, lots of physical evidence of what they did and what they brought back. The moon rocks are distinctively different from any rock on Earth and never been found anywhere but the moon. And there's various things where you can

actually, for example, see with spacecraft the remains of the Apollo 11 lander and some of the other landers in the various spots of the moon where they are. And there's experiments you can run where you can shoot a laser beam at one of these big reflectors that they left on the moon where they are. And there's experiments you can run where you can shoot a laser beam at one of these big reflectors that they left on the moon's surface after they departed and get a return beam at the exact time expected.

What is the reason, though? I mean, what would be the purpose of faking the landing on the moon? If you believe there's a conspiracy, don't you typically believe there's a motive behind the conspiracy? And if so, what is the motive for faking that? Yeah, I've never been able to fathom what they really think is the reason behind it. There's various ideas you see people run around, but it's basically just the idea that government

has this big power over us and it's inherently evil and it's manipulating us all the time. So the moon landing is the most prominent one. But I think the acid test of why we know the moon landing was real is that, of course, we were not cooperating with any other world government back then. The Soviets at that time were not conspiring to work with us in any way. If anything, they were our rivals and they were trying to do the same thing we were doing in almost the same time frame. And so if for any reason we had ever faked it, the Soviets would have called us out. Instead, they congratulated the U.S. shortly after Armstrong and Alderman Martin and the moon. That's why it's the most plausible possible idea that we can get a global conspiracy to do things like this, because reality is we have global rivalries and every time the other superpower does something we tend to

respond by trying to do what we can to counteract it not to praise it so that all all by itself pretty much debunks the idea that we could pull this off what about the dinosaurs where'd they go and why do people argue about that there's a crazy set of creationists out there who believe that dinosaurs are faked. And there's, of course, actually some spoof sites which do this as well and do this mostly to get a reaction out of it, like the People Against Dinosaurs and so on. Or Christians Against Dinosaurs is actually a fake site

run by people who are trying to mock this thing. But there are serious creationists who take the Bible so literally that they insist that dinosaurs are faked primarily to shake our faith in creationism. And they go through extraordinary lengths of bizarre ideas about what they think paleontologists actually do for a living. And as a paleontologist, I know this firsthand. They think somehow, first of all, there's a great conspiracy and there's a great money to be made in dinosaurs, which is laughably far from the truth. I mean, most paleontologists don't get any grant funding to do paleontology at all. It's very hard to get that kind of thing.

And there's not much in the way of glamour to be attached to it other than, you know, get a little bit of press publicity once in a while if you do that kind of paleontology. But there is no big paleontology. There is no giant amount of money there. There is no incentive for us to fake it in the first place. And the second place, I can take anyone who doubts this is real out and show them real fossils coming out of the ground. Nobody put them in the ground. They were there before we looked. What about the continent of Atlantis? I remember hearing stories about, you know, it was this wonderful place where people got along and we all just sat around and sang Kumbaya and then somehow it sank. Before we knew anything about what the

seafloor was like, they imagined it was out in the Atlantic Ocean, which is where the name of the Atlantic Ocean comes from. But there is no such thing there now. We know what the seafloor looks like and have since the late 1950s. And there is no sunken continent that would ever be corresponding to it. So there's a lot of possibilities, but the point is it's always been a legend. Even when Plato reported it in the fifth century BC, it was still a legend. Okay. It was not based on anything that anyone at that point took seriously as a place that really existed. I understand that, you know, you're a scientist and you believe in the science and people believe what they believe. And so what's wrong with that? I mean, a lot of people, what they believe is based in their religion.

And if they want to believe it, so what? We have in our culture an interesting problem where we're probably, and Carl Sagan said this back in the 90s, we're so dependent on science and technology, and yet basically Americans are about one of the most scientifically literate of all developed societies out there. And I would say that's worse now than it was in Carl Sagan's day based on what we see people rejecting science when it comes not just to evolution, but also climate change and the effect of medicine and vaccinations. Now we're seeing a giant rejection of science by people whose lives depend on science. A lot of it comes from the fact we're taught science by rote early on in school years. And that's, of course, sort of appropriate when you start out,

you can't ask a fourth grader to know all the facts behind a particular scientific idea. You just try to get the idea across. But that's all that most people ever learn. They just learn stuff by rote. They learn the earth is round, not flat. And at the beginning level, there's not much chance to do much more than that. But when I teach at this college level, for example, I always tell my students, it's not enough to just know something to be a scientific reality. In a college level, you should have an understanding of why we know these things. What's the evidence? Why do scientists accept this?

Why do they not embrace things like flat earthism or geocentrism? All this stuff is out there. It's floating around. And thanks to the internet, it's easy to find now. Now, maybe 25 years ago, you know, in the 90s, you could not hear this stuff anywhere unless you listened to crank crazy radio broadcasts or you subscribed to mailing lists of these crank believers. Now it's so abundant and so easy to find one crazy site after another on the Internet. It just fosters this giant cesspool of lies on a great level.

You know, people think they're doing research when they read these sketchy websites and think they know something nobody else knows. So you say, and I guess I didn't really know this, but you say that there are people who believe the earth is hollow. And so if the earth is hollow, then the people who believe that, what do they believe is in there? Is it just air? Is it gas? What is in there? There's a whole set of ideas about that. In the 19th century, before they knew much about the earth at all, they had these mystical worlds that lived beneath the surface. And that was the inspiration, by the way, for Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. He actually made that a more and more popular idea thanks to a novel that was intentionally science fiction,

but based on what a lot of people were saying in the 1800s. In more recent years, they have these ideas that somehow there's a hole at the top of the earth and the bottom of the earth, which you can get inside the earth. There's no consistent idea what they think is inside. Some people think it's giant caverns. Other people have other weird ideas, like another planet inside us. That hasn't had any consistent following. But there is a very large number of people out there who think the Earth is hollow. In addition to what we've already talked about, what else, like people who believe the Earth is flat,

what else interests you that you find confusing that why would people believe this? Besides flat Earthism, that is the most disturbing is geocentrism, right? Rejecting the idea that the sun is the center of its own solar system. And that has almost the same characteristics as flat Earthism. There are some people who believe both. And again, it comes from a starting point of you stand out on a given night and you

see the sun and the moon and see the stars and they appear to be rotating around you. And that's intuitive. Therefore, it's hard for you to imagine that you're not really seeing what's really there people are only comfortable what they can see and intuit in their own own perspective the biggest element of that again goes back to creationism namely people who take the bible very literally and the bible does say many places or clearly indicates in many places, if you take it literally, that the earth is the center of things, the sun is moving above us. And the famous episode in the Judges where Joshua makes the sun stand still, which of course implies they think the sun is moving over our heads and the earth is in the center. All that

is part of the Bible. Well, this all speaks to the issue that people can believe whatever they want to believe, but modern communication and the internet make it easy to spread these things and possibly make them look more legitimate. But at the end of the day, people are allowed to believe whatever they want. But one of the drawbacks of the information age and the age of Internet is that, yes, we can share great information and have information at our fingertips, but there is no filter. And it's a giant set of, my phrase is, accessible lies, because 90% of the Internet sites I find in this area are pretty much run by people who are trying to contradict what science says. And in the 1990s, you couldn't find this out very easily. There was no way to reach other people and find other people giving you these crazy ideas. Now, anybody can find it in a few clicks. And of course, the way browsers work, as soon as you click on one of these sites, it gives you links

to all the rest that are similar. So you can get down that rabbit hole really fast. So I have this belief that, that people aren't, I mean, there's always going to be people who believe this stuff, but that people aren't generally as stupid as they're often portrayed. And an example of this is the War of the Worlds broadcast by Orson Welles, where it was reported that people panicked. And then when they did the research years later, it turns out people did not panic. They did not believe. Not a lot of them, yeah, that's right. Very few people did.

But the perception was that people are so stupid and so gullible that they'll believe things. And I just have a sense that, yes, there's always going to be that fringe group, but that by and large, people don't believe the earth is hollow or that the earth is flat, that people are pretty good at figuring things out. Right. No, I would still agree that the majority of these crazy ideas I talked about in this book are still fringe, but they have way, way more followers and more adherence than

they used to because they can all reach each other now through the Internet. Well, I understand the concern, and of course the Internet does make it easier to spread this information around or this misinformation around, but I don't know. I guess I don't worry as much as some because I think people can make their own judgments and there will always be those people who believe that stuff. But I don't think for the most part too many people are going to see something on the internet

and go, oh, the Earth is flat? I don't know. But I understand your position that as a scientist you need to really take a stand. Donald Prothrow has been my guest. He is a geology professor who has taught at Caltech and Columbia, amongst other schools. And the name of his book is Weird Earth, Debunking Strange Ideas About Our Planet.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Donald. Well, thank you very much. It was lots of fun. I've enjoyed doing this. You know the word quantum, as in quantum physics, quantum theory, quantum leap? The word quantum pops up a lot, especially in tech talk. But actually, most people don't really know what it means.

In fact, in surveys, four out of five people could not come up with the correct definition of the word quantum when asked. Definitions vary a little bit, but I think when people hear something like quantum leap, it makes it sound like it's a big leap. It's a giant quantum leap. But in fact, it means just the opposite. In general, it's used to mean the smallest possible measure of something. Here's how the Merriam-Webster Dictionary uses it in a sentence. The sum of human knowledge is now so immense that even a highly educated person can hope to absorb only a tiny

quantum of it. And now you've absorbed one quantum more. And that is something you should know. I could use a review from you if I haven't gotten one yet. And even if I have, you can leave more than one review and it would really help us out a lot. Reviews help us be more visible to other people. You can leave a review at Apple Podcasts or any other platform that accepts reviews. Apple Podcasts is a good one. It's the big one, so we would appreciate that. 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 co-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 Lightning. A fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. During her journey, Isla

meets new friends, including King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and learns valuable life lessons with every quest, sword fight, and dragon ride. Positive and uplifting stories remind us all about the importance of kindness, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and an all-star cast of actors, friendship, honesty, and positivity. Join me and

an all-star cast of actors, including Liam Neeson, Emily Blunt, Kristen Bell, Chris Hemsworth, among many others, in welcoming the Search for the Silver Lining podcast to the Go Kid Go network by listening today. Look for the Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.