Something You Should Know - The Dark Side of Achievement & The Astonishing Science of the Sea-SYSK Choice

Episode Date: November 1, 2025

Why are the numbers 1, 2, and 3 across the top of a phone keypad but across the bottom of a calculator? It’s not random — and once you hear the logic, you’ll never look at a keypad the same way again. That’s just one of three quirky mysteries I explain at the start of this episode, along with surprising insights about portholes and time. Source: Ivan Semeniuk, co-author of Why Don’t Penguins’ Feet Freeze? (https://amzn.to/3sf8muM) Achievement can be wonderful — until it starts defining your worth. When you believe you matter only because of what you accomplish, it can lead to burnout, anxiety, and even shame. Journalist and social commentator Jennifer Wallace, author of Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—And What We Can Do About It( https://amzn.to/49jkdIQ), reveals how modern “achievement culture” took hold, why it’s making so many people miserable, and how to redefine success so it actually feels good. The ocean covers 70% of our planet, yet we’ve explored only a fraction of it. Beneath the surface lies an astonishing, interconnected system that shapes everything from our weather to our food. Physicist and oceanographer Helen Czerski, author of The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works (https://amzn.to/3scCyXo), takes us on a fascinating deep dive into the hidden forces that drive the sea — and why there’s really only one global ocean. According to one marriage expert, there’s a remarkably simple thing any woman can do to motivate the man in her life — and it works every time. It’s quick, it’s easy, and the results may surprise you. Source: David Clarke, PhD, author of The Total Marriage Makeover (https://amzn.to/3QoIvZD). PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! QUINCE: Layer up this fall with pieces that feel as good as they look! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! ON POINT: We love the On Point podcast! Listen wherever you get your podcasts! ⁠⁠https://www.wbur.org/radio/programs/onpoint⁠⁠ SHOPIFY: Shopify is the commerce platform for millions of businesses around the world! To start selling today, sign up for your $1 per month trial at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://Shopify.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Amex Platinum, you have access to over 1,400 airport lounges worldwide. So your experience before takeoff is a taste of what's to come. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Conditions apply. Today on something you should know, the answers to three questions you've probably wondered about, about calculators, portholes, and time. Then, toxic achievement. It's when you define yourself by your success. The messages perhaps that you got growing up were that you're only as good as your success.

So when you're not successful, that's when you can really, really struggle. When we really couple our worth to our achievements, it makes us less resilient. Also, one simple thing women can do to motivate any man. And a peek below the surface at what's going on in our oceans. And there's a lot going on. I do think that we need to get away from this idea that the dominant thing we know about the ocean is that it's mysterious. You know, if you want mystery, look into space, it's empty. The ocean is doing so many interesting and beautiful things.

All this today on Something You Should Know. Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door, expertly cleaned and folded. So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting to finally pursue a whole new version of you. Like tea time, you. Or this tea time you. Or even this tea time you. Said you hear about Dave? Or even tea time, tea time, tea time you.

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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. I'm going to start today's episode with three questions. Three questions you may have wondered about, didn't know the answers, and now you'll have the answers.

Number one, on a telephone keypad, the lowest numbers, one, two, and three are across the top. On a calculator, they're at the bottom. Why are they different? Well, they each traveled down different evolutionary roads. The calculator descended from the old adding machine, which had lower numbers at the bottom. The touchtone telephone descended from the dial telephone, which had lower numbers at the top. Why are the windows on many ships?

Round, they're portholes rather than windows. Actually, on many old wooden boats, the windows were square, but when ships switched to metal hulls, that's when, things changed. When you cut a rectangle or a square into a piece of metal, the metal is subject to more fatigue at those corner points. Naval architects quickly learned that round portholes eliminate the problem. And the third question, what time is it in the North Pole? And the answer is, any time you want it to be. Theoretically, all time zones converge at the North and South Poles, so there is technically no time.

and that is something you should know. It's hard to argue with the concept of achievement. We are taught to achieve. In school and at work, achievement is good. It's how we get ahead. We judge our success by our achievements. But can achievement become toxic? Can we become so wrapped up in our achievements that they define us?

That may not be so good. and it seems to happen quite a bit. Joining me to talk about this is Jennifer Wallace. She is an award-winning journalist, social commentator, covering parenting and lifestyle trends. She used to work at 60 Minutes, and she is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal in the Washington Post.

She's author of a book called Never Enough when achievement culture becomes toxic and what we can do about it. Hi, Jennifer, welcome to something you should know. oh thanks so much for having me on so state your case here because you know achievement seems like a good thing so at what point does achievement become not a good thing achievement becomes toxic when our sense of self is so deeply intertwined with our successes or our failures that's when it becomes toxic, when we only feel as good as our next achievement, or we feel as bad as our

failure. So when our self-esteem, when our sense of self, when our sense of worth rests on our accomplishments, it becomes toxic. So it would seem to me, though, that we are wrapped up in our achievements, that achievements are a big part of us, that if you, for example, get a job you've always wanted and you finally achieve that and then say the company goes out of business or you get fired or whatever, that's going to be a huge blow. You're going to feel terrible about that because your achievements are a big part of you. So at what point do you say it's toxic and at the other point there's a line where you feel horrible and that's okay? Yeah, that's obviously a normal reaction, right? So mental health is not about having positive emotion.

all the time. But as psychologists point out, having good mental health means that you have a reaction that's appropriate to what you're going through. Where it would become toxic is if getting fired really becomes an indictment of your worth and you sink into a depression or you turn to substances to cope, that the messages perhaps that you got growing up were that you're only as good is your success. And so when you're not successful, that's when you can really, really struggle. When we really couple our worth to our achievements, it makes us less resilient. And where does this come from? Why are people feeling this way? What I believe is at the root of much of our anxiety and depression, the loneliness epidemic,

is this unmet need to matter. And mattering is a psychological construct that's been around since the early 1980s. It was an idea, a concept that was initially conceived by Morris Rosenberg, who is the social psychologist who brought us the idea of self-esteem in the 1960s. And what he found in the early 80s was that kids who did well, who enjoyed healthy self-esteem felt like they mattered to their parents, that they were important and significant. What I am seeing now in my own research, what I'm reading from national surveys, is that

there are many people in the world who feel like they don't matter, meaning they don't feel valued by anyone, by family, by friends, at the workplace, they feel easily replaced. They don't feel known or seen or heard. And these are basic human needs that are going unmet. And when researchers who study it say that after the drive, the human motivation for food and shelter, it is the instinct to matter that drives human behavior for better and for worse. I get that people don't feel like they matter

and that it would be good if they did. But what does that have to do with achievement? I mean, I know I get it, but I want you to make the case because it seems like we're talking about two different things. We're not, right. Okay, so when we talk about achievement that is excessive and felt like excessive pressure, what we are talking about is the idea that our sense of self

is contingent on our achievements, that we only matter when we achieve. So the kids that I met who seemed to be suffering the most were kids who felt like they're mattering was completely contingent on their performance, that they only mattered if they got good grades, or if they made the A team, or they got the starring role, they felt that only certain people in this world mattered. And then if they weren't performing at a high level, then they didn't actually matter. The other group of kids who were suffering that I met were kids who got the messages at home that they mattered. They heard from their parents that they were important and significant, but no one ever relied on them or depended on them to give back in any way other than

to themselves and their own resumes. And so what these kids lacked was what I call social proof that they mattered. They heard it in words, but they didn't see. see how they actually made a positive impact on the world around them. But what you just said sounds like an argument to try to achieve, to use that feeling of not mattering as fuel to show the world that you can achieve, that you can do something, that you do matter. And one way to be acknowledged as mattering is for people to see what you've accomplished, what you've achieved.

Oh, I think it's the opposite of that. I'll talk about myself. I am extremely ambitious. I am a high performer. I get a lot of joy out of my achievements. But what I am driven by is what I call a healthy fuel. And that healthy fuel is that I don't feel defined by my achievements or my failures. I'm able to reach higher for bigger goals because I know if I don't succeed,

succeed, it's not an indictment of who I am versus other people I know in my life who have a very fragile sense of mattering, a very fragile sense of self-worth, that they only feel worthy when they're achieving. And so this can backfire. They are less likely to reach for super high goals because they are holding on to the little mattering that they have. I suppose what we're talking about, if you really zoom out, is about values and how they impact achievement. achievement and our well-being. And so your values of having this healthy outlook on achievement comes from where? Was it from your parents, from your...

Yeah, there's a social psychologist, Gregory Elliott, who writes, what gets in early, gets in deep. So our first sense of self-worth and self-esteem is not created in a vacuum. It is, you know, what researchers call a social barometer to see how we are doing in the eyes of others. And the first people that we get this sense of self-worth from are our parents, the feedback that they give us, the signals they send us about whether or not we are worthy just for being who we are. And I will tell you, I grew up with a deep sense of mattering. And I didn't realize how unusual that was until I went out into the work. and I was working in very hyper-competitive environments, like 60 minutes, and, you know, many of my colleagues really struggled with feeling worthy. One colleague said to me,

you're only as good as your next story here. That is not a great environment to raise children in, to be working in ourselves. It seems that we live in a culture where it's a never-ending wheel that if you want to achieve, one way you achieve and you get opportunities to achieve is because of your past achievements, your experience achieving other things. So like it never ends. And like with school, I have a son who's going into college. And I mean, the pressure of getting into a college is all about what have you achieved. It's all about achievement. I wrote an article in 2019 that was for the Washington Post about a newly named at-risk group. And these are kids attending what researchers call high-achieving schools.

Those are public and private schools around the country where kids go off to competitive four-year colleges. Those kids are now at risk, meaning they are two to six times more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression and substance abuse disorder than the average American team. That is a problem. When the kids in our culture, who are given so many opportunities, are doing as poorly as students living in poverty, there is something upside down wrong in our culture.

We're talking about achievement, toxic achievement, and the human need to matter. My guest is Jennifer Wallace. She is an award-winning journalist and author of the book, Never Enough, when Achievement Culture becomes toxic and what we can do about it. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. A new era of fitness is here. Introducing the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, built for breakthroughs with personalized workout plans, real-time insights, and endless ways to move.

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And the embellage, too beau, who is practically pre-a-doned. And I know that I'd love these offriads, but I guard the Summer Fridays and Rare Beauty by Selena Gomez. I'm, I'm sure. The most ensemble, the Cadowdo of the Feds'Cadee's rare beauty,

way, Cifora Collection, and other part of So Jennifer, it seems like there is some format standard and mini, regrouped for a better quality of price, in line on C4A.com or in magazine. So, Jennifer, it seems like there is some attention being paid to what you're talking about in the sense that we hear things about, you know, mental health days and self-care and the four-day work week and, you know, flexible schedules, that there's some attempt to address this, or is that, in your view, just lip service?

No, I think there is an attempt to address it. absolutely right. There's certainly more of an awareness. But I do believe that we are sold a bill of goods when it comes to the multi-billion dollar wellness industry. You can't download a meditation app or have a mindful day at work. Resilience rests fundamentally, this is according to decades worth of resilience research, on the strength and depth of our relationships. The problem I saw and I saw it over and over again was not that adults today didn't have friends. The adults I interviewed had friends. What they didn't have was the time and the bandwidth to deepen those friendships so that they could be sources of support when needed. So in order for parents, for example,

to act as first responders to our kids' struggles, we need one or two people in our lives outside of the home, and I want to underscore that, because our in-home relationships are already overtaxed, trying to be these, you know, one household villages. So really, it's one or two people outside of our home that we can open up to, that we can feel heard, that we can feel seen, that we know we matter. And that is what builds up our resilience. Do you think, you know, if you stopped people on the street and asked them if they saw this as a problem, in their life, that they would agree with you or because, you know, your life is your life. You don't really have anything to compare it to that they don't see this as a problem.

This is just the way things are. No, there have been studies done asking the very question, do you feel like you matter? Do people notice you? Do people depend on you? and a very large percentage of adults and youth do not feel like they matter and they're aware of it. This is an instinct to matter.

This is something that we have all evolved to feel. So you can feel like you don't matter. You can feel invisible, but you notice. You know that you're, I mean, think about it in your own life. I mean, there have been times. Our sense of mattering fluctuates throughout our lifespan. So you could be a busy young mother and actually feel like you matter too much because you're exhausted and your kids are pulling at you all day long.

And then your children could leave and go to college and start their own lives. And you wonder if you're not sort of feeling like you matter in other domains of your life, you can really struggle with not feeling like you matter. People in retirement can feel like they matter at work. and then feel invisible when they're out of the workplace. No one is asking anything of them. No one is depending on them anymore. I don't know if that's the actual question you would ask people,

but if you ask somebody, do you think you matter? I mean, there's kind of a tendency to say no because of the way the question is served up. And it isn't like you don't matter to everybody. Maybe you don't feel like you matter at work, but you, nope, I don't think too many people feel like they don't matter. to anybody, to anywhere. Oh, I think you're wrong.

I think this is part of our devastating loneliness epidemic. I don't have the data in front of me, but, you know, there have been national surveys asking people, if you were to go in for surgery, would you have someone to call you to pick you up? I mean, there are so many lonely people in the world. I don't think it's the majority of people, but I think it's an alarming percentage of people.

And I think what we're seeing with the opioid epidemic, with, you know, substance abuse disorder that's running rampant in our society is a way of coping with feeling like you don't matter. So if you feel like you don't matter, how do you fix that? So it was funny. I was doing a presentation for a major corporation that I won't name and a 30-year-old raised their hand and said, you know, some days I really don't feel like I matter. Some days I really don't. And is there a mantra that I could say to myself? And I said, I have something better than a mantra.

I said, what I think you should do on those days is go to the cafeteria and say to the man or the woman who serves you that delicious warm lunch that brings a smile on your face and thank them for always making your day a little brighter. So the way to unlock our mattering is by unlocking it in others. The more we can unlock mattering, even just small talk at the deli or thanking someone sincerely for doing something for you. That is how we build up our own sense of mattering. It's one way. That's an interesting way because I wouldn't think that would be a way. But anytime you have one of those conversations, you always feel pretty good.

You always feel like when you tell somebody how grateful you are for what they do, that feels good to you. Exactly. It's a, you know, they call gratitude a social glue, what binds people together. So when you feel appreciated, the person, you know, even let's call it a colleague. Let's not say it's a stranger.

Let's say it's someone in your workplace. Really takes time to appreciate. something that you've done and say it out loud, what does that do? It binds you to them. It helps, it helps you notice that they are potentially a good relationship partner, somebody that may be a relationship, a friendship that you want to nurture. So, and then it binds you to them. The find, bind, remind theory is, is what I'm talking about, which is something researchers who study gratitude have found with couples and with long-term friendships that expressions of gratitude can actually act like a booster shot, reminding you of the value of that relationship and bonding you to them.

That gratitude plays an evolutionary role in making our social connections strong. So I guess, and you kind of questioned, you know, where I was coming from early on. And I think what I was thinking was more when I, saw the title, this overachievement culture and the solution is to lower your sights. Don't try so hard. You're just ruining your life and, you know, settle for less. And that's not your message. No, my message is the opposite. My message is be ambitious for more. Be ambitious for more than just a narrow definition of success. What does it mean to you to live a successful life. And what a successful life looks like to me is having a successful marriage,

having a successful, strong relationship with my kids, being a friend that people know they can depend on, enjoying hobbies, having time for joy in my life, having enough time to rest. So what I'm saying is not to be not ambitious, but to be ambitious for more than just being a cog in the machine. Well, it's a great message, and I think one a lot of us can take to heart, those of us who perhaps have put too much

emphasis on achievement in our life, and maybe there's a different way. I've been speaking with Jennifer Wallace. She is a journalist and social commentator. She's a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal in the Washington Post, and she is author of a book called Never

Enough. When Achievement Culture becomes toxic and what we can do about it. There's a link to that book at Amazon and the show notes. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Jennifer. Thank you so much. Welcome aboard Air Canada. Rocky's vacation here we come. Whoa, is this economy? Free beer, wine, and snacks. Sweet. Fast free Wi-Fi means I can make dinner reservations before we land. And with live TV, I'm not missing the game. It's kind of like I'm already on vacation. Nice. Nice travels.

Wi-Fi available to aeroplane members on equip flights. Sponsored by Bell. Conditions apply. See AirCanada.com. When a child is in the hospital, visitors come to say hello. And when visiting hours are over, they leave. But family. Family does whatever it takes to stay. At Ronald McDonald's, we believe families shouldn't have to fight alone.

So we make sure they have everything they need with a community of support, warm meals, and a place to rest. Because when a child is sick, family stays, and Ronald McDonald's house stays with them. There is something awe-inspiring about the ocean. Just looking at it can give you an amazing sense of wonder. The oceans cover so much of our planet, and yet many of us know very little about what goes on beneath the surface, or even on top of the surface. and many of us don't really understand what the oceans do.

Here to take us on a fascinating journey of the world's oceans is Helen Chersky. Helen is a physicist and oceanographer at University College London's Department of Mechanical Engineering, and she is author of a book called The Blue Machine, How the Oceans Work. Hi, Helen, welcome to something you should know. Thanks for having me on. So I have always loved the ocean. I've lived near the ocean. The ocean, there's something about it that just does it for me.

But what is it you find so fascinating about the ocean? It's that it's so many different things. It's, it, the way, the way you see the ocean depends on your perspective at that time. And it's, it's kind of the same as, you know, we, we all understand that a human being can be many different things, right? Someone can be a poet and a great badminton player and also a skeleton that's got, you know, some lungs and kidneys hanging off it. And there's all these different ways of looking at what a human being is. And in the same way, there's lots of different ways of looking at what the ocean is. And I think the great shame is that our society really only sees one or perhaps two of those things.

And there's all this richness behind it. Yeah. Well, of course, that richness is all underwater. So it's kind of hard to see unless you really make an effort to go look. And I think that's why we're so mystified by it because it isn't easy to see. No, it isn't. And of course we're land mammals and, you know, the ocean is far away from many of us and it's quite hard to get out into the middle of the ocean, all of those things. But really, the great

tragedy of the ocean, I mean, all of that is also true for the sky and for the moon and, you know, for the stars. The great tragedy of the ocean from a human point of view is that you can't see into it, that light doesn't travel very far. Because just imagine if you could really see into the ocean. You know, we think that water is transparent to light because when you turn on the tap, you know, what comes out is, is colourless, even though actually we all teach our children to draw, you know, with blue crayons, to draw water with blue crayons, which are just crazy. If there's enough water altogether, it does look blue. But we think of water as something that light travels through, but actually it doesn't. It'll go a couple of hundred metres on a good

day. And so it stops us. The ocean hides itself from us. And that's the thing that, you know, we're such visual creatures that because we can't look into it in the same way that we can look into the sky, we sort of think it isn't there. And as you say, that makes it harder to appreciate, but it does mean that once you start to be able to look, you know, as technology gets better, as we get better at telling these stories, there's a lot to see there. Can you give me just some of the ABCs of oceans, like, you know, how many are there, how much of the earth does it cover, just some of the basic facts and figures about the ocean as it relates to us? Well, I guess the statistic that most people are familiar with is that the ocean covers about 70% of Earth's surface.

The thing that the statistic, interestingly, I think most people are less familiar with, is that there's only one ocean. That's it. There's one. Because it's all connected. And you can see it like this. There's a type of map known as the spillhouse projection, because the guy who came up with it was called Athelstam spillhouse. And, you know, so every two-dimensional map is a version of a three, you know, you take a three-dimensional sphere and this spherical surface and you kind of try and flatten it out somehow so you can put it on a piece of paper. And he said this very profound thing. He said that in order to see the land, we always cut the ocean. So in order to see the ocean, we must cut the land. And when you draw the map like that, when you unwrap

earth so that you cut the land instead of the ocean, then you can see it's one big global ocean. on average it's just a little bit under four kilometers deep and I guess one of the perhaps statistic about it is that just under half of all photosynthesis on earth happens in the ocean so you know we think on land we think about trees plants all those green things harvesting sunlight and turning it into a form that other you know other life can can eat basically like us and just under half of all of that process for earth happens in the ocean even though we can't see plants and trees and that sort of thing in most of the ocean. So, yeah, it's an important place.

There's lots going on there. Well, you say it's all one ocean, but I remember it wasn't that long ago. I saw that picture, or maybe it was a video, of where the Atlantic, I think it's the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean meet and the waters don't mingle, that you can see the line between one and the other. So how are they all one if they don't mingle? So the area you're talking about, and I think you're talking about the area off South Africa, that's the most famous place where you see that.

You know, fish can just swim from one side to the other. It's clearly connected, but the water doesn't have time to mix up. Whatever's generating the distinctiveness is kind of generating distinctiveness faster than the mixing can even it out. But you say fish could swim between the two things, they can go and do they? yeah that's right so and actually there are because of this distinctive anatomy you know if you so to us it just looks like water and more water and other water but if you're a fish um especially if you're a predator that can swim long distances to find food the ocean to you is a has structure in the same way that we look at land and we see hills and forests and streams you know we see

different types of environment um if you're underwater and you're a predator you can effectively distinguish different types of environment so for example example, the Gulf Stream is the big fast warm current that comes up the side of North America in the Atlantic and then turns across and comes out towards us in Europe. And it's generally drawn on the map as a kind of smooth line kind of curving around. But actually, if you look at what it's really doing, it's much more interesting than that, because this river of water within other water is sort of wobbling and meandering as it goes. And sometimes as those wobbles grow, they get big enough. So imagine a kind of a stream going along that starts to generate a loop and the loop

gets bigger and bigger until eventually a whole part of that loop can kind of break away and it just spins by itself. And so the Gulf Stream is doing that all the time and it's kind of budding these spinning islands of water that we call mesoscale edits. And they can be 50 to 100 kilometers across. They can last for several months, up to two years. And that little spinning island, either of warm water within cold water or a spinning island of cold water within warm water, the Gulf Stream kind of buds these off and then they sort of drift off either north or south. And they've got quite distinctive ecosystems. And so, for example, bluefin tuna will go looking for those eddies

because they know that they're good places to hunt. And the yellowfin and big eye tuna, they'll go looking for the cold ones. And the bluefin tuna go looking for the warm ones. and the sharks are often found at the bottom of the warm ones, and the swordfish hang around outside. So absolutely, they can swim across the ocean because they know that these features are going to be there. They know that it'll have the thing they want to hunt.

And so they can swim into them. And once they've found one, they'll kind of stay with it and, you know, scoff themselves silly, fill themselves with food. And then if it starts to dissipate or to mix in with the rest of the ocean, they'll just go and find another one. What makes the ocean salty? So it's quite profound question. It was first, Aristotle is the first person we have a record of asking that question.

And he came to the conclusion, you know, before the age of what we now recognize as science and experimentation. He thought the sea was salty because when sunlight hit it, it became salty. And it wasn't until the 1600s when a guy called Robert Boyle, who was very much into experiments, actually left some water out in the sunshine to see if it was. would go salty and it didn't, it just started to stink. So that was that idea out of the door. And there is a lot of salt in the ocean and where it comes from a mixture of places. So what we think of salt as being a solid because, you know, that's what you put on your chips or whatever, your fries. But actually only what salt really is, is it's a mixture of different components

that all dissolved in the water. So you might have chloride and sodium and magnesium and iodide, all these kind of components. But it's only when you take the water away. that they join up to form a solid salt. So salt is actually lots of different things that are all mixed in to seawater. And the mixture of them is the same everywhere, which is quite interesting. But it's just because they've had so long to mix up.

And so those components came from different places. But there were two major sources. One of them was on the early earth. There were huge amounts of acid rain because way back then, the environment was much more harsh. The rain was slightly acidic. And as it ran over rocks, it dissolved some minerals from the rocks like sodium.

So that's where the sodium comes from. And, of course, the rivers then ran down into the sea, and the sea gradually got more and more sodium. And then the other place you get ions from is from underwater volcanoes, which are belching things out from underneath the earth. And that's where the chloride came from. But once they're all in the ocean,

there's no way for them to get out. So over geological time, you know, they've kind of accumulated in the ocean. And now there's a kind of balance between salt that goes, you know, the same process is adding little bits more salt to the ocean. And the processes which are kind of putting salt high and dry on land. So, you know, in Utah, you get those salt flats. Well, that's salt that used to be in an ocean, and now it's dry on land, so it's not in the ocean anymore.

But there is a huge amount of salt in the ocean. If you, you know, you take a household bath and you want to make it as salty as the ocean, you have to put a whole bucket full of salt in it. It's a lot of salt. The temperature of the ocean is regulated by what? temperature is really important in the ocean because it's a water is a really good way of storing heat and we know this because if we try and you know if we heat up some water in a pot on the stove or in a cattle it takes an enormous amount of energy to do it you have to put a lot of energy in

to warm up water by even a little bit so that means that if you if you've got some water you can add lots of energy to it you can effectively store the energy there But you've only heated up the water a little bit. So the ocean is an enormous store of heat energy, and it comes from the sun, almost all of it. You know, there's tiny contributions from geothermal energy underneath, but they are absolutely minuscule. So the ocean's heated from above, and because of the way the ocean engine turns, it turns out that the bottom of the ocean is filled from the poles, and that the poles is obviously much colder water. So the water that flows, that fills up the bottom of the ocean from different places on the world, that's cold water.

So at depth, it can be maybe four degrees Celsius, while at the surface where it's all being heated by the sunlight, in the tropics, it could be 30 degrees Celsius. So you get this temperature structure, which is part of the anatomy of the ocean. And one of the things the ocean does, together with the atmosphere, is move heat, overall to move heat from the equator towards the poles, helping to dry. the weather. And of course, that influences what happens on land. So it sounds, you know, the sort of things that a child might know about the ocean are that it's, it's warm or cold, it's salty, and it's wet. And those are quite fundamental things that determine the character of the ocean and why it's so important for our planet. So if I go stand on the beach and look at the water in the ocean that I can see, and I come back a week later and do the same thing, and my

looking at the same water or is this all new water that's moving around and maybe this was in Japan three weeks ago and because everything's moving or is it pretty stationary? It's almost certainly moved somewhere. It does depend a bit on where you are. Yeah, that water's been on a journey and you don't always know where it's come from. These days actually we have quite clever computer models which we can sort of run backwards. You know, if we say if we're here, where do we think that water came from? So it will have come from. somewhere else. And it will have mixed in with water from lots of different places, actually. So as the ocean engine turns, there is a very slow mixing. So, you know, over here, if I was to

dip a toe in the water off the coast of Scotland, for example, I would be getting some water from over on the American side of the Atlantic that's travelled across with Gulf Stream. I would probably be getting some water that's come down from the Arctic, there might be some water that has perhaps it got rained onto land and it went into the Baltic and it's come out into the North Sea. So, you know, if you were to trace the distant origins, all water has probably been everywhere. But the interesting thing is that actually some of the water, if you're in some places in the world where you get an upwelling from the deep, the water that you're seeing might not just have come from another country, but it might have been down in the deep ocean for so long that it hasn't

seen sunlight for a few hundred years. So you're also kind of going back in time. You know, the last time it was connected to the atmosphere, connected to the rest of the planet, could have been a long time ago. So the water is also coming to you from different times in time as well as different places in space. What about the ocean do you think people maybe don't know that would be fascinating because it either affects them, it affects us, or it happens and we don't see it, or just something that's really rather amazing that is under the radar? If I had to pick one thing, off the top of my head, you know, I would say how important sound is in the ocean.

We have this idea that the ocean is kind of silent, partly because of films and partly because of one specific film, the silent world that the Jacques Cousteau made back in 1956. And we don't prioritize sound very much on land. We're visual creatures. We look for things. We look at things that are a long way away. and we kind of know that we usually can't hear things

that are a very long way away. But in the ocean, it's exactly the other way around. Light doesn't travel very far. Light is not a long-distance messenger. But sound is absolutely critical. So I think in terms of things that we don't think about when it comes to the ocean, the importance of sound and the number of different sounds there are.

So on a coral reef, for example, or the fish and the crustaceans, whatever's down there. They're basically chattering away. They're grunting and squeaking and making all kinds of noises. they're talking to each other, they're paying attention to what's around them, because they can hear what's around them. And it's been shown a scientist called Steve Simpson at the University of Exeter recently did a study showing that if you've got a dead coral reef, you know, one that's been bleached, and so there's not very much living there, if you play the sounds of a live coral reef in that place, then the larvae of fish that are kind of floating around in the water are more likely to settle there. So coral larvae, for example, or small things that need an anchor point, you know, barnacles and so on, they're more likely to settle in a place that's got the right sound. So when you see like a hurricane, a big weather system and the water looks all chopped up and big huge waves out in the middle of the ocean, ships being thrown around, but you get the sense that just below the surface, things are quieter.

Like, if you go down not too far, things kind of remain the same. Is that true? And maybe that's because when you swim in the ocean and you go down a few feet, things seem pretty calm versus the waves on the top of the water. Is that true in the ocean? No. But the reason it's not true. I mean, the waves are pretty turbulent.

And that's part of what I study, you know, my academic job. But actually, it's to do with how we look at the world. So we have eyes and senses that can see waves, but they can't tell the difference between different types of water, you know. But what we can't see is all the other character of the water. So we can't directly detect the amount of living things that are in the water, and most living things in the ocean are really, really tiny. In land we tend to think of, you know, that kind of life as being trees, big things that we can see. But in the ocean, it's far too small to see.

I estimate, if you look at those numbers, I estimate that just over 60% of all ocean life is too small for us to see with the naked eye. So we can't see what's happening with the life for a start. And even then, there's small things in the water that we technically could see if we were looking for them, but they tend not to come out during daytime. So, for example, the biggest migration on earth happens at dusk in the ocean where lots and lots of very tiny creatures that have been hiding down in the darkness as the same. sun comes goes down they rise up in the water column and come up to the surface to hunt and then when the sun you know when the sun rises again they go they sink back down so we tend not to see those because we tend not to be swimming in the dark um so so it's not that there aren't things happening it's just that our senses are biased so we don't see them in the we're not aware of them in the same way that you know smaller creatures or creatures that live in the ocean that have to you know navigate through these conditions would be able to tell. So there is, it might be calmer in the sense that, you know, it's not like a washing machine. You know, you've not got that kind of turbulence that's smashing everything about. But it is definitely the case that there are lots of things happening. And there is a huge

amount of character, but we can't see it directly. Are there any misconceptions things people say about the ocean that drive you crazy that, that you know aren't true or anything like that? So I've got a right be in my bonnet about this comparison between the moon. People sometimes, there's this statement people say that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about a deep ocean. It drives me mad. It's wrong. It's wrong in every possible way. And I'll spare you the full rant.

But the basic reason it's wrong is that there is so much more to know about the ocean. It's a much richer environment. And the moon is a dead rock that hasn't changed for two billion years. And, you know, it's perfectly nice. I have nothing against the moon. but it's a static environment that kind of, you know, it's not doing anything and it's relatively limited in what's on offer there. Whereas the ocean is enormously rich. It's got all these different types of life. It's got all these different types of chemistry. It's moving. It's changing

with the seasons. It's changing with the time of day. It's doing things all the time. So it's a far richer environment. And that statement about comparing the moon to the deep ocean drives me nuts because it implies that the deep ocean is only as interesting as the moon and it's much, much better. There are lots of interesting things that we don't know about the ocean. You know, we've never seen giant squid

or colossal squid mate, for example. We don't know where they do it or how they do it. There's plenty of, you know, we don't really know what sea turtles do when they're not nesting or feeding because they're off and the beaches. So those are just two biological things.

There are lots of physical things as well. So just exactly how water is moving along and how it really mixes in the deep ocean. There's lots of questions there. But we also do know a lot about the ocean. We're just not very good at talking about it. So we absolutely do have a very good picture of this engine and how it works. But I do think that we need to get away from this idea that the dominant thing we know about the ocean is that it's mysterious.

You know, if you want mystery, look into space. It's empty. You have your mysteries out there. The ocean is doing so many interesting and beautiful things. We need to look at that for what it really is, to appreciate. that for what it really is, rather than just sort of dismissing it as a mystery. Well, okay, if you say so, but one of the things I find so interesting about the ocean is the mystery of so much that I have no idea what's going on down there, and that somehow

fascinates me. I've been speaking with Helen Cherski. She's a physicist and oceanographer at University College London's Department of Mechanical Engineering, and she's author of a book called The Blue Machine, How the Ocean Works. and there's a link to that book at Amazon and the show notes. Thanks for this little tour through the ocean. Appreciate it, Helen. No problem. Thanks for inviting me on.

Men need praise. That's according to Dr. David Clark, author of a book called The Total Marriage Makeover. He says the more a woman praises her man, the better the relationship will be. But he says most women aren't very good at it. The tendency is to focus on all the things men are not doing or are doing poorly. And maybe all those criticisms are valid, but they totally demotivate a man.

So, instead of criticizing a man for spending too much time at work, praise him for the time he does spend with you and the kids. When women criticize men for what they're not doing, it breeds more of the same. Praise, on the other hand, is such a deep need for men that they will go to great lengths to get more of it, including doing what you want him to do. Try it. Dr. Clark says it always works. And that is something you should know. You know, it's not uncommon for fans of this podcast, and there are many of them.

They'll ask me, like, what can I do to support your podcast? Well, one great thing you can do is to do business with our sponsors. If they're offering something that sounds of interest to you and you do business with them, that helps us. I'm Micah Rothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Hi, Bald. It's me, Trixie Mattel, Skinny Legend, and Board Certified HVAC Somali. And me, Katia Zamalachikova, the sweatiest creature in showbiz reminding you to subscribe to the Bald and the Beautiful podcast. Listen as we cover topics as varied as proper bidet usage, celebrity impression tutorials, and a television show I recently watched that I'll base my entire personality on for six weeks. as well as creative pest control, tasty lime aid recipes, and fun sex act trend.

We also chat about boobs and movies and wigs and stuff, which is obviously the public service part of the podcast. So get ready for screaming, cackling, and some occasional educational moments as two massively unqualified queens talk about what it's like to be the epitome of fabulous. Go subscribe to The Bald and the Beautiful with Trixie Mattel and Katia Zamalachcova on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening right now. Oh, the Regency Era. You might know it as the time when Bridgeton takes place, or the time when Jane Austen wrote her books. But the Regency Era was also an explosive time of social change, sex scandals,

and maybe the worst king in British history. And on the Vulgar History podcast, we're going to be looking at the balls, the gowns, and all the scandal of the Regency era. Vulgar History is a women's history podcast, and our Regency Era series will be focusing on the most rebellious women of this time. That includes Jane Auster.

and herself, who is maybe more radical than you might have thought, we'll also be talking about queer icons like Anne Lister, scientists like Mary Anning and Ada Lovelace, as well as other scandalous actresses, royal mistresseses, rebellious princesses, and other lesser-known figures who made history happen in England in the Regency era. Listen to vulgar history wherever you get podcasts.