Something You Should Know - The Fascinating History of Blue Jeans & Incredible Science About You and Your World

Starting point is 00:00:00 Today on Something You Should Know, it's important to take breaks during your work day. But when? Well, I'll tell you exactly when. Then, the fascinating history of blue jeans. And as you might imagine, John Wayne and his blue jeans are part of the story. Every time he was going to go on a new film set, his family, in a sort of a ritual, would bundle the jeans up with rocks and toss them off a pier into the Pacific Ocean and leave them for a couple of days. And then when he dragged them out, they had been broken down and softened by the combination of the stone and the water. Also, just how accessible are those super successful people you'd love to meet?

Starting point is 00:00:38 More accessible than you think. And amazing science you never knew. Well, 50% of the cells in your body are not yours. They are microorganisms which are hitching a ride. It's even worse because it turns out that 99.75% of the DNA in your body does not belong to you. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know is all about.

Starting point is 00:01:17 And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu.

Starting point is 00:01:39 She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your entrepreneurial spirit, the future of robotics, and so much more. Like I said, if you like this podcast, Something You Should Know, I'm pretty sure you're going to like TED Talks Daily. And you get TED Talks daily wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to another interesting, fun, and fact-filled episode of Something You Should Know, episode number 226.

Starting point is 00:02:28 And we begin today talking about breaks. You've probably heard, and a lot has been written, about the importance of taking breaks when you're working, and that you will ultimately do better work and be more productive if you take breaks during the workday. But the question is, when? When is the best time to take a break? Well, according to research at Baylor University, the answer is mid-morning. It seems mid-morning breaks are more helpful because it's easier to replenish your energy early in the day when your concentration and motivation are higher than trying to replenish

Starting point is 00:03:04 yourself later in the day when you're more tired and depleted. But taking a break from work doesn't mean taking a break and then go pay your bills or schedule a doctor's appointment or doing anything else that is even slightly stressful. Otherwise, it defeats the whole purpose of taking a break. Taking a break means taking a break from all work. So you're better off to go talk to someone, read an article, or just cyber loaf on the internet. You'll feel better when you return. And that is something you should know. Few things are as all-American as blue jeans. I'm sure you have a pair or two or three in your house somewhere. Everyone has worn blue jeans. So where did they come from?

Starting point is 00:03:55 And what is denim anyway? And how is it different from other fabrics? Why did blue jeans become so iconic and so associated with America, particularly the American West? Well, as you might imagine, there's a fascinating story here, and journalist James Sullivan explored and uncovered it for his book, Jeans, A Cultural History of an American Icon. Hi, James. Welcome. So take us back to the beginning. Where did blue jeans start, and why, and how did they catch on? How did it all begin?

Starting point is 00:04:28 Well, blue jeans, the history isproduced, factory-produced blue gene originated in 1873 with the Levi Strauss Company out of San Francisco. And the distinction is that the mass-produced genes that Levi's began making have the copper rivets. The copper rivets make the pants obviously more durable, they last longer. And at the time that was done so that miners and other working class people would have durable work clothes. The rivets have since become part of the whole fashionability of jeans themselves. Everybody knows what denim looks like and feels like. I mean, you can spot it a mile away that that's denim. That's what jeans are made out of. But what is it and how is it different than other fabrics?

Starting point is 00:05:33 Denim is a cotton twill material with the warp is dyed with indigo, although jeans have come in many different colors. And the cross thread is undyed, which is one of the things that gives jeans their distinct look. The more the indigo abrades off of your jeans. In other words, when you wash them and wear them and the indigo starts to chip away, it exposes the undyed cross thread underneath, and that's where the fading comes from. That's where the distinct fading look comes from. So in denim, the threads going one way are colored, and the threads going the other way are not colored. They're white. So that's what makes denim, denim. And so who is Levi Strauss? Was he a real guy? Levi Strauss is a real guy, sure. Levi was a wholesaler in

Starting point is 00:06:15 San Francisco beginning in the 1850s, when San Francisco was a boomtown because of the California gold rush. And he was selling all kinds of household goods, materials, including denim, to retailers. And the idea of blue jeans, he was selling something like an early version of jeans, among the many other things that he was selling for the first two decades of his existence as a businessman in San Francisco. He was approached in the early 1870s by a small-time tailor in Nevada who had come up with the idea of adding the copper rivets to make the pants more durable for his customers. And this guy, his name was Jacob Davis, had been buying denim material from Levi Strauss for a number of years.

Starting point is 00:07:03 And he approached his supplier and said, if you can help me come up with the cost for the patent application, we can split it. And Jacob Davis eventually went to work for Levi and ran the first factory that produced the first Levi's jeans. So the original appeal of blue jeans was the durability, nothing else it wasn't fashion it wasn't cool color it was just that they were very durable you know i like to say that for the first 75 to 100 years of their existence as we know them i don't think anybody really thought twice about them other than the fact that you wanted them to be durable you know you were probably wearing them uh you were you were almost certainly wearing them for hard work.

Starting point is 00:07:45 You were a farmer or a miner or someone building the railroads or a construction worker, cowboy. You were doing hard work and you weren't wearing them for the way they looked. It was only really in the 1940s, let's say, that jeans really started to become something like a fashion item. And how did that happen? Well, in the early years, the 30s and 40s, one of the first ways that the general mainstream of America came to understand what blue jeans were was by seeing them in movies, in Western movies. The earliest cowboy heroes in the movies were sort of dandies. They wore a lot of fringe and fussy-looking cowboy clothing. And then as Western films grew up, the John Waynes and men of his era

Starting point is 00:08:26 started wearing blue jeans that they felt were a little more of an authentic farmer or cowboy look, which were dustier and sort of more rugged looking. Students and young people in the 30s and 40s began wearing them in part because they wanted to emulate their heroes from Western films, and also in part because they wanted to show college students, for instance, wanted to show solidarity with the working class. So artists, college students, and young people really didn't start wearing jeans as casual wear until the 30s and 40s. What is it about Levi's that makes them so iconic, and they seem to win the battle every time other jean manufacturers show up?

Starting point is 00:09:09 You know, they've carved out a niche, but Levi's is still, in many minds, blue jeans. Levi's is blue jeans. Well, they clearly have created a company that's had astounding durability, just like the product itself. I mean, they did essentially invent the modern blue gene in 1873. So that's a long time. And the company was actually a regional company, mostly recognized on the West Coast until 50 or 60 years ago.

Starting point is 00:09:41 There was a time, it's hard to understand but there was a there was a long period of time where there were other jeans manufacturers that were better known on the east coast and levi's but one of the things that the company was great at has always been great at uh... marketing itself and uh... so in the thirties forties fifties levi's really started to understand maybe more quickly than any of their rivals that you could market these things not only to working men and women, but also to young people as their own kind of leisure wear. And so Levi was really sort of instrumental in establishing that.

Starting point is 00:10:17 It does seem that a lot of jean companies have come and gone, but who would you say are Levi's, historically have been Levi's biggest competitors in the blue jean business? Well, historically, it's always been Lee, and since the 40s, Wrangler. Wrangler was founded in, the Wrangler that we know today was founded in 1947. Historically, it's always been those two companies, although pretty clearly in the last handful, you know, there's been cycles in jeans history where various trendy designers have gotten a lot of attention,

Starting point is 00:10:49 and clearly in the last handful of years, that don't quite put up the same numbers that Levi's does, but that have been grabbing the lion's share of the attention for the product. But historically, it's Wrangler and Lee. And certainly over the years, there have been different styles of jeans. You know, there's the button fly and the zipper fly and the extra pockets and a lot of different styles of blue jeans. Jeans were button fly until the 20s when the Lee Company actually introduced the zipper. One of the interesting things that I found in researching my book and talking to many different people who've been in the industry for a long time is that we tend to think of jeans in stark terms going from the sort of rock and roll 50s look of Levi's and the other companies or the cowboy look, and then suddenly in the late 70s and early 80s going

Starting point is 00:11:38 to the designer jeans of the disco era, Calvin Klein and Gloria Vanderbilt and Guess Jeans and Jordache and all of those brands, when the fact of the matter is that from the mid-60s or so, jeans manufacturers had been finding many different ways to stylize jeans, to make them something other than the classic, as I said, rock and roll or cowboy look that we think of as sort of the old-fashioned looking jean. In the 60s, kids started wearing their jeans lower on the hip. They started wearing much more flared bell-bottoms. They started toying with the finishes, the washes, pre-washing the jeans to sell them with a pre-faded look and bleaching them and other methods of changing, altering the appearance of the

Starting point is 00:12:25 garment before it even hit the shelves. So many different things were done to jeans before that designer jeans era that were intended to sort of stylize them, upscale them. 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.

Starting point is 00:12:56 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, Thanks for watching. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating

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Starting point is 00:14:45 Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm speaking with James Sullivan. He is a journalist and author of the book, Genes, A Cultural History of an American Icon. So James, here's a question. Remember stonewashed jeans? I had several pairs of stonewashed jeans back in the 80s or whenever they were popular. What does that term mean? What are stonewashed jeans? Stonewashed literally means washed in washing machines with pumice stone. There's a fun tale that I retell in my book about John Wayne. He did something that a lot of people did back in his day.

Starting point is 00:15:27 The jeans were never pre-washed in his day, and so they came pretty stiff, and you wanted to break them in before you started wearing them, and a lot of people sort of started to realize that you could, people would lie down in a bathtub with them on for an hour or two so that they would shrink to form fit the body. And one of the things that John Wayne did was every time he was going to go on a new film set, he would take his family on a vacation beforehand,

Starting point is 00:15:55 and he would have his new pair of jeans that he was going to wear on the film set. And his family, in sort of a ritual, would bundle the jeans up with rocks, tie them up, and toss them off a pier into the Pacific Ocean and leave them for a couple of days until the vacation was over with. And then when he dragged them out, they had been broken down and softened by the stone, by the combination of the stone and the water. Wow, I've never heard that story before. That's pretty interesting that John Wayne would tie up his jeans and throw them off a pier. But as you point out, I mean, they weren't pre-washed, probably pretty stiff and uncomfortable, so he probably wasn't the only one to do something like that to soften them up. There's a well-known Hollywood designer, costume designer, who did real stylish Western suits called Nudy Cohen, Nudy's,

Starting point is 00:16:46 the company that made all of those very stylized, fringy Western suits. He did stuff for Elvis and lots of country singers. And in the early 70s, before any of the major jeans manufacturers began stonewashing their jeans on a mass production scale, Nudy was another designer who did the same thing. He took industrial-strength washers and tossed his jeans into the washers with stone and tossed them that way. From all accounts, I'm told the process is hell on the washing machines.

Starting point is 00:17:20 Yeah, I would think so. And you probably end up with some very clean stones. You talk about the prices people have paid for vintage jeans. It's pretty amazing. Talk about that. Like a lot of other collectible artifacts, you know, jeans have, one of the neat things about them is that they've been such a huge part of American culture for so many years that at this point, a pair of hundred-year-old jeans, if it's in decent shape, is worth a lot to someone out there. One of the interesting things about that is the idea of globalization. I mean, one of the main products of selling Western culture to the rest of the world has been blue jeans over the years. Other cultures have historically loved the idea of blue jeans and what it says about American culture.

Starting point is 00:18:06 And so in the 1980s, the Japanese were going through their huge economic boom and looking for places to spend their money, essentially. And one of the places that they did that was on vintage American clothing, and not just jeans but bomber jackets and Hawaiian shirts. Certain looks that dated to the World War II era actually were huge in Japanese culture. And so collectors there started paying crazy amounts of money for vintage blue jeans. The collectibles market has kind of gone up and down a little bit since then. But Levi Strauss, for instance, has a world-class archive of its own products,

Starting point is 00:18:52 and they have been known to pay huge sums for jeans that have been newly discovered that date back to 100 years or so. In a lot of cases, they're called miner's pants because the jeans will be found in the mines of Nevada and the West. They were used in a lot of cases when they started to wear out. They would be used to fill cracks to keep the insides of the cave sites intact. And excavators have found fairly good examples of old jeans socked away in the cracks of old mines in the West. And if you were to look at a pair of those old jeans from way back when they were miners' pants, if you were to look at them and feel them, I mean, would they feel like jeans, or has the fabric and everything about jeans, have they evolved to such a point that you wouldn't

Starting point is 00:19:37 recognize them? They essentially look and feel like jeans, which is one of the amazing things about jeans. I mean, over the generations, each successive generation for the last 50 or 60 years has initiated various kinds of twists on the product to make it their own, whether we're talking about the extreme wide bell-bottoms of the hippie era or the extreme baggy pants of the hip-hop era in the 90s. But essentially, it's always remained the same garment. And if you saw a pair of jeans from the 1890s, you would absolutely recognize it as something very similar to what we wear today. So why do we call them jeans? Do you know where the word jeans comes from? I do. The word jeans comes from Genoa, Italy, which was a major shipping port in the Middle Ages. And the French called the Genoans the Jeanne. And one of the things that

Starting point is 00:20:32 they made in Genoa was sort of a precursor to denim material, which was known as jean cloth. So that's where that name comes from. The term denim comes from a French industrial town called Nîmes. That product was known for hundreds of years as Serge de Nîmes, which is shortened to denim. Both jean cloth and denim were made in mass quantities in industrial England and then brought over to America. And denim is more durable than jean cloth, and at some point in the last 150 years or so, the two terms sort of became interchangeable with one another. The product is now made specifically with denim, not jean cloth. But we, a long time ago, sort of conflated the two terms

Starting point is 00:21:17 and started calling denim pants jeans. And I remember growing up, we called them dungarees. So where does that term come from? That actually comes from a town called Dungaree in India, which is another part of the globe that several hundred years ago was already mass-producing a durable cotton cloth used for work clothes. Well, it is interesting how jeans have become such an important part of fashion throughout so many different decades and throughout so many different fashion changes,

Starting point is 00:21:51 and yet jeans are a staple in all of them from the 50s on up. So what do you think the future of jeans is? Well, I think that, excuse me, at this point, it's fairly safe to say that it's not going anywhere. I mean, over the last handful of decades, we've seen fashion commentators make the case periodically that maybe Americans are getting tired of their blue jeans and want something else. But they always tend to come back around. I mean, they're durable, but not only is each individual pair durable, but the idea of blue jeans has proved to be extremely durable. Sure has.

Starting point is 00:22:33 And it's such a great story that pretty much we've all been a part of. My guest has been James Sullivan. He's a journalist and his book is called Jeans, A Cultural History of an American Icon. There's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, James. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong?

Starting point is 00:22:53 Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown.

Starting point is 00:23:34 I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 00:24:02 One of the great things about hosting this podcast is getting to talk with such interesting people and learn such fascinating things and share them with you. And we're about to do it again with Marcus Chown. Marcus is a science writer and a journalist in the UK, and he's really good at explaining scientific things about your world and the universe in interesting and relatable ways that are easy to understand, which is just the way I like it. Easy to understand.

Starting point is 00:24:35 Marcus is the author of a new book called Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand, 50 Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe. Hi, Marcus, welcome. So let's start with one of the more provocative things you say in your book, and that is that the sun could be made out of bananas, and it wouldn't make any difference. Huh? Yeah, I mean that sounds quite a controversial thing, doesn't it really?

Starting point is 00:25:02 But I'm just making the point, why is the sun hot? And the sun is hot for an incredibly simple reason, because it's got a lot of mass, which is being squeezed down on its core by gravity. And when you squeeze something, it gets hot. So that incredible amount of mass pressing down on the core of the sun heats it to about 15 million degrees. And at that kind of temperature, matter kind of turns into this kind of anonymous, amorphous state known as a plasma. It doesn't actually matter what you start off with. You always end up with a plasma.

Starting point is 00:25:39 So the sun is something like a billion, billion, billion tons of mostly hydrogen gas. But if you were to put a billion, billion, billion tons of microwave ovens in one place, or a billion, billion, billion tons of bananas, you would get something equally as hot as the sun. You say that we're born 100% human but die 50% alien. What? Most, well, 50% of the cells in your body are not yours. Okay, they are microorganisms which are hitching a ride so you know there's bacteria on your skin but most most important many of these bacteria we don't actually know what they do but a lot of them are incredibly important so for instance the the bacteria in your stomach help you digest your food. So if you take too many antibiotics, which kill those bacteria, you end up with diarrhea because your stomach cannot actually digest your food.

Starting point is 00:26:32 So they're actually really important. You don't have any of these organisms when you're born, none at all. So you're 100% human. You then acquire them from your mother's milk, from the environment, and by the time you're about two or three, you've got most of them. So when you die, you've got this load of organisms which don't belong to you. It's even worse than what I've just said, because it turns out that 99.75% of the DNA in your body does not belong to you.

Starting point is 00:27:01 It belongs to all these organisms that are hitching a ride. So only 1 400th of the DNA in you is actually your DNA. Well, that's just weird. That's just plain... Very weird, isn't it? Very weird. What do you mean by you get older on a top floor than you do if you're on the bottom floor? Well, this is actually a consequence of Einstein's theory of gravity. And it tells us that time flows more slowly in strong gravity. So if you are closer to, if you are working on the ground floor of a building, you are closer to the mass of the Earth.

Starting point is 00:27:38 So gravity is marginally stronger and time flows more slowly for you than it does on an upper floor. I mean, it's a fantastically small effect. But in 2010, physicists in America were able to show that if you stood on one step of a staircase and someone stood on the step above you, you aged more slowly than they did. And they did it by having two super accurate atomic clocks on the two floors. Now, you may think this is so ridiculously esoteric. Why did, you know, who cares? Well, it turns out that if you've got a sat-nav

Starting point is 00:28:16 or if you use a smartphone, it determines your location relative to global positioning satellites. And these satellites are in highly elongated orbits, and they carry clocks. And when they come in close to the Earth, they're in stronger gravity, their clocks slow down. And when they go a long way out, their clocks speed up.

Starting point is 00:28:36 And if your phone or sat-nav did not compensate for that effect, you would get your location wrong by an extra 50 meters every day. So, you know, you may think it's really esoteric, but actually it affects your life every day. Now, you say in your book that the entire human race could fit into the volume, into the size of a sugar cube, which makes no sense at all. So explain how that works. It turns out that the atoms of which you're made are really, really empty. Okay, you've probably got a picture in your mind of an atom that you

Starting point is 00:29:14 got from school. It's like a miniature solar system, you know, with a nucleus at the center, which is like the sun, and electrons which orbit around it like planets. But that doesn't really tell you how empty atoms are. It turns out that those electrons are very tiny and they orbit a long way away from the nucleus compared to the size of the nucleus. To give you some idea, I'll tell you how much empty space there is in an atom as a percentage, okay? It's 99.99999999999999% I just counted that out on my fingers.

Starting point is 00:29:58 That's how much empty space there is in atoms, okay? So that's how much empty space there is in you. So if you were to squeeze all of the empty space out of all of the atoms in all the 7 billion people on Earth, you could actually fit them in the volume of a sugar cube. So it just shows you how empty matter is. We're ghosts, really. The science of time fascinates me, the past, present, and future. And so talk a bit about that and time travel and the possibilities of that and why this is so interesting. Well, should I say about time travel? I mean, one of the most startling things about time travel

Starting point is 00:30:37 is that here we are in 2018 and no physicist can prove it's impossible. And this is because Einstein showed us, really, in 1915, that in principle, it would be incredibly easy. One of the things you asked me earlier in our conversation is about why you age more quickly on the top floor of a building than the ground floor. And I told you it's because the time flows at different rates and different gravity. So immediately, you can see how to build a time machine.

Starting point is 00:31:13 You just have two regions with two different gravities, where one where time flows at a particular rate and another one where it flows at maybe a slower rate, and you go between them, and you can go back in time. I'll show you how. So this is how you would do it. You imagine a region near a black hole. A black hole is the densest, an object with the most powerful gravity we can imagine.

Starting point is 00:31:39 So if you imagine you have a black hole where time is flying very slowly near it compared to the Earth, and you have the Earth. And you start clocks on the Earth and at the black hole at the same time. So we start on a Monday. By the time it's Friday by the black hole, sorry, by the time it's Friday by the Earth, it's still only Wednesday by the black hole because time is flowing more slowly there. So if you could go instantaneously from the Earth to the black hole,

Starting point is 00:32:06 you would be able to go from Friday to Wednesday. That would be a time machine. Is there any way we could do this? Well, it turns out that Einstein's theory of gravity not only permits the existence of black holes, it permits the existence of things known as wormholes. These are shortcuts through space type. You know, you can imagine you have a wormhole in California,

Starting point is 00:32:27 and, you know, you go in one mouth and you crawl a meter or whatever, and you get spat out in London. You know, it's a shortcut through space-time. So basically, the recipe for a time machine is you have the Earth, and you have a region near a black hole, and you connect them with a wormhole. That's a time machine. Now, to build a time machine, it's totally impractical.

Starting point is 00:32:49 We'd need a black hole, we'd need a wormhole, we'd need stuff with repulsive gravity, it would require a lot of energy to do it. And it would require like a super civilization to do it. It's way, way beyond our technological capabilities. But the point is is it's possible in principle and that is what worries physicists i mean stephen hawking who died in the last year famously proposed what was called the chronology protection conjecture which is just a fancy name

Starting point is 00:33:20 for saying time travel is impossible in other words there's got to be some law that we have not yet discovered that must prevent it. Because the problem is, if time travel is possible, then all kinds of paradoxes, which you may have heard about, can happen. You, in principle, could go back in time, and I don't know why you'd want to do this, but you could shoot your grandmother, your grandfather, before your mother was born. If you did that, then how could you have gone back in time? Because you were never born. So that is the paradox that keeps physicists awake at night. They know that time travel would be very difficult,

Starting point is 00:34:01 very, very difficult to build a time machine in practice, but the fact that it's possible in principle, and they can't prove it isn't worries them. And the rhetorical question that's often asked in this conversation about time travel is, if time travel is possible, where are all the time travelers from the future? They should be coming back here and visiting us and tell us how they do that. That's exactly what Stephen Hawking used to say. One that you explore in your book that doesn't really seem like a science question, but I guess it is, is why are there no photographs of the first man on the moon?

Starting point is 00:34:36 That's a very interesting question, because obviously next year is the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, you know, 1969. I can't remember how much was spent on the NASA Apollo program, but I mean, in today's money, it would probably be hundreds of billions of dollars. And really, after all that, Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, never took a photograph of Neil Armstrong. So this was the publicity opportunity of all history missed. The astronauts were, when they were in Houston before they went, they were told to take cameras, which they kept

Starting point is 00:35:11 on their chest, by the way. They were told to take them home for the weekend and practice with them. But it turned out to be very difficult to take photographs on the moon because of the high contrast. I mean, on Earth, we get soft shadows, but on the Moon, you know, there is no air to soften shadows, so it's either very, very bright or it's very, very dark. So the only photographs we actually have of Neil Armstrong are a photograph taken, which is actually in Buzz Aldrin's visor, a reflection in his visor, and those fuzzy actual TV pictures, that's all.

Starting point is 00:35:45 Which I think comes as a surprise to most people, and it's one of those good little facts to have to impress people at a cocktail party, but that there are no pictures of Neil Armstrong on the moon, except the fuzzy TV pictures, but no real high-quality still photos. No, I mean, it's just absolutely incredible that that would not be done. You know, I don't know at NASA whether they held their head in their hands. Right. I mean, basically, the first two spent only two hours on the moon.

Starting point is 00:36:17 That's all they spent, and then they came back. And I don't know if anyone thought, oh, my God, we've missed out on that opportunity. We didn't photograph the first man on the moon. Okay, and I did want to ask you though, because there's one thing in your book that I read that I've been thinking about ever since, because it boggles the mind, but it makes so much sense when you hear the explanation. It's about the moon. We think of the moon as being up there in the sky, in orbit, around the Earth, and it just sits up there. But you say, no, no, the moon is plummeting towards the Earth.

Starting point is 00:36:51 So explain that. Well, this is a very interesting question because, I mean, it's often a question I get asked by children, you know, in school. They say, oh, why don't satellites fall down? Why doesn't the moon fall down? The answer is it is falling down, but it never reaches the earth. I mean, this was, it took the genius of Isaac Newton, you know, in the 1600s, probably the greatest scientist who ever lived, a man whose father couldn't even write and signed his name with a cross, you know, but he became the greatest physicist

Starting point is 00:37:20 of all time. And he thought to himself, why doesn't the moon fall down? And what he did was he imagined a cannon, you know, firing a cannonball. And he thought, well, if it fires the cannonball pretty much horizontally along the ground, you know what will happen. The gravity will curve it down and it will just hit the ground. And then Newton thought, well, wait a minute, what if I had a bigger cannon? Then I'll be able to fire the cannonball even faster. Then maybe it might go perhaps a mile before gravity curved it down and hit the ground.

Starting point is 00:37:52 And then Newton thought, what if I had the mother of all cannons? Something that could fire a cannonball, I can't remember the speed, but probably about 18,000 miles an hour, something like that. What if I had a cannon that could do that. Then he realized that as fast as the cannonball would be falling back down to the Earth, the Earth's surface, because it's round, would curve away from it. So the ball, even though it was falling, would never get any closer to the Earth's surface. And so it would fall forever in a circle. And that's what he realized the moon was doing.

Starting point is 00:38:26 The moon was falling forever, but never getting any closer, going in a circle. And the genius of that was when he recognized that the moon was falling, he was able to compare how, because he could see how fast it was falling. He knew how fast the moon went around the Earth and everything. He could see how fast it was moving.

Starting point is 00:38:44 He could compare it with how fast an moon went around the Earth and everything. He could see how fast it was moving. He could compare it with how fast an apple fell from a tree. And from that comparison, he could deduce the behavior of gravity. And Newton was able to deduce that simply because he was the genius who realized the moon is falling. And the answer to all those schoolchildren is that the satellites are falling as well. But they're falling in a circle. And as fast as they fall towards the Earth, the Earth's surface curves away from them, so they never get any closer. That is so weird.

Starting point is 00:39:17 And yet, when you think about it, though, it makes sense, sort of, to non-scientific people like me. And it is one of the 50 wonders that you talk about in your book, Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand, 50 Wonders That Reveal an Extraordinary Universe. Marcus Chown has been my guest, and there's a link to that book in the show notes. I appreciate you being here, Marcus. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. It's been a real pleasure being on your show. I bet at some point in your life you've thought about writing to some billionaire CEO or someone very successful or very famous in hopes of getting a meeting.

Starting point is 00:39:59 But you never did because you knew it would be a huge waste of time and would probably go nowhere. Well, think again. When 21-year-old Daniel Jacobs moved to San Francisco, he had no money and he knew no one. He knew he needed to make connections, so he decided, what the heck, and he wrote to several captains of industry, CEOs, presidents, and other top-level executives. He recalls that, I let them know that I admired specific work decisions they'd made

Starting point is 00:40:29 and character traits they'd displayed, and it would be amazing if I could learn from them. Then, something amazing happened. He got replies, lots of replies, from the president of Morgan Stanley, the president of NBC, the chief marketing officers of Coca-Cola, Intuit, and many more. Many of them agreed to speak with him and several became mentors. Daniel is now a very successful entrepreneur, having started several companies of his own.

Starting point is 00:41:05 The president of NBC told him years later why he agreed to meet with him. He said, because in the 20 years of being in this business, every single person who reached out to me cold wanted something. They wanted money, they wanted a job, they wanted something, and you were the first person who asked only for advice. And that is something you should know. I invite you to share this podcast with someone you know who might benefit from it. There is usually a share button on every podcast app out there, whether you listen on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you listen.

Starting point is 00:41:39 It's easy to share, and I'm sure someone will appreciate that you did so. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church

Starting point is 00:42:14 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.

Starting point is 00:42:32 Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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