Something You Should Know - The Mysteries of Your Subconscious Mind & Is An Electric Car in Your Future?

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

When people see someone in public having a heart attack or stroke or other medical emergency, they often pull out their phones? Bad idea. This episode begins with something ER doctors want you to do and NOT do in a medical emergency. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14372699/er-doctor-medical-emergency-darria-gillespie-jay-ladde.html So much of what you do is driven by your subconscious mind. You don’t have to think to blink or have to consciously remember how to walk, or sit or eat – you just do these things. Join me as we take a peek inside the subconscious mind to get a better understanding of how it works and how it drives so much of your life. Here to reveal the very latest research on the subject is Dr. Allan J Hamilton. He is a brain surgeon who holds four professorships at the University of Arizona and he is author of the book Cerebral Entanglements How the Brain Shapes our Public and Private Lives (https://amzn.to/3EKZGC9) Are we all destined to drive electric vehicles? Are electric cars taking the world by storm? Why are some people still resistant to the idea of driving an electric car? The fact is that electric vehicles face some real challenges. Still, ask a Tesla driver and chances are they LOVE their electric vehicle. What does the future hold for the electric car? Here to tell the story of is Mike Colias. He is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and has been reporting on the auto industry for several years. He is also author of the book Inevitable: Inside the Messy, Unstoppable Transition to Electric Vehicles (https://amzn.to/4hXz6Eb) When should a man wear a tie? How does a man decide to wear black shoes or brown? How often should a man get a haircut? Listen as we explore some style basics all men should know. https://www.menshealth.com/style/a19516070/2011-style-rules/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, what not to do when you see someone have a heart attack or stroke. Then, your subconscious brain, how it works and how it's different from a psychopath's brain. There's another part of the brain that's called the amygdala. And the amygdala is very important in situations of anger, but also situations of fear. And one of the things that we see in psychopaths is their amygdalas don't work.

They're not scared of being caught. Also, what every man needs to know about personal style. And are electric cars in all of our futures? So far, it's been a bumpy ride. All of the traditional car makers are still losing a lot of money on electrics. And so you're kind of at this crossroads where, do I lean into this thing that's killing me on a financial statement because I know I can't fall further behind China and Tesla?

All this today on Something You Should Know. This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online and sign up only takes a few minutes. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. 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. What to do in an emergency situation. That's what we're going to start with today. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers. Welcome to Something You Should Know. The Daily Mail had an article online the other day that I thought was really worth mentioning. It was a couple of ER doctors wanting people to know what to do in the event that someone that you're with or You yourself are having a heart attack or some other medical emergency

Because a lot of people do the wrong thing the first thing is don't get your phone out and call a friend or a loved one or Google the symptoms or plug it into chat GBT, all of that waste time. If someone falls to the ground with what looks like a heart attack, call 911. If you are having an emergency, don't drive yourself to the hospital. More than three-quarters of ER patients arrive at US hospitals in their cars rather than in an ambulance. If you can't feel one side of your body, that is not the time to drive yourself or get someone else to drive you to the hospital. You need an ambulance and some

hospitals have particular specialties. Some are better at stroke, some are better at heart attacks and first responders know that and can make sure you go to the right place. Many Americans don't call an ambulance for fear of the cost, but not calling one could be a huge mistake. The doctors also said to make sure that the patient and the loved ones who come to the hospital with the patient all have cell phones with them. The patient might need to call someone and all of their contact info is probably in the phone. And if you take someone else to the ER, stay

with them. Don't just drop them off and leave. You could be a valuable source of support and comfort and you can advocate for the patient and help ensure that they get seen faster by doctors. And that is something you should know. A lot of research is going on to help science learn more about the human brain. How it works, what it is about the brain that makes you who you are, what drives you to do what you do. And a lot of this new research is really fascinating and worth knowing about because, well,

it affects everything you do every second of your life. Here to explain and discuss this is Alan J. Hamilton. He is a medical doctor, a brain surgeon actually. He holds four professorships at the University of Arizona, and he's author of a book called Cerebral Entanglements, How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives. Hey, Alan, welcome to something you should know. Hello, Mike.

Thanks for having me. So, anything having to do with understanding the brain, I think people find interesting. I find it really intriguing. And so let's start with where are we right now when it comes to understanding the brain? I guess the first part is to say, well, what do we know now that we didn't know before? Okay. And the thing that we know now is with brain imaging, we can actually look at the brain when it's feeling things, when it's thinking, and we can see the subconscious and the conscious. So the very first thing I would say that blew everyone away was how small the conscious

world is in our brain compared to the subconscious world. So to give you some numbers, you and I are having a conversation and we're sitting in chairs and we're talking. That takes up 200 bits of information every second. That's the capacity of the conscious brain. By comparison, the subconscious brain is 11 million bits per second. So there's this incredible vast world of subconscious machinery that's going on in the background that we're completely unaware of and then and our brain takes a lot of responsibility for editing it if you will. And those 11 million bits of information are doing what's it doing

using up those 11 million bits of information things like what's it doing using up those 11 million bits of information things like what it's filtering the entire world and it's making decisions about what's important and what isn't important so I'll give you a very concrete example you and I blink our blinks last about one to two hundred milliseconds and we blink 30 times every minute. Okay, so when you and I are talking, we don't see the world going on off, on off, on off, on off. Okay, that's because the brain says, you know what, it's not important for you to know about

that, so I'm going to edit it out. That's just one example of all this subconscious information that's flowing around. Conscious information is what you and I are aware of. Subconscious means we're not aware that it's happening. So when the brain says that's not important for you to know that you're blinking, so I'm going to edit that out, how does it know that? How does it know to edit that out? Well, first, that's got a lot of millions of years of experience. It also could make the argument,

well, if I let you see the world blinking, flashing on and off, on and off, on and off, on and off, that puts you at a disadvantage. It also does things that we don't usually get to see. Let me give you an example. There's a syndrome that we call cortical blindness. It happens with carbon monoxide poisoning. It happens with certain kinds of strokes.

But what happens is the conscious part of the brain that sees vision, which is at the back of our head, it's destroyed. So we have no longer have conscious vision. So those people are blind. They can't see. They can't read, period. But if they walk into a room, they will not bump into a piece of furniture.

And if I throw a ball at them, they can catch it, even though they're completely blind. So you say, well, how is that possible? Well, what you're seeing in that event with cortical blindness is you're seeing the subconscious processing of vision that the brain carries out all the time separated from the conscious reception of vision, which is what we're aware of. So that the brain's literally cleaved the two apart, but you can see how sophisticated it is. And for you and me, everything that we're thinking, doing, experiencing, processing, has a conscious component and a very, very significant subconscious component.

So why is this important to know? Since all of this is kind of going on behind the scenes, the brain is telling you, you don't need to know about this. Why do we need to know about this? Because it actually makes so many things understandable, from things about falling in love, to things about psychopathic killers, to things about laughter, to things about how we process music. All those things have these huge subconscious components and conscious, smaller conscious awareness and we combine them every moment of our lives. And so we're both the subject and the active component in this process.

And that's the brain brings us into existence so we can experience, and our experience brings the brain into existence, if you think about it like that. So talk about falling in love. I'd love to hear about how that works. I'd love to hear about how that works. Well, falling in love, the brain takes love, romantic love, very, very seriously. And the reason is it's found it's a good idea

to have a pair, mate, and then stay together, because they do a pretty good job of bringing up the offspring. So, what happened was nature took... The brain builds on things that are already there. So nature took a molecule, one of my favorite molecules called oxytocin. Oxytocin is a huge molecule and originally it was for let down of breast milk and for uterine contractions. It was related to birth. But when mammalians evolved, mammalians had young that were very dependent on the mom to help bring them up, feed them, and defend them. So

oxytocin began to take on this emotional component of, you know, like the dangerous mother bear with her cubs or the lion with her kittens kind of thing. That got built up stronger and stronger until this molecule of oxytocin was also involved in bonding, affection, trust. What we found is that if we measure oxytocin levels, couples that have very high oxytocin levels have very successful marriages. And parents who have very high oxytocin levels make very good mothers and make very good fathers. And if we take couples and we ask them,

hey, give me a list of subjects that are really tough for you guys to talk about because you argue about them. Okay? And then we bring them into a room and one group gets placebo, they get saline, but the other group gets an oxytocin sniffer. You have to deliver it through the nose. It turns out when they get oxytocin, they don't argue. They're much more willing to compromise.

Their positions are not as hardened. They're much more willing to listen. So you know, you ought to probably crop dust with this stuff around the world right now. But oxytocin is a beautiful molecule. So let me give you another crazy experiment. There was a wedding. Don't ask me how they set this wedding up experimentally, but they asked everybody permission while we're in this wedding, can we sample your blood to measure oxytocin? So you know, the waiters must have been going around with hors d'oeuvres and drawing blood at the same time

kind of thing. So they got everybody at the wedding and they got their oxytocin levels. And guess who had the highest level of oxytocins at the wedding? A couple that was getting married. Oh, well, that makes sense, doesn't it? Right. Okay. Who had the second highest levels of oxytocin? The parents of the bride. Correct. And who had the second and next level of oxytocin? The parents of the groom.

Exactly. And then the bridesmaid party and the groom's party. And all it, what you saw when you looked was this gigantic network of molecular connectivity through oxytocin. And it told you how closely people were bonded together. And that's the joy of oxytocin. Oxytocin makes relationships work. It makes conversations.

If you and I get a conversation going and I'm digging what you're saying, you're digging what I'm saying, I'm listening to you, you're listening to me, each of us is releasing oxytocin at higher levels in each other so that the conversation tends to spiral upward. At least that's our hope. So wait, there's a nasal spray with oxytocin in it? Yeah, let me explain. You can't swallow oxytocin. You can inject it intravenously, but the way they do it for experimental purposes is they just use a nasal spray, and it's very well absorbed through the nose. And it does crazy things. For example, if I give you money and then I spray you with oxytocin in your nose, you will donate more money to charities. Okay, you will be more likely to trust people with money than if I don't spray you with oxytocin.

It's often called liquid trust, but it's just an amazing molecule. And what we found is that couples that fall in love and have very high oxytocin levels are very likely to stay together. And guess what? Their levels will be just as high 25 years later as when they fell in love. What goes on in your subconscious mind? That's what we're talking about today with Dr. Alan Hamilton. He is a professor at the University of Arizona

and author of the book Cerebral Entanglements, How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives. I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times. And I'm Paul Shearer, an actor, writer, and director. You might know me from the League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters. We come together to host UnSpooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them. We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight. So if you love movies like we do,

come along on our cinematic adventure. Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to hit the follow button. From the podcast that brought you to each of the last lesbian bars in the country and back in time through the sapphic history that shaped them comes a brand new season of cruising beyond the bars.

This is your host, Sarah Gabrielli, and I've spent the past year interviewing history-making lesbians and queer folks about all kinds of queer spaces, from bookstores to farms to line dancing and much more. You can listen to Cruising on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes air every other Tuesday starting February 4th. So Alan, you mentioned that psychopaths fit into this conversation about the subconscious, so explain that.

So psychopaths are really an interesting group of people. And of course, there are many much higher proportions of them in prison and that's where a lot of them have of people. And of course there are many much higher proportions of them in prison and that's where a lot of them have been studied. And there are a couple of very interesting characteristics. One is there's a big bundle that goes from the frontal lobe to the emotional parts of the brain, it's called the unsonate vesiculus.

And what it does is it's what holds us back from acting on our impulses, okay? So if I look at your watch and I like your watch, I don't steal it, I just go, oh, you know, Mike's got a nice watch. But when we look at psychopaths, they don't have those bundles, they're not very well developed at all. The other thing we see, there's another part of the brain that is called the amygdala. It is kind of an almond shaped little part of the brain.

Amygdala means almond. The amygdala is very, very important in situations of anger, but also situations of fear. One of the things that we see in psychopaths is their amygdalas don't work. They're not scared of being caught. They're not scared of the police. And if you look at folks like Ted Bundy and Manson and people of that nature, they're almost taunting the police to try and find them. So, let's talk about laughter. I mean, I love laughter. I love laughter too. Henry James is the father of American psychologists. He said something very insightful, which is,

we don't laugh because we're happy, we're happy because we laugh. And that turns out to be quite true. There are only five species of primates that have laughter. And we're the only one has social laughter, the kind of polite laughter when somebody tells a stupid joke at the coffee machine and you politely laugh. And then we have that real awesome belly laughter where our sides hurt, where we're afraid we're going to pee on ourselves, where we're just, our sides are splitting.

And that is handled by a completely different part of the brain, actually a very ancient part of the brain. But that laughter is associated with an amazing outpouring of hormones, including endogenous opioids and oxytocin. So laughter is a very social activity. If you think about it, when we're alone and at home watching something, it's very unusual for us to laugh out loud alone. But when we go to the movie theater or we go to see a stand-up comic or when we're with a group of friends, that's

when laughter really happens. Laughter is a social activity, and they think, evolutionarily, that that's one of its primary functions is to bond together. But it's also associated with an outpouring of some wonderful hormones and peptides that make us feel very good. The other thing is that there are tremendous health benefits from laughter. There was a journalist named Norman Cousins, and I worked, it was editor for the Saturday Review and he had a terrible disease called ankylosing spondylitis and I won't go into it but it's usually a disease that's incurable and it's associated with tremendous amount of spine pain. And he went to see doctor after doctor and they said there's nothing you can

do and you're probably not going to live for another year or two. Now he noticed that when he watched funny movies or funny TV shows, that he always seemed to feel better and less pain. So, he began this program where he basically forced himself to watch funny movies and funny TV programs two hours a day like a prescription. Okay? And bit by bit, his pain became alleviated and he actually lived for 22 more years. Strangely enough, he founded a school that's called Psychoneuroimmunology, which is where we found out that there's a tremendous connection between how we feel and how our immune systems work. And part of that is triggered by laughter. And laughter has very positive effects on our immune system.

I can tell you about an interesting experiment. Yeah. Okay, they took two groups, and they took one group and they put them in a room where they were gonna show them a horror movie. And they put the other group in a room where they were showing them a funny movie. And they collected blood samples from both groups.

And then they took the blood samples and they separated out the white cells and they put them in these Petri dishes where we grow bacteria. And what they found was the blood from the people who watched funny movies was three times more effective at killing staph aureus bacteria than the group that had been watching the scary movie. And that effect has now been shown over and over and over again that laughter tends to boost our immune system, and it boosts positive inflammatory markers as well.

And so there's a couple couple things you can do. You can make sure that you watch funny movies and may go out of your way to make sure that you catalog what you enjoy watching and you find friends that you watched. You can go to a comedy club. You have to go in, by the way. You can't just stand outside the comedy club. You have to go in and listen to the comic and laugh. But laughter is very, very therapeutic. I wanted to ask you, back when we were talking about oxytocin and you were singing the praises of it and saying, well, you don't really want to use a nasal spray to get more of it.

But if it's so great, how do you get more of it? Great question. It's very easy. Human contact is very important. When you give, somebody gives you a very big warm hug, that boosts your oxytocin level. And to get your oxytocin levels high, you really need about seven of those a day. So I don't know, it depends on how active you've been so far,

but you got the rest of the day to get the seven done. But it also, affectionate gestures, touching someone on the shoulder. And if none of that works, go out and get yourself a dog. Because petting dogs releases oxytocin. So it's just the affectionate bonding that makes oxytocin go up. And women have a tremendous advantage in that they make about five to seven times more oxytocin than men do. Which may be one of the reasons why women have a lot more ease being intimate with each other than men do in their conversation. So all of this stuff we're talking about, this is all fairly new, right? This is all relatively new research? You have to understand, Mike, we are the first generation in the history of humanity that has been able to see a human thought and a human emotion. And it is profoundly changing the way we look at normal states and disease states. And it will become the foundation of how we actually look at administering medication for certain psychiatric and emotional conditions

because we can begin to see what parts of the brain are being affected by the medication. And has that started to happen yet? Yes, it's happened in depression, it's happened in PTSD. We see that as people remember that amygdala I told you that's sort of always on guard and looking out and checking if the world's okay and blah blah. Like that's hyperactive in people with PTSD. They're always checking the perimeter, they're checking if the world's okay and blah blah. That's hyperactive in people with PTSD. They're always checking the perimeter, they're checking if there's a threat, they're checking. Well, as their PTSD is treated, that amygdala activation goes down.

So knowing what you know, like do you, has all of this research, has it changed anything in your life? I mean, have you put this into practice or is this just something we're keeping our eye on no absolutely looked at this from the point of view of

how does it tell me about how i'm living my private life and has it tell me about how i'm interacting out in public. Okay, so I spend a lot of time trying to go over the research that is reported and saying, how does this affect me? A perfect example is, if I'm interviewing somebody, I make a point to really actively listen to what they're saying, to not having an agenda.

Because as I actively listen, I'm engendering in that person the desire to talk to me some more and share more with me. And I'm also making them potentially say, this would be a good person to work with. So I'm trying very hard to say, okay, am I showing them opportunities where they can trust me? Am I showing them opportunities where I trust them? And am I in an upward spiral in this relationship? Well, as you say, the subconscious mind is something, I guess, by definition, we're not that aware of. So I've really enjoyed hearing your insight into what it is and how it works and how it works with the conscious mind.

And it's all pretty fascinating. I've been speaking with Alan J. Hamilton. He is a brain surgeon who holds four professorships at the University of Arizona. And he's author of a book called Cerebral Entanglements, How the Brain Shapes Our Public and Private Lives. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Alan, thank you, thanks for coming on.

Ladies and gentlemen. What are you doing? What do you mean? I'm making a... Just keep it simple. I'm making the promo. Just keep it simple, just say, hey, we're the Brav Bros, two guys to talk about Bravo. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

we're the Brav Bros. No. Oh. Dude, stop with the voice. Just keep it simple. I've seen promos on TV, dude. This is how you get the fans engaged. This is how you get listeners.

We're trying to get listeners here. If we just say, oh, we're two dudes that talk about Bravo, people are gonna get tired of it already. We need some oomph. All right, then fine. Let's try to do it with your voice. Brav Bros. Good job. Hello, bros. Good job.

Hello, I am Kristin Russo. And I am Jenny Owen Youngs. We are the hosts of Buffering the Vampire Slayer once more with, spoilers, a rewatch podcast covering all 144 episodes of, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We are here to humbly invite you to join us for our fifth Buffy Prom, which, if you can believe it, we are hosting at the actual Sunnydale High School. That's right, on April 4th and 5th, we will be descending upon the campus of Torrance High School, which was the filming location for Buffy's Sunnydale High, to dance the

night away to 90s music in the iconic courtyard, to sip on punch right Buffy's Sunnydale High. To dance the night away, to 90s music in the iconic courtyard, to sip on punch right next to the Sunnydale High fountain, and to nerd out together in our prom best inside of the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. All information and tickets can be found at bufferingcast.com slash prom. Come join us. What percentage of the vehicles on the road today in the United States would you guess are electric vehicles? With all the talk about electric cars, you might be surprised that in 2024, it was less than 1%.

Now, it is true that of new car registrations, electric vehicles represent somewhere between 7 and 9 percent. But still, electric vehicles are a small minority of the vehicles on the road today. However, you are probably well aware that there is a lot of talk about electric cars and a push for people to buy them. It might seem that it is inevitable that one day we will all be driving an electric car, like it or not. Will we all be driving an electric car? That's what we're going to discuss with Mike Kolias. He is a Wall Street Journal reporter who lives in Detroit and has been covering the auto industry for some time. And he's author of a book called Inevitable,

Inside the Messy Unstoppable Transition to Electric Vehicles. Hi, Mike, welcome to something you should know. Thanks for having me on, Mike. Super excited to talk about this. Since it's the title of your book, why do you think it's inevitable that we will all transition to electric vehicles when, to date anyway, they

represent a minority of cars on the road they are expensive and a lot of people have been pretty vocal about not really wanting an electric car for a variety of reasons so why are they inevitable do you think well i think if i had to boil it down to one word right now, it probably would be China. There's a lot of factors, but we talk about the EV transition and it's really like there's multiple transitions playing out across the world at different speeds. And so here in the US, we have one view of things and we've got about 10% of our new car sales are either electric or plug-in hybrid.

In China, it's almost half. And so what's happened is, you know, China made sort of this deliberate bet on the EV a decade or two ago, and it's paying off now. And the big concern of the automakers is now you're starting to see China push a lot of these electric cars out to other markets. And so even if things slow down in the US, which it has, you know, if you're the GM, the CEO of General Motors, and you're seeing some, you know, some flattening of EV demand, you're kind of wondering, you know, are Americans really gonna, gonna buy this? I think the thing that's motivating you is, sure, you could sell some more big pickup trucks and SUVs,

but do you really want to fall further behind the Chinese and Tesla and other EV startups if this is really the way of the future? But when you talk about demand, in this country, there just doesn't seem to be a demand that you said a moment ago that the sales are flat, that it's just not setting the world on fire.

If people don't want them, people don't want them. So it's certainly not what the companies banked on when they set all of their investment plans three and four and five years ago when there was a ton of enthusiasm around EVs. And I think what's happened is, you know, a lot of those people were early adopters, people who wanna be the first on the block to get something or were motivated by environmental reasons or just really liked the tech. All those people have their EVs now,

they're driving Teslas and Rivians. And so to get to this next group of people, I think someone in marketing would call people, I think, you know, someone in marketing would call it, I think, a fast follower. Those people are going to be a little more discerning. And so they're going to, you know, they're not going to pay above sticker price just to get an electric car. They're going to think things through. They're going to look at their options. They're going to figure out if this makes sense from, you know, am I going to be able to charge it when and where I want? And so the industry is really trying to figure out how to convince the consumer that,

you know, this is, this is a leap worth taking. But I think there's a lot of reasons why you are going to start to see this continue to move in this direction. I'll just give you one example. Sure. You know, a Prius 20 years ago was a bit of a nerd mobile, right? I mean, it was for environmentalists or, you know, again, the people who really were interested in the tech. And, you know, you sort of had to explain yourself if you were if you were driving a Prius. And now, you know, hybrids are ubiquitous. I mean, you go into a showroom, you might not even realize it's it's a combination gas electric car that just happens I mean, you go into a showroom, you might not even realize it's a combination

gas electric car that just happens to get, you know, whatever 30, 35% better gas mileage. And so I think, and we're continuing to see, we're seeing sort of a resurgence in interest in hybrids. All the car companies are putting out more of them. I think it's just a small example of the more people see these things, talk to their neighbors, experience them, you know, that's sort of the stigma is going to go away a little bit. But that stigma, when EVs, when electric vehicles first came out, there was a lot of, I guess there was a lot of demand, there certainly was a lot of interest. People were fascinated by the concept and the technology, but everything cooled off. Demand died down. And it reminds me a little bit of,

you know, a new movie comes out, has a good first weekend, but then the buzz gets around and people, yeah, it's not so good. And the demand for that movie goes away. It's kind of like this, and the demand for that movie goes away, it's kind of like this, that it seemed cool, but the reality of it was, where are you gonna charge it? What if you're stuck in the desert and you can't charge it? I'd really rather just stick with my gas car. Yeah, there's two big reasons. You hit on one of them, I'll do the other one first,

and that's price. They're still more expensive than a comparably sized gas car. And so if you're already kind of on the fence, new technology, you're not quite sure what to make of it. And then you're looking at paying more than you would for the thing you already know and are comfortable with. You know, that's a tough leap for people. Pricing has come down and because demand isn't quite what the industry thought, we are starting to see kind of a mini price war in the US.

And that's made it, there's a lot of good deals out there for someone who's interested in an electric car. But you know, until it comes down, and this was supposed to be the year, like, you know, 2025, we're going to have parity between EVs and gas powered cars. That's what a lot of the experts thought. And that hasn't happened. You know, battery chemistries, you know, the price of what goes into the EV hasn't come down fast enough. So they're still more expensive.

That's one. The other is charging. And it's just kind of all of the headaches and questions and uncertainty that goes into that. So am I going to be able to find a charger on my road trip? You know, how fast am I going to be able to fill up even if I do find one? There's a lot of problems still with the charging infrastructure. I mean, there was one survey that showed, you know, 20% of people who stopped at a charging station left without putting any juice into the battery because, you know, the app didn't work or the credit

card reader didn't work. You know, it's, it's in its infancy and, you know, there are a lot of factors that like if you're a buyer looking to, you know, decide whether I should go EV or plug in hybrid or just stick with my gas car. There's a lot to think about because it is far from perfect. I don't even know because I don't have an electric vehicle. How long does it typically take? I mean when you pull into a gas station you can fill up your tank, your gas tank in

three minutes. How long does it typically take a EV to juice itself back up? So it depends on the charger that you're at, but when people talk about, the experts talk about, you know, we really need to expand the charging infrastructure in the U.S., what they're really talking about are the fast chargers, the fastest type of EV chargers that are found typically along highways and interstates. Because that's really what you need to make this all work. Because if you can't drive a few hours out of town and be sure that you're going to be able to recharge somewhere, it's just going to be a barrier to adoption.

And so those are really expensive for the operators to put in. You can get. Maybe a hundred miles of range and in 20 or 30 minutes, if all goes well. So, you know, if you're on a road trip and you want to, and you have a 300 mile range, EV, and it's down to 50 miles and you need to stop and, and top that off before you move on, it's probably going to be an hour wait. And that's a change in mindset that not everyone is comfortable with. Even though I don't know much about them, that's in the back of my mind is I really

don't want to wait an hour to charge it back up again. And that's why. Because normally you see people kind of, you see people's cars, EV cars parked in the driveway with that charger stuck in the side overnight. You know, they come home from work and they plug it in and so it charges overnight. And you kind of have to plan your day around that as opposed to, well, when it says E, I better run up to the gas station and get some gas. Right. And so this is an important point. 80% roughly of charging that happens in the US

is done at home. And so most people get, if you buy an EV, you're almost certain to buy an upgraded charger to put in your, most usually your garage if you have a home. It's a little trickier if you live in a multi unit you know an apartment or a condo building but you know for a thousand dollars maybe more if they need to mess with your wiring you have this charger that can get you from pretty close to zero from you know zero to full overnight. You know if you just were to plug into your wall it

would take days to recharge. So most people get the charger. That is enough for most people in most situations. I mean, you can go weeks at a time without having to charge anywhere outside the house. So you'll see them at grocery stores and banks and things like that. But generally, you don't need to stop at those because you've charged overnight. You're not far from your home. The typical commute, running errands, shuttling kids to practice, you can do all that, come back and have plenty to spare.

Most ranges today, 250 miles is sort of the minimum at this point. There's plenty with over 300 miles of range on a single charge. And so for most people on their day to day, that's fine. It is the road trips. And that's where if you're going to decide, you know, if you're trying to decide on an EV, I think you need to ask yourself a few questions. Where can I charge if you have a house in a garage and you're willing to spend the money, you can have a charger there. That's big. And then the other one is, how often do I go out of town? And if I do, do I have an option to take a different car?

Because it's not impossible, but you have to plan it out and you have to plan extra time. You know, a question I've always had, and I've never known the answer to this. When you have an electric vehicle and you charge it, like with a lot of other electronics, the more you charge it over and over and over again, the less efficient the battery.

Is that the case that electric cars don't hold the charge as well after five years as they did when you first got it? It does not work like your iPhone because if it did I don't know that many people would be interested in these because I'm you know I don't know about you but I feel like my battery you know I always have issues with the smartphone battery with there is a small degree of degradation over time with EVs but there you can see plenty of testimonials of people who've had electric cars for 10 years and you know there's barely a noticeable difference. It's I think with that large of a battery, it's not that doesn't become an issue with EVs like it does with

smartphones and other devices, smaller devices. So you've been writing about and reporting on the auto industry and you're in Detroit, right? That's right. What is Detroit? Do they care? Do automakers care? Or they're just going to make whatever people want to buy? Or are they all behind this or what?

Well, for the longest time, the auto executives in Detroit and, you know, Germany and Tokyo, that sort of dabbled with electric cars. And, you know, they certainly had work going on, but it was never a full embrace. And when a company like Tesla comes around, you know, founded in 2003, that's how long they've been around, but really only started putting out cars, 2012, 13. There was a lot of sort of eye rolling or so it was just sort of a curiosity, right? And then eventually, you know, I think the thought was, well, they're never going to break through in mass market cars and be able to build them with quality. And oh, God, they're never going to be able to turn a profit, right? I mean, that was kind of the view of Tesla and the broader EV space.

And then once Tesla did breakthrough, maybe 2018 is when the model three really became kind of a mass market car. That's when you saw the start of a pivot toward EVs. And so, you know, Tesla passed in 2018, they passed Ford in stock market valuation, the market cap of the company was worth more than Ford. And then literally a week later, it was worth more than GM. And within a few years, it was worth more than the top 10 automakers in the world combined on a stock stock market basis, even though they sell a fraction of the cars as a company

like Ford. And so it just became something that these companies could not ignore anymore. But really, I think this big transition was driven by Tesla and the Chinese and other startups that showed that we can mass produce EVs. And guess what? Investors want this stuff because that's where they see the growth. And so all the Detroit companies have huge investments now in their electric vehicle operations. But are they selling them? Are people wanting them? Yeah, I mean we saw this big rush, right? You know, 2020, 2021, there were, you know, huge waiting lists for some of the new because that's when we first, we finally started to see competitors to Tesla.

There had been, you know, small cars that, you know, GM might've come out with a decade ago that really didn't have much range. They weren't really trying. And by early this decade, there was a bunch of really cool models coming out. And we saw huge demand. People were paying above sticker. Everyone just, there was like a big rush to get into an EV. And that has faded.

So US EV sales are still rising, but they're not going up nearly as much as the company is expected. And so now they're trying that they need to lower the prices. And that has exacerbated their losses. All of the traditional car makers are still losing a lot of money on electrics. And so you're kind of at this crossroads where, okay, do I lean into this thing that's killing me on the financial statement because I know that long term investors want it, I have to stay, I can't fall further behind

China and Tesla. But right now it's painful for the car makers to keep on this path. So you said at the beginning that China is a big pusher of EVs. Why? Why does China care? What's the big reason? Yeah, it's really fascinating and looking at how that evolved. So China barely even had an auto industry up until like the 1990s. It was just like a closed market and really was just, you know, dignitaries and government officials drove cars. But the cars weren't really a big thing there and they didn't, the cars that they did buy and sell, they were from Russia or other places, and then they opened the market to companies like GM and Volkswagen came in.

Um, they partnered with Chinese, like China owned, uh, automakers that really played kind of a little sibling role. And these big car companies came in and, um, and within 15 years it was the biggest car market in the world and it was a huge growth driver for companies like GM and VW and during all that time the Chinese companies, you know, they tried and they would put out their own models and they were kind of knockoffs and they didn't, they weren't very reliable. And they really couldn't figure out the engine technology. I mean, it's super complex, hundreds of moving parts. You've got a transmission that's very complex.

These other companies have been doing it for a hundred years so that the Chinese companies just couldn't compete. And so the government decided this is, you know, 2004 or five, like we think we can leap ahead if we move to electric. It's a simpler technology. And it was kind of this big bet that these other companies would, you know, they were never going to relinquish their gas engine dominant, they were never going to go after EVs in a wholehearted way, because

that would require them to leave the technology that had filled their bottom line for decades. And so China leveraged huge supply chains and they have a lot of raw materials that go into batteries. They huge government spending to incentivize manufacturers to make EVs for consumers to buy them. They invested heavily in charging. So those fast chargers we talked about, 20 times more fast chargers in China than there are in the US. And almost overnight, you know, in 2017, 18,

it was less than 5% of their new car sales were EVs. And now it's almost half. It's almost, you can't comprehend how fast the transition has gone there. You had mentioned that American carmakers misjudged the demand. Did they usually misjudge the demand? I mean, for other cars? I mean, was this a big whoops or it's just too hard to judge demand in advance,

so, you know, they did the best they could. I think a big oops is, is probably fair. You know, I think that they, they overestimated the number of people who would be ready to make the leap now. And so I think, you know, a lot of the analysts that you talk to will say, okay, this there's a lull in the market now, and we're going to see it pick up again, because costs are going to come down, which means price is going

to come down, and the charging infrastructure is going to get built out. And so I think they were just, I think the car companies were probably early, too early to the party. And now it's a and now they've got a big headache on their hands. Cause, um, you know, you don't want to make, you don't want to have a bunch of cars sitting on dealership lots that people aren't going to buy or that you're going to have to heavily discount. And they're going through that pain now of trying to calibrate, you know, how,

how fast is this going to take off in the U? And again, it's not just, it's something you can't just walk away from, because if it is the future, you're just falling further behind. And that's kind of the, I don't know, I think the CEO of a big traditional car company right now is one of the hottest seats to be in, in all of the business world, because it's just such a tricky thing to calibrate right now given how the different speeds at which the transition is playing out around the world. Given all you've said and the fact that the demand for electric cars has not been what was anticipated, why do you still think it's so inevitable when there is this pushback

and resistance to electric cars. One of the things I always go back to is, you know, when you talk to people who drive EVs, or you know, a Tesla owner, for example, I mean, if you ask, surveys show that 80% or more of Tesla owners would go buy another Tesla. You know, they're not going back. And I think that's pretty universal among EV buyers.

Sure, you can find examples of people who just bought one and wasn't for them and they turned it in six months later. But you know, the driving experience is really dynamic. They're quick, they're fun, they're quiet. And so, you know, the fact that people, when they get into them, they like them, I think, you know, can't be discounted, right? I mean, at the end of the day, it's what the consumer wants. And you know, there's a lot of challenges and headwinds right now, especially in the

US around the EV story. But I think that's one of the reasons why the people I talk to feel like this has legs is that, you know, the buyers, when they get into them, they really like them. Yeah, well, I get that. I remember the first time I got into someone's electric car, I thought, this is really cool. And I think anyone who's been in one thinks it's really cool. But with any technology, the promise and the reality are often different. And as you clearly pointed out, the cost of these cars and the problem with charging them away from home,

those are real obstacles. But we'll see what happens. I've been speaking with Mike Collias. He is a Wall Street Journal reporter and author of the book, Inevitable, Inside the Messy Unstoppable Transition to Electric Vehicles. There is a link to that book in the show notes.

And Mike, thanks for coming on and talking about this. Thanks, a link to that book in the show notes. And Mike, thanks for coming on and talking about this. Mike Thanks, Mike. I've really enjoyed the conversation. If you're a man or you know a man who wants to be successful, you have to have the right look. A few years ago, the style experts at Men's Health magazine published an article about what men should wear to be successful. And I've always remembered this and want to share it with you. Rule number one, wear a tie when you're asking for money.

If you're ever confused about when to wear a neck tie to a meeting or get together, if money is involved, there should be a tie around your neck. Rule number two is the rule of shoes. Black is basic, but black is boring. If you're wearing black, then by all means wear black shoes, but if you're wearing gray, blue, tan, or a combination, brown shoes will almost always make the look more sophisticated. Rule number three, thin with thin, thick with thick. If you have a narrow lapel, you should wear a narrow tie.

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Something you should know is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Jeff Havison. Our executive producer is Ken Williams. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. While back we had Ramit Sethi on as a guest. He's one of the smartest people you'll ever know when it comes to everyday money matters. And he was here talking about money and couples. As it turns out, he has his own podcast called Money for Couples.

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