Something You Should Know - The Science of Friendship & What You Need to Know About Computer Coding

Episode Date: April 23, 2020

You probably aren’t spending as much time outside as you used to and that can be a big problem. This episode begins with the important reasons why you should be spending more time outside – even if you have to wear a mask or be all by yourself. http://www.rd.com/health/wellness/benefits-of-nature/ Having friends is vital. You may be realizing that now more than ever since you aren’t able to be with friends like before. Friendship seems to be a human need according to Lydia Denworth, a science journalist, contributing editor at Scientific American and author of the book Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond (https://amzn.to/3bhQFNl). Lydia joins me to explain the fascinating science of friendship and how people become friends. If you are having trouble sleeping, there is one simple thing you can do to improve your sleep and more importantly, improve your DEEP sleep. Listen and discover what that is. http://www.besthealthmag.ca/best-you/sleep/6-ways-to-improve-your-sleephygiene?slide=2#0QEJXJSRL7wAxmyT.97 Coding is hot. Kids are being encouraged to learn coding – it is job and career that appears to be growing rapidly. So what is it really? What do coders do? What does code look like? And why is it important to understand? For the answers to those questions we turn to Clive Thompson. Clive is a tech writer and author of the book Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World (https://amzn.to/3boOckA). He joins me to explain what coding is all about. This Week’s Sponsor -Better Help. Get 10% off your first month by going to www.BetterHelp.com/sysk and use the promo code: sysk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 was all about. 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. 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.

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. Today on Something You Should Know, you probably haven't been outside that much, We'll be right back. together before people feel that someone goes from an acquaintance to being a friend and it takes a full 200 hours to consider someone a best friend if you don't feel that you've become great friends right away give it time also if you ever have trouble sleeping there's one simple thing you can do that really

helps and computer programmers they're now called coders well how did coders become so cool once you get billions of dollars turning on the skill set of a small number of people, they become powerful. And so that's essentially how they went from being pocket-protecting nerds of the 60s and 70s to the titans who everyone is kind of interested in. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes.

Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back, and in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, and welcome to Something You Should Know. I want to start today by talking about something I think is really important because I imagine that you, as with

me and my family, are spending a lot of time indoors. But we're spending time indoors not because we shouldn't be outside, it's because we shouldn't be outside around other people. And in fact, if you want to improve your mental health and creativity, you need to get outside. The theory is that being in nature allows the prefrontal cortex, that's the brain's command center, to rest and recover like an overused muscle. For most of human history, we lived outdoors. We lived in nature. Today, we spend a lot of time indoors, and right now in particular, even more time indoors. Researchers

all over the world have been showing that there is a definite positive impact on the brain when people spend more time outside. It's sometimes called forest therapy, but being outside in nature seems to have a very is what it takes to get the most benefit, according to David Strayer, who's a cognitive psychologist at the University of Utah. So get outside. You don't have to be around a lot of people, but you can't be with many of them, that you realize just how important your friends are. And you realize there really is something to the idea that we are social creatures, that we need to have our friends around. Friendship is really a fascinating topic because, as important as friends are, when you think about it, they do

tend to come and go. And some people have a lot more friends than others, and some people seem to be much better at making friends than others. And then there are in fact people who have few, if any, friends. Lydia Denworth has taken a serious

exploration into the world of friendship. Lydia is a science journalist. She's a contributing editor at Scientific American, and she's author of the book Friendship, The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond. Hey, Lydia. Hi, Mike. Good to be here.

So everyone knows what a friend is, but how do you define it? What exactly is friendship? Well, that's one of the interesting things that this new science of friendship has done is it has provided a little bit clearer definition. And so the kind of three essential things that friendship has to have, and that is that it's a long lasting sort of stable relationship. It's positive, it makes people feel good. And it's cooperative and reciprocal. So there's some back and forth. And we hear that having friends is good for us. How is it good for us? People with more friends live longer, are healthier, are happier. And in other species,

the animals best able to make strong positive bonds, like among baboons and macaques, they live longer and they have more and healthier babies. And you can't do better than that in evolutionary terms. So this is what has led us to believe that the kind of cooperative, positive aspects of friendship have been something that have really been an evolutionary advantage and something that, yes, caused the people who were sociable to live longer and then to pass more genes on to their offspring. So we all meet lots of people, some of them become friends, most of them don't. What's going on there? Why is it that most people that we encounter come and go and that's the end of that, but some people stick?

There are a couple things at work there. I think there's a chemistry to friendship, just like there is with romance. You know how there are some people you meet and right away you think, oh, you know, we could be friends. I like this person. But then it takes time. So you have to put in the time. There are some things that have always been helpful. I mean, there's similarity often helps people become friends. So, you know, it's not for nothing that I have a lot of

middle-aged female friends who have college-aged kids and creative jobs, because we have a lot to talk about, right? And, but those are not the only kinds of friends I have. And ideally, people will also make friends with people who are not exactly like they are. But it's, it's been true for 1000s of years that similarity helps. And proximity makes a big difference. So we do tend to be friends with the people who are nearby, and with whom we spend time. And I referred to time, but, you know but you can spend hundreds of hours with someone at work and never really become a friend. So that is just a piece of it.

You have to, in that time you spend together, you've got to start to share some emotional experiences, shared interests often come into it, things like that. You had mentioned, and I think most people have heard, that people who have friends tend to live longer, they have better health, they're probably more successful. But do we know why? What's the connection between friendship and health?

It turns out that friendship on the one hand and loneliness, the flip side of it, on the other, have a real impact on all kinds of parts of your health. So it gets under the skin is the way biologists talk about it. For instance, I mean, both things affect your stress levels and your stress responses. And as I'm sure you've heard, if you have sort of chronic unrelieved stress and cortisol is racing through your body all the time, that is going to have downstream bad effects for your health. But more intriguingly and probably something you haven't heard is that having more and better friends improves the way your immune system reacts and the gene expression in your immune system. It makes you more resilient in the face of inflammation

and viruses. And people who are lonely are more susceptible to inflammation and viruses. And friendship also affects our cognitive health, your risk of dementia, your mental health, your chance of being depressed or not, and even the rate at which your cells age. Wow. Yeah. I'm not messing around here. Yeah, it's worth having a friend or two. It is.

But what about the people who are self-described as loners? In other words, they don't have a lot of friends. They maybe never get married. They live a fairly isolated life because that's their preference. So are they doomed to have poorer health and less longevity? Or are they just fine because that's the way they like it? There's no one way to do friendship, first of all. So I am not at all saying that everyone needs to have lots and lots of friends and be the life of the party. In fact, the majority of us prefer to have a handful of very close friends and to socialize in that way. And what's interesting from a health point of view is that the biggest difference in the number of friends you have is between zero and one.

You need one good friend. You're right. There are introverts out there or people who are loners. Most introverts do have those handful of close friends, even if it's just one or two. And then there are some people who claim, you know, I like it this way. I like it this way. I believe some of them do. I think most of them actually may be lonelier than they're willing to admit because there's a little bit of a stigma to saying that you're lonely. And it's also requires making yourself vulnerable to put yourself out there and make friends. And that can be hard

for people to do. So I think there might be a little of that going on too. It's my observation, and I don't know if it's true or not, but my observation is that women do friendship better than men. Well, many people agree with you and think that, but what I find interesting, there's a couple of parts of this that I think are interesting. So the stereotype is that women do friendship face-to-face side by side, by which I mean that women talk, talk, talk and disclose a lot to each other, share a lot of emotional information. And that's true. And men are more likely to play sports together or do sports, watch sports or sit on bar stools next to each other is what the side by side bit means go hunting together. And, you know,

there's truth to that. But what I find more interesting is that the more recent research that's looked at sort of meta analysis of all the studies that have been done on gender differences and friendship, find that the similarities far outweigh the differences, and that both men and women value friendship quite a bit, and that they they care about it, and that both men and women value friendship quite a bit, and that they care about it, and that they put it in their lives, they respond sort of similarly. And the last thing I'd say about that is that, interestingly, if you look at the history of friendship, thousands of years, over thousands of years, there was a very long stretch of

time where men thought they were the ones who did friendship well and that women didn't have the capacity for it. So those were not good times in terms of misogyny and things like that. But I do think what's interesting is that the pendulum has swung and the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. And there's no biological reason why men are not good at friendship. It may just be a cultural thing that stops them from feeling comfortable revealing their emotions, but they don't have to, to be friends. It seems that some people are very good at making friends. It comes easily to them where other

people can't seem to figure it out. What's going on there? Making friends and maintaining being a good friend, it is a skill. And it's a skill that hopefully we learn when you're young, but that we keep perfecting. Some of us are better at it than others. Some of us are more naturally sociable. It a little bit has to do with your sense of social threat and of social anxiety. And unfortunately, one thing that happens is that loneliness acts rather like a physiological warning signal. It's like hunger and thirst. It's telling your body that you need to connect. But sometimes what happens is the response is almost a feeling

in your brain of being threatened. And then if that becomes really severe, the first thing that can go is your social skills so that the people who need most to connect are the least able to do it. And this is true, by the way, of even people who are normally socially skilled, if you put them in a lab in a university study and induce loneliness in them, their social skills will become poorer. And it is possible, by the way, to do that, to make people feel lonely. And so what that's telling us, you know, I hope that's not too disheartening for people. I think what's useful is to recognize that there's this pattern and to say, oh, you know, so maybe if that is a listener out there feeling that that's them, to recognize that this might be what's happening and to sort

of take a breath and a step back and try to analyze, you know, think a little more about how their behavior might be affecting how people respond to them. Well, it's always interested me that, you know, friends are so important, and yet there's no, like, direct way to get one. You know, the worst way to get a friend is to go up to somebody and say, hey, will you be my friend? Because that's not the way you do it. It's much more of a slow evolution of, you know, you start as strangers, you become acquaintances, and then it evolves into friendship and then you're friends. Well, yes and no.

So I actually have come to believe that there are some basics to being a good friend that have to do with the definition of friendship that we talked about at the beginning. So if a friend is somebody who is a long lasting, really, it's a long lasting relationship, a positive one and a cooperative one, what that translates to in terms of how people can be good friends is to be reliable, to be positive and to be helpful. And so often, we maybe do some pieces of that, but not all of it. You know, you can think about when was the last time I did something to make my friend feel good? Did I say something nice? Also, just listening goes an awfully long way. And very, a lot of us are not all that good at that. We spend a lot of the time that we're listening, just waiting until it's our turn to talk again, you know, and making sure that you are holding up your end of a relationship. And so there are a lot of friendships out there that get a little bit

lopsided, where one person is doing all the hosting or all the calling. And sometimes that's a sign that the other person's not so interested. But sometimes it's just that people are a bit oblivious and self-centered. And so, be helpful, be positive, and be a reliable, steady presence in people's lives. Try that. And show up, too. That's my other major, major thing about, you know, showing up. And that can mean, you know, just saying happy birthday. It can mean showing up at an event. It can mean a whole lot of things. Show up in every sense of the word.

Right now, virtually. Yeah. We're talking about friendship and the importance of friends in your life. My guest is Lydia Denworth. She's author of the book Friendship, The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of life's fundamental bond. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children.

The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available. 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 Thank you. and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker John Ronson discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars.

Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Lydia, doesn't it seem that friendship comes a lot easier when you're a child than when you're an adult? When you're a kid, you're at school, you're surrounded by a bunch of other kids, you kind of need to forge relationships and so friends become friends. When you're an adult, it just seems harder.

A couple of things are happening there. One is, or there are a couple of interesting things, I think, about how we look at this across the lifespan. So children and college age students as well, I mean, you are never in your life going to be surrounded by as many people the same age as you with whom you have a lot of time together to sort of build bonds. And that really helps people to become friends. And friendship is a critical part of development for young children and adolescents. And the adolescent brain is just primed to be social. That's why they're so obsessed with being with their friends all the time.

And one thing I think parents could do differently is to recognize, though, that friendship is a skill and it's something that kids can get better at and they don't just automatically come into the world knowing how to do it. And, you know, we often are delivering messages about achievement to kids, but never really explicitly or rarely talking about what it is to be a good friend, how to think about that. I mean, maybe we insert or we try sometimes to insert ourselves in their social lives, and they don't like it very much. And so I'm not really talking about that. I'm just saying that having that conversation about what it means to be a good friend, would be doing your children a very good service. Because as we established with the health, if you are someone who can have good friends through your life, you will be you will live longer and be healthier and happier because of it. But what happens in adulthood is that, you know, we get busier, we have less time. And I think that we

often expect it to be as as to feel as effortless as it felt when we were kids. And of course, it's not, as you say, you do have to put in the effort. But, and you have to be motivated, and you have to be willing to make yourself vulnerable. If let's say you move to a new city, and you're trying to meet people, you've got to get out there. And, and a lot of adults find that hard to do. But it's important. And I hope that understanding that it takes time to actually somebody counted. It takes 50 hours of time together before people feel that someone goes from an acquaintance to being a friend. And it takes a full 200 hours to consider someone a best friend. So I hope that's not daunting. Instead, it's just a clear eyed sense of,

you know, if you don't feel that you've become great friends right away, give it time. Well, but it also seems that once you're an adult, it's harder to make friends because the people you try to make friends with, well, they've already got their friends. So to break into that circle is a lot harder than when you're a kid and we're all kind of at the same level and it's kind of a level playing field. This is true. And, you know, what I hope is that if people are finding that, that they should, they'll have to look elsewhere, I guess, is part of what happens. But there are, I guarantee, because I hear from many of them, there are adults all over the country and the world looking to make friends. And so if the people you come across have a tight little group and don't have time or space for new people, then go looking elsewhere. Go, you know, if you are into hiking, for instance, go join a hiking club.

If you, I did an interview with some people in Las Vegas and apparently Las Vegas is famously unfriendly. I don't know if you knew that, but I didn't know that. But there they have a vibrant craft bar scene and they have friendship groups that have sprung up around craft beer. I mean, and so, you know, there's something for everyone out there and you're more likely to meet, to make friends with people when you're sort of naturally doing something together

that is, that has brought everyone there and not just as you said, sort of saying, oh, here, let's make friends. That's a hard way to do it. So people have friends and then people often have a best friend. And so how does a person move from the group of friends to the top spot, the best friend spot? Well, they are usually the person that you've put in a lot of time with, but also the person that you really trust and feel knows you and is there for you. And I think of it as it's not just me, psychologists have used this, this sort of framework to talk about friendship for a long time. You can think of concentric circles. And we all have if you put yourself at the center, the tightest circle around you, your inner circle of people you rely on the most, sometimes people describe it as the people you can't imagine life without.

Most of us have only about an average of four people in that circle, and they're divided and they're split among family and friends. How much depends on the person. So somebody with a whole lot of siblings that they're very close to and, you know, might have all family in there and someone who has very little family will have all friends. And then we have these concentric circles moving out with maybe the next one is 10 to 15 people that are the first people you would invite to your birthday party. And it goes out from there with extended family and colleagues and neighbors. And really, when we think about how we prioritize our time, we put most time into the people in that closest inner circle, because those are the people we're really going to have to turn to in a crisis or when we need them. And friendship and strong bonds like this really are about sort of protecting us from the stresses of day-to-day life. They were, from an evolutionary perspective, about helping to ward off predators or help people find food, things like that, you know, very fundamental things.

And so, while there aren't lions in most of our day-to-day lives anymore, literally, there are plenty of figurative lions out there. And that's what those people are for. Usually, you're going to turn to the people in that inner circle. And then the other ones go out. So your best friend should be right there in that tight inner circle with you, someone that you feel you can count on. Friends have a tendency to come and go. And I know it stresses people out when they've had a friend that all of a sudden isn't around much anymore or doesn't seem very available anymore. But it also seems pretty natural, too, that people come in and out of our lives.

You are exactly right about that. And this is something that I talk about a lot and I get asked about a lot because it is very painful when friendships end and or when it feels, especially if it's in an unreciprocated way where, you know, one is pulling away. But it is quite natural that in those circles that we have, you can think of it as a social convoy that travels with you through life, but its makeup does change over time. So while it is important that your close bonds are people that you have sort of a longstanding tie with, there can be some shifting in there. So, you know, somebody new comes in, but then you get to know them really well over the course of a decade or something like that. It doesn't have to be a decade. I said 200 hours, you can do that in a much shorter period of time. But I do think that people need to ask themselves whether the people that are close to them are serving them, are making them feel good, are there with are helpful and there when they need them and

are reliable. And if they're not, if they're just one piece of that, like maybe somebody with whom you have a lot of shared history, but that you find draining or demanding, I hear those words come up a lot. Maybe that relationship, at least that person maybe doesn't belong in your innermost circle. Do spouses count as friends or is that just a whole different category? It depends who you ask.

It also probably depends who you marry. It depends who you marry. But there was a study in Jacksonville, Florida. They asked a whole thousands of people if they consider their spouse their best friend. And about 60% said yes, they did. And then they did the same study in Mexico City, and almost no one said yes, they did. And I don't think that that is a statement on the state of marriage in Mexico. I hope not. I think what it is about is culturally whether we use that phrase to describe our spouse. What I say, and what I

think the science of friendship shows is that it's the quality of a relationship that matters more than anything. And that distinction then blurs the lines actually, between family, friends and romantic partners and spouses. And so for me, we say, if someone is telling me that their spouse is their best friend, I understand that as a value-added piece of information, because now they're telling me something about the quality, about the texture of their relationship. And you would like to think that most of us have that, and certainly in the West, that's something we aspire to. In Western cultures, we imagine it that way. But it is, alas, not always true. And otherwise, the divorce rate would not be as high as it is. And, and the same is true with

with biological family. Sometimes we think of them as very close friends. And other times we might love them or not, or, but we, you know, they, if someone tells me that her sister is her best friend, then I know that that means that they talk all the time, that they're very close, that they are very involved in each other's lives. And other siblings are not that way. And that's okay. What matters is that you've got somebody. Well, it's so interesting that friendship is so important for humans. And for some people, it comes very easy. And for some people, it comes very easy, and for some people it doesn't. And it's interesting

to get real insight into the whole topic. Lydia Denworth has been my guest. She is a science journalist, contributing editor at Scientific American, and author of the book Friendship, the Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thank you, Lydia. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. 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. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? 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 Lister 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. It wasn't all that long ago when if I said, think of a computer programmer, you'd most likely think of some nerdy kind of guy.

But today, today computer programmers have been transformed into coders. And coders are about the coolest people in the world. Coding is the great new skill. Kids are encouraged to learn how to code. Coding is the great new skill. Kids are encouraged to learn how to code. Coding is cool. So how did coding get to be cool? What's this all about? Well, for that, we turn to Clive Thompson. Clive is a tech writer, and he is author of the book, Coders, the Making of a New Tribe and the remaking of the world. Hey Clive.

It's good to be here. So how is it that computer programming became coding and how did it become cool? How did it become the cool thing to do? Well, the reason why it happened is simple. It's money, right? So software, beginning in kind of like the late 70s and accelerating in the 80s and then going crazy in the 90s, it became big, big business, right? It went from being this weird thing that nerds did down in the accounting department to software that controlled every aspect of daily life, right? From the way you write memos to the the way you communicate, to the way that you shop and play. And once you get billions of dollars, you know, turning on the skill set of a small number

of people, they become powerful. And so that's essentially how they went from being the sort of, you know, pocket protector nerds of the 60s and 70s to the, you know, titans who everyone is kind of interested in, in our current world. And what does it mean to be a coder? Because a coder does what? He sits down and does what? Yeah, what do they do? It's a great question because it's such a mystery to people, right? Like, we sort of know how cars are made and how planes are made and how open heart surgery works. But if you ask people how software is made, it's just a big empty box. Basically, what computer code is,

is a lot of it is actually sitting and thinking, right? Like it's actually not, you get the, you see these movies where like a coder is just typing frantically and code's pouring out of them. Not even remotely what coding is like. Coding is a lot of thinking about, okay, how do I take this thing I wanna do? You know, say I wanna have a little app that's going to check your Google calendar every day and set up a bunch of text alerts.

It's going to text you 10 minutes before everything, right? Little app. Okay. You have to break that down into tiny little steps, like every little possible step. It's like, it's like cooking, you know, it's like cooking scrambled eggs, except you have to explain how to open the drawer to get the spoon out, right? You know, you have to break it down into these little steps. And then you have to write each step as a piece of code, as a little instruction set to the computer.

And so a lot of coding is this thinking, sitting there thinking. Then you're writing a little bit of code to get that, like, you're just trying one of those steps. Like, you're not doing the whole thing, one little step. Then you test it, and it doesn't work. It never works the first time. Code always is broken. You've screwed something up. You've screwed up a comma.

Then you're trying to figure out what did you do wrong, and you finally get that right, and you're slowly assembling this thing, constantly making mistakes until finally the whole thing works. That's basically what computer programming is. It sounds very detail-y and frankly boring. Well, here's the thing. I've done enough of it to tell you that you are absolutely right on the first count, but wrong on the second count. So it is super detail-oriented. In fact, every programmer I know, you can sort of tell their psychology because they are super specific about details. They're often incredibly precise in the way they speak, and they expect you to be incredibly precise. And if you're not incredibly precise,

they get pissed off, right? So they're very, very detail-oriented. But I actually don't think it's boring at all, I'll tell you. In fact, there's something, it's like solving puzzles. It attracts people who love like, you know, crosswords or chess or any type of puzzle because it's like, well, oh wow, this isn't working, but I know I could get it to work. And so that moment when you finally click it together and the machine is doing exactly what you want, it has this Promethean feel to it, like you've just brought life into the world. And there are a few charges like that. I mean, I'm a writer and I enjoy writing, but there is never that charge I get

when I'm writing a little piece of software and suddenly it's doing what I wanted and this machine has come to life and it will do my bidding until the sun explodes or the electricity rolls up. It's a wonderful feeling. So I actually find coding, that it's being offered in schools, it's being offered in outside schools. We've had advertisers on here offering to help kids learn to code. Is it because coding is becoming just such part of everything that everybody needs to

learn it? There's been a push for it for a couple reasons. Some, it's just economic. There's been this sense of, my God, good paying, stable middle class jobs are vanishing. So where can we send kids that they might have a chance of getting one? And coding is definitely one of them, right? It pays pretty well, pretty stable, demand is high and will probably remain high for some years, if not decades. So I think that's part of it. It's a response to economic anxiety, an understandable response. There's another part of

it that's like, wow, you might get incredibly rich. Although I think that's kind of silly because the chance of getting the chance of being a millionaire are as likely as if you were a millionaire in, you know, being in entertainment or hotels or mining. Right. You know, but the third part of it is something I think it may be a little misguided. It's this idea that everyone needs to know it because it's sort of a core competency like reading or writing. I don't think that's true. I think you can get through life fine not knowing how coding works. I think it is actually interesting to know a little bit of coding and I'll explain why, which is that I'm a journalist. I'm not going to become a full-time coder. But in the process of writing this book, I taught myself just enough coding that I can do these little things that help me out in my job. I can like, when I discover I'm doing something repetitive or boring or doing the same thing every week, I can write a little script that will do that automatically for me. And I slowly outsource all this boring work. And I sort of give myself these superpowers as a journalist,

right? Like I'm not stopping being a journalist, but I know just enough coding to suddenly punch way above my weight class. And I actually think that that is really the reason to learn a little bit of coding. I'll give you a great example. If there's a piece of data that I want to monitor, like here's a simple little one. I wanted to know the stats on the sales of my book, right? I want to keep an eye on that. And so you could go and

refresh your Amazon page every day and check it out. Or you could write a little script that logs in every day, grabs that page, pulls out exactly the sales information, formats it as a text message and sends it to me. And I did that, you know, or if I want to be alerted when something is changing online, you know, if I'm writing a story and like, is that website going to change? I can write a little script that looks for that change and alerts me. I can also, I've written tools for like cleaning up text. Like I often go to YouTube and I want to get the transcript of something. And so, you know, YouTube generates these transcripts, but they're totally a mess. It's like time code, five words, time code, five words. So I just wrote a simple little web tool that lets me dump that text in there and instantly clean it up, you know, so I can actually use it. So I sort of, I write all these little tools that just save me time and let

me operate more efficiently and be a better journalist. And I see that you could do that if you're an accountant, you could do that if you were a nurse, you could do that if you were in hospitality. Everyone has to deal with stupid, inefficient things that only they care about. No software developer is going to write that software for them. But they could just write 15 lines of Python that would solve that problem for the rest of their life. Are there superstars in coding? I mean, are some people like so amazing at it, like champion athletes? Or is coding coding?

That's a really good question because there is in coding this idea of the 10x coder, the person who is 10 times better than the average coder. And some venture capitalists told me it's more like a thousand x, that there are people who are so productive that they are like a thousand times better. I would say that it is partly true, yes. I definitely have met coders who are so good at their particular type of, they might not be good at all forms of coding, but in their wheelhouse, they have tilted the world on its axis by being very productive. One example, Bram Cullen, a young guy, I met him back in the late 90s, early aughts.

He wrote BitTorrent. He single-handedly wrote the protocol that everyone uses to trade massive, like, four-gig files online. NASA uses it. Accounting firms use it. Everyone uses it. And he did that all himself in a room, right? So he is like, yeah, that's probably like 1,000, 1 million X, right? So there definitely are people who seem to really rise above through some combination of just predisposition. They're good at it. They got their 10,000 hours in early. They worked really hard at at all. They're just boasting about it. You know, they're just blowhards like in any field. But there definitely are people that really do stand

above the pack. And I think coders all know and respect those folks. What does code look like? What is the language? What is it you're coding? What's the code? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What does a piece of code look like? Well, I'll give you an example. So one of the simplest pieces of code that any programmer does when they're trying to learn a new language is called the hello world statement. And all you're doing is you're telling the computer to print something on screen to show that it is alive and obeying your commands. And so one example of that, say, in the language Python, which is a nice, fairly simple language, good one for beginners, this would be a single line of code. Print, that's all in lowercase, space, and then in brackets, in round brackets, you would put in quotes, hello world, or hello Clive, or something. So print space in

brackets in quotes, hello Clive. And when you run that, the computer just says hello world, or hello Clive. You are telling it to print to the screen that string, that piece of text that's inside the quotes. And so all code just looks like that. It's just a little command that is specific to the language like that print. Why print? Well, that's the way that that's one of the, that's one of the words in the language that is the Python language. And so to learn to code, you have to learn all those little commands that Python lets you do. For example, another one might be

what they call an if statement. Say I'm wondering, I'm going to do something if this number that comes in is 10,000. Say I'm waiting to see if someone transmits more than $10,000 into my bank account. I could go, you know, if, and then I would say whatever that, whatever the variable of information is, I could go, you know, if, and then I would say whatever that, whatever the variable

of information is, I could call it money in is greater than that greater than sign that you remember from, you know, from, you know, from, from high school is greater than 10,000. And that's an if statement. And it's basically saying, so if the computer sees this happening, then do the next thing. And that's essentially all that code is. It's just a lot of strung together little commands like that. And when you learn to program in a language, you basically study and absorb all those different little commands that are available and how to sort of, you know, stream them together into a set of instructions for a computer. Most people, I imagine, learn it little by little, that you don't learn it and then go do it. You do it and learn it as you do it.

Exactly. Exactly. In fact, one of the things that's funny about calling it a computer language is that it's a little similar to learning like French or Spanish or Chinese, which is to say, you don't sit down with a book and study French for a month and then walk out the door and you, hey, I can speak French. No, you sort of learn, you know, how do you say hello? You know, how do you say goodbye? How do you count? And you practice that stuff. And then, and then you try and do it with a French speaker to see if, you know, are they, are they understanding this? Am I understanding them? And you slowly ratchet and practice and, and the things that you've done a bunch, you get good at and the things that are, then you try and learn some

new things and you're bad at them and then you eventually absorb them. And so it really is like your classic 10,000 hour thing. You start practicing and you can do very little at first, but the more and more you do it, the more you start to think in the language of Python, of JavaScript, of C++, of whatever programming languages you're learning. You start to think in that way, the same way that like if you're learning French, at first it's very foreign, but eventually you're sort of almost formatting thoughts in your head in French or in Spanish or in Chinese. So is there or will there ever be a code to write code?

In other words, will it ever write itself because you've created a code that tells you how to create code? This is a great anxiety. It's a great question because this has been a code that tells you how to create code. This is a great anxiety. It's a great question, because this has been a long anxiety for computer programmers, because they know that their main trick, their main benefit to the world, is taking something that's tedious and doing it automatically for people, right? You know, like, we'll write this little thing that will make it possible to do this piece of work for you, you human, over and over again.

And so they know that, well, you know, if we're good at taking, you know, fiddly things and automating them, well, programming is a fiddly thing. So wouldn't it be possible to automate that? say to the computer, all right, if a transfer of more than $10,000 comes into my account, alert accounts received with a text message and put that information in this spreadsheet and add it to this Word document, right? And so the truth is actually that is indeed happening a little bit. Like you're seeing more and more of these tools that automate things that used to require a lot of programming. One good example of that, here's a simple one that I think most people listening would

know is, say you want to start a blog today. Well, you would just go to a place like Medium or WordPress and you would set it up and they would say, type what you want in this box and then you hit publish and there, it's online. That effectively is a machine that's writing computer code for you. It is writing a whole pile of HTML, the computer language of the web, so that you don't have to. All you have to worry about is the words. But when you push that button, you're initiating an automatic software generation machine. And so a lot of, there's been more and more creation of this stuff.

It's actually called the no code movement. And the idea is to create tools that let the average person say, I want, if this happens, do this. If this happens, do that, do that and make it so. And the software will essentially create, be created for you. So yes, this is happening. It's going to continue to happen. It's going to give more and more of these programming superpowers to people who don't

have to worry about learning the language. But it's also true. It's also true that you're still going to need people to learn how to program, you know, if only to create those interesting new tools. Like there will always be something beyond the ambit of what we can do that will require someone to do some sort of programming. So I think that those superpowers will increase to more people that don't know coding, but there will still be a lot of need for people that want to buckle down and want to learn it. Well, I must say you made it sound more interesting than I thought it was going to be. And when you listen to you talk about it, I mean, coding is really the language of how so many things and how so much of our society works. It's probably good to understand it a bit better. Clive Thompson has been my guest. Clive is a tech writer,

and his book is called Coders, the Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World. There's a link to the book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, Clive. Thanks for being here. If you're having trouble sleeping and you would like a deeper, longer night's sleep tonight, take a walk today. Researchers at the University of Arizona say those of us who walk every day sleep much better at night. Try for at least the equivalent of six city blocks. That's three blocks out and three blocks back. That six block distance

could add 15 to 60 minutes to your deep sleep cycle. Walking reduces stress and will lessen any anxiety or restlessness that prevent you from getting to or staying in that valuable deep sleep state. If walking is not your thing, any exercise will do. Exercise is one of the best ways to improve sleep quality. On average, it reduces the time it takes to get to sleep by 12 minutes, and it increases total sleep time by 42 minutes. And that is something you should know.

I know there are a lot of podcasts to listen to. I appreciate you taking time to listen to this one, and I hope you'll share it with your friends. 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. Her brothers, thanks for listening connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity.

The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well,

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