Something You Should Know - Understanding Fear and Bravery in Everyday Life & How Modern Chemicals Affect You

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, how many married couples would you guess sleep in separate beds? I bet you guessed wrong. Then, understanding the fear and anxiety of everyday life. The example I use usually is that if someone is pointing a gun at you, the experience you have is fear. But if somebody tells you there is a gunman on the loose in your neighborhood, the feeling you have is anxiety. You don't know exactly what you're afraid of.

Starting point is 00:00:57 The object of fear is not right there. Here you worry about a lot of things that may go wrong. Also, why organic cookies taste better than regular cookies, even when they don't. And how do dangerous chemicals end up in our products and our environment? So you develop a new chemical to make a jacket waterproof, or you develop a new chemical to use as a lubricant or a solvent, and you can just put it out on the marketplace. And then it takes decades after scientists show a problem to get it off the market.

Starting point is 00:01:26 All this today on Something You Should Know. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks and only make left turns where it's safe to do so. Be alert, be aware, and stay safe. Something you should know.

Starting point is 00:02:00 Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, 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. Boy, this is surprising. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. Would you believe it if I told you that 25% of couples in the U.S. sleep in separate beds. According to research, sleeping separately does improve sleep quality and reduce stress, but sleeping together results in healthier and happier relationships. Snoring and conflicting sleep-wake schedules were the main reasons for

Starting point is 00:02:40 sleeping apart. But interestingly, in the late 1800s, sleeping in separate beds was quite common and often recommended. There were books written by doctors saying that sleeping together was unhealthy. By the 1920s, twin beds were actually seen as the fashionable, modern choice for couples. Things changed after World War II and twin beds fell out of fashion by the 1960s

Starting point is 00:03:08 and couples began sharing a bed. But still, a lot of couples prefer sleeping separately. And that is something you should know. I think it's safe to say that we live in a fearful culture. When you watch the news or read something online, it seems like there's a lot of things to be afraid of. And certainly we have all experienced moments of real fear in life. When you stop and think about it, fear is a good thing, because if we weren't afraid of anything, we'd probably all be dead. You'll never know how many times your fear protected you

Starting point is 00:03:48 because your fear prevented you from doing something that might have put you in danger. Fear keeps us alive. But a lot of fear seems irrational or overblown. So how do we better understand and get a handle on our own fear? Joining me to help with that is Dr. Arash Javanbacht. He is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who currently serves as the director of the Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic at Wayne State University. He's also author of a book called Afraid, Understanding the Purpose of Fear and Harnessing the Power of Anxiety. Hi Arash, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:04:29 Thanks for having me, Mike. So fear is something humans, and I guess every other creature has, we know what fear feels like, but what is it exactly? Fear is a reaction to an obvious threat. So if there is a lion attacking me, if a rock is falling over my head, I'm using these examples because these are examples related to the context and environment fear evolved in and the system evolved in. So in these situations, I have an object or situation right in front of me that is perceived

Starting point is 00:05:02 as a threat by myself. But then we have anxiety. Anxiety is more wider sense of apprehension and worry about something that might happen to us. The example I use usually is that if someone is pointing a gun at you, the experience you have is fear. But if somebody tells you there is a gunman on the loose in your neighborhood, the feeling you have is anxiety.

Starting point is 00:05:23 You don't know exactly what you're afraid of. The object of fear is not right there. But there is constant alertness and being on watch and looking for what might happen. A lot of people who have anxiety or anxiety disorders are dealing with this. You're not necessarily worried about one specific thing. Here you worry about a lot of things that may go wrong. So I think everybody gets the idea that fear serves a purpose. If we didn't have fear, you know, we'd all be driving our cars off a cliff or, you know, running in front of a train, it wouldn't bother us. So fear keeps us alive. So when is it a problem and why is it a problem? Absolutely. Excellent point. If we were not capable of experiencing fear, we would not exist as a species. We would all have been killed by the nature or by other species or

Starting point is 00:06:13 by our own competitors. So we do need fear. But the challenge is that this system evolved over a very long time to deal with the situations of its environment. And our fear circuitry has evolved to basically prepare us to the conditions of fight and flight. Back in the time, 50,000 years ago, the threats were natural disasters, falling rocks, predators, and other humans who were there to kill us. But the confusion here is

Starting point is 00:06:41 within the modern life environment, because basically I say the software has evolved extremely fast and the hardware has not. So we react to situations of perceived threat in the modern life the way we would react to these situations 50,000 years ago. Example, let's say I am giving a public speech and I'm scared and I'm worried I may be judged and my heart is pounding in my throat and I'm short of breath and my hands are sweating and it is not helping me it sounds stupid that the system which has

Starting point is 00:07:13 evolved to help us and serve us is now working against us but if we put it in the evolutionary perspective and context it's less confusing so 50,000 years ago if I'm among my tribe mates and they don't like me, chances are high in a matter of minutes, one of us are dead or I'm exiled or seriously injured. So I need that fight and flight system to work. And that's the feeling we feel inside of our chest and inside of our guts and stomach. Well, it does seem, I think anybody who would look back at the things that they have been afraid of or felt fear about or anxiety about in the last six months probably was unnecessary. That whatever it was never happened. It wasn't a threat. It was just a perceived threat in your head.

Starting point is 00:08:00 That's true. That fear and anxiety, mostly anticipatory anxiety, is worse than what it really is. And a lot of us overshoot, especially more anxious people, overshoot for threat detection. We have a tendency to catastrophize. Like right before this, I was talking to a friend who has a company with like 30, 40 employees. And he's talking about some of the challenges, some challenges at work. And then he goes, well, at worst, I can have my own solo practice and work. Well, that was a big jump

Starting point is 00:08:32 from going from 30 employees to, oh, I will be able to function as one person after losing all of these. So we do overshoot. And a lot of times I tell people, how about you look back and see on average in the past every time you worried about something, how much you overshot compared to the reality of what you experienced. Then we can use our cognitive brain to basically readjust that next time we are in a situation that we are worrying about. The other thing that fear and anxiety do is that, which is amazing about us. So we as a species are capable of reflecting on the past and planning for the future. But

Starting point is 00:09:13 the problem is that even right now, our listeners are not 100% here. Part of their brain processing is in what happened earlier and in what's about to happen in a few minutes or a few hours or tomorrow, the meeting I have tomorrow, what I'm going to have for dinner, when I go home, what challenge I will have. All of these things are constantly here. And if we were able to be exactly in here and now, we would be a lot less stressed and a lot less anxious. And if you wanted, we can at some point have a two-minute practice of just doing that of doing what of just being in the here and now yeah I can guide a one-minute experiment between us and the audience if you want go ahead okay so I want you all to pay close attention just with the

Starting point is 00:10:02 count of fingers or just tell me or yourself how many sounds you're hearing at this very moment to to how many colors as many as they are do you see around you in the room many seven eight seven eight and you can you can count and focus more and more as much as possible because there are different shades even in the same object. Right. And then I want you to feel your shoes. Feel exactly every inch of the shoe. There are parts that the foot is touching the shoe. There are parts that are not touching.

Starting point is 00:10:37 There are parts which are less comfortable. There are parts which are more comfortable. Same you can do with your sleeves, like sleeves of the shirt. People can feel every single inch of it. So during this time, could I confidently say you were thinking less about past and the future? Absolutely. I was thinking about what you told me to think about. This is exactly mindfulness. To a lot of people mindfulness is being with some candle and some weird music in the basement but this is

Starting point is 00:11:09 mindfulness this is one of the ways we use and we can use which is very against what's happening these days because these days you're constantly not here you're you're on your phone you're on Instagram you're on Facebook 200 different contradicting and different subjects in a matter of seconds you're just scrolling down and up but then with these experiences we use our senses to come back to here and now which is oftentimes the safest moment and when we are not in there and then which is just imaginations life is a lot easier and less scary is that beneficial though only for the few minutes I'm counting colors and feeling my shoes?

Starting point is 00:11:47 Or does that have any kind of residual effect? Excellent question. So it's a practice. The same way we build muscles in the arms and in the body with going to the gym, this kind of practice basically gradually teaches us to be here and now. And the more and the longer we can, we will basically be able to do it longer and more and gradually first of all it's a respite if I can and that's a lot of activities we do that recharge our brains right I go to the gym and I do go to a boxing gym I hit

Starting point is 00:12:18 the bag not the people doing that one hour then I'm hitting the bag I'm just right there because I cannot think about something else and it's very refreshing so mindfulness any mindful activity in that sense could basically be a reset for the mind basically takes us away for a second from all the worries and troubles and problems we are thinking about or we have made for ourselves in our minds but then also when we do more and more and more and more and more of this in the midst of the anxious moments and difficult situations, it's easier for us to come back to here and now. So it's a practice that we do to basically reset the system and be able to come to here, which is the only real moment

Starting point is 00:12:56 in our life. We're talking about fear and anxiety in everyday life, and we'll be talking about bravery too in just a few moments, my guest is Dr. Arash Javanbhakt. He is a psychiatrist and author of the book Afraid, Understanding the Purpose of Fear and Harnessing the Power of Anxiety. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual.

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Starting point is 00:14:07 We've got the financial tools to help make it happen. Wealthsimple. Built for possibilities. Visit wealthsimple.com slash possibilities. So Arash, you know, I've always been fascinated by this idea, and I understand why, but whenever there's something in the future that you're worried about, it's almost impossible to imagine it turning out well. You know, it's always in the negative. It's like, what if this goes wrong? Nobody ever sits around and thinks, what if this

Starting point is 00:14:39 goes right? And I get why, and we're wired that that way but wouldn't it be nice if we could say this is gonna be a piece of cake this is gonna be great this is gonna be the greatest thing that ever happened that will be very good and that would be even better if we were able to be have an objective assessment of the threat but like think about why do we worry even about like jinxing things right you're like oh don't say all those good things about it even if you're not superstitious you still have some worry but in the back of your mind about it and there's this other part oh if I set myself for a

Starting point is 00:15:13 lower level of expectations so if bad things happen then I'm not unprepared for them it's as if there's somebody in my head who's sitting there as a very harsh judge that if i fail i should be so prepared to explain to them why i failed there's also something about fear though that intrigue us you know we like movies that scare us we like books that scare us. We like, so we almost like go after it. We almost like pull it in because there's something about it. Maybe it just feels good when it goes away after. I don't know. But what is that?

Starting point is 00:15:57 The same way our body needs to be active, we go to the gym, right? Because this body was designed not for sitting at the desk all day long it was designed for other activities we go to the gym and prepare it and we feel a lot better i think our fear system also needs some good healthy exercise we need some real fuse and the first time i thought of this was when i had my own experience of fear, big fear. I was afraid of heights and I, not thinking well about it, signed up for a mule ride down the Grand Canyon. So I'm sitting on the mule next to this flat wall going down so deep and terrified. Of course, those few hours of right down to the bottom of the canyon

Starting point is 00:16:45 was basically helpful in overcome basically was exposure therapy more for my fear of heights and I ended up being able to even do roles in a fighter jet but the cool experience was after that for a few days I did not feel anxious I felt so calm same I was talking to my boxing trainer. This guy fights, Reggie. And Reggie, I was asking him about his fights and how it feels. And one of the things he said was fighting feels as if he's alive, which I couldn't understand. This is another one of those real mindful moments.

Starting point is 00:17:19 But he also felt much less anxious the next few days after that. I think this, when putting fear in real perspective, being exposed to what is really scary, allows us to put our false anxieties in perspective. I've always thought, my theory has always been that it's like safe fear. You know, when you go see a scary movie, deep down inside, you know, there's nothing to be afraid of. And yet, so you get to exercise that feeling in complete safety. Absolutely. I agree with you. Somebody chasing you with something looking like a knife in a haunted house is different than that happening on the street, on a dark street.

Starting point is 00:18:05 And that is what matters here is the context. So contextually, we have a very contextual brain. Our brain is advanced to process the context and put cues in context. So that context allows you to know, as you said, you're safe, number one. Number two, you are in control. Sense of control is one of the most important things for reducing fear and anxiety and there are many ways I've talked about how we can basically use that sense of control to reduce anxiety I mean there are even researchers that where the same rats got the same number

Starting point is 00:18:40 of shocks two groups of rats one group had a false perception that they are in charge of the shocks they get. They were less stressed. So absolutely, that feeling of safety. So you rile up the animal inside, but the human knows we are safe and we are in charge and can enjoy the ride. So is the antidote to too much fear bravery? Is the ability to feel that fear and do whatever you do with it and just move ahead

Starting point is 00:19:09 anyway. So bravery is a very complicated concept because it has so many layers because what is perceived as bravery is an action that we see from outside. Let's say I'm highly trained at, I don't know, a SWAT team member who is highly trained in self-defense feels much less scared if someone is about to rob them than I am. Is that person more brave than me or is that person more trained and skilled than me? Or how we perceive that threat. An accurate threat perception is important in the sense of bravery. If let's say I don't know about snakes, I see a snake, I freak out. Someone else knows this snake is non-venomous. Because of that knowledge, they look brave and they can go grab the snake. But it could also be stupidity. Someone may have

Starting point is 00:19:57 a very unrealistic perception of threat and they act somehow that looks brave. But there's a point to what you mentioned. We say fear and anxiety a lot of times is there. I mean, sometimes we cannot even eradicate it. I mean, we have a lot of advancements in our treatments and whether it's medications, therapies, technologies, using some advanced augmented reality technologies for that, and they help a lot. But sometimes at the end end of the day you cannot totally eradicate fear and anxiety but you want the person to get to the point that they're able to perform and function ideally despite the face in the face of the fear and anxiety i mean for a lot of people with anxiety disorders and illnesses that's one part to learn through skills and coping skills and

Starting point is 00:20:45 other abilities but this is some the effect of a life of people who are highly performing i know someone who goes a very famous actor actress or singer who goes on the stage or the high performing athletes they always have to deal with their anxieties and fears and still perform fully ideally and that actually is what determines a better professional from the professional which is less successful very often people who are perceived as brave said I had no choice that was the only it was the right thing to do and you know if somebody if I'm holding my own child and someone tries to grab him at gun point, I'm going to do everything. I'm going to do things that people would perceive brave.

Starting point is 00:21:31 I had no choice. What else was I going to do? Maybe it was brave, but it wasn't like there was another option. You do what you have to do. And bravery is something other people say about you more than what you say oh I was I was so brave I work for the first responders a lot what you said just reminded me of a story I had a cop who basically whose partner was shot in front of her and it's just the two of them and the gunman is coming towards him and shooting and she's sitting there putting her hand on her partner's neck that is bleeding to help him survive. And that was the question I asked her.

Starting point is 00:22:15 I was like, you didn't worry about your own life at that moment. She exactly gave me the answer you gave, you just said. I had no other choice. I did not think and I could not think of any other action at that time. Is there something, and there may be no answer to this, but is there something like the next time I'm in one of those places where I'm really afraid, I have fear, that I can do in the moment like a a first aid thing, to turn the volume down on the fear? Yes. One thing is to try to bring myself as much as I can to here and now, whether it's like

Starting point is 00:22:52 counting colors around me, or writing something down, or engaging my cognitive brain, or joking about something, sense of humor. Bring me here, because being there in the la-la land of fear and anxiety, number one, it makes it worse. Number two, it's not going to help. It reduces my ability to deal with the situation. Even seeking help from others, others from outside can give you perspectives that can basically, both from a biological standpoint

Starting point is 00:23:17 and a cognitive standpoint, other humans are able to soothe each other. So we can use these resources. Yeah, well, I've always believed that, that fear grows exponentially in a vacuum. But when you get other people involved and talk about your fear with other people, they can help you put a better perspective on it. I've been speaking with Dr. Arash Javanbacht. He is a psychiatrist and neuroscientist. He is author of the book, Afraid, Understanding the Purpose of Fear

Starting point is 00:23:46 and Harnessing the Power of Anxiety. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Arash. This was really interesting. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. It was an engaging conversation. You asked very thoughtful questions and I really enjoyed it. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats. And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather.

Starting point is 00:24:28 Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking, Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug, the play is pretend, the skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys. I think it's safe to say that when you hear the word chemicals, it probably doesn't make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

Starting point is 00:25:05 That word has a reputation. Chemicals are bad, seems to be the general consensus. But the fact is, chemicals are a big part of life on Earth. They're not all bad, but certainly some are. And having a better understanding of what chemicals are, what they do, can really help people feel better about them and get a sense of which ones to avoid and which ones not to worry so much about. Here to help with all of this is Frank von Hippel. He is a professor of ecotoxicology at Northern Arizona University and author of the book, The Chemical Age, How Chemistry Fought Famine and Disease, Killed Millions, and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth.

Starting point is 00:25:48 Hey Frank, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you Mike, I really appreciate it. So it seems like chemicals, chemistry, that's like the definition of a two-edged sword. Chemistry can be good and helpful, and it can be bad and dangerous. So first, the good. What is chemistry good at? Well, chemistry has been used to solve major problems now for a few centuries. So one way to think about it is to prevent famines, you can use chemistry to kill plant pathogens like what destroyed the potatoes in Ireland. You can use chemicals to

Starting point is 00:26:25 destroy the vectors of disease like mosquitoes and body louse to prevent pandemics. But people also use these same types of chemicals to make chemical weapons. So there's been a lot of interplay between chemistry development for good, fighting famine and disease, and for evil, fighting people. Well, I guess there's always going to be that. It's like, you know, you can use your powers for good or evil, and the same can apply to chemicals. Yeah, that's right. And one of the interesting things about the history of chemistry is it's often the same people doing both. So Fritz Haber, for example, is considered the father of chemical weapons because he deployed chemical weapons successfully for the first time on the battlefield at the beginning of World War

Starting point is 00:27:12 I. But he's also the man who was the first to fix atmospheric nitrogen to make fertilizers, which probably saved millions of lives in the 20th century. So you have all these interesting characters who were using chemistry for both good and bad. And when you look at both sides of that equation, you've got good and bad, like how are we doing? Are we leaning more towards the good, like we have things under control or not? We really have things less under control. And the reason for that is the pace with which humanity is creating new chemicals far outstrips our ability to understand their effects on the

Starting point is 00:27:51 environment or human health. So we now know there's something like 350,000 man-made chemicals that have been released into the environment. And we understand the toxicology really well for maybe 10,000 of those. So probably the amount of new chemicals produced every year equals our total understanding of what these chemicals do to us and the environment. So in that sense, it's getting worse. And we really haven't figured out as a species how to live sustainably with chemistry, though there are a lot of good ideas on that front. Well, there is in just kind of modern culture, it seems, when you talk about chemicals, there's a very negative connotation to that, that chemicals are bad somehow, that you should not, you know, the fewer chemicals in your life, the better, which isn't necessarily true, right?

Starting point is 00:28:43 And not all chemicals are bad. Not all chemicals will kill you. Some of them just occur in nature and chemicals have gotten a bad rap, it seems. Yeah, I think you're right. I think a lot of people view it as a negative thing when we couldn't live without chemistry, but we also have to learn to live sustainably with chemistry. So I think the agricultural sector provides a good example of this because the chemicals that we've used to kill the pests of agriculture have gotten a lot safer, but we also use far more of them than we need to. And so we haven't really caught that balance found that balance yet between what we

Starting point is 00:29:27 need to do to use chemistry in a good way while avoiding the pitfalls of chemistry well one of the things i think a very specific example of where people get confused about chemicals is you know we hear that chemicals are used in agriculture and there's pesticides on our food and that you should buy organic, some people say, because then you'll get fewer pesticides. Is that true? Do you eat organic? Yeah, so it's definitely healthier to eat organic food. It's better for you and it's better for the environment. But most of us can't afford to only buy organic because it's more expensive. And so typically what works best would be to allocate your budget to get organic foods where the pesticide residues are the highest. And you can look this up. There are groups like the Environmental Working Group that have

Starting point is 00:30:18 apps for your phone, they have documents online that will show you what the pesticide residues are for different foods. You might decide, okay, I'm going to buy organic strawberries because the pesticide levels are high in those, but I'm not going to buy organic potatoes or whatever it might be. So just being able to make those informed decisions helps a lot. And one of the things that I really like about thinking about pollution and thinking about chemicals is it's one of the major planetary issues that we can personally make a big difference on. Because what we decide to do, what we decide to use in our homes and our gardens, that can make a difference to our own health, the health of our neighbors and local wildlife. Whereas with many of

Starting point is 00:31:01 the other problems like climate change, it can feel like, what could I do as a person that would make any difference? So with pollution, it can feel like, what could I do as a person that would make any difference? So with pollution, you can personally make a big difference. But when you say that it's healthier to eat organic in some cases, because there have been studies to prove it? Because it seems there's also studies that say that it really doesn't make much difference in terms of your health, in terms of your longevity, whether you do or don't. So when people use the word it's healthier, by what standard?

Starting point is 00:31:37 That's a great question. So generally, these chemicals are most problematic for the baby in the womb and during early development, early childhood. And so that's the timing when you need to be most careful because a lot of these chemicals are so-called endocrine disrupting chemicals. They disrupt hormone function. And so when a child is undergoing rapid development in the womb in an early childhood, and they're exposed to high levels of pesticides and other chemicals, it can lead to late onset diseases like cancer. It can also lead to reduced fertility and other problems. So for example, in the industrialized world now, men have about half the sperm count they had in the 1950s. And that's thought to be due to exposure to all of these chemicals. So it's definitely personal, it's definitely healthier for you as a person, but the way in which that those health effects are expressed is often has to do with early

Starting point is 00:32:32 developmental exposure and later onset disease. Are there any points in time in the development of chemicals as they interlace with our lives that have been like big, like, wow, this is amazing, or oh my God, this is horrible? Or have there been, or is it more incremental, you know, things come, things go, things change, things don't? Oh, there's definitely big shifts. And so, for example, prior to World War II, most of the pesticides that were used to fight insect pests were metal or metalloid based pesticides, things like lead, mercury, and other toxic metals. And those were really quite

Starting point is 00:33:14 dangerous because if you ate an apple that had been treated with lead arsenic, a lead arsenic combination, it could potentially kill you. So with World War II, we got the origin of modern synthetic pesticides. Everyone's heard of DDT as an example of this. And those were much safer for consumers. So that would be one shift. And there've been other ones since then, but we made a major shift to these organochlorine pesticides beginning with World War II and going all the way into the 1980s. And there, the problem was mostly environmental because they persist the environment for decades. So we switched to another category of pesticides called organophosphate pesticides, where they break down much faster.

Starting point is 00:33:56 So it's safer for consumers, but they're more dangerous for the farm workers to apply. And there's been a number of these kinds of shifts as we've moved from one chemical class to another. issue, you know, back when Rachel Carson wrote her book and then, you know, malaria came roaring back and killed a lot of people. And maybe that wasn't such a great idea. So it seems like politics and public influence gets mixed up in the soup here. Oh, absolutely. And DDT is kind of the poster child for this because when it was first developed during World War II for use, it was a public health tool. It was used to kill mosquitoes and vector malaria and yellow fever in the war theaters in South Pacific, North African war theater. It was used by the U.S. military in Naples in December 1943 to February 1944 when we invaded, took over Naples, and the people of Naples were facing a typhus outbreak. And typhus is a deadly disease affected by the body louse. So it's really effective at

Starting point is 00:35:15 stopping those diseases in their tracks. That was the first time a typhus outbreak had ever been stopped, and it was through DDT. If we had only just preserved DDT for public health emergencies like that, it would still be a wonderful tool today. But it's human nature not to do that. And so as soon as the war was over, we started using it in everything, in wallpaper for the nursery, in our paints, in our homes, in theater so you wouldn't have to be bothered by flies when you're watching a concert in airplanes, just overused everywhere. And because it was used so much, the pests quickly evolved resistance to it, so it became ineffective.

Starting point is 00:35:52 So that's kind of a good theme to the whole story of chemistry, because these chemicals like DDT can be wonderful tools, but not when they're overused. Well, and talk about that idea of no matter what chemicals you use, whatever you're trying to get rid of can develop resistance to it. And over time, you know, we hear about that with antibiotics and other things that it's a moving picture. It's not a static, oh, we solved this problem. That's exactly right. The antibiotic story is a great parallel for this because it works the same way with pesticides. So with DDT, for example, once it went into heavy use in the decade after World War II, all over the world, the insects that were targeted with it evolved resistance in two or three years.

Starting point is 00:36:42 And then it was no longer very effective. It's like everything in life you know you have a pesticide you have a chemical that will do this but there's likely side effects on the other side of the scale that you know it's nothing is ever it's like a medication you know yeah it'll help but it may also cause this other problem it's it's always a balance that's exactly right And in terms of the politics of it, we unfortunately have our politics pretty much backwards on chemicals policy, because if you wanted to develop a new drug, and it's the Mike Carruthers new medicine for whatever disease, you would have to go through clinical trials to prove that that drug is safe and efficacious. But that's not the way it works

Starting point is 00:37:25 with chemicals. So companies can introduce new chemicals to the market, and then we as consumers have to prove they're unsafe to get them off the market. And if we just reversed it and made it the same as drug development, then we could have a much more sustainable process where we're not constantly overusing and polluting everything. I mean, I think most people are now familiar with PFAS chemicals polluting our water supplies all over the country, and that's another example of the same problem. But wait, a company can just create or find and distribute a chemical and then wait until somebody says this is wrong?

Starting point is 00:38:02 Or there must be some sort of approval process before you put out a new pesticide or something. Yeah, for pesticides, there is an approval process. And that approval process does not prevent dangerous pesticides from being used. They just have to show in a cost-benefit analysis that according to the current rules, this is worthwhile. But just as an example, down on the Arizona-Mexico border, on the U.S. side of the border, we use 240 different pesticides in year-round agriculture, and a quarter of those pesticides are considered hazardous in terms of being carcinogenic or disrupting development. So we have many of these that are quite dangerous that go on

Starting point is 00:38:42 the market anyway, and it's known they're dangerous. But the bigger problem is that we have tens of thousands of new chemicals being developed for other purposes that don't have to go through any kind of safety testing at all. So you develop a new chemical to make a jacket waterproof, or you develop a new chemical to use as a lubricant or a solvent, and you can just put it out on the marketplace and then it takes decades after scientists show a problem to get it off the market that's that surprises me not not not that you know using it in a on a jacket I mean that seems pretty benign but but how it got to the point of being able to use it on the jacket without being you know stopped somewhere along the

Starting point is 00:39:25 process and saying, wait, wait, what is this? Wait, we can't be doing this. Yeah, I think PFAS, those are the per- and polyfluorocyl substances, are a great example of this very problem. These are the chemicals that were developed for having waterproof materials like Gore-Tex jackets, Scotchgard that you might put on your car seat, and a variety of other coatings to make things waterproof. It turns out there's more than 10,000 chemicals in this family of chemicals. And we understand the toxicology really well for four of those and a few others. We understand a bit about them. Most of them, we know almost nothing about them. And they were all we know almost nothing about them.

Starting point is 00:40:06 And they were all introduced into the marketplace without any testing of their toxicity. So that's just the norm when it comes to chemical development. Is there ever been, or is there now, some chemical that really has lived up to the promise, it really isn't that as dangerous, and it really does do what it says and it really this is like kind of a new era of chemicals or is it always been problems and benefits well so we have as i mentioned something like 350 000 man-made chemicals that are in the

Starting point is 00:40:38 environment probably most of those are not a problem for the environment and not a problem for human health but many thousands of them are including many that are are not a problem for the environment and not a problem for human health, but many thousands of them are, including many that are probably quite a problem that we haven't yet discovered. The history of science is all about these accidental discoveries that end up being a big deal. So you could just think about stratospheric ozone depletion as an example of this, where the chlorofluorocarbons, the CFCs, were developed to be refrigerants and propellants. And they were developed as a safer alternative because before Thomas Midgley Jr. developed the first one, Freon, lots of people were dying in explosions of air-conditioned units or refrigerators. And Freon was so safe and inert that that never happened. So it seemed like this

Starting point is 00:41:26 wonderful new invention with no problems. No one anticipated that it would destroy ozone in the stratosphere that protects life on Earth from dangerous ultraviolet radiation. So those kinds of unintended consequences of chemical development are the norm. There's so many of these. And who knows what damage is happening for all the new chemicals coming out now. And that's why we really need to have a precautionary principle, like with drugs, of first doing the testing and then allowing the marketing. The problems that you point out, are they problems with the system? Are they problems with the government? Are they problems because people are being devious? I mean, what is the problem? So there's some of all of that, but it's mostly the problem with the system. So another great

Starting point is 00:42:18 example of this in the history of chemistry, I mentioned that Thomas Midgley Jr. developed Freon. Another thing that he developed was tetraethyl leaded gasoline. And he was trying to solve the problem of knocking in internal combustion engines and discovered that if he added tetraethyl lead to gasoline, marketed as ethyl gasoline, that it greatly increased the performance of cars. Well, in the development of that gasoline, a number of workers got lead poisoning. So they knew that lead was toxic at the time, but they thought that it was worth the benefit in terms of increased performance in automobiles. And so then we went through nearly 100, it was about 70 years of use of leaded gasoline that created tremendous levels of lead pollution in the atmosphere. And lead, unfortunately,

Starting point is 00:43:05 leads to irreversible declines in intelligence and cognition when children are exposed to it. So we had several generations who were exposed to high levels of lead and all of the consequences of that for a chemical that was known to be toxic at the time it was produced, but there was so much money in it that it all went forward anyway. And so that's one side. But on the system side, it's also this having the chemicals policy be backwards is really the system level at which it's a problem. So all of those things occur and whether it's the system or just profit motive, they all lead to unsustainable chemicals policy. Well, it's certainly an important topic and one that everyone really has a stake in because we're all exposed to chemicals everywhere we go. And it's good to get an understanding of what they are and what's going on.

Starting point is 00:43:59 I've been speaking with Frank Von Hippel. He is a professor of ecotoxicology at Northern Arizona University and author of the book, The Chemical Age, How Chemists Fought Famine and Disease, Killed Millions, and Changed Our Relationship with the Earth. There's a link to that book in the show notes. Appreciate it. Thanks, Frank. Thanks for coming on. Thanks so much, Mike. I've really enjoyed this. Since we were just talking about chemicals and organic food with Frank von Hippel a minute ago, I thought this was interesting. Do you know that organic cookies taste better than regular ones, even if they really don't taste better? A study found that people perceive food as tastier if they're told it's organic or if it includes organic ingredients. The same trick works for other descriptive words like farm-raised, locally grown, all-natural.

Starting point is 00:44:59 Experts call this the health halo effect. People tend to assume that food is better for them, more pure, and tastes better if it has fancy adjectives that make it sound all natural. And that is something you should know. You know, if you hear an advertiser on this podcast and what they're selling sounds interesting to you, typically there is a link to that advertiser in the show notes for whatever episode you hear it in. And I hope you'll check them out. We love our advertisers.

Starting point is 00:45:31 We vet them all. And they're good folks with good products, and they keep this podcast going. So please do business with them, and I'd appreciate it. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a

Starting point is 00:46:05 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.

Starting point is 00:46:52 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, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left field choice in the best way possible. The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him,

Starting point is 00:47:23 but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes, so please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - Understanding Fear and Bravery in Everyday Life & How Modern Chemicals Affect You

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