Something You Should Know - Using Data to Get What You Want & What You Didn’t Know About Weather and Nature

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Starting point is 00:00:31 Today on Something You Should Know, just how dangerous are women's shoes? Then, the surprising ways data can help you make better choices, like finding a mate, being happy, or getting rich. They analyzed all the data of basically everybody rich in the United States of America and they concluded that the typical rich American is the owner of a regional business such as an auto dealership or beverage distribution company. That kind of shocked me for multiple reasons.

Starting point is 00:01:02 Also how working too much can make you boring and forgetful, and a discussion that will change the way you see weather and nature, like trees. So if you look at a tree from all directions, you walk around one, you'll very quickly realize that there's no such thing as a symmetrical tree, and on average there's just more tree. There are bigger branches and more branches and more leaves on the southern side. 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,

Starting point is 00:01:46 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. 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. I'm one of those people that doesn't really like wearing shoes all that much. Around the house, I pretty much wear socks, and I'll admit that I'm not wearing shoes right now. And I may be onto something, because wearing shoes can be dangerous, especially high heels. In fact, in one survey, over half the female population in the U.S. say they have been injured as a result of wearing high heels.

Starting point is 00:02:41 And according to data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, there have actually been injuries associated with wearing high heels that resulted in trips to the emergency room. In fact, between 2002 and 2012, there were 123,355 high heel related injuries seen in the emergency room during that period. That's about 12,000 a year. And it was people between the ages of 20 and 29 who were most likely to suffer an injury. Now, some historians suggest that high heels have been around for nearly 300 years, and medical professionals have been warning about the dangers of high heels for roughly the same amount of time. 60% of women claim to regret at least one purchase of shoes.

Starting point is 00:03:37 Most women only wear four pairs of shoes regularly, and 25% of their shoe collection have only been worn once. And that is something you should know. You make a lot of big decisions in your life based solely on your gut. What feels right? Mostly because there really isn't much else to go on, so you use your own judgment to decide things like who to date, who to marry, what career path to follow, figuring out what makes you happy, how to be a good parent. But what if there was some objective data on these topics that could really help you make better choices?

Starting point is 00:04:21 Well, there is, according to economist and former Google data scientist, Seth Stevens Davidovitz. He's author of a book called Don't Trust Your Gut, Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life. Hi, David. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Michael Carruthers. Thank you for having me. So I really like this idea, this idea of using data and algorithms to make better choices, which we generally don't do. So explain how you came up with this idea. But one of the motivations was that I'm a huge baseball fan. And any baseball fan knows the story of baseball the last 25, 30 years, which is the explosion

Starting point is 00:05:01 of analytics and data analysis to make decisions. So baseball has just totally been transformed by data analytics. And I'm a data scientist. So I've worked at Google as a data scientist. You know, every decision is based on data. But it kind of occurred to me that certainly in my personal life, like I don't really make decisions based on much data. I kind of just like do what I think seems about right.

Starting point is 00:05:26 Trust my gut, basically. And it occurred to me that, you know, maybe it would be interesting to explore some of these bigger areas of life. So, you know, dating, picking a romantic partner, career success, happiness, parenting. What would data tell you about these topics? Kind of a money ball for your life approach to the biggest questions that we face. And also I knew because I'm kind of in the field of data analytics that there's been an explosion of really credible research in these big areas. To which some might say, well, but maybe some of these big questions are not better served by data. Maybe the old-fashioned way of trusting your gut and

Starting point is 00:06:06 doing it the way grandma did it is better. So as you look at the whole thing, when the dust settles, do you come away saying data is a better way, or it's too individual, or data is not a better way? I pretty strongly believe data is a better way. Yeah, somehow that doesn't surprise me. I kind of came into that with that idea because it's been proven in every area it's been tested. They've tested judges. If they have to decide whether someone on trial is going to commit another crime or it's safe to let him be out, that algorithms are better than judges at doing that. They found that algorithms are better than principles at deciding whether a teacher should

Starting point is 00:06:51 be promoted. They found that algorithms are better at doctors at determining whether someone should be given a test for heart disease or cancer. So it's been proven over and over again. And all you have to do is look around. It's not like people are nailing these big life decisions as is. You know, if you talk about marriage or picking a partner, I mean, how many people do you know are in terrible relationships or divorced multiple times? How many people do we know who are unhappy and career success? Certainly many people have struggled to figure out what they should do. So I think it's pretty obvious just looking around that the current approach of using your gut is leading to less than optimal decisions. And then the fact that there's been proof in pretty much every arena that's been tested that data beats gut is more evidence in my favor. So let's dive into some of these specifically. And I wanted to maybe start with wealth, because I think there's this kind of skewed view of the best way to get

Starting point is 00:07:53 rich and the best way to be wealthy. So what does the data say? Yeah, so there are these studies where they basically looked at the entire universe of people in the top 1% or even top 0.1%. They analyzed all the data of basically everybody rich in the United States of America, and they concluded that the typical rich American is the owner of a regional business, such as an auto dealership or beverage distribution company. That kind of shocked me for multiple reasons. I didn't think of auto dealerships as paths to wealth. I didn't know what a beverage distribution company is. But then you kind of dig down the data. They dig down. I dig down the data as well. And you kind of start understanding what that

Starting point is 00:08:36 means and why that is and kind of what it really takes to be rich in the United States. One of the big points about being rich is that the path to wealth is owning things, not a salary. So among the top 0.1% of Americans, there's about a three to one ratio, people who own versus people who make a salary. Well, I imagine a lot of it has to do with what kind of business you run or own, because, you know, there are plenty of statistics about how most new businesses fail. Restaurants go out of business a lot of the time. Well, they're not quite as bad as some people think. There are definitely a lot of restaurateurs that are in the top 0.1% or 1%, but it's nowhere near as good as, say, an auto dealership or a beverage distribution company or some other companies. So what is it about auto dealerships or beverage distribution companies that make

Starting point is 00:09:30 them the path to wealth? Well, they actually have legal protections against competitors. So you can't just start an auto dealership. There are kind of laws of who's allowed to do this. One danger of being in business, I'm an economist, so there's something called the zero price condition, which is basically if you have profits, someone else will start a business, a competing business, and they'll charge a lower price and they'll take away all your profits. That happens a ton in business. I think people don't realize just how hard it is to actually have a business that's consistently making money. So legal protection is definitely a good path to making some money. But there are other businesses that have their own protections

Starting point is 00:10:17 that aren't legal. So market research turns out to be a really good business. Just a large percent of people who start market research businesses end up in the top 1% or top 0.1%. So I guess mainly because these things are so visible, a lot of young people think the path to wealth is, you know, being an athlete or being a celebrity on YouTube or trying to be a Kardashian or, you know, something like that, that I imagine the odds of that are pretty low. Yeah, they are very low. It's not as crazy as you might sometimes think trying to be a celebrity, because there are ways you can dramatically increase your odds. The data also shows. And there have been actually studies of artists and what it takes to be a successful artist. And usually what separates them is not necessarily the art they've created,

Starting point is 00:11:06 that the art is so much better than everybody else's, but they were just much more aggressive hustlers. So for example, there've been studies of hundreds of thousands of painters and they found that the painters who made it traveled widely to every possible gallery, different regions of the country, different countries, any gallery that

Starting point is 00:11:25 would take them, they showed their work there. And eventually they kind of stumble on a big break. And the painters who didn't make it, they just kind of presented their work in the same place over and over again, hoping that someone would find them and nobody actually did. Well, isn't that true of any business? The people who, no matter what business, the few that are the real high achievers are the hustlers. Yeah, I think you can definitely take the lesson from artists who made it. It depends a little on the field. So the more talent, the more you're judged objectively based on your talent, the less hustling is going to matter. So athletes, for example, sometimes it matters less how much you hustle because it's much easier to see how good you are. So, you know, a lot of the

Starting point is 00:12:13 NBA stars, they didn't even play basketball when they were kids. They were just, you know, doing something else. And then they turned out to be seven feet tall and everyone's like, here, here, put up here, play basketball, dunk it. And they ended up being among the greatest basketball players of all time. So the world kind of just found them and discovered them and coached them and did everything for them. Many fields are more like art than like athletics, where it's much harder to judge who's got the most talent or produce the best work. And in that case, hustling is kind of the answer. And you can take the lessons from the data of artists and apply it in your own life.

Starting point is 00:12:51 And don't just stay in the same place, hoping that the world's going to find you, travel widely to get your big breaks. So let's talk about happiness, because I think people have a sense of what happiness is and where it comes from what does the data say yeah so i became obsessed there are these projects it's called experience sampling projects where they ping people on their phones and they ask them how happy they are what they're doing who they're with and they've found the activities that make people happy the people that make people happy uh the weather that makes people happy, the weather that makes people happy. And I was telling people the results of these studies, I was telling my friends, and I'm like, people are happiest when they're having sex or going on

Starting point is 00:13:33 a hike or when they're with their friends or with their romantic partner when it's 75 degrees and sunny. And I was telling my friends, they're like, these are so obvious. Do we need scientists to tell us that? But I think there's actually profundity in the obviousness of the happiness research that a lot of modern life is trying to trick us and tell us that if we work hard enough, make enough money, spend enough time on social media, we're going to be happy. But these don't really make people happy. So I kind of concluded what's the data driven answer to happiness to really life, because I think happiness is many people's goal for life. And I think the data driven answer to life is to be with your love on an 80 degree and sunny day, overlooking a beautiful body of

Starting point is 00:14:17 water, having sex, like those are the simple things that tend to make people happy. And if your life is very far from that, I'd ask yourself, how can you do more of those simple, obvious things that tend to make people happy? Well, that's too simple. I think there's kind of this contrast between what the world is telling you about happiness and what commercials are telling you about happiness and what the data says about happiness. And yes, the data does offer simple answers to happiness. And I think the data there is basically right. So think of all the commercials, all the things you're advertised. They've actually done studies when people buy these fancy products, stuff, buy a lot of material

Starting point is 00:15:01 goods, it doesn't make them happy at all. It wears off very, very quickly. So the things that do make people happy, the data says really are that simple. Walks, hikes, friends, romantic partners, nice days, all these things. There's nothing more complicated than that about happiness. And I do think what gets in the way of a lot of people's happiness is they over complicate things and they you know they they don't do enough of these simple things that make people happy we're talking about data and how it can prove or disprove conventional wisdom and and help you make better choices in life seth stevens davidowitz is my. His book is called Don't Trust Your Gut. At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner, however you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way.

Starting point is 00:16:10 And that's what running's all about. Run your way at newbalance.com slash running. 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. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterHelp.com.

Starting point is 00:16:47 So Seth, we've talked about this on this podcast before. Isn't being out in nature a real contributor to happiness? Nature plays a huge role in happiness. They've even done studies that when people visit parks, you see their tweets and the mood of their tweets goes way up when they're in a park. And even for four hours after they've been in the park, they're still bathing in the happiness of their walk through the park. Being in a park, the data says, gives a mood boost equivalent to Christmas Day. flip side of that, you talk about the misery-inducing traps of modern life where maybe these are the things people are doing or buying to seek happiness that don't deliver. Yeah, exactly. So stuff is a great example of that, that buying stuff doesn't make people happy. Work is a great example of that. When they ping people and when people are working, they on average, it's the second least happy activity.

Starting point is 00:17:45 The only more miserable activity is being sick in bed. So the average person when they're working reports being unhappy. And the world doesn't necessarily tell you that. So in the quest to find love and the perfect partner, how can data help us there? Yeah. So I think the big lesson from the data on dating and romantic fulfillment is that there's an enormous disconnect between what people seek and what makes people happy. So if you look at data from dating sites, what do people try to date? They try to date someone beautiful. They try to date someone tall if it's a man. Tall men are much more likely to be clicked on to get messages on online dating sites. They try to date men with certain sexy occupations. Lawyers do very well in dating. Military men,

Starting point is 00:18:37 firemen do very well in dating. They try to date people with sexy names. There are all these names that lead to better dating success. They try to date people similar sexy names. There are all these names that lead to better dating success. They try to date people similar to themselves, even on silly dimensions. They try to date someone with their same initials. It's been shown that you're 11.3% more likely to match with someone if they share your initials. For some reason, people think this is attractive to people. And when you actually look at the data and what makes people happy in romantic relationships, these things that people are drawn to

Starting point is 00:19:11 tend not to correlate with long-term happiness. People who end up with beautiful partners really don't report that they're happier. People who ended up with taller men or men in desired occupations, or even people with lots of similarity themselves, don't report greater happiness. If there's anything that leads to happiness, it tends to be the psychological traits in a partner, a partner being having a growth mindset, being conscientious, satisfied with life, happy. This is from the

Starting point is 00:19:41 largest study of romantic partners, more than 11,000 couples. What in all the data that you looked at, what, if we haven't talked about it, surprised you the most or that you found the most interesting? Also dating, there's this Christian Rudder studied hundreds of thousands of couples on OkCupid, an online dating site. And he found that the most successful daters tend to be beautiful people. You know, people think of Brad Pitt or Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo DiCaprio, you know, okay, yeah, we get it. Everybody wants to date them. They're beautiful, whatever. But then he found other people who did really well. These are people who had extreme looks. So think of like women who heterosexual, sexual women who shave their heads or people who dye their hair blue or wear wacky glasses. And what happens with these unconventional daters is they have they polarize people. So some

Starting point is 00:20:40 people think they're really, really unattractive, but some people think they're really attractive. And in dating, that's kind of all that matters. So the data suggests that you can get 70% more matches. If you're not conventionally beautiful, you can get 70% more matches by being an extreme version of yourself and kind of just appealing to a niche market who will be really into you. And yeah, some people will think you're disgusting or hideous. Who cares about them? A small group will really like you. So that really surprised me. I know you found some surprising data on parenting that I think any parent would be interested in hearing about what affects how their kids turn out. Where it seems like the biggest decision that parents can make is where to raise their kids,

Starting point is 00:21:26 and particularly the adults you expose your kids to. There's great evidence that kids are likely to follow in the footsteps of their neighbors. So putting your kids around adults you want them to turn out to like can be maybe the best thing you can do as a parent, even better than things you just do when you're one-on-one with them. Kids may rebel against you, may turn against your advice, but they're really likely to follow in the footsteps of the other adults that you expose them to. So little girls who are exposed to lots of adult female scientists, much more likely to become scientists themselves. Black males who grow up around a lot of successful

Starting point is 00:22:06 black males, even not their father, much more likely to have much more successful life outcomes. What does the data say about the role of luck in your life? Because it seems to me it plays a bigger role than a lot of people think it does. Yeah. So luck definitely plays a big role in life. But as far as success goes, it's less about getting unusually lucky and more about, there are things you can do that kind of allow you to get more lucky

Starting point is 00:22:35 and take advantage of the luck you have. There have been studies that show the most successful artists release the most work in the world. So they just put more work out there. And eventually, one of their pieces just got really, really lucky. Well, other artists didn't put as much work out there. They questioned themselves. They almost pre-rejected themselves. And they didn't allow luck to find them as much. I think that's true in dating as well.

Starting point is 00:23:00 And I think frequently what happened is the person who dates well out of their league just asked way more people out and was rejected more because you know, that that person who you're really attracted to also is attracted to you back. So even applying for jobs, there have been studies that apply scientists to apply for more jobs are more likely to get more interviews. Too many people pre-reject themselves, don't allow themselves to get that lucky break. Well, you talk a little bit about the outsider's edge, which is this concept that people who aren't in the know on something have an advantage because they bring this fresh thinking that they're not. What is that? Yeah, that's actually just not true. It's a myth. There are all these myths that data debunks. It's kind of a surprising idea, but it got a lot of airplay in part because it's so surprising where people say, you know, being outside a field can give you an edge that if

Starting point is 00:24:11 you're too inside a field, you'll be too stuck in the ways of the field. You won't see kind of the surprising idea that actually works. When you actually look at the data, for example, of businesses that have succeeded, the most successful businesses tend to be started by people very, very close in that field, people who had real experience, not just in the broad field, but in the very, very narrow field. So if it's a soap manufacturing business, the most likely person to succeed in that business is not just someone who has experience in manufacturing, but someone who has experience in soap manufacturing.

Starting point is 00:24:45 So really, the outsider's edge is a myth that's gotten too much airplay, I think. What are some of the other myths that you uncovered? Oh, the myth of youth in entrepreneurship. There have been studies that have shown the average successful entrepreneur in their 40s and the chance of starting a business increase up until the age of 60. Which again, people think if you want to start a business, you need to be in your college dorm room. You know, there have been all these examples of successful entrepreneurs, 19 year old, 20 year old, 21 year old, that's really the exception. It's a myth. It's it's the exception that goes against the rule. There's a myth that entrepreneurs are

Starting point is 00:25:26 failed employees because to be an entrepreneur, you need to think outside the box and you can't be a conventional working for the man and being a conventional employee. There's no way you'd rise up to the top of entrepreneurship. Total myth as well. The best entrepreneurs are great employees. And if you're thinking of starting a business, the fact that you've already succeeded as an employee is a great sign that you're ready to go out on your own and start your own business. Well, I always enjoy these conversations that explain how the data either confirms or denies the conventional wisdom. And as you just pointed out, how the data proves that a lot of conventional wisdom is a myth.

Starting point is 00:26:07 It's always fun to hear that. Seth Stevens Davidovitz has been my guest, and the name of his book is Don't Trust Your Gut, Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. I appreciate it, Seth. This was great. Thanks so much, Michael. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world,

Starting point is 00:26:28 looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness, and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, 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.

Starting point is 00:27:15 Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like the Jordan Harbinger show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation

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Starting point is 00:28:16 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. When you think about weather, you probably think of things like temperature, rain, wind, snow, those kind of things, because those are the things we're familiar with and have experienced. But there are a lot of things about weather that may have escaped your attention, really interesting things. And that's what Tristan Gooley is here to reveal to you. Tristan is an author who writes about things in nature, and his latest book is The Secret World of Weather.

Starting point is 00:29:18 And I promise that after you hear this, you're going to notice things you've never noticed before when you're outside in the weather. Hey, Tristan, welcome. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me on. I guess because we're in it all the time and we see weather forecasts on TV, we think we have a pretty good working knowledge of weather, right? There are some big signs that people may be loosely familiar with, but the really undiscovered world, and the reason I ended up writing a book with the title The Secret World of Weather, is the smaller signs, the things that are going on, you know, sometimes within touching distance. And that's what gets me really excited is when I go outside and I go, wow, how did I not notice that for 20 or 30 years? And suddenly it's there in front of me.

Starting point is 00:29:59 And that's, yeah, that's what fired me up for the last three years. So give me an example of you walking out and saying, how did I not notice this for the last 20 years? Like what? I'll give you a couple. One, so much of the small weather signs are related to the key forces of the sun and the wind. There's a thing called a sun pocket, which is where we can find a place in a landscape which is a lot warmer than even somewhere only 30 feet away. And to do that, we just have to be, we have to find a spot that's in direct sunlight. You know, it's no great surprise that being in the sun is warmer than being in the shade. But the slightly cunning thing is, you get these really

Starting point is 00:30:44 super warm pockets if you can find somewhere that is both in the sun, the slightly cunning thing is you get these really super warm pockets if you can find somewhere that is both in the sun but actually has shelter directly above you and that stops the heat escaping vertically upwards so as an example February of this year I went out with a picnic it was very cold and I by finding a spot underneath a conifer where the sun could reach in a low winter sun could reach in but the heat heat couldn't escape upwards, I was able to sit there very comfortably for 20, 25 minutes. But if I'd moved out from under the tree, and it's a little bit counterintuitive, we'd sort of imagine being out in the open in the sun would be warmer. It would have been far too cold to sit around eating a picnic. Equally, the wind behaves very differently around any obstacles,

Starting point is 00:31:26 but let's stick with trees for now. If you're moving across an open area and you get used to feeling the breeze, what you can notice is that the breeze accelerates underneath an isolated tree. If we think of a sort of almost like a stereotypical tree with a nice big green canopy and a gap underneath where we see the tree trunk. If you walk in underneath that canopy, the breeze will accelerate. The physics is the same as the way air accelerates over an aircraft wing. It will actually accelerate underneath the tree. Now, both of those examples, I mean, the warmth on a cold day can be really practical and helpful. You know, if you're, I can remember waiting for a bus on a very cold day and you can be really quite warm in a bus shelter, but sometimes not even

Starting point is 00:32:08 understand why. It's just more fun when you understand why that the sun is coming, is reaching in, heating things up, but then the heat doesn't escape. So it's, it just really just turns the temperature sort of a dial up and makes things much more comfortable in winter. Yeah. Well, not only have I never noticed that, but as you say, you know, it's counterintuitive to think that under a tree would be warmer. You would think that out in the sun you would be warmer and under the tree it would be colder, but the reverse is true. And yeah, these are things like you would never, well, how did I not notice that? Yeah, and so much of my work is obvious in hindsight but people can go their whole lives and not notice it so i mean my work is is rooted in um natural

Starting point is 00:32:52 navigation finding finding our way uh just using nature's signs and there are over 20 ways we can navigate using a tree but i'm fairly confident that you know fewer than fewer than one in a hundred people will will know more than one of those 20 so uh but once you explain that trees are bigger on their southern side and that the angles of branches are different people go out there and they see it and once you see these things and experience these things you can't unknow that if you know what i mean you every time it's there it sort of announces itself to you and that's what I mean is you go like wow it's it's it's really not it's not deeply hidden we don't have to peel back 10 layers to find this stuff it is in front of us you know and I mean I often say to people when they don't understand the the strange line of work I mean I've been and I don't presume people should

Starting point is 00:33:39 understand it it is quite odd what I do but I say to them pick anything that you've seen outdoors today literally anything and you can seen outdoors today, literally anything. And you can do this now, Mike, if you want. And I will find a clue in it. So tell me some of the ways that trees help. You said that the southern side of a tree is bigger. What do you mean? Yeah, so one of the cornerstones of natural navigation is that the sun is due south in the middle of the day.

Starting point is 00:34:01 For everyone north of the tropics, which is almost all of the USA, all of Europe and lots of other places as well, the sun reaches its highest point when it's due south in the middle of the day, halfway between sunrise and sunset. And that's when it gives us most of its light and energy. And of course, the trees need this light. It's their breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Starting point is 00:34:22 So it'd actually be quite odd if trees were symmetrical, bearing in mind, you light is light is what's feeding them so what they tend to do is they respond to the to these stimuli like light and they actually just grow more on their southern side so if you look at a tree from all all directions you walk around one you'll very quickly realize that there's no such thing as a symmetrical tree and on average there's just more tree there are bigger branches and more branches and more leaves on the southern side.

Starting point is 00:34:49 I never knew that. Yeah, that's, if you ask anyone to draw a tree, it doesn't matter if they're five years old or 95 years old, they'll draw a symmetrical tree. It's sort of how we imagine a tree. But of the X billion trees on planet Earth, there isn't one symmetrical one. They are all asymmetrical.

Starting point is 00:35:08 And one of the kind of core ideas in my work is that two sides of everything are different. And if we ask the question, why is one side different to the other? It will tell us something about where we are. It'll tell us something about either direction or possibly what the wind has been doing. And through that, we can start to build up a richer picture of what's going on around us.

Starting point is 00:35:28 So tell me some other things like that that I don't know. Well, I'll put myself on the spot here. You tell me one thing you've seen, and we haven't prepped this. I genuinely have no idea what you're going to say. Tell me something you've seen outdoors in the last few days. Well, I saw fog when I woke up this morning. It was foggy outside. Okay. So fog, the simplest way to think of it is it's a low cloud. There are different types of fog, but if you see fog early in the morning, it's a counterintuitive sign that actually the

Starting point is 00:35:57 weather's probably going to be quite good because it's a type of fog called radiation fog. And what happens when we see fog very near the start of the day is it's actually a sign that the sky's been clear overnight. Heat has radiated out of the land. The land has grown very cold and moist air when it touches cold land forms this blanket of fog in the morning. So if it's a still morning and you walk out into fog, there's a pretty good chance the sun will be shining by lunchtime. So let's talk about clouds because, I mean, you walk out into fog, there's a pretty good chance the sun will be shining by lunchtime. So let's talk about clouds because, I mean, you walk outside, you look at clouds, there they are, and we sometimes see images in them and some of them look different than others. So give me the ABCs of clouds. Yeah, the cloud world is like a lot of nature. It can be intimidating because people are maybe curious and they start to investigate it.

Starting point is 00:36:49 And then they start getting hit by too much Latin and they start realizing there's a classification system. And maybe I'm meant to learn the names of 20 different clouds. And I come up all of these things in a totally different way. Names are never important. So because we can look at a sign in nature, like a cloud, and worry about what type of Latin word and stuff like that, but actually, you could go to meet an indigenous person on the other side of the world, and they will be able to see the sign in it, and you'll never agree what that cloud should be called. So, that's a really important point for

Starting point is 00:37:17 me is that names are never actually the interesting part, but shapes and patterns are. So, in clouds, what we do is we think about three main families of clouds there are the blanket clouds which if we're going to use the Latin is stratus just from the Latin for blanket and these are the long flat you know they can cover an entire landscape and they're pretty dreary and they they just really tell you that there's not going to be much change over the next few hours. And if there's any change, it's going to be glacial in pace. Everything's going to happen very slowly. They are the least interesting of the three. The other two, the next one we look at is the bubbling up heaped clouds, the cumulus clouds.

Starting point is 00:38:01 And these are the ones that the easiest way for me to describe them is is you know if you've seen the opening credits of the simpsons or pretty much any other cartoon cloud you've got a blue sky and these clouds typically have a flat bottom and they they bubble up they look like a you know a bunch of white soccer balls in a bag um and they are telling us something very specific they are saying that there is convection, there is warm air rising in that particular spot. For me as a natural navigator, there's some really fun things you can do with them in terms of making a map. So they form over islands, they form over dark woodland and they form over towns because each of those landscapes warms up more quickly

Starting point is 00:38:41 than the land around them. So whether it's a Pacific navigator in the middle of the ocean looking for an island, they'll be looking for cumulus clouds. Or if you're walking or driving across a wild area looking for a town, there's a very good chance that if it's a blue sky day, there'll be cumulus clouds over the town, but not anywhere surrounding it. Equally over dark woodland the same thing and then the third the third family are the high wispy ones i i forget what the what you what you call it in the states we call it candy floss um that kind of sugary candy um stuff that we get at fairs here do you know the stuff i mean um cotton candy doesn't cotton candy yeah thanks yeah i forget i forgot Candy, yeah, thanks. I forgot the term. It looks very wispy. It's very high, this cloud.

Starting point is 00:39:28 The Latin is cirrus. Sometimes people think it looks like feathers, and it does have lots of different forms. And that can be used for longer-term forecasting. So if you've had a period of sunny, settled weather, one of the early signs that things are about to get worse is this wispy, cotton candy and feathery high clouds is one of the earlier signs that because it's so high it's the leading edge of a warm front

Starting point is 00:39:55 system coming through which which can lead to a couple of days of bad weather so this might be fun maybe let's's take a walk down an imaginary street or imaginary path and tell me some of the things that you would notice that tell you where you are or where you're going or help you navigate. As I look out of the cabin window that I'm in at the moment, I'll just pick a couple of things I'm seeing there. Leaves, for example. So leaves are smaller on the south

Starting point is 00:40:25 side of a tree and bigger on the north side of a tree. And the way their angle changes as well. So they tend to point more down towards the ground on the south side, and they tend to be closer to horizontal on the north side. And it's not, you know, the tree or the leaves don't care about north, south, east, west. These are just organic responses to to what's going on out there if um i'm just looking at the ground i can actually see a puddle we've had a bit of rain today and puddles uh can form anywhere but the way they dry is quite specific so they're obviously going to dry more quickly in the sun and more slowly in the shade and if you're walking along a track or a road, the south-facing side is actually the north side. So you end up with longer-lasting puddles on the south side of tracks and roads. When you see weather, when you see it rain or snow or it's

Starting point is 00:41:17 real windy, is that telling you something? Well, in the case of both rain and snow, the very first thing I'm trying to do is work out which of the two cloud families are we looking at here, because that will then reveal what's most likely to happen over the next 12 hours. And whether it's snow or rain, the same branch is there. It's either showers or it's blanket. If it's showers, it's coming from those heaped clouds, the cumulus ones. And what that means is the word showers is misunderstood these days a little bit. In weather terms, you know, weather aficionados will know this. But if you're new to kind of looking for weather signs, the word showers to some people means light rain. But actually,

Starting point is 00:41:59 it's much more precise than that. Showers means short, distinct periods. So if you have a rain shower, it can actually be very, very heavy. Same with snow. A snow shower can be really heavy, but it won't go on for an hour. So the way I put it when I was writing about it is that, you know, showers don't last hours. If it's blanket and it starts raining, there's a really good chance it'll be raining in three or four hours time. Same with snow. But if we've seen cumulus clouds, a little bit of blue sky here and there. And again, a lot of this stuff is common sense when we're seeing it in hindsight.

Starting point is 00:42:35 But it's very easy to not actually pause and even go, well, which of those two is it? You know, if it showers, you can plan actually to have a, you know, quite fun day dodging them if you want to. And if you haven't had snow for a while and you're enjoying it, you might actually want to be out in it. But yeah, they're very different experiences. If blanket rain starts, it's not a good day to be outdoors, to be honest. It's going to be a bit drab. Let's talk about wind. What makes the wind blow and why is wind so interesting? Wind is air moving from a high pressure region to a low pressure region. And we can recreate this by blowing up a balloon. But instead of sealing the neck, if we just release the neck, high pressure air in the balloon will flow towards the room, which is at lower pressure. And what's happening all around us and on every scale imaginable from the vast, you know, thousands of miles down to, you know, 10 feet literally, is that the sun is heating some areas

Starting point is 00:43:38 more than others and warm air expands. And as it expands, its pressure reduces. So what's happening every single day is that the sun is heating the equator more than the poles, for example. So that leads to massive flows over literally thousands of miles. But it's also going to heat the dark tarmac in a city more than the green outside the city. And that's why we see those clouds above a town. In fact, I got a fun message from a friend who lives in the town nearest us. I live out in the country. And he said, there's a couple of birds of prey. I think they're buzzards and they're

Starting point is 00:44:18 orbiting, they're circling. And it was about 11 o'clock in the morning, which is very early for birds to be doing that. And I said, they're probably looking for a car parking space. And he said, what are you talking about? I said, well, if you draw a line vertically down from where they're circling, is that the large car park in the north of town? And he goes, yeah, how on earth did you know that? I said, well, that's the only big, dark place that will be warm enough to create the thermal that they'll look for. So it's, as I say, all wind is high pressure to low pressure.

Starting point is 00:45:00 But what I'm trying to do is encourage people to not just think this is about these huge, massive, massive kind of charts we see on TV or Internet forecasts. This is something that's happening within, you know, 50 feet of us every day. And so why doesn't the pressure all just equal out and be done with it? Why does it change? It's always trying to equal out, but actually air is a bit more viscous than most people think. Everyone sort of imagines that it could kind of equalize in five seconds, but it's more treacly than people imagine it it doesn't it can't move across the surface of the earth as fast as people might think it does but also the second it the second it equals out somewhere the sun will create a difference somewhere else so it's if if it was night time for 10 days solidly things would start to equal out but obviously

Starting point is 00:45:43 that's not what we experience. So, everywhere the sun, you know, at any one moment, the sun is rising somewhere and it's setting somewhere else. So, the sun is sort of setting this game going the whole time. Every time things start to equalize a little bit, there'll be the sun heating up a bit of land more than the sea, or heating up the low latitudes more than the high latitudes. So it's all driven by the sun. And because, you know, it's sunny somewhere always, the game never ends. What is dew and frost? Dew and frost are related. And it's, they're both a sign that we've had clear skies overnight,

Starting point is 00:46:21 similar to, we were talking about fog a little bit earlier and it's it's a similar thing that if you have clear skies overnight the heat leaves the land i think everybody's comfortable with the idea that that heat energy radiates from the sun to us but people are slightly less familiar with the way heat radiates out of everything including us um you know i'm looking at a desk and a chair there's's heat radiating out of those. I've got a cup of tea, there's heat radiating out of that. And heat radiates out of the land and it does it much, much more quickly and dramatically when there are clear skies. So what we tend to find is if you've got the blanket, the stratus type cloud over an area at night, you wake up in the morning and there'll be no dew. If the following night those clouds have cleared

Starting point is 00:47:05 away and you've got clear skies, the land gets very, very cold overnight, the moisture in the air, and there is always moisture in the air, even over the hottest deserts in the world, there's some moisture in the air. There's no such thing as perfectly dry air on planet Earth. Then that moisture comes into contact with the cold ground. It condenses and forms dew. And if it's cold enough, it will form frost. So frost is just frozen dew? Yeah, there are different types of frost, but the one most of us are familiar with, that's the exact process. It's dew forming at a cold enough temperature that it freezes on contact. And one of the fun things we can do is, both and frost is just notice how it disappears when you walk under any

Starting point is 00:47:46 any form of shelter so whether it's a jutting bit of a roof or a tree or or anything else that um stops heat escaping and you can probably start to sense how the pieces how the pieces sort of come together here we have a sun pocket we're warmer in because the heat can't escape vertically upwards but the flip side of that is is if the heat can't escape vertically upwards but the flip side of that is is if the heat can't escape vertically upwards that bit of ground will stay warm overnight and you won't get dew or frost there and i think again everybody's had that experience when you go out and you see a frosty landscape but if you just pause for two seconds you go i'm used to kind of seeing it but i've never actually thought why is it more frosty there

Starting point is 00:48:23 than there and why is there no frost there? So what's one more way that you can navigate in the world through looking at nature? The other sort of real cornerstone is prevailing wind direction. So in most of the temperate parts of the world, it's a little bit different in the tropics, but in most of the US and Europe, we find that the wind blows from one direction more often than any other. And that leaves footprints absolutely everywhere. So the tops of trees will reflect that direction. So you can't

Starting point is 00:48:59 predict what the wind's going to do from the prevailing wind direction. So the wind can blow from the north, south, east or west on any day of the year. But over the course of a year, there are patterns and they're fairly dependable. So in my part of the world, the wind blows from the southwest more than any other direction. And that means I can look to the tops of trees and quite a few other places just to see that footprint. You just see the trees bent over from southwest to northeast. And wherever you are in the world, you just tune into what your local prevailing wind is. And if you're not sure, however you want to do it, you can look it up on the internet

Starting point is 00:49:33 or you can just have a look at the tops of trees in a fairly exposed place, go up a hill a little bit or something like that. With practice, you can see it in parks in the center of cities. But when you're starting out looking for that effect, you just want to look in places that are getting blown by the wind quite a lot because it's a much more dramatic effect. It's much easier to pick up. Well, it's funny as you're talking, I'm looking out the window and looking at the tops of trees

Starting point is 00:49:56 and looking at the south side of the trees that I see. It's really interesting. I know that when I drive the next time, I'm going to be checking out some of the things that you've been talking about tristan ghouli's been my guest he his book is called the secret world of weather and you'll find a link to his book in the show notes thanks for being here tristan this was fun uh cheers mike Really good chatting. When holidays or vacations or weekends roll around, are you one of those people who can really dive in and enjoy that time off? Or do you find ways to keep doing your work? Well, if you like to keep working on your days off, listen to this. It turns out that working too hard and putting in a lot of overtime in order to

Starting point is 00:50:46 climb the ladder can actually mess things up for you in the future. According to a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology, too much work over the years can leave you absent-minded, dull your creative edge, and leave you more prone to dementia. In the study, the people who worked the most overtime hours saw a significant drop in reasoning power and vocabulary skills by the time they hit their early 50s. So when it comes to overtime, maybe less is more. And that is something you should know. Supposedly, the best advertising is word of mouth, and that is certainly the case when it comes to this podcast. The people who listen tell their friends, and then they tell their friends, and that's how we grow our audience. If you would like to help, please

Starting point is 00:51:37 share this podcast with someone you think would enjoy listening. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love top 10 lists? 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. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures.

Starting point is 00:52:25 You got this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either. Of course, I'm just a cicada. I'm crying. I'm so sorry.

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Something You Should Know - Using Data to Get What You Want & What You Didn’t Know About Weather and Nature

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