Something You Should Know - What Makes You Lucky or Unlucky & Why Some People Really Believe the Earth is Flat

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

With people drinking more around the holiday season, it is important to realize that not all drinks are created equal. This episode begins with some interesting differences between beer, wine and hard liquor that everyone should keep in mind because they can affect you differently. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2006.00190.x What makes a person lucky or unlucky? Are some people cursed with bad luck? Are some people born lucky? To explore these questions, we turn to Richard Wiseman, perhaps the foremost researcher on the science of luck and author of the book, The Luck Factor (https://amzn.to/3EMLy6r). Richard joins me to explain what makes lucky people lucky and how we can all attract more luck into our lives. It’s not magic - it’s how you think. It seems strange that some people actually believe the earth is flat, while others believe it is hollow. Some people believe we never went to the moon and still others believe that aliens walk among us. What causes people to believe what seems like nonsense to most of us? That’s what Donald Prothero is here to talk about. Donald is a geology professor who has taught at Caltech, Columbia, and other schools and he is author of a book called Weird Earth: Debunking Strange Ideas about Our Planet (https://amzn.to/3GOsTc9). Listen to hear his explanation as to why some people cling to what some like very odd beliefs and why he sees it as a growing problem. Do you know what the word quantum means? In a survey, 4 out of 5 people could not define it correctly. Listen as I explain what science and the dictionary say it actually means. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quantum#examples PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! We really like The Jordan Harbinger Show! Check out https://jordanharbinger.com/start OR search for it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen!  Firstleaf – the wine club designed for you!! Join today and get 6 bottles of wine for $29.95 and free shipping!  https://tryfirstleaf.com/SOMETHING Go to https://backcountry.com/sysk to get 15% OFF your first full-priced purchase! Listen to "Operator" the new podcast from Wondery https://wondery.com/shows/operator/ Get $15 off your first box of premium seafood at https://WildAlaskanCompany.com/Something Omaha Steaks is the best! Get awesome pricing at https://OmahaSteaks.com/BMT T-Mobile for Business the leader in 5G, #1 in customer satisfaction, and 5G in every plan! https://T-Mobile.com/business Grow your business with Shopify today at https://Shopify.com/sysk  Visit https://ferguson.com for the best in all of your plumping supply needs! https://www.geico.com Bundle your policies and save! It's Geico easy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From the kitchen to the laundry room, your home deserves the best. Give it the upgrade it deserves at Best Buy's Ultimate Appliance Event. Save up to $1,000 on two or more major appliances. Shop now, in-store, or online at BestBuy.ca. Exclusions apply. Today on Something You Should Know, some important intel if you plan to drink during the holidays, then understanding the science of luck and how to be luckier.

What people shouldn't do is see luck as something that doesn't change. I think it's one of the most dangerous beliefs you can hold to see yourself as unlucky because what you think you'll do is fail in every single circumstance, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Also, do you know what the word quantum means? Most people don't. And why do some people believe that the earth is flat or that we didn't land on the moon or that aliens are visiting our planet? Almost all the stories about UFOs and aliens date back to the beginning of the last century, about the same time science fiction became a part of our culture.

And that's one of the strongest evidence we have that those things are not real or they're not what people think they are. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick? That's why Bumble is changing how you start conversations. You can now make the

first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. 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 there. Welcome to Something You Should Know. As we move into the holiday season, it is natural for people to drink more alcohol because that's what people do during the holidays. And there are some things to consider that maybe you haven't really considered. First of all, it really matters what you drink. A lot of people lump beer and wine together, but the alcohol by volume, or ABV as it's called, the alcohol content for beer is about 4.5%, while most wine is around 11 or 12%. That's a big difference.

Then, when you get into harder stuff like vodka, you're up to around 40%. When you do the math, even when you mix vodka or other hard liquors with something else, that drink or two could be a lot more powerful than a couple of beers. Be especially careful with festive spiked punches, too. It's hard to know how much liquor is in there, or if there's more than one type. That real sweet liquor can really sneak up on you, especially if you then switch to something else. And that is something you should know.

The subject of luck fascinates me. Why is it that some people seem to be so much luckier than others? And why do other people seem to have a lot of bad luck? We've talked about luck a couple of times on this podcast in the past, but one person we haven't talked with about it is Richard Wiseman, who is probably the leading researcher on the science of luck. He's also the author of a book called The Luck Factor. Whether you consider yourself lucky or unlucky or somewhere in between, you're probably about to become even luckier when you hear what he has to say. Hi Richard, welcome to Something You Should Know. Pleasure to be here. So how do you look at luck? What is luck to you? I would say it's when seemingly chance events seem to consistently work out well for you.

So if you're a lucky person, then you seem to always be in the right place at the right time, get lots of chance opportunities. If you're an unlucky person, then life is a catalogue of disaster. It doesn't seem to be your fault. So I'd place it very much around the role of chance, or at least the role that chance appears to play in our lives. I know the answer to this next question isn't a simple one, and probably it's unfair to ask you to answer it quickly, but try to answer it quickly. What is the basic difference between a lucky person and an unlucky

person? Prior to our work, a lot of scientists have rejected the idea of any kind of science of luck. They said, you know, this is just chance. And it's like winning or losing the lottery. Some people, life works out well for them. Other people, not so much. And that's all there is to it. And then we took a very, very different take on it. We looked at the psychology of it. We looked at the notion that to a very large extent, you're creating your own luck by the way you're thinking, the way you're behaving. And that's where I would sit with my interpretation. So I think to a large extent, it's unconscious, but it's to do with the way you think and behave. Well, I've always thought of luck as being, you know, there's like three kinds of luck

in my view, and you get your comment on this. So there's good luck, there's people who have good luck, there's people who don't seem to have much luck one way or the other, and then there are people who seem to have really bad luck. And so it's like a spectrum, I guess, of luck. Yeah, I think that's a fair way of looking at it. I mean, of course, it depends on the context of your life. Some people will say, I'm lucky in my career, but I'm unlucky in love and so on. In our research, we really focused on people who said, look, in pretty much every part of my life, I'm either exceptionally lucky or I'm exceptionally unlucky. And when you look at the numbers to that, there's a sway towards the positive end.

So around about 12% of the UK, about 12% of folks in the USA describe themselves as extremely lucky, and only about 9% describe themselves as unlucky. But they're at the extremes. You are right. It's a continuum. When you ask people to self-describe as lucky or unlucky, doesn't a lot of it just depend on their outlook on life? You know, I'm lucky to be alive. I'm lucky to breathe the air today. I'm lucky to see the sunset.

Well, you know, I don't know if that's really luck. Absolutely. I mean, these things are self-determined by your self-perception. But that really matters. And so often in our work, you'd have two people who experienced exactly the same life event, and one would go, my goodness, that was lucky. The other would go, that's terribly unlucky. And the reason that matters is if it was a negative life event, it's related to resilience. It was related to whether we bounced back or not.

So in our work, we weren't just looking at people that considered themselves lucky or unlucky. We're not just looking at their perceptions, but the impact it had on their lives. And when you looked at the lucky people, across the board, they were doing well. Higher income, higher longevity of relationships, fewer trips to the hospital and so on, and the opposite for the unlucky people. So those self-perceptions, which as you say, very subjective, but they absolutely matter because they convert to objectivity, if you like, in your life. Those kinds of observations though about your life, that I'm lucky in love, that's kind of a general throughout my life, I'm lucky in love, as opposed to I won the lottery, which is an event and a very lucky event if you win the lottery.

But it isn't a lifelong I'm lucky in love or I'm lucky in my career. It's I was really lucky I picked the winning numbers. Yeah. And I think when you speak to people about their lives, you know, lives are complicated and messy. With the lucky people, they would say everything works out well for them. They pick the right numbers and lottery tickets. They're the ones that always get the parking space. They're the ones that bump into people at parties and that completely changes the course of their life and so on. And the opposite with unlucky people.

So you are right. Sometimes it's about a single event. Sometimes it's about multiple events. Sometimes it's something that's trivial. Sometimes it's something that's really important. But their claim was that those things, when there was some kind of chance, as involved in most events, when there's some kind of chance, it consistently played out in their favor. Or with the unlucky people, it consistently played out against them. And so why is that? I mean, that's the big question here. Why is it that things turn out so well for some people,

and other people report that things tend to not turn out so well? Well, some of it is chance. Some of it's to do with factors beyond their control, where they're born and so on. But a lot of it was to do with the way they were thinking and behaving. And we carried out studies with them over a decade, and you could see those factors unfolding. So for example, the lucky people would say, you know, I get all these opportunities, and the unlucky people would say, I never get a break. And so in one of our studies, we invited them into the lab, we asked them to look through a newspaper and count the number of photographs in there,

a fairly tedious thing to do. And what we didn't tell them was there's two big opportunities inside the newspaper. One of them was a half-page ad saying, stop counting. There's 50 photographs in here. And the other was a half-page ad saying, tell the experimenter you've seen this and win £100. And the lucky people spotted those opportunities. The unlucky ones went straight past them. And that's to do with the fact that when we're cheerful and relaxed and happy, we tend to have quite a big attentional

spotlight. We're literally seeing more of the world. When we become worried and anxious, that spotlight becomes really small. And so when you're unlucky, a little bit worried about the world, you're not seeing so much of your surroundings. And it's a good example of the way in which your psychology is then playing out. So you're seeing opportunities or you're missing them. So if you by nature are just more anxious, more cautious, more nervous. Are you destined to have bad luck? No, I mean, there's all sorts of things you can do to change your luck. And that was the second part of our research.

So if, for example, before you go to sleep, you jot down some of the positive, lucky things that happened to you that day, no matter how trivial it is. And over a two week, three week period, that starts to change how you see yourself. And once you see yourself as a luckier person, then again, that has a knock on effect on how others people see you and how you interact with them, and so on. So luck is something that changes. You're not born lucky or born unlucky. It's something like every other psychological attribute that we have that is open to change and open to growth. And often in that conversation, you'll hear someone mention the Kennedys. The Kennedy family seems to have had an awful lot of bad luck in terms of death. You know, Robert Kennedy and John Kennedy were assassinated. Their older brother was killed in World War II. John Jr. was killed in a plane crash. I mean, there had been a lot of tragedies in that family that makes you think there's a curse.

Again, all these things, it depends on how you look at it. I mean, it's also a very high achieving family in many ways, of course. And so what people shouldn't do is see luck as something that doesn't change. I think it's one of the most dangerous beliefs you can hold to see yourself as unlucky because what you think you'll do is fail in every single circumstance. And then you become fatalistic, and then you stop trying, and that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So I would always argue against any notion of, you know, curse, paranormal, any of those sorts of things which are telling you actually you're not open to change. It doesn't matter what you do. You're always going to fail. What are some of your favorite, because you must have encountered a lot of them,

some of your favorite luck stories? I interviewed one of our lucky participants twice. And in between the two interviews, they've fallen down the stairs and broken their leg. So they came in second interview with their leg in a cast. And I said, do you consider yourself quite so lucky now? And they said, you're kidding. They said, you can never tell whether an event is lucky or unlucky for a long period of time. They said, I could do some time off work. And also the last time I got sick, I went to hospital, met a nurse, fell in love, was happily married 25 years. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. On the other end of it, we had a multi-millionaire

because he'd won the lottery, hit the jackpot, and he's in the unlucky group. And I said, well, it's kind of astonishing you're in the unlucky group. And I said, well, it's kind of astonishing you're in the unlucky group. And he said, just my bad luck. When I chose my numbers, somebody else chose the same numbers that day. So I had to share an eight million pound jackpot by splitting the prize. How unlucky is that? What? So again, it shows this is all about self-perception. You can find the downside in absolutely everything if you try hard enough. You won't be much fun to be around. And that's the other aspect of this.

Our emotions are contagious. And so people like being around lucky people. They don't like being around unlucky people. So it's fascinating that we look at our lives and we don't realize the way in which we are responsible for some of our good and bad fortune. What else, because you have this really unique perspective on luck because you've recruited people who are lucky and people who are unlucky. So what else do you take away from what all these people have told you? Yeah, we had many lottery winners involved in the study,

and I was always interested in the way in which those events, where they'd won the lottery, what it made them do was feel lucky. And then suddenly that kicked off a whole chain of positive events in their lives. The same with the unlucky people. I can remember there was one person involved who, unfortunately, on the day they were born, two family members died. They were seen as an unlucky baby. Nobody wanted to be around them.

And that set their course for life. And so these events and the notion of luck really do affect people and affect lives. And, of course, we aren't responsible for all of the success and failures in our lives. There are many, many other factors. I say where we're born, the opportunities we're given, and so on. But we do have control over a large amount of it. And luck is surprisingly important within that domain. We're talking about luck and how to make you luckier in life. My guest is Richard Wiseman. He is one of the leading experts on the science of luck, and he is author of the book, The Luck Factor.

Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolf Puntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Randolph Bantwine, wherever podcasts are available. People who listen to Something You Should Know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives. So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and 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. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, Richard, I've always considered myself pretty lucky. I have a lot of things to be

thankful for, but I've also had some bad things happen in my life, some very bad things. You know, my mother died very young and just, I mean, there's some, but it's more of a step back and look at your life rather than find one thing and say, oops, see, there, you see, I'm unlucky. I think that's right. And it does depend how one looks at all of these events. I mean, in some of our studies, we gave people fairly ambiguous events and asked them what they made of them. So in one, we said, imagine you go into the bank and in bursts a robber, and they fire a gun, and the bullet hits you in the arm. Are you lucky or unlucky?

And our lucky people would go, well, of course I'm lucky. You know, it could have been my head. It could have been my heart. The unlucky people would go, why are you even asking the question? I've just been shot in the arm. Of course I'm unlucky. And that's to do with what's called counterfactual thinking. You know, you generate the other outcomes.

And if you always generate outcomes where, well, actually, it could have been better, the bullet could have missed me altogether, then you'll think the universe is always picking on you. Where if you're the sort of person who generates a worse outcome, you know, it bit my head, it bit my heart, then you'll think you're lucky. And so, you know, the psychology of this, I find endlessly fascinating. So the lucky and unlucky people involved in the studies, it was just magic. You know, things worked out well for them or they didn't. But actually there's a lot of psychology sitting under that. I would imagine that mixed into this discussion on by, you know, having a rabbit's foot or knocking on wood or, you know, never walking under a ladder. So how does superstition play into this?

There's certainly that argument that's made with superstitious behavior. And we looked at that, and there's certainly something to it. So in our work, we separated what we called positive superstitions away from negative ones. So with positive ones, it's like touching wood, crossing your fingers, things that bring about good luck. Those are the ones which lucky people tend to endorse. The negative superstitions that you walk under a ladder or you smash a mirror and this is going to bring you bad luck, those are the ones which unlucky people tend to endorse. So it's a double-edged sword. I think there's no harm in carrying out some of these positive superstitions, particularly if they make you feel more confident, because that, again, affects how you interact with others and perform.

So, yeah, I'm actually not quite as down on superstition as perhaps I should be, given I'm a scientist. Well, but I remember hearing some story about golfers who were given and were told that this ball is a lucky golf ball and that they actually performed better because they believed they were playing with a lucky golf ball. That's correct. And that work comes out of Germany. And it's very interesting research. There's been other work where you put lucky mascots on students' desks and they perform better in exams. You give people a pen that another student did really well on the test using this pen, and the student does a little bit better in the exams. So these are all positive superstitions. You will do better because you've

done this. And we know that elite sports people carry out superstitious rituals. Very well-known actors do as well. Confidence is important and these rituals probably help with that. What you don't want to do is get into a position where you go, well, I haven't got my mascot or I didn't tie my shoes up in a certain way. Therefore, I become especially anxious and it actually disrupts performance. So it's a fun thing to do if it helps, but not to get too worried about it if you haven't got your lucky mascot with you. So given what you know and what you've researched about luck, if somebody wanted to deliberately go about trying to improve their luck, what would you recommend they do?

I think the luck diary is very important. Jotting down the positive thing that's happened that day, no matter how trivial that is. I think teaching yourself to be resilient, to realize that events could be worse is good. I think connecting with others and getting out there and creating those opportunities, and also just get used to doing different things in your life. So, you know, if you go the same route to work every day, well, just vary the route. Try and eat different types of food, watch different types of films, whatever it is, get used to being a flexible person so that when those opportunities come into your life, you're ready to make the most of them. When you ask people, and I guess it's all in how you ask people, but if you ask people, do you consider yourself lucky or do you consider yourself unlucky? You know, I don't know

that people think of themselves in those terms that, you know, good things happen and bad things happen, but that most of us have both. So we don't necessarily identify as lucky, or do we? Well, most people would say lucky. There's around about 60%, 70% that would tick the lucky box. In general, when you ask that question, in general, do you consider yourself a lucky person? But that's true of most positive traits. In general, do you consider yourself to be a safe driver? Yes. You've got an above-average sense of humor. Absolutely.

We are overly optimistic creatures. It's one of the things that gets us out of bed in the morning, and that's good in its way. So yes, there's a shift towards seeing yourself as lucky rather than unlucky. But there are people who will say, well, I'm a realist, which I've always thought is kind of code for I'm a pessimist. But they're not particularly optimistic. They claim not to be particularly pessimistic. They just see things for what they are. I think that's right.

And you are right. Often it is heavily related to pessimism. I mean, if you see things as they are, it's perhaps not surprising you're pessimistic about the world. I think that there are real advantages to putting on the rose-tinted spectacles, even if you know that you're to some extent kidding yourself. The fact is that optimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It enthuses others. It means you keep on going when the going gets tough because you're convinced there's going to be a good outcome. And as I say, it gets you out of bed in the morning. So even though you are kidding yourself, even though it may be irrational,

in a sense, when you take the bigger view, it's rational to be irrational. I meant to ask you when we were talking about superstitions, I don't know if you looked at this, but my guess is, and I'd like to get you to comment, is if you ask people, I bet everybody has some sort of, you know, if this light turns green in the next three seconds, it means the interview is going to go well, kind of superstition at some point. There's nobody that doesn't do that. I think that's right.

We did some work in superstition, and we looked at superstition amongst scientists, amongst people who said they were extremely rational. Even people like myself who are skeptical about the paranormal. And you still find it's in the 90 in the uk they're touching wood crossing their fingers and i think the reason for that is it costs nothing to do it makes you feel good it probably reduces a little bit of anxiety and may have a real impact and of course those things have been around you know all of recorded history you know every single uh society has some sense of a lucky charm or whatever. So I think it really is something that's deeply embedded within us, this notion of trying to control chance.

And I think now that we have a greater understanding of the psychology of luck, we can do that more effectively. But we're not going to stop people touching wood and crossing fingers, and maybe it's good for them anyway. Do you consider yourself lucky? No, not at all. It's been disastrous. No, no, no, I'm just kidding. It's, I think, you know, I spent most of my career hanging around with these lucky and

unlucky participants. And when you see the difference, it's kind of hard not to side with the lucky people. And so, yes, I think a lot of their traits in terms of optimism, resilience, and so on, and being open to opportunities and open to change and flexible, yeah, that's rubbed off on me. And I think I've benefited from that. So, yeah, overall, a very lucky person. Well, it's such a great message because you really give everyone permission to be luckier by just doing the things that lucky people do and being open to

opportunity. Richard Wiseman's been my guest. He's a leading researcher on the science of luck, and the name of his book is The Luck Factor. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Richard. Thank you. Pleasure speaking to you. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British

woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. I've never been a big conspiracy guy. I don't really understand how some people believe that the earth is flat or that we didn't land on the moon or that the earth is hollow. But I respect the fact that people are entitled to believe whatever they want. Still, why they believe these things is something interesting to explore,

which we're about to do with Donald Prothero. He's a geology professor who has taught at Caltech, Columbia, and other schools, and he's author of a book called Weird Earth, Debunking Strange Ideas About Our Planet. Hey Donald, welcome. Well thanks for inviting me. So let's start with whether or not the world is flat. I mean I've been led to believe that it is not. I'm pretty sure it's not but I know some people believe it is. So why do people believe the earth is flat? It's a combination of things. Remember before we had the birth of science and the understanding of the earth was round, which actually the ancient Greeks knew, and then it was rediscovered, of course, in the Renaissance. People are, you know, used to having their own senses tell them what's true, right?

We're prisoners of our own senses and our own sense of time and our own sense of space. So we have an impossible time imagining the immensity of the universe that we now know it has. But more to the point, we have a hard time imagining the Earth is round, when most of the time, wherever you stand, it looks like it's flat. We have a hard time imagining the Earth is not the center of the universe when you see the sun and the moon and the planets move around us. And so that's the intuitive and logical way most people think. And it was not until the breakthroughs of science in the last several centuries that we were able to understand that, in fact, that's not the way it is. Science is often counterintuitive.

Science often operates on scales that we as humans don't grasp, whether it's a microscopic scale or the gigantic scale of the universe in the geologic time. So that's the main thing. It's just counterintuitive to imagine the Earth is not flat until you're taught otherwise. But we have been taught otherwise, and with some pretty convincing evidence. So it's baffling to me why people would deny that evidence. Yes. Well, but we are in a world now where we now know that 40% of Americans believe in weird conspiracies that baffle most people and that believe there's strange things going on and the governments are running these giant hoaxes and giant conspiracies to do this or do that. And

then, you know, scratch our heads at things like QAnon and other things out there. But it's just shocking how many Americans buy into this now, and other people around the world too, but Americans especially in the last four years. And flat-earthism is part of that. It starts with the conspiratorial thinking process that everything you've been told is wrong, that every image you've been shown is a hoax. You have to start with that premise before you can get any further. My sense is from talking to people who will sometimes spout out conspiracy theories and whatnot, is that it isn't either or, where they're completely anti-science,

they're completely buying into every conspiracy theory on earth. They do pick and choose. There are people who believe one thing or two things, but don't necessarily buy into the rest of it. Right, yeah, it's very much a spectrum. There are some people who are deep into the conspiracy world, so almost all they think about is conspiracies. They believe everything they've been told on conspiracies.

And so there is a high correlation between believing one conspiracy and believing another. And then you get sort of the intermediate things, like, for example, people who believe in Bigfoot but don't believe in UFOs because UFOs are crazy, but Bigfoot is not. And the evidence for both is about the same. And then there are people who just selectively just reject certain things. And we see this probably the majority of Americans like that. They will accept science and accept technology because they recognize their lives are better because of science and technology. But then they'll reject just the things they don't want to believe.

So you'll have creationists who reject evolution, but they will happily use electronics and modern medicine. So since you brought up aliens, and there has been in the news lately, more stories about, you know, pilots and people seeing things. What about that? Does seem to fuel the fuel the fire when when that stuff happens. Yeah, we go through phases where there's lots of reports like that, and then dies off for a while, then it comes back again. It's very much a pop culture phenomenon. Almost all the stories about UFOs and aliens date back to the beginning of the last century, about the same time science fiction became a part of our culture. And they're very strongly

correlated. Ideas that appear in science fiction eventually appear in the public media, and then that's when people copycat and believe that's going on. And that's one of the strongest evidence we have that those things are not real or they're not what people think they are. But the major thing to take away from the recent reports is that remember, UFO stands for unidentified flying object means they don't know what it is doesn't mean they've identified it as a spacecraft or done anything to prove it's nothing more than something they don't know what it is. Lots of people don't know what's flying in the sky. People identify all sorts of craft up there as UFOs, and they're just identifiable once better data come in.

People even identify the planet Venus as a UFO, okay? Just because they don't know what it is doesn't make it a totally alien craft. And in the skeptic society, one of the models we say, just because we don't know what it is doesn't mean we won't eventually learn what it is, right? A scientific position and a skeptic society, one of the models we say, just because we don't know what it is doesn't mean we won't eventually learn what it is. Right. A scientific position and a skeptic position is do not jump to a conclusion just to give yourself a convenient explanation. Accept that we don't know certain things yet. But sooner or later, science does get around explaining most things.

So it's a cop out to say, oh, it's an alien spacecraft. Yeah. But but it's also pretty interesting when these reports come in of of something in the sky maneuvering in ways that we don't have the technology to maneuver. Yeah, they say that. And then whenever it's finally tracked down as to what it is they're talking about, it turns out that there was either misperception on their part, or they just didn't understand these things are out there for the longest time. For example, most of the UFO sightings from the 1950s through the 1990s and later, were basically spy aircraft. We had a ton of spy aircraft, the SR-71 Blackbird and the U-2 before that. My dad was a Lockheed employee his entire career and worked on both those planes. And they were top secret. So even airline pilots would see these things happen and would end up saying, oh, I saw a UFO. Well, it was a plane flying at 80,000 feet of Mach 2. You wouldn't know what it was. And of course, it was top secret back then. And there's lots of other

things that can easily explain these things. But again, the position we take as scientists and as skeptics is that the unexplained is not necessarily unexplainable we just have to wait until more evidence is there and as scientists especially we're always comfortable with the fact we don't know everything and we don't put in a stop gap uh crazy explanation for something just because we don't know the answer yet why Why is it and where does it come from that people believe that we never landed on the moon? Yeah, that's one of the weirdest conspiracies of all. And the funny thing about it is

no one believed that to be true anywhere near the 1969 landing or the years that followed. It was something that originally hatched out of a silly science fiction movie plot and it was mentioned made into a movie in France, and then was picked up by various types of conspiracy theorists and then carried along. And again, this is really part of the great, you know, sort of conspiracy mindset that you have to believe that there's malevolent forces,

government forces, or other secret large forces, whether it be Illuminati or whatever you want to blame it on, they're out there doing these actions. People cannot accept that things just happen. And so then they get into this great conspiracy mindset. And then once you do that, you start to go down that rabbit hole. Every other thing you don't understand sounds like a really reasonable thing. And so they become very much embedded in lots of conspiracies. The basic thing about the moon landing conspiracy is that, of course, they want to believe that we were being all tricked and that it was all fake because it makes them feel better. But the irony is, of course, the

larger the conspiracy and the more people involved, the harder it is to ever keep it under a lid. Sooner or later, people blab. My dad worked for Lockheed. He actually was part of the space program. His company contributed parts of the Apollo missions. All those people, millions of people, are involved in the space program, and they all apparently did not find a hoax once, which makes it pretty improbable that it is. Not only that, of course, we have lots, lots of physical evidence of what they did and what they brought back. The moon rocks are distinctively different from any rock on Earth and never been found anywhere but the moon. And there's various things where you can actually, for example, see with spacecraft the remains of the Apollo 11 lander and some of the other landers in various spots of the moon where they are. And there's experiments you can run where you can shoot a laser beam at one of these big reflectors that they left on the moon's surface after they departed and get a return beam at the exact time expected.

What is the reason, though? I mean, what would be the purpose of faking the landing on the moon? If you believe there's a conspiracy, don't you typically believe there's a motive behind the conspiracy? And if so, what is the motive for faking that? Yeah, I've never been able to fathom what they really think is the reason behind it. There's various ideas you see people run around, but it's basically just the idea that government has this big power over us and it's inherently evil and it's manipulating us all the time. So the moon landing is the most prominent one. But I think the acid test of why we know the moon landing was real is that, of course, we were not cooperating with any other world government back then. The Soviets at that time were not conspiring to work with us in any way.

If anything, they were our rivals and they were trying to do the same thing we were doing in almost the same time frame. And so if for any reason we had ever faked it, the Soviets would have called us out. But instead they congratulated the US shortly after Armstrong and Alderman Weimar and the moon. That's why it's the most plausible possible idea that we can get a global conspiracy to do things like this.

Because reality is we have global rivalries and every time the other superpower does something, we tend to respond by trying to do what we can to counteract it, not to praise it. So that all by itself pretty much debunks the idea that we could pull this off. What about the dinosaurs? Where did they go, and why do people argue about that? There's a crazy set of creationists out there who believe that dinosaurs are faked. And there's of course some, there's some actually some spoof sites which do this as well,

and do this mostly to get a reaction out there, like the People Against Dinosaurs and so on. Or Christians Against Dinosaurs is actually a fake site, one by people who are trying to mock this thing. But there are serious creationists who take the Bible so literally that they insist that dinosaurs are faked primarily to shake our faith in creationism. And they go through extraordinary lengths of bizarre ideas about what they think paleontologists actually do for a living. And as a paleontologist, I know this firsthand, they think somehow, first of all, there's a great conspiracy and there's a great money to be made in dinosaurs, which is laughably far from the truth. I mean, most paleontologists don't get any grant funding to do paleontology at all. It's very hard to get that kind of thing. And there's not much in the way of glamour to be attached to it other than, you know,

get a little bit of press publicity once in a while if you do that kind of paleontology. But there is no big paleontology. There is no giant amount of money there. There is no incentive for us to fake it in the first place. In the second place, I can take anyone who doubts this is real out and show them real fossils coming out of the ground. Nobody put them in the ground. They were there before we looked. What about the continent of Atlantis? I remember hearing stories about, you know, it was this wonderful place where people got along and we all just sat around and sang kumbaya and then somehow it sank. Before we knew anything about what the seafloor was like, they imagined it was out in the Atlantic Ocean, which is where the name of the Atlantic Ocean comes from. But there is no such thing

there now. We know what the seafloor looks like and have since the late 1950s. And there is no sunken continent that would ever be corresponding to it. So there's a lot of possibilities, but the point is it's always been a legend. Even when Plato reported it in the 5th century BC, it was still a legend. It was not based on anything that anyone at that point took seriously as a place that really existed. I understand that you're a scientist and you believe in the science and people believe what they believe and so what's wrong with that? I mean a lot of people what they believe is based in their religion

and if they want to believe it, so what? We have in our culture an interesting problem where we're probably, and Carl Sagan said this back in the 90s, we're so dependent on science and technology, and yet basically the Americans are about one of the most scientifically literate of all developed societies out there. And I would say that's worse now than it was in Carl Sagan's day based on what we see people rejecting science when it comes not just to evolution, but also climate change and the effect of medicine and vaccinations. Now we're seeing a giant rejection of science by people whose lives depend on science. A lot of it comes from the fact we're taught science by rote early on in school years.

And that's, of course, sort of appropriate when you start out. You can't ask a fourth grader to know all the facts behind a particular scientific idea. You just try to get the idea across. But that's all that most people ever learn. They just learn stuff by rote. They learn the earth is round, not flat. And at the beginning level, there's not much chance to do much more than that.

But when I teach at this college level, for example, I always tell my students, it's not enough to just know something to be a scientific reality. In a college level, you should have an understanding of why we know these things. What's the evidence? Why do scientists accept this? Why they not embrace things like flat earthism or geocentrism?

All this stuff is out there floating around. And thanks to the internet, it's easy to find now. Maybe 25 years ago, you know, at the nineties, you could not hear this stuff anywhere unless you listened to crank crazy radio broadcasts or you subscribe to mailing lists of these crank believers now it's so abundant and so easy to find one crazy site after another on the internet it just fosters this giant uh giant cesspool of lies on a great level you know people saw that think they're doing research when they read these sketchy websites and think they know something nobody else knows so you you say, and I guess I didn't really know this, but you say that there are people

who believe the earth is hollow. And so if the earth is hollow, then the people who believe that, what do they believe is in there? Is it just air? Is it gas? What is in there? There's a whole set of ideas about that. In the 19th century, before they knew much about the Earth at all, they had these mystical worlds that lived beneath the surface. And that was the inspiration, by the way, for Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. He actually made that a more and more popular idea thanks to a novel that was intentionally science fiction, but based on what a lot of people were saying in the 1800s. In more recent years, they have these ideas that somehow there's a hole at the top of the earth and the bottom of the earth, which you can get the inside of the earth. There's no consistent idea what they think is inside. Some people think it's giant caverns. Other people have other weird

ideas, like another planet inside us. That hasn't had any consistent following, but there is a very large number of people out there who think the earth is hollow. In addition to what we've already talked about, what else, like people who believe the Earth is flat, what else interests you that you find confusing that why would people believe this? Besides flat Earthism, that is the most disturbing is geocentrism, right? Rejecting the idea that the sun is the center of its own solar system. And that has almost the same characteristics as flat earthism.

There are some people who believe both. And again, it comes from a starting point of you stand out on a given night and you see the sun and the moon and see the stars and they appear to be rotating around you and that's intuitive. Therefore, it's hard for you to imagine that you're not really seeing what's really there.

People are only comfortable with what they can see and intuit in their own perspective. The biggest element of that, again, goes back to creationism, namely people who take the Bible very literally. And the Bible does say in many places or clearly indicates in many places, if you take it literally that the other earth is the center of things the sun is moving above us and their famous episode and and uh the judges where joshua makes the sun stand still which of course implies they think the sun is moving over our heads and the earth is in the center all that is part of the bible well this all speaks to the

issue that you know people can believe whatever they want to believe, but modern communication and the internet make it easy to spread these things and possibly make them look more legitimate. But at the end of the day, people are allowed to believe whatever they want. But one of the drawbacks of the information age and the age of internet is that we, yes, we can share great information and have information at our fingertips, but there is no filter. And it's a giant set of my phrase is accessible lies because 90% of the internet sites I find in this area are run pretty much run

by people who are trying to contradict what science says. And in the 1990s, you couldn't find this out very easily. There was no way to reach other people and find other people giving you these crazy ideas. Now anybody can find it in a few clicks. And of course, the way browsers work, as soon as you click on one of these sites, it gives you links to all the rest that are similar. So you can get down that rabbit hole really fast. I have this belief that people aren't, I mean, there's always going to be people

who believe this stuff, but that people aren't generally as stupid as they're often portrayed. And an example of this is the War of the Worlds broadcast by Orson Welles, where it was reported that people panicked. And then when they did the research years later, it turns out people did not panic. They did not believe. Not a lot of them, yeah. Very few people did. But the perception was that people are so stupid and so gullible that they'll believe things. And I just have a sense that, yes, there's always going to be that fringe group, but that by and large, people don't believe the earth is hollow or that the earth is flat,

that people are pretty good at figuring things out. Right. No, I would still agree that the majority of these crazy ideas I talked about in this book are still fringe, but they have way, way more followers and more adherence than they used to because they can all reach each other now through the internet. Well, I understand the concern. And of course, the internet does make it easier to spread this information around or this misinformation around. But I don't know. I guess I don't worry as much as some because I think people can make their own judgments and there will always be those people

who believe that stuff. But I don't think for the most part too many people are going to see something on the Internet and go, oh, the Earth is flat? I don't know. But I understand your position that as a scientist you need to really take a stand. Donald Prothero has been my guest. He is a geology professor who has taught at Caltech in Colombia, amongst other schools. And the name of his book is Weird Earth, Debunking Strange Ideas About Our Planet. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Donald. Well, thank you very much. It was lots of fun. I've enjoyed doing this.

You know the word quantum, as in quantum physics, quantum theory, quantum leap? The word quantum pops up a lot, especially in tech talk. But actually, most people don't really know what it means. In fact, in surveys, four out of five people could not come up with the correct definition of the word quantum when asked. Definitions vary a little bit, but I think when people hear something like quantum leap, it makes it sound like it's a big leap. It's a giant quantum leap. But in fact, it means just the opposite. In general, it's used to mean the smallest possible measure of something.

Here's how the Merriam-Webster Dictionary uses it in a sentence. The sum of human knowledge is now so immense that even a highly educated person can hope to absorb only a tiny quantum of it. And now you've absorbed one quantum more. And that is something you should know. I could use a review from you if I haven't gotten one yet.

And even if I have, you can leave more than one review and it would really help us out a lot. Reviews help us be more visible to other people. You can leave a review at Apple Podcasts or any other platform that accepts reviews. Apple Podcasts is a good one.

It's the big one, so we would appreciate that. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity.

The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Rob Benedict. And I am Richard Spate. We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural.

It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll, of course, have some actors on as well, 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, 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.