Something You Should Know - What to Do When Things Go Wrong & Fascinatingly Gross Things in Everyday Life

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Starting point is 00:00:47 The first thing that we had to think about was we had 75,000 people in the stadium. What were we going to tell them? You don't want other problems happening as a result of the first one. The first problem was a blackout. The second one was what if people started heading for the doors? Then something important to understand about your credit score and some of the fascinatingly gross and gory things in your everyday life. Personally, one of my favorite things is that we all have tiny arachnids that actually are

Starting point is 00:01:18 living in our faces. These are called face mites that are just living inside our pores. They spend their whole lives there. All this today on Something You Should Know. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like Something You Should Know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than

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Starting point is 00:02:35 The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. You know, we have listeners all over the world and pretty much every country on the planet, somebody's listening to something you should know every day. So depending on where you are in the world would determine what season it is. But where I am in California, spring has sprung. It's starting to feel like

Starting point is 00:03:16 spring here. And when it's springtime, it means the return of bugs and insects. And there are some things about bugs you may not know. First of all, technically, the word bug and insect are not synonymous. A bug is a certain type of insect. Bugs have a stylet. It's a mouth that's shaped like a straw, which they use to suck juice from plants. So all bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs. According to the University of Florida Book of Insect Records, the most poisonous insects are wasps, bees, and ants.

Starting point is 00:03:51 And the ones with the most toxic venom are certain harvester ants. Best estimates are there are over 1,017,000 species of insects in the world. Bug longevity varies widely. A lot of bugs, like house flies and aphids, live only for a few weeks. Queen termites can live 50 years. Wood beetles can make it to 40. People often wonder why insects are so often attracted to light, like they'll fly to a street light or they'll come to your porch light. And actually, nobody really knows. The light seems to appear to mess up their navigation system so they can't fly straight.

Starting point is 00:04:38 No one is exactly sure which is the fastest insect on Earth, but a horsefly was clocked at 91 miles an hour, so he's right up there. Cockroaches are the fastest runners. They can run at about 3 miles an hour, so he's right up there. Cockroaches are the fastest runners. They can run at about three miles an hour. And that is something you should know. You may have noticed that in life, things sometimes go wrong. It's not just you. It happens to everybody. Probably in every trip you take, every task you do, every relationship you're in, every event you attend, almost always something goes wrong. It might be minor, but almost nothing goes perfectly smoothly.

Starting point is 00:05:19 Interestingly, though, we seldom plan for that. When you plan to do something, you don't think about what could go wrong. You plan it to go perfectly. In large part, that's because it's impossible to know what will go wrong. For example, if you have a car, one day something will go wrong at some point. That's why we have all those auto repair shops around. But since you don't know if it'll be the transmission or the windshield or the brakes or the air conditioning, you just have to wait for it to go wrong and then you fix it. But imagine if you were in charge of the Super Bowl. You had to make sure the Super Bowl and everything in the stadium run smoothly

Starting point is 00:06:00 because the whole world is watching. And then suddenly, the entire stadium goes dark. The lights go out and you have no idea why. Well, hopefully you've anticipated that and have some sort of backup plan. That's exactly what happened to my guest, Frank Sapovitz. Super Bowl 47 in New Orleans, the lights went out and he was the NFL's guy in charge. I'll let him tell the story, but the point of all this is you can plan for trouble even if you don't know exactly what or when something will go wrong. Frank's written a great book on this subject called What to Do When Things Go Wrong. Hey Frank, welcome to Something You Should Know.

Starting point is 00:06:45 Oh, it's great to be here, Mike. Thanks for having me. So I've always liked this subject because I've never been a big follower of Murphy's Law that everything that can go wrong will, because everything doesn't go wrong. It doesn't take everything to go wrong. It only takes like one thing to go wrong. And how people always expect things not to go wrong. And yet things, we don't know what, but things, something almost always goes wrong along the way, right? The fact is that, that people hope that things don't go wrong and hope clearly is not a strategy. I'm not the first person to say it, but I do embrace that thought.

Starting point is 00:07:27 You can't hope that everything is going to be all right. You do have to plan for it. And there are some little tricks in trade to be able to do that. I wonder what the mental block is, because I don't think people typically think, okay, so I've got my whatever, my speech prepared, my Zoom call ready, my project I'm doing in the woodworking shop. Everything's all set. But nobody ever then thinks, okay, now what might go wrong? We just think we're ready to go and everything should work out fine. We are master planners. As people, we put lists together.

Starting point is 00:08:02 We start to prepare by thinking about how to get from point A to point B. But there's a step ahead of planning, and that's imagining. Imagining all the things that can get in your way from getting to point B from point A. So when you start imagining before you pick up a pencil, before you start writing that speech, before you start planning that trip, before you start planning that wedding, that you start planning that trip, before you start planning that wedding, that product launch, that software rollout, whatever it happens to be that's filled with details. You have to imagine, in general, what kinds of things can get in your way. Well, see, I would think that you would have to have the plan first and say, okay, here's what I'm planning.

Starting point is 00:08:45 Now, let's look at what might go wrong. Well, let's take a look at what we've just dealt with. We can't have imagined or we couldn't have imagined COVID-19 becoming as big a problem for our lives and our businesses as we could have. But we could have planned for not being able to get to our own workplace, for us not being able to use the venue that we were going to use for whatever event we were going to plan, that we might have gotten involved in planning and then had a cash crunch. And all of those things happened during COVID-19. Really what it's all about is not creating plans for everything.

Starting point is 00:09:29 You have to create plans for anything because problems don't follow patterns, but solutions often do. So all of the things I just mentioned happened during the COVID-19 crisis, but we didn't necessarily have to plan for COVID-19. We just had to imagine all of the things that could have gone wrong. And COVID-19 showed that many things could have gone wrong all at the same time. My experience, and I don't know how, if this is just me, my experience is that when I try to imagine what might go wrong, I never actually imagine the thing that does go wrong.

Starting point is 00:10:09 I can imagine a lot of other things, but I'm often surprised I didn't see that coming. That happens all the time. Let me give you an example of something that happened to me. I'm an event planner. One of the events I used to plan was the Super Bowl. At Super Bowl 48 in New Orleans, we experienced a blackout. Most people who are listening probably were experiencing that

Starting point is 00:10:31 event on television. I was experiencing it inside the stadium. Oh, just to set the record straight there, Frank, I think you misspoke. You meant Super Bowl 47 in New Orleans, but go ahead. And our job was to take that situation, try to make it right, try to get the game back up and running. For many years, about 10 days before the Super Bowl, we would create a kind of a simulation of things that could go wrong for us. So somebody who was very familiar with our planning would look at all of the things that we had in front of us and say, okay, I'm going to throw a monkey wrench into this and see how they respond to those kinds of things. See how the team is going to respond and how they're going to solve the problem. We did that every year.

Starting point is 00:11:18 And every year that we did it, one time was it a power failure, but what we did by, by simulating the problems that we might have faced that, that didn't involve power problems, we started to create a, a kind of a plan on how we would approach things. How would, how would we deal with things that got in our way? Not a power failure necessarily, but what are the things we have to do first? How would we approach those? And when we got hit with the power failure, we went right into that mode. What was the first thing we had to think about? The first thing that we had to think about was we had 75,000 people in the stadium. What were we going to tell them? On one hand, you want to solve the

Starting point is 00:12:06 problem, but you don't want other problems happening as a result of the first one. The first problem was a blackout. The second one was, what if people started heading for the doors? What if they thought it was an unsafe environment? What if it was an unsafe environment? What kinds of questions did we have to ask ourselves? And what and how would we respond as we got answers to those questions? And the first thing we thought about wasn't how do we get the plug back in the wall? The first thing we thought about was what do we tell 75,000 people? How do we want them to respond? What'd you tell them? We actually found out within two and a half minutes that we were not faced with a terrorism

Starting point is 00:12:46 problem. We weren't faced with a fire. We weren't posed with a cyber attack. We knew it was a safe environment. It was an equipment failure. So the first thing we had to do was tell them, don't worry, we're going to work on getting the game started again. Just stay where you are.

Starting point is 00:13:03 Everything's going to be fine. We didn't want to do that unless it really was going to be fine. If you did have an unsafe environment, you do want people to leave. You're responsible for the health and safety of all those people. In this particular case, we found out within a very short period of time that it was just an equipment failure. So let's try to get the problem solved. In the meantime, let's tell people to stay where they are. And in fact, what ended up happening was it was the best half hour of beer sales in the history of the Super Bowl. People just left, went to the concessions and hung out.

Starting point is 00:13:40 My memory's a little fuzzy, but when you say equipment failure, what actually happened? For many stadiums, there are two sources of power, two different substations that come into the building. So that if you do lose power, you lose power in half the building, not all of the building. And that's exactly what happened. There was an equipment failure in one of the relays. So basically a giant circuit breaker that flipped. And the reason that it did flip, by the way, was because we had just left the halftime show. The halftime show was put on its own generators to actually avoid a problem like this. It had its own generators,

Starting point is 00:14:19 so there was almost no power being consumed from the power company during that period. And when the halftime show ended and all the lights came back on, all the cameras came back on, all the game systems came back on, there was a huge power spike. And that power spike was what flipped that relay. Interesting. Yeah. Again, my memory's kind of fuzzy, but everybody who was watching certainly remembers because it was no panic. It was actually something that was featured on 60 Minutes Sports on Showtime. There was actually a crew from 60 Minutes standing right next to me when the power went out, which is, you know, when you have a bad day,

Starting point is 00:15:16 you don't want a crew from 60 Minutes standing next to you. But really what it helped to do was help us evaluate what our response was after the fact, because it was all on film. So we ended up not panicking. We were working the problem and being very methodical about it. But one of the things that's really important is how we responded. We didn't react. When you react, you can create bigger problems and unintended consequences if it's something that you work so quickly to put into place that you haven't thought it through. The blackout was 24 minutes long. The game didn't start for 34 minutes.

Starting point is 00:16:00 And the reason it didn't was because after the lights came back on, and you can imagine the pressure we were under to get the largest television audience back glued to their seats, we said, well, what happens if other things besides the lights failed? What if the instant replay system no longer works? What if the score clock doesn't work? What if the coach to quarterback communication systems don't work? Then you have a problem, particularly if there was another score, the officials go under the hood to take a look and there's no replay. So now you've got a bigger problem. So we took the time. We responded by saying, you know what, what else uses power that we have to check besides the lights? And we took 10 minutes to go through that process. And as a consequence,

Starting point is 00:16:52 we did find things that weren't working and we got them repaired in the meantime and then got the game started again. I'm speaking with Frank Sipovitz. He is author of the book, What to Do When Things Go Wrong. Hi, I'm Jennifer, a founder of the Go Kid Go Network. At Go Kid Go, putting kids first is at the heart of every show that we produce. That's why we're so excited to introduce a brand new show to our network called The Search for the Silver Lining, a fantasy adventure series about a spirited young girl named Isla who time travels to the mythical land of Camelot. Look for The Search for the Silver Lining on Spotify, Apple,

Starting point is 00:17:30 or wherever you get your podcasts. 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.

Starting point is 00:18:16 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, Frank, when things go wrong at the Super Bowl, that's a good example of a pretty big catastrophe. You know, the world is watching and everything stops and, and all eyes are on you, I guess, to like, okay, Frank, fix that. And, but a lot of times when things go wrong, it's not that, it's not that noticeable necessarily, or it's not that big a deal. It's, it's not a big catastrophe, but it's still a problem. You know, problems are very individual. And how you feel when a problem happens is very, very common to what happens in a major. I would say it was a major incident.

Starting point is 00:19:15 It wasn't a catastrophe because we got the game going again. I think there are bigger catastrophes going on right now. But you know that feeling in the pit of your stomach when something goes wrong, can be a leaky pipe in your house, you know, you just feel awful. And what psychologists have determined is that when you start working on the problem, you start feeling better. You know, the second something goes wrong for you, whether it's a minor thing or a major thing, there's that release of adrenaline. and that's the human fight or flight response, right? You either have to get out of there or you have to fight through the problem.

Starting point is 00:19:52 And the best way to fight through the problem and fight the feeling that all that adrenaline gives you is to start tackling the issue. Psychologists have determined you can actually start taking that kind of biological response and direct it towards solving the problem, and you feel better in the process. When you're planning something major like the Super Bowl and thinking about what could go wrong, that's a big bet right there. That's a major event, and that's what you do. But most of the things that go wrong in someone's life is not so major that you're going to spend

Starting point is 00:20:33 15 days trying to figure out and reenact and role play what might go. Because it's not that big a deal, but it probably still needs some attention. So how do you, like, if you can't predict what's going to go wrong, how do you even start the process of trying to imagine what could go wrong? I think it's something that you don't do alone. You don't work on a Super Bowl alone. I think you talk to people. I always advise people to work as a team, even if a team is not required. Don't try to be the expert at solving everything, especially when something goes wrong. Surround yourself with people who can provide the

Starting point is 00:21:18 expertise that you lack and double check. One of the mantras that I instituted when we were planning Super Bowls was assume nothing, double check everything. And part of double checking is getting other people's opinions. Can you tell me another story or two that we might either know of or that was pretty interesting as it relates to what we're talking about that, uh, of how, you know, catastrophe was averted because someone did what you're talking about. Well, one of those stories, I suppose, would be the, the Superbowl halftime at, at Superbowl 48 in New York, New Jersey. It was the first Superbowl to be played in an outdoor stadium in a winter environment. Uh, we had to think about all the impacts that winter weather could have. Now, some of them are pretty obvious, like snowfall and how you would clear the seats, how you would clear the aisles and all of those things that we never really had to think about.

Starting point is 00:22:17 But one of the impacts that was very, very unique was, well, how do you set up a halftime show? Well, remember a halftime show is a 12 minute rock and roll concert. Very, very technically advanced. That's sitting in the middle of a football field. You get eight minutes to set it up and then you have seven minutes to get rid of it and have the field in the right condition to be able to play the second half of the game. Well, what would happen if it was snowing or icy on the field? And all of those people, and there's about a thousand people who are running out of the tunnels with staging and equipment and all of that. What happens if there's ice on the field? And what happens if somebody gets stuck underneath the wheels of a part of the stage?

Starting point is 00:23:07 So that is a foreseeable outcome. It ended up not being a problem on game day, but two years ahead of time, we're already thinking about, well, where do you put the stage and how do you set it up in time so that nobody's going to get hurt. And what we ended up doing was actually building the stage onto the field behind the team bench, rather than in the middle of the field where Super Bowl halftimes have always been held. They've always been staged in the middle. We put it on the side, we covered the stage so that it looked like a piece of decor. The fact that it was on the sideline meant that we could have a lot of things set up ahead of time. So it was no less spectacular. It was a great show as Bruno Mars

Starting point is 00:23:51 and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Nobody on television knew that it was on the sideline, but we put it there because we imagined that you could have potentially had ice on the field. The Super Bowl stories are great and very instructive, but bring this down to a more personal level. So knowing what you know, knowing that, how do we then translate that kind of thinking into everyday life? There are things that are common to pretty much any project, and that's communicating. So one of the things that I think is always imaginable is what if you're in the middle of whatever project you're in and you can't communicate with the people that you need to in order to get them to do what you need them to do?

Starting point is 00:24:39 And that could be something, you know, in the office, your email goes down, the phone system goes down, whatever it happens to be. How do you communicate with them? Or how do you make sure that they know what they're supposed to accomplish, even if you can't communicate with them? So that should be part of the planning. How do you then provide them with whatever instruction they need if you can't get back in touch with them. That's one example. And that brings me to a question about, I can use this podcast as an example. So for every person that I interview, I have a backup phone number typically to call if

Starting point is 00:25:20 something goes wrong. If I have a power failure or if I get sick or something happens. And almost never do I ever have to call. People show up, I show up, the studio works fine, everything's great. And there's almost a tendency to like, you know, do we really even need to bother with that? Because we've prepared for it, but it almost never gets used.

Starting point is 00:25:46 And I imagine that happens a lot where people have prepared and prepared over and over again, and nothing really much ever goes wrong, and they go, ah, screw it, we don't need this anymore. And then, of course, right after you do that, oh, man, I wish I had a backup number, but I don't. That's kind of the hope is not a strategy perspective again. I'm expecting it's going to go fine because it always goes fine. But that's the thing about when things happen, right?

Starting point is 00:26:16 Every incident is something new. And you're not going to have a power failure in the middle of the Super Bowl every year. It was 47 years before there was one. We needed to make sure that we had people in place knowing what they needed to do if there was such a power failure in that particular case. And frankly, I didn't even know what half of those plans were because I'm not the expert at solving for a blackout. But luckily, there were people around us who were. Something that occurs to me, I mean, obviously, you love what you do. But I would be very hesitant to take on a task where if something goes wrong at the Super Bowl, it's my responsibility.

Starting point is 00:27:01 That's a big, that's a big ask of someone. I'm pretty OCD, which is the right kind of guy that you want if you're dealing with a big project. I'm tireless. I just keep going back and checking and rechecking and rechecking and rechecking and then asking questions, well, what if? And there's a little OCD in all of us. One problem that often happens when things do go wrong is people get emotional. They get upset. And, you know, in retrospect, you look back and realize, well, getting upset didn't do any good at all. But it's hard not to get upset.

Starting point is 00:27:41 Do you get upset? Mike, can I tell you something? When something goes wrong for me, I feel it like everybody else. I just don't show it as much because panic paralyzes decision-making. If you panic while you're dealing with a problem, one of two things happens. Either everyone around you start panicking too, or they stop listening to you. They stop talking to you and they start doing things on their own. So if you're leading a project, for example, and something happens, you have to show no sweat.

Starting point is 00:28:18 Doesn't mean you're not going to feel it because you're a human being. You're going to feel it like everybody else. Well, you have certainly had to anticipate and handle some pretty big problems when the whole world was watching. But, you know, really, when people have their problems, they're just as important to them as yours are to you. And it's good to get some insight into what really works in terms of planning for trouble and what to do when things go wrong. Frank Sipovitz has been my guest. He's author of the book, What to Do When Things Go Wrong. And if you'd like to read it, there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Frank. Hey, thanks, Mike. Appreciate it. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown.

Starting point is 00:29:06 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.

Starting point is 00:29:24 So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice.

Starting point is 00:29:49 Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. When you were a kid, things that were kind of gross were probably more interesting and intriguing to you than they are now. You know, things like bugs and worms and smells and odors. Creepy is cool when you're a kid, but then as we get older, it's not so acceptable to talk about it.

Starting point is 00:30:36 Unless, of course, you're Erica Engelhaupt. She knows all about gross and creepy and gory things. Erica is a writer and editor for National Geographic and author of the book, Gory Details, Adventures from the Dark Side of Science. Hi, Erica. Thanks for having me on. So what's a nice grown-up like you doing looking at creepy and gross things? You know, I guess if I had to sum it up, I would say I like answering the kinds of questions that people are afraid to ask. So, you know, anything that's kind of creepy, crawly,

Starting point is 00:31:13 gross or weird, I've always been very curious about any of that stuff. Frankly, I think that all of us are. You know, I don't think we ever really lose that childlike curiosity with gross stuff. I think we just maybe get too embarrassed to talk about it. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. So what's like one of your, just to kick it off, one of your favorite gross things to talk about that hopefully isn't too gross, but... Well, everyone's, you know, measure of what's too gross, I guess, can be different. We're all kind of sensitive to different things. But I think personally, one of my favorite things to talk about and that is often very surprising to people that they didn't know is that we all have tiny arachnids that actually are living in our faces.

Starting point is 00:32:01 And these are called face mites. Their scientific name is Demodex. And we all have them, as far as scientists can tell. And they're probably not doing us any real harm, but it's really freaky to think of these little tiny mites that are just living inside our pores. They spend their whole lives there. And do we think they're serving some sort of purpose? Well, it's entirely possible that they are. When scientists first discovered these little things living in our pores, they were pretty horrified.

Starting point is 00:32:35 And they have been found to be higher concentrations of them in people who have rosacea. So for a long time, it's been thought that face mites might have rosacea. So for a long time, it's been thought that face mites might cause rosacea. But scientists who I talked to said that it's also entirely possible that we have more of a symbiotic relationship with these face mites. They might be eating bacteria in our pores, you know, doing some housekeeping by eating up all of the oils and things that are in our pores. And so we may be feeding them and they may be giving back to us by, you know, doing that kind of housekeeping. I actually got to see my own face mites, which was a big thrill. I mean,

Starting point is 00:33:16 it's one thing to know that they're in there, but to actually see them was a lot of fun. So I went to a lab and the scientists, you know, scraped some oil out of my pores, put it on a microscope slide, and we took a look. And sure enough, there they were. And they're just like these little skinny, almost like a shaped like a plug, because they fit inside a pore. And then they have these eight little itty bitty legs wiggling around. So it's amazing to think that those little critters are just in all of our faces all the time. And for the most part, they're just doing their thing and we don't even know they're there. That's kind of gross. Well, you know, what's interesting as you're describing

Starting point is 00:33:56 these face mites that are living in my pores, which is just so gross. But my reaction is that that's disgusting. I think that's the reaction of a lot of people. And yet, so much of nature is kind of gross. Why, I wonder, are we so disgusted by these things that are really just part of nature? Disgust is a pretty universal emotion. Everyone feels it. People around the world even make the same kind of facial expression for something that's gross, where you kind of scrunch up your face and nose and maybe even stick your tongue out if it's really gross. And we tend to be disgusted by the same kind of things for the most part. So things like insects and pests, you know, they can potentially carry diseases and might be a sign that something's dirty. So, you know, it makes good sense that

Starting point is 00:34:54 we might be grossed out by those kinds of things. And we're grossed out by, you know, any kind of sign of illness or, you know, bodily fluids, things like that. So, you know, it really makes sense that the kinds of things that gross us out tend to be things that could potentially harm us or make us sick. That said, you know, we're surrounded by these things all the time. And I guess, you know, one little funny story that I would tell about that is how many people are actually going into emergency rooms with insects that have gotten into their ears or even up their noses. I mean, this was just a kind of a weird little thing. I've always heard these stories of you accidentally swallow eight spiders a year or there there's, you know, some kind of numbers. And I think that those things are mostly made up. But it is true that it's pretty common for doctors

Starting point is 00:35:54 to see people coming into emergency rooms with roaches in their ear. And I thought, you know, I could give people one little piece of practical advice based on this, which is that something you should know is that if a roach does get in your ear, it's probably going to be while you're asleep at night. And what you want to do is keep that roach alive until you can get to an emergency room to get it out. You know, I read a really funny story about doctors who tried to test ways of getting roaches out of people's ears. And this is I think this is something that everyone is horrified thinking about. But it happens so frequently that doctors have actually written about the best ways to get roaches out of people's ears. And why did they go in there in the first place? Well, probably because your ear has wax in it, and that wax makes some of the same kind

Starting point is 00:36:50 of fatty acids that are in meat. And so probably roaches are smelling that and, you know, going in to investigate, and then they just get stuck. So yeah, I mean, I know it's horrifying to think about, but this is something that happens to lots and lots of people. There are tens of thousands of people that go into emergency rooms every year with something in their ears. And roaches tend to be the thing that that is one of the most common types of critters that tends to try to crawl in. Well, you were talking a moment ago.

Starting point is 00:37:24 It's so interesting that we're grossed out by so many things like this, but other animals aren't. You know, if I see a dead animal in the road, I mean, I kind of look away, that's kind of gross. My dog will go right up to it and sniff it and maybe take a bite and, you know, I mean, if I let it, but it's just humans are grossed out, but nobody else is. That's right. You know, humans have a really finely tuned sense of disgust. We probably have the best sense of disgust of any animal, I think, you know, so greatly that we have this sense of manners. And when you think about it, manners are really largely something that we've developed to protect each other from disgust, to protect each other from being disgusted.

Starting point is 00:38:11 We don't want to make noises that are disgusting to other people. We don't want other people to see things, you know, that would be potentially disgusting to them. So that sense of manners really protects us from disgust. And as far as we know, we're the only animals that have that sense of propriety. Well, one thing that grosses out a lot of people is the sight of blood. And I know you talk about bloodletting and how that became a thing to treat illnesses. So talk about how that became a thing to treat illnesses. So talk about how that became a thing. Bloodletting has been around for so long, you know, for thousands of years. And I think that people probably started thinking about bloodletting because, you know, so much of our medicine was based on the idea of the humors and our different body fluids being in balance or out

Starting point is 00:39:07 of balance. And so the idea was, you know, maybe you have too much of one thing and you need to get rid of some of it. So bloodletting has been around for a really long time. It may even be one of the reasons why George Washington died. He was very sick. And he had a doctor who drained so much of his blood that doctors now look back on it and think that that probably contributed to his death. One common gross thing that people think about, especially when they're about to go into a pool, is, you know, people pee in the pool. And that's kind of gross. Is it kind of gross? So scientists have actually looked at what happens when you pee in the pool. And the news isn't great, because when you pee in the pool, all of that urine contains a lot of nitrogen and urea. And that can combine with the chlorine in a pool to actually create some very toxic

Starting point is 00:40:15 chemicals. One of them is even classified as an agent of warfare. That's cyanogen chloride. And so when you pee in the pool, you're not just grossing other people out. You're actually producing very tiny amounts of, you know, chemical warfare substances that can be quite toxic. Now, how much pee would it take in a pool to actually, you know, harm someone with these substances? Well, we don't know, but it would be probably quite a lot. However, I would say that there's probably no amount of, you know,

Starting point is 00:40:52 chemical warfare agent that you really want in your pool anyway. And isn't there some advice that like, if you get a jellyfish sting, you should pee on it, that that would help it somehow? Yeah, this keeps going around. And, you know, for a long time, people have said, if you get a jellyfish sting, you should pee on it, for example. Or that if you have a deep wound and you don't have access to clean water, that you should pee on it. The idea is that urine is sterile, doesn't have any bacteria in it, and therefore it's almost as good as, you know, clean, pure water for washing out a wound or something. That is absolutely not true. There's definitely bacteria in all of our urine. Urine is not sterile. Neither is almost anything else in our body,

Starting point is 00:41:42 for that matter. There are bacteria literally in pretty much every part of our body, including even in the brain. There are bacteria and viruses that can get in there. So certainly don't pee on things and thinking that it's so clean and pure. And also the thing with jellyfish, jellyfish release these stinging cells, and those are actually sensitive to any kind of change in salinity. So by peeing on a jellyfish sting, you might actually make it worse by triggering more of those stinging cells. So what you should actually do instead, if stung by a jellyfish, you're probably close to saltwater. That's what you would want to use.

Starting point is 00:42:30 You'd want to use seawater to rinse off. You say we should be eating insects. Why would I want to do that? So eating insects is one of those things that was a challenge, even for me. And, you know, I have a background studying environmental science, and I want to do the right thing for the environment. So I went to a conference that was all about eating insects and scientists who are studying this and people who have started a whole industry in edible insects, both for humans to eat and for the animals that we raise as livestock to eat. And what they are finding is that it is very environmentally friendly when you think about how many insects you can grow in a small area and how efficiently you can grow them. It's much better for the environment than raising hogs and cattle and all of these things that we do.

Starting point is 00:43:25 But there's that disgust factor. Like I said, you know, it's pretty common for people to be grossed out by insects and bugs. So the idea of eating them, if that's not part of your culture's cuisine, is, you know, really repulsive to most people. And I have to admit that even for me, it was hard to give it a try. I went to this whole bug buffet where a chef had prepared all different kinds of food using insects, you know, in his cuisine, and that's what he specializes in. So it was really nice stuff. But for me, it was still it was still a little hard to give it a first try, you know. But I will say it really, it wasn't too bad. Once you kind of get past that ick factor, if you just kind of focus on it, like, well, it's just another little animal, you know, it's

Starting point is 00:44:17 not really much uglier than a shrimp, for example. So if you just kind of focus on that and think about it, and it really, it doesn't taste like anything all that unusual for the most part, like crickets, those were pretty easy. We had mealworms, we had even ants. Ants had a surprisingly light lemony kind of taste when they were sprinkled on top of something. The only one that really was hard for me and that kind of grossed me out was he had served a silkworm pupae, which is like the kind of like the teenager form of a silkworm in between a baby and an adult. And that was, you know, a couple of inches long and segmented and really looked insecty. And I have to admit, that one was pretty tough for me to swallow. What did it taste like?

Starting point is 00:45:09 You know, a lot of it was about the texture because it was bigger. And so it was a little bit meaty, but on the squishy side, it was kind of a unique taste, but, you know, almost a little bit papery to me. It wasn't that it tasted so bad necessarily. It was more that the texture was like squishy, like I was really eating a bug at that point. Well, I know it came up in a conversation on a previous episode, but, you know, one way to eat bugs like crickets is cricket flour. And you can buy cricket flour at Amazon or lots of places. Well, you know, cricket flour is also really high in protein. And so a lot of people are using that for things like making protein rich smoothies and things like that. And I've

Starting point is 00:45:56 tried that. That was one of the things that they were talking about a lot at the eating insects conference that I went to. And, you know, I tried some of that in a drink, it, you can't even really taste it, you wouldn't even know, it just tastes like protein powder, like any other kind of commercial protein powder you would buy. And yeah, so that's a great kind of, again, an environmentally friendly way of, you know, adding some protein to your diet. And again, like once you try it, I find it's not so gross. Once you've tasted it and said, oh, actually it tastes like nothing, then, you know, I think most people are more afraid of trying something than they really need to be. You know,

Starting point is 00:46:39 give it one shot. And if it's really not that bad, I think you'll find that you're not so afraid of it the second time around. You know, one thing I saw in your book, one thing that really kind of grossed me out was these fatbergs. It's like icebergs, only they're made out of fat. So lurking under the sewers, these are giant mountains of fat, grease, and whether it just London. You know, these have been found in cities across the US. New York City has had some famous fatbergs as well. And it's another area where scientists are trying to figure out how these fatbergs form, what causes them, how to prevent them. And, you know, one of the biggest things is just getting people not to put so much gunk down into the sewers. It's amazingly hard, you know, people

Starting point is 00:47:51 flush, they're all these wet wipes that say they're flushable, they're really not. And so they develop into these just enormous accumulations that have been probably around, you know, since as long as we've had sewers. The Romans, for example, had sewers. Famously, they developed a sewer system, and they used to send slaves down to go clean all of this gunk out. These days, you know, we have to send people down with heavy equipment to blast the stuff out. Something else that plagues major cities often is rats. And, you know, I get creeped out by rats. I've never liked rats.

Starting point is 00:48:35 And then we hear these stories about how they are getting so big and so indestructible and they're the size of a small dog. So can you talk a bit about rats? So rats are the ultimate survivors. Rats today are all over the world. Anywhere where there are people, there are rats. And so in that sense, I guess you could say that they're taking over the world. But they're really adapted to live alongside humans these days. You know, they really are dependent on us for the most part for their food and shelter. What's amazing is that as much as we hate rats, we know so little about them. We know so little about their actual ecology and how they live in the wild. In this case, the wild for rats is now mostly, you know, in our homes and in our cities. So one ecologist even told me, you know, she said, we probably know more about the ecology

Starting point is 00:49:40 of polar bears than we know about rats. And so they have been trying to study and understand rats and how rats move around different places and what causes, you know, large infestations of rats to happen in some places. And one of the big things is that when you try to eradicate rats, when you try to kill all the rats in one place, they will just move to another. And so, you know, you'll end up with kind of a wave of rats that moves, that can move around, you know, from city block to city block. Well, we all are surrounded by gross and creepy things. And you know, what's interesting is like the more we talk about them, the less creepy they sound. Erica Engelhaupt has been my guest. She is a writer and editor for National Geographic,

Starting point is 00:50:34 and her book is called Gory Details, Adventures from the Dark Side of Science. And you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for being here, Erica. Thanks. Take care. Everybody's concerned or should be concerned about their credit score, but there are some things about your credit score you may not understand. First of all, there are five major factors that have an impact on your FICO credit score. They are payment history, your level of debt and credit utilization, the age of the credit, the mix of the credit,

Starting point is 00:51:07 and the number of credit inquiries. 30% of the score is utilization, and a lot of people don't really understand what credit utilization means. For example, you might think that if you pay off a credit card, the financially responsible thing to do would be to close that account. But credit utilization, remember that's one-third of your credit score, means how much of your available credit are you currently using. So you want to have a good portion of your credit available that's not being used. If you close the account, you lower the amount of available credit, which could hurt your credit score.

Starting point is 00:51:47 Now, some cards charge a fee if you don't use their card for a long time, so you want to watch out for that and try to use the card once in a while to avoid that charge. But having credit that you don't use is generally a good thing. And that is something you should know. There are lots of things we discuss on this podcast that I bet your friends would like to hear, so please tell them about this podcast, share the link with them, and let them listen as well.

Starting point is 00:52:14 I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent

Starting point is 00:52:42 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,

Starting point is 00:53:00 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.

Starting point is 00:53:23 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.

Starting point is 00:53:38 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.

Something You Should Know - What to Do When Things Go Wrong & Fascinatingly Gross Things in Everyday Life

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