Something You Should Know - Where Would We Be Without Alcohol & Good Reasons to Go Outside Right Now

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

There’s nothing better than a really good laugh. What’s even better is, laughing offers some excellent health benefits too. I begin this episode by explain how laughter may just be the best medicine. https://www.womenshealthmag.com/life/a19968254/live-laugh-love/ For centuries, humans have been drinking alcohol. Why do people drink? Is it really the taste, the smell and all the nuances of your drink of choice or is it really just for the buzz? Why are some people able to drink socially while other people have had their lives destroyed by alcohol? Could it be that we would have never achieved all the advancements of our civilization had we not had alcohol to drink? Listen as I explore these and other questions with my guest Edward Slingerland. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia and author of the book Drunk: How we Slipped, Danced, and Stumbled our way to Civilization (https://amzn.to/2WONrif) There is a smell that happens after it rains. And interestingly, smelling that smell is good for you. That’s just one of many reasons why we all should be spending more time outside in nature according to my guest Lucy Jones who has researched the science regarding the amazing benefits of being in simply being out in the natural world. Lucy is the author of the book Losing Eden: Our Fundamental Need for the Natural World and Its Ability to Heal Body and Soul (https://amzn.to/3j7YUky). Listen as she explains why it doesn’t take much to get the mental and physical benefits nature has to offer.  On a job interview, there is a bit of a dilemma: You want to look good so you think you should maybe brag a bit about your accomplishments. On the other hand, a little modesty might be good too. Which is better? It depends on who you are. Listen as I explain. https://www.rutgers.edu/news/rutgers-study-finds-male-modesty-turn-women-and-men Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The search for truth never ends. Introducing June's Journey, a hidden object mobile game with a captivating story. Connect with friends, explore the roaring 20s, and enjoy thrilling activities and challenges while supporting environmental causes. After seven years, the adventure continues with our immersive travels feature. Explore distant cultures and engage in exciting experiences. There's always something new to discover. Are you ready?

Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, the real health benefits of simply laughing, then drinking alcohol. It isn't good for you, so why do so many people drink? The central motivation people have for drinking beer and wine and other types of alcoholic beverages is intoxication. We clearly have a strong drive to get intoxicated and it arguably gave rise to civilization. Also, in a job interview should you be modest about your achievements or speak up proudly? Dep on who you are, and the remarkable evidence

that shows getting out in nature will do you a world of good. Spending time in nature really affects us from our heads to our toes. Studies show that it can balance our nervous systems, help us recover from stress more quickly and more completely, even reduce inflammation and enhance immune function. All this today on Something You Should Know. Whether in the game or in life, the right coverage can make all the difference. Securian Canada gives you that coverage. For more than 65 years, Securian Canada has been helping Canadians build secure tomorrows. Their insurance solutions are designed to help protect you and your loved ones financially,

giving you the peace of mind to focus on what truly matters. Find their products through banks, credit unions, and associations, or visit SecurianCanada.ca. Securian Canada. Insurance designed for life. 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 carothers hi welcome to something you should know who doesn't like to laugh everybody likes to laugh and it appears that laughter rivals exercise when it comes to health benefits.

Here are some things researchers uncovered about laughter. In a study at Loma Linda University, laughter raised the level of a disease-fighting substance in the body by 14%. At UCLA, it was discovered that students could endure having their hands submerged in ice water 40% longer while watching comedies. A cardiologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center measured subjects' blood flow as they watched the movie There's Something About Mary and concluded that laughter increases circulation about as much as a treadmill session. Two researchers at John Hopkins Medical School divided 98 students in a biostatistics class into two groups. Each took the same 57-item exam,

but one group's test had funny instructions. The students who got those funny instructions scored significantly higher on the exam. Why does humor help us think? No one really knows, but scientists believe that amusement and laughter stimulate the brain's reward center, which improves our mental function. And that is something you should know. This episode is being published on the 4th of July.

And traditionally, the 4th of July is a holiday when a lot of people drink alcohol. It's part of the celebration for many, an important part. There's also no doubt that some people drink too much and that alcohol can cause a lot of misery and heartache. Nevertheless, the story and the science behind why people drink is fascinating and certainly worth exploring and understanding, given how pervasive it is all over the planet. Whether it's cocktails with friends, beer with the guys, wine with dinner, alcohol is part of our culture.

And in fact, civilization as we know it might not even exist if it weren't for alcohol. Here to help us understand all this is Edward Slingerland. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia, and he's author of a book called Drunk, How We Slipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization. Hey Edward, welcome to Something You Should Know. Thanks for having me. Let me just mention as we start here that if you hear noise in the background, and you will hear noise in the background,

is because it's just traffic noise where Edward lives, and we've done everything we can to quiet it down, and that's the noise, is traffic. So, Edward, I would imagine that, well, you tell me how long human beings have been drinking, but my guess is since they figured out how. People have been drinking certainly for as long as we've been doing anything in an organized fashion. By about probably 20,000 years ago, we were consciously making alcoholic beverages. And in fact, the standard story is that alcohol is a byproduct of agriculture.

So we started growing crops, and then eventually we noticed that our grain fermented if we left it sitting around. But the way it's actually looking is that we started making beer and wine first. So we have direct evidence of beer making as far back as 13,000 years ago. And that's way before agriculture started. So it looks like actually, it's the desire to make better and more beer that gave rise to agriculture and therefore gave rise to civilization rather than the other way around. I remember having a conversation about this with someone, and I think it's a really important point that people, you know, talk about alcohol, like, you know, the smell and the taste and how this one tastes different than that one. But basically, people are drinking for the buzz.

People drink for the buzz primarily, right? Yeah. The central motivation people have for drinking beer and wine and other types of alcoholic beverages is intoxication. We clearly have a strong drive to get intoxicated, and I argue we gave rise to civilization, and it's what keeps this taste for intoxication. It has stayed in our gene pool. It hasn't been eliminated by evolution, either genetic evolution or cultural evolution. And that suggests that there are some

really important benefits to wanting to get intoxicated, at least from time to time. And what are those benefits? One is enhanced creativity. So there's an ancient idea that artists and poets have always been associated with wine and other intoxicants. One of the things alcohol does is down regulate your prefrontal cortex. So this is the PFC. This is the part of your brain that's in charge of keeping you focused on task and delaying gratification and controlling emotions and not getting distracted. The problem, which is all very good, the problem with that is certain creativity tasks require you to be open and

allow connections to happen. And so the PFC is good for getting to work on time. It's not good for creative insights. And so one of the things alcohol does is temporarily turn the PFC down a couple notches. And this seems to allow different parts of your brain to communicate to each other in ways that they wouldn't normally communicate. It allows your unconscious to communicate to your conscious brain in a way that it normally doesn't. So there's good empirical evidence that getting to about, creativity seems to peak at about 0.08 BAC. So this is about two drinks in. So this ancient idea that creativity and alcohol go together, find some modern support in scientific evidence. And what are the other benefits? When I think of alcohol, I think when

most people think of alcohol, it's more of a vice that doesn't have a lot of benefits other than, you know, you feel good in the moment, and there's often a price to pay later. But in the way you talk about it, what are those other benefits? Another important benefit is what I call chemical disarmament. So the reason we shake hands is that potentially hostile people who are meeting and trying to come to an agreement want to show each other that they're not carrying a weapon in their dominant hand. In the same way, when treaties are being signed or contracts being negotiated, people sit down and drink together. And essentially what's going on, it's very much like shaking hands. If you sit down and have a few drinks with me, you are taking your prefrontal cortex out of your brain and putting it on the table and saying, I'm cognitively disarmed. So things that I'm less able to lie because I don't have cognitive

control anymore. The PFC is very important for lying because you need to keep track of what you're doing. You need to suppress the truth. You need to have good working memory to remember what you're lying about. That's all much harder to do when your PFC is downregulated. We're actually better at detecting lies when we're a little bit drunk because we're not when we're consciously trying to figure out if someone's lying. We're actually worse at it than if we just relax and take in a bunch of information. And then alcohol, another effect of alcohol is it's boosting feel-good hormones. So it's boosting endorphins, it's boosting serotonin, and this makes us feel better about ourselves. We feel wittier and more attractive, and we think other people are wittier and more attractive, and this helps people bond. So there's, I review some

empirical evidence that it, you know, again, this is an old folk idea in vino veritas, the idea that in wine there is truth. This idea of alcohol as a truth serum and as a way to really get a good sense of someone is an ancient idea. And there's good empirical evidence that that's true. It actually does help people bond and trust one another more. Despite the benefits that people experience when they drink alcohol, the fact is alcohol doesn't work for everyone. Some people can't stop drinking. Other people turn nasty when they drink. There are a lot of problems with alcohol.

Yeah, so the mean drunk phenomenon is really more of a problem of just mean people. So alcohol, there is this kind of myth that alcohol can make you angry or make you mean. It doesn't really do that. It disinhibits you. So it removes your ability to suppress what's there. And so if you're a mean or angry person, it will allow you to express those traits. So that's a potential downside of alcohol is, you know, again, inhibition is important. So that's alcohol is basically just taking the playground monitor away. And that means some bad things can

happen, especially if you start to get to high levels of inebriation. The bigger danger with alcohol is addiction. It's probably the case that up to 15% of the human population is genetically prone to alcoholism. So there's a really high heritability to alcoholism. And people who are prone to alcoholism, it's very difficult for them to drink safely, to use alcohol in a moderate way. Alcohol is incredibly addictive. It's up there with heroin and cocaine in terms of how addictive it is. Why has the taste for it stayed in our gene pool, considering how many people in our population are vulnerable to misusing alcohol? And it's got to, again, it has to be the case that these benefits overall outweigh the risks. But it's also the case that cultures have traditionally had ways to help

individuals who are potentially problem drinkers drink more responsibly. So we have typically, you always drink socially. In traditional societies, you never drink alone. And in fact, you very rarely have private access to alcohol. So if you're going never drink alone. And in fact, you very rarely have private access to alcohol. So if you're going to drink, it's going to be a communal situation where it's ritually mandated how much you're allowed to drink, or you can only drink when people make toasts. That helps a lot. Traditionally, we've also only had access to beers and wines. And in the past, they were traditionally pretty weak. So beers were coming in at like 3% ABV and fruit wines maybe could get up to 9%. What's changed, what's made the calculus

a little bit different in the modern world is distillation. So we now have access to distilled liquors, which are just wildly more powerful than anything we dealt with in our evolutionary history. And this is relatively recent. People don't realize this, but we didn't have widespread access to distilled spirits in the West, in Europe, until the late 1600s, 1700s, which in a story that starts 10 million years ago, It's basically yesterday. So that's another problem is people can get dangerously drunk very quickly when they have access to distilled liquors. You said, or maybe it was in the book, but I think you said earlier in this conversation that civilization might not be here without alcohol. So if I heard you correctly, can you explain that? Well, it relates to this idea

that I talked about earlier of the so-called beer before bread hypothesis. So civilization depends on agriculture. And if it's the case that it's our desire to get intoxicated that caused us to start domesticating plants, there's just a literal direct connection between intoxication and civilization, the desire to get intoxicated, created civilization. The kind of broader sense in which I think that's true is that intoxication is a tool, chemical intoxicants are a tool that cultures use to get past cooperation dilemmas, to allow us to innovate in a much more efficient way. And so it's been, I think, there are a lot of these tools. So alcohol is not, intoxicants aren't the only one.

We have religion, for instance. I think religion is another cultural tool. This is earlier research I did worked on the evolutionary study of religion and how it helped large-scale societies get off the ground. So we have several tools in our toolkit, but a really crucial one is chemical intoxicants. And the fact that when, for instance, alcohol is removed, so there are places where they don't have alcohol, you find them using other chemical intoxicants that have very similar effects. So the fact that when you take alcohol out of the equation, something else fills its spot suggests that it's performing a really crucial

function. I'm speaking with Edward Slingerland, and we're talking about why people drink. Edward is a professor of philosophy, and he is author of the book Drunk, How We Slipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization. Take back your free time with PC Express Online grocery delivery and pickup. Score in-store promos, PC Optimum points, and more free time, and still get groceries. Shop now at pcexpress.ca. This winter, take a trip to Tampa on Porter Airlines. Enjoy the warm Tampa Bay temperatures and warm Porter hospitality on your way there. All Porter fares include beer, wine, and snacks, and free fast-streaming Wi-Fi on planes with no middle seats.

And your Tampa Bay vacation includes good times, relaxation, and great Gulf Coast weather. Visit flyporter.com and actually enjoy economy. So Edward, what about the hangover? Is that serving a function of you went too far and so behave yourself? Or is that just a byproduct of you drank too much and that's the beginning and end of the story? Yeah, I think it's just really just a physiological byproduct of how alcohol affects the body. But again, it could be a function of the modern world. So you're much more likely to have a hangover if you've been drinking distilled liquors. If you spend an evening drinking two to three percent beer,

which is what most people did traditionally, you're not going to have hangovers. You're going to wake up and be pretty fine. What about the health effects, though? I mean, despite the sometime advice that you hear that a glass of wine a day is good for you, there are some serious health effects if you drink, right? Yeah, the health effects are terrible. So it's, again, this is part of the evolutionary puzzle, is alcohol is bad for us physiologically. And I talk about the study that came out,

very widely publicized study from the Lancet, this medical journal. It was a massive review of the literature on the physiological effects of alcohol. And the conclusion of that article was the safe level of drinking for all individuals is zero. So if you're looking at alcohol purely from a medical perspective, there's nothing good about it. Any kind of whatever benefits to kind of helping with, you know, your lipid levels or is far outweighed by cirrhosis of the liver, cancer risk, all the other bad things it does to you. So again, and part of the problem with our society is that we look at alcohol through this medicalized lens. We're looking at it only in terms of its physiological impact. And if that's the case, we should stop drinking alcohol. It's bad for us. But I'm arguing that once we consider the broader picture of the positive effects it has

socially and in terms of individual creativity, individual happiness in terms of stress reduction, relaxation of the ego, it's good for us to take a little break from being in cognitive control all the time. When you consider all those benefits, those outweigh, arguably outweigh, the obvious negative effects physiologically of alcohol consumption. Over the last several years, there's been a lot of awareness made and pressure put on people not to go out and drink and drive. And has that awareness, how does that play into the mix here? So it's true. And that's the other thing that's made alcohol much more dangerous is that we have access to motorized vehicles now. So traditionally, you know, if you were out

getting drunk and you were walking home or you're riding a horse home, it was not a problem. The horse could find its way home. But operating heavy machinery and drinking alcohol is a really bad combination. So there has been an increased awareness about the challenges of combining social drinking with driving. And I think people are much more reasonable and careful about that now, which is a good thing.

But I'm not sure it overall decreases alcohol consumption instead of just pushing it to different places. I've always wondered why we have all these different kinds of liquor. If the core goal is to just get intoxicated, it really shouldn't make too much difference how you get there. But, you know, we have tequila or we have vodka and we have scotch and some people hate scotch and some people hate tequila. And maybe it has to do with where you are and what material is available to make the alcohol. But is there any sense that, you know, one kind of alcohol does anything different than another, or is it all just intoxication driven?

It's all just ethanol. The active ingredient of all these different substances is ethanol, and that's it. It's not different in tequila or vodka or beer or wine. It's just that in distilled liquors, it's much more concentrated ethanol. So I think the variation you see has probably a lot to do with different materials people have to work with. But in terms of why you'd want to have this much variation, I mean, just go to the next time you're in the grocery store, any big grocery store, go look at the variety of Doritos you could get. There's like 20 types of Doritos or, you know, the number of different types of tortilla chips you can, people like variety. So there's variety in alcohol for the same reason there's variety in anything. People,

people like variety. But there does seem to be different effects of different alcohol in the sense that people often describe that gin gives them a worse hangover than vodka that when I ever whenever I have a margarita the tequila I think it's the tequila I have stranger dreams at night from the tequila from the tequila so it could it be something is it just me imagining this? But there does seem to be some truth. In fact, I can't remember the name of the brand of vodka, but one of the selling points when it came out was that it didn't give you a hangover,

that they must have manipulated something. So there's something else besides the ethanol doing something else. It's not having a psychopharmacological effect, but the other parts, components of alcohol can do all sorts of things in terms of giving you headaches or giving you an allergic reaction. So for instance, there's a gin made in the San Francisco Bay Area that I love. It's delicious. It always gives me just this brutal headache within about 15 minutes of drinking it. And it's got to be the case that one of the, you know, they use about 20 different botanicals when they're making this gin. I must be allergic to one of those botanicals. So there are other things in alcohols. The other thing is with regard to hangovers, sugar content is a big cause of hangover. So if you're drinking an alcohol

that has a lot of sugar in it, like rum, or I think tequila has quite a bit of sugar in it, you're more likely to have a hangover than if you're drinking something like vodka, which tends to not have very high sugar content. So yeah, there's all sorts of botanicals and other things and alcohols. And that's what gives them all their different, great, wonderful, diverse tastes. But if you're allergic to some of these substances, or they contain a lot of sugar, and that's going to give you a worse hangover, you could have different reactions. There are a lot of things people say about alcohol that, you know, I'm not sure if they're true. For example, you know, a lot of people say that red wine gives them a headache

and it's because of the tannins in the wine. Is that true? The red wine thing is certainly true. Red wine has a lot of tannins. When red wine, you're extracting a lot more of the grape because you're leaving it on the skins. And so you're getting all sorts of other compounds with the ethanol, which is what you're shooting for. So there's good evidence that red wine can affect people really negatively. My partner actually can't drink red wine. She can

drink as much white wine as she wants. She has more than half a glass of red wine. It triggers migraines. So people really do have different effects to, and different wines are going to contain different substances in them. So there's that, that is not a myth. The red wine versus white wine difference has got some evidence behind it. Is there anything else finally here in the science about alcohol that we haven't talked about that you think people really should understand? Beware of distilled liquors. You know, what we really evolved to deal with is weak beers and wines. And so even though distilled liquors are the same substance, it's just ethanol

in the same way wine and beer are just ethanol. Keep in mind that when you're drinking these things, it's such a powerful combination that you should really, I think people should really view distilled liquors as a different type of drug. But as you say, alcohol is alcohol. So, you know, whether it's 10 beers or the equivalent, you know, shots of tequila, you're still getting the same amount of alcohol. Sure. But the 10 beers takes you a really long time to drink. So if you're drinking a weaker beer, there's a built-in pacing mechanism, right? There's only so much you can fit in your stomach. And you're going to sip it at a certain pace. It's just with distilled liquors, if you're

good about it, if you say, look, tonight I'm going to drink X amount of ethanol content, and I'm going to have that either in whatever, five beers or two vodkas, that's one thing, but that's not usually how people drink. People just order another round. And so you just got to be conscious that when you're dealing with distilled liquors, it's much easier to go past the sweet spot of pleasant inebriation and into dangerous territory. Well, I like your approach and the tone of this conversation because often discussions about alcohol are either that, you know, alcohol is evil and nothing but evil or they're, you know, light and flippant and isn't it funny, but your more middle-of-the-road approach. I mean, it isn't all evil, it isn't all good, it is what it is, and it's a big part of our culture, and it's interesting to understand why that is.

Edward Slingerland has been my guest. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of British Columbia. And the name of the book is Drunk, How We Slipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization. And you will find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Edward. All right. Thanks a lot. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug.

Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug. The play is pretend. The skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop

for toys. At New Balance, we believe if you run, you're a runner. However you choose to do it. Because when you're not worried about doing things the right way, you're free to discover your way. And that's what running's all about. Run your way at NewBalance.com slash running. From the time you were a child, you have probably heard that you need to go outside,

that being outside is good for you. And you've probably heard the advice that it's good to be out amongst nature, that it lowers your stress. But all this get outside, it's good for you advice, it all seems a little vague. How exactly is it good for you? What is being outside around trees and plants? How does that really affect you? Well, here to tell you is Lucy Jones. She is a writer who has explored the science behind the idea that there's a connection between your health and well-being and being outdoors in the natural world. The name of her book is

Losing Eden, Our Fundamental Need for the Natural World and Its Ability to Heal Body and Soul. Hi, Lucy. Welcome. Thank you for having me, it's great to be here. So what is it about being outdoors that's supposed to be so good for you? Other than the fact that, you know, nature is beautiful and it's lovely, what is it that happens when you go out in it? Sure, I mean yes, And that was my kind of assumption at the beginning that it must be to do with the simple beauty. But in fact, what's really fascinating and really important is that spending time in nature really affects us from our heads to our toes. More broadly, studies show that it can balance our nervous systems, help us recover from stress more quickly and more completely,

even reduce inflammation and enhance immune function, which is very important. And breaking that down a bit, there are so many myriad elements in the living world, which scientists have now been showing and proving and measuring and explaining have quantifiable impacts on us. So let me give you a few examples. If you're a gardener and you might get a buzz after gardening and digging your hands in soil, that might be because there's a micro bacteria that lives in soil, which has been found to have antidepressant-like effects on the human brain. It boosts our serotonin. So that might explain why you get a buzz after gardening. We all might know that spending time in parks is supposed to be good for us. But did you know that

we have a genetic disposition to prefer certain shapes of trees, shapes that would have occurred on the savannah where we spent 99% of our evolutionary history. Another example that I really loved is the word petrichor, which means the smell of the earth after it's rained. You know when you've had kind of a long dry spell with no rain and then it rains and the air smells really amazing. And studies show that when we smell that smell, areas of our brain associated with calmness and relaxation are activated. And that's what really kind of blew my mind was the kind of depth and variety and diversity of the evidence. But how much does it move this needle? Does smelling that smell or seeing trees of a certain shape measurably change your mood? Or you would

have to do it every day? Or you'd have to do it a couple hours every day? Like how much you're assigning kind of this attribute to being out in nature, but like how much benefit is there? Sure. And that's a really, really good question. I think that some of the most robust and fascinating evidence that speaks to this idea of kind of a dose or amount of time that we need to spend is evidence that's come out of the forest bathing culture over in Japan and South Korea. And that shows that two hours spent in a woodland or in a forest, breathing in the chemicals that are emitted from trees, which are called phytoncides, have significantly measurable effects on mental health. And there are now myriad studies from every single continent where particularly environmental psychologists have studied people who live in areas with nearby nature and opportunities to connect with the sea or woods or so on, and those who have much less contact

with nature. And the evidence is very robust now and very telling that if people have access to nature, they are more likely to have less psychiatric disorders, higher longevity of life and improved health and improved health and well-being is it improved health and well-being in a preventative way i mean it it doesn't treat disease it just maybe helps you not get sick or how does it work one of the keystone pieces of work in this area was a study done by a guy called Roger Ulrich, who studied people recovering from surgery. And there were two groups of people recovering. And one had a view onto a tree, and one group had a view onto just a brick wall. And he found that those who were recovering with a view onto a tree actually had a shorter post-operative stay they had less symptoms of anxiety and depression and they needed less painkillers as well so this was a study done

back in the 1970s and of course it's not to say you know spending time in nature is going to cure your diseases but the the evidence shows and it has done really in an anecdotal way for centuries, when you look at Florence Nightingale, for example, or the way asylums and hospitals have always been often being built in kind of natural areas, there is a connection between restorative natural environments and illness and ill health. Could it just be though, or couldn't it just partly be, though, that if you're stressed out and you go out for a walk, you're really just distracting yourself, that you're getting away from your troubles and enjoying the beauty of nature and that that rest from, that break

from all the problems and stress in the world is just a break from all the problems and stress in the world and that that does something for you. I think that's definitely a strong element. But say you took that walk in a kind of paved, tarmac urban area, you would be missing out on the myriad elements in the natural world, which have now been found to improve our health and well-being. So for example, you might not listen to birdsong, which we know can reduce blood pressure. You probably wouldn't see the fractal shapes of which are found all over the place in nature and trees and plants which also improve affect brain activity involved with well-being and relaxation and calm you're probably unlikely to feel awe in uh kind of more urban environments and we know that awe now has measurable effects on our our health that's not

to say that there are beautiful villages in Italy or even you know the skyline of New York is going to awe some people and there are going to be kind of interesting things to look at but in a in a natural environment it's the variety and the diversity and the volume of different elements which have been found to impact the human mind and brain which make it a place where we can recover from stress more quickly and more completely so another um really important area of work is the effect of spending time in natural environments versus urban environments on the nervous system. If we walk into a natural environment, our parasympathetic nervous system is more likely to be activated. And that is the side of the nervous system which

is involved in immune function, rest, digest, feelings of contentment and calm. It's the opposite to the sympathetic nervous system, which is that which we know is fight or flight, adrenaline, feeling kind of stressed and tense. So that really strikes me as a really important sign that these natural environments are so needed for our sanity. When it comes to the health benefits of being in nature, does it matter what kind of nature? Does it make a difference? Or is it just being outdoors amongst trees and green and that's enough? Yes, it's a great question. There's lots of evidence which show that, well, it's called blue health, so living near water. The population study

found that people who live nearer the sea compared with people who don't are more likely to have better mental health and well-being. But saying that, most of us live in urban areas, right? And most urban areas don't have very much nature at all so and I live in an urban area too so I was really interested in whether urban nature you know kind of plants coming up through a pavement or scrubby urban parks or so on could have any impact on on mental health and it turns out that there's some really interesting evidence which can help us understand this more deeply. Firstly, studies suggest that unintentional daily contact with street trees, so just living on a street with more street trees,

is associated with lower antidepressant prescriptions and this is a study that came out of the Netherlands other studies show that background nature so for example walking through a park not necessarily looking at any of the trees or wanting to climb the trees or anything but just having that kind of background nature can provide a buffer against the stress of moving into an urban area and I think these studies are very important because they show that even if you're not someone for whom nature is is a hobby or something that you that you kind of want to spend your restoration time doing it shows that everybody needs nature and the implications then for urban planning and green design are really really significant of course I think most of us know this but this huge now

growing evidence base of the last 10-20 years of really robust empirical and peer-reviewed science just shows that you know unequivocally we really need more nature for for our health and well-being you know what i wonder is does it matter if you're into nature like if if you really love being in nature are the effects better than if you're maybe you know an urban dweller, you don't care that much about getting away and being out in nature. So maybe you're more immune to the effects because you're not really paying attention to it. Well, that was definitely me. About 10 years ago, I was living a really urban life, not spending any time outdoors and doing other things for my restoration. And my experience was that falling

in love with the natural world again and experiencing the restorative benefits of being by a beautiful marshland and by a canal was so powerful. I was kind of like, how did I not know about this before? You know, why isn't this being prescribed but there was a a study done by a guy called Gregory Bratman which compared people walking down a busy street with no nature on it and no trees or so on and then walking down a street with tree lined and greenery and his study found that those who walked down the the tree line street had less rumination and brooding and worry and less activity in a particular area of the brain associated with those things. And rumination and worry are associated with depression and so on. And I thought that that was really interesting.

Those weren't people who were nature lovers. They're just kind of the general population. You mentioned in the beginning of our discussion, for example, that the smell after it rains seems to have some sort of effect on people. Or if your hands are in the soil, there's something in the soil that seems to help with depression. And these are very specific things but this general sense of when you're in nature it makes things better it makes your mental and physical health better what else besides things in the soil or you know the smell after a rain is helping or is it that we it just is it just being out in nature is good for you and we

don't really know why the the latter we don't know yet i mean there are lots of things that we don't know so we don't know from my research i'm i might bring in the idea of biophilia which is the the theory that because we have spent 99 of our evolutionary history outdoors and among trees, we have an innate affiliation and innate kind of appeal or drawing towards the living world. That's a theory espoused by the American biologist E.A. Wilson. You know what it almost sounds like is isn't you could actually look at this as not not so much that nature is good for you but not being in nature is bad for you that's the problem you know it's another way of looking at the same thing but it's kind of the flip side of the coin that

the fact that we aren't out in nature is what's causing all all these problems that we have of stress and everything else and that that's the stress and everything else, and that that's the problem and nature is the cure because that's where we belong in the first place. I think that that's absolutely it. I mean, we're living at unprecedented disconnection from the living world. We spend in the industrialized global north between 95% and 99% of our time indoors. And we've never been at this point of disconnection and estrangement from the rest of nature before. I think because of that disconnection, we've forgotten

or we're overlooking how much we need the rest of nature and how much we are nature too. We are part of nature. We might think we nature and how much we are nature too. You know, we are part of nature. We might think we're not, but we are. Has there been any research that just looks at people who live in urban areas versus people who live in rural areas and just compare them in terms of these kind of mental health things to see if you can attribute the fact that you live more amongst nature that it does anything. Yes, there's plenty of studies that compare urban groups with rural

groups. A really interesting number of studies compared the Amish with the Hutterites. And they found that the children of the Amish, who are more used to living near animals, going in and out of barns, having a much more traditional relationship with the natural environment, compared with the Hutterite children, who live away from the air-conditioned barns, they have big tractors, the children are not kind of living alongside animals in the same way as the Amish are. And they found that the children of the Amish had much lower levels of inflammation and inflammatory conditions such as asthma or allergic disorders. And another aspect of that is also psychiatric disorders as well. So inflammation is associated with our

mental health. And the conclusion that the scientists reached is called the old friends hypothesis, which means that essentially the old friends, which are the bacteria that we have evolved with, that we do not get exposed to in our kind of air conditioned, very urban lives are actually very beneficial for us and particularly for the health of our guts and inflammation and mental health and so on. And that's a study which speaks to that difference between rural and urban living. Also studies that compare rural and urban groups have found that people recover from stress more quickly and more completely if they live in a rural area. So what's the prescription here?

I mean, most of us, as wonderful as it might be, are probably not going to pack up and go live with the Amish. So what is the prescription as to how much nature we need? Or is it just that any nature is better than no nature, a lot of nature is better than a little, or what? Just that, any nature is better than no nature. So some studies from Edinburgh found that even walking through a park for five minutes had measurable effects on brain activity from then moving into an urban area. It buffered the stress of the group that walked through the park. So a little bit of nature is much better than no nature, but it's almost like a cascading effect. The more nature you have, the more

therapeutic benefits you may be exposed to. So really, it's all good news. I mean, being outside in nature is good, and there's no other side of it. I guess, you know, unless a tree falls on you, then I guess it's not so good. But nature is good for everybody, and most people like being outdoors, so it truly is a win-win.

Lucy Jones has been my guest. She is a writer, and the name of her book is Losing Eden, Our Fundamental Need for the Natural World and Its Ability to Heal Body and Soul. You'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Lucy. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Take care.

Modesty is a wonderful trait to reveal on a job interview, but only if you're a woman. A study done at Rutgers University had over 200 people examine a series of videotaped job interviews, both men and women. The job applicants were actually actors told to respond modestly to the interviewer's questions. All of the applicants appeared equally qualified for the job. The results of the study showed that modesty was viewed as a sign of weakness and a low-status character trait for men that could adversely affect their employability or earnings potential. Modesty in women, however, was not viewed negatively,

nor was it linked to status. These are long-standing stereotypical gender traits that may not seem fair, but they are still valid in today's workplace. And that is something you should know. So normally I ask you at this point in the show to share this podcast with a friend or family member, but today I'm upping the pressure. I'm going to ask you to share it with three people. Three people. How hard can that be? Share this podcast with three people. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Do you love Disney? Do you love Top Ten lists?

Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial. And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games,

and fun facts you didn't know you needed. I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle, what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched in cooler temperatures? You got this. No, I didn't. Don't believe that. About a witch coming true? Well, I didn't either.

Of course, I'm just a cicada. I'm crying. I'm crying! I'm so sorry! You win that one! So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. 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, or wherever you get your podcasts.