Something You Should Know - Why The Negativity Effect Rules Your Life & What You Never Knew About Liquids

Episode Date: July 21, 2022

You probably hate when people don’t respond to your emails, right? Well, you may be part of the problem. Listen as I explain how this one little mistake in the subject line makes it easy for others to dismiss your emails and how to fix it. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/291896/subject-line-typos-decrease-email-engagementrates.html Why is it that bad things feel bad more than good things feel better? Someone can say 9 wonderful things about you and one negative thing – and you dwell on the one negative thing? It seems that it’s just the way we are wired says John Tierney who has researched and written a book about this called The Power of Bad: How The Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It (https://amzn.to/30Gn3EQ). The result of this is that we will do more to avoid a bad thing than to seek a good thing and this has all sorts of implications in your life. Listen as John explains how the negativity effect plays such an important role in many parts of your life Think of all the liquids in your life. You drink several, one is running through your veins, your car runs on them – liquids are everywhere and they are vital to our survival. But what makes a liquid a liquid? Scientist Mark Miodownik, author of the book Liquid Rules: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances that Flow Through Our Lives (https://amzn.to/2RMwSyL) joins me to discuss the fascinating world of liquids. For one thing, liquids are hard to define yet one liquid (water) covers 70% of the earth’s surface. And as necessary as they are for us, there is actually very little liquid in the universe.  What is the worst color to wear on a job interview? Listen to hear what hiring managers say about the best and worst clothes to wear if you want to make a good impression. https://www.businessinsider.com/best-and-worst-colors-to-wear-to-job-interview-2013-11 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Go to: https://actnow.climeworks.com/SomethingYouShouldKnow to start removing CO2 from the air today! For the first 500 people to use the code SYSK20, Climeworks will cover 20% of your first installment for monthly and yearly subscriptions. For a limited time, SAVE 35% on Cozy Earth Bedding.  Check out their awesome loungewear, too.  Go to https://CozyEarth.com and enter SOMETHING at checkout to SAVE 35% now! Hometap is the smart new way to access your home’s equity and pay for life’s expenses without a loan! Learn more and get a personalized estimate at https://HomeTap.com Helix Sleep is offering up to $200 off all mattress orders AND two free pillows for our listeners at https://helixsleep.com/sysk.  Go to Amazon and search for Conair Turbo Extreme to get your 2-in-1 steam and iron steamer today! Go to https://Shopify.com/sysk for a FREE fourteen-day trial and get full access to Shopify’s entire suite of features! Redeem your rewards for cash in any amount, at any time, with Discover Card! Learn more at https://Discover.com/RedeemRewards Go to the App Store or Google play to download Best Fiends for free. Plus, earn even more with $5 worth of in-game rewards when you reach level 5. That’s Friends, without the r—Best Fiends! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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You can now make the first move or not. With opening moves, you simply choose a question to be automatically sent to your matches. Then sit back and let your matches start the chat. Download Bumble and try it for yourself. Today on Something You Should Know, how to improve the odds of getting a response to an important email. Then, the negativity effect. Why negativity is more powerful than positive reinforcement. Penalties are

usually more effective than rewards. They've done clever experiments watching how kids learn. If you give them a marble for a right answer, you take the marble away for the wrong one. Taking the marble away, the penalty, they learn much faster that way. Also, when you go on a job interview, there are some colors you should and shouldn't wear. Then, liquids. We're surrounded by them. We drink them. But what is a liquid? Yeah, you'd have thought there'd be a good answer to that, wouldn't you?

I'd be able to just reel it off. And that's one of the fascinating things about liquids. There isn't actually a very good definition of what a liquid is. We know what a solid is, and we know what a gas is, but liquids, well, liquids are somewhere between the two states of matter. 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 most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes.

Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. In the last couple of weeks, there have been some very nice reviews on Apple Podcasts about this podcast. And I know a lot of people listen to the podcast, which is generally a good sign that people like it. But it's always great to hear what specifically people think. And so thanks for those reviews. And if you have a chance, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening to this. First up today, emails. Everyone complains that people don't respond to their emails, but some research shed some interesting light on an important reason why. Typos. According to a study, email response rates decrease as the number of

typos in an email subject line increase. Overall, emails without any subject line errors averaged a response rate of 34%. If an error was detected, the response rate average dropped to 29%. Capitalization errors affected response rates by as much as 15%, according to the study. A correctly capitalized subject line averaged a response rate of 32.6%, but a subject line that began with a lowercase letter averaged a response rate of 28.4%. And this is interesting. Emails sent on a Monday had the most errors, Friday was the second most error-filled day,

while Tuesday ranked as the best workday to send emails. And that is something you should know. You've probably heard of something called negativity bias, or the negativity effect, which is basically that we tend to pay attention to and are more motivated by negative things than by positive things. That it hurts more to lose $10 than it feels good to get $10. And it seems to be human nature, but there's so much more to it than that. And understanding how the negativity effect works and how you can use it in a positive way is really interesting. John Tierney is a writer who, along with social psychologist Roy Baumeister, has researched and written a book called The Power of Bad,

how the negativity effect rules us and how we we can rule it. Hi John, welcome. Hi Mike, thanks for inviting me. So since you're the expert and you wrote the book on it, explain the power of bad. Well, the power of bad is the negativity effect, which is the universal tendency of bad events and bad emotions to affect us more strongly than good ones. You know, when you hear a mix of compliments and criticism, you obsess over the criticism instead of enjoying the praise. You know, when you walk into a room and you see a bunch of faces,

you focus on the hostile one and you miss all the smiles. And, you know, and this negativity effect, it just skews the way we see the world. It skews our decisions and our relationship. Isn't it true? I mean, so our podcast has hundreds and hundreds of reviews on Apple podcasts and all that, and most of them are glowing. Most of them are great. People love this podcast.

But guess which ones I take particular notice of? And the ones you can't forget. It's just the same thing's happened to us, you know, the power of bad when the reviews came out, you know, they've been generally very good, but it's the one sentence here, the one, you know, cranky guy who posts a review who you think never really actually read the book. There must be a reason why we do this, why we're so drawn to the negative. And I imagine it has something to do with our survival

as a species or some sort of evolutionary thing. Right. It's adaptive, as evolutionary biologists call it, that it helped our ancestors survive because it was much more important to pay attention to threats like, you know, like a hungry lion than it was to savor the good things. You know, you really had to pay attention not to eat poisonous berries instead of enjoying the great meals. And it's more important to pay attention to an enemy who might kill you or might ruin your life in some way than to be nice to a friend, because a friend can't do that much good for you, whereas an enemy can really do bad stuff. So to survive, life has to win every day. Death only really do bad stuff. So, you know, to survive,

life has to win every day. Death only has to win once. So the brain is just primed to look out for those threats. And it's still useful. I mean, it's still important to pay attention to bad stuff. And we learn more from bad stuff. So it's a great teaching and motivational tool. But the problem, as we argue, is that there's, and we're in this high bad environment now where we're just surrounded by people, the merchants of bad, as we call them, who are trying to scare us, who are trying to get our attention. And they know the easiest way to get our attention, whether on television, on a smartphone app, on anything, on social media, the easiest way to get your attention is with something bad because the brain immediately pays attention.

Well, and you've been a journalist, so you know the old saying that if it bleeds, it leads because people are drawn to the violent, to the bloody, to the bad. You know, and I found myself guilty of this throughout my career. It's how I got interested. When I noticed myself early, I was a summer intern, and I found myself ridiculously hyping this weather story to make it sound like Armageddon. And I just wonder, why am I doing this? And why do readers want to see all this bad news? And the answer for mass media is that it's just the easiest way to get attention. The good news today is that, you know, podcasts like yours are,

you know, that's a whole different form now. And social media tends to be more positive than mass media. I mean, we hear about the Twitter wars. You know, there's an awful lot of vitriol on social media, but there's much more positivity. You know, people tend to share positive things more than negative things. When you tweet positively, you actually get more followers than people who tweet negatively. And, you know, I mean, you know, these new outlets like, you know, podcasts like this, it gives people a chance to listen for an extended time to something that really interests them, you know, some positive thing that interests them. So knowing that this is very pervasive, it's basically human nature, how do we use it in a positive way when it is in itself not?

You can put bad moments to good use. You know, that instead of despairing at a setback, override your gut reaction and look for a useful lesson. The upside of the negativity effect is its power to teach and to motivate. Penalties are usually more effective than rewards at spurring students and workers to improve. They've done clever experiments watching how kids learn. If you give them a marble for a right answer, you take a marble away for the wrong one. Taking the marble away, the penalty, they learn much faster that way. Religions that emphasize hell tend to grow much more quickly. They fill the pews on Sunday more than ones that are very benevolent. And, you know, there's even

evidence that in countries where more people believe in hell, there's a lower crime rate, more of a deterrent. So, and one of the problems that we see in today's education system is that we've gone to this everybody gets a trophy philosophy. And as a result, students are learning less. There's been rampant grade inflation. So the average grade at college now is an A minus. So students are learning less than in the past. And it's because we're not using penalties well enough. I mean, you want to do both. You want to reward people for good work, but you don't want to just do this, everybody gets a trophy when they don't do good work.

But there is a general consensus among people, not necessarily you and people that study this, but I think there's a general consensus in the population that positive reinforcement is better than negative feedback. I mean, there's two reasons why we have that, you know, that idea. One is the self-esteem movement, you know, from the 1970s and 80s, which is one of the sorrier mistakes in the history of psychology. In fact, my co-author Roy Baumeister, you know, who's one of the leading social psychologists, he started his career, you know, in that self-esteem research and thought it looked very promising because people saw that kids with high self-esteem do well.

And they thought that's what caused it. When in fact, what Roy and others found out was that no, that's not how it works. That yes, people who are successful have high self-esteem, but the causation is they have high self-esteem because they're successful. Just having high self-esteem doesn't help you. So that's one of the reasons. The other reason, and this whole idea that the carrot is more effective than the stick, we trace the history of that cliche.

It goes back to the 19th century when there were cartoons and people would advise parents that it's more effective to use a carrot than a stick. And they would tell this fable about that's how you got a donkey to move better was to put a carrot use a carrot than a stick. And they would tell this fable about, you know, that's how you got a donkey to move better was to put a carrot there instead of using a stick. And the question we ask is, has anyone ever seen a donkey move that way? I mean, you know, when you look at the horses in the winner's circle at the Kentucky Derby, you don't see any carrots dangling there. You know, the jockeys have whips.

And our conclusion is that the reason we think that encouragement works better is because it's a lot more pleasant to give encouragement than it is to criticize. You know, people would rather say nice things. It's a lot less stressful when you evaluate someone just to tell them lots of nice things and let it go with that. So it's more pleasant to give praise, but it's much more effective to give a mix of both because the criticism is really where people learn. One of the things people struggle with is what is that mix? What is too much and what is not enough? Well, we talk about the rule of four, and that is that, and this is based on a lot of different research into how people respond to financial gains and losses. Researchers who study how many good days someone has versus how many bad days, how many good emotions versus how many bad emotions to see what seems to work. And the general rule is that it usually takes four good things to overcome one bad thing. That's the rule of four, as we call it. And, you know, and it's a useful rule of thumb. It means that if you're late for one meeting,

you're not going to make up for it by being early the next time. If you say one hurtful thing, you need to say, you know, at least four good things to make up for that. And one of the unfortunate things has been this idea of the criticism sandwich where you start out with lots of good things for the person, then you slip in a little criticism, and then you say a few nice things, and that's it. The problem is if you say all the good stuff first and then you say the criticism, the criticism just hits the brain so hard that it forgets all the stuff that came before. And so the person walks out of the meeting,

all they can think of is the bad stuff, and they've forgotten all the good stuff. So our advice is to get the criticism done early, and then the brain's on high alert, and then you say the praise, and try to say more than four bits of praise for every bit of criticism, and give the criticism,

and you can do it in a positive way saying, you know, this didn't work last year, but here's a way that we're going to, you know, deal with it next year and things are going to be better than ever. You know, so you don't want the person walking out demoralized, but you've got to make sure that they hear what's gone wrong so they can improve. We're talking about the negativity bias, the negativity effect. And my guest is John Tierney, who is co-author of the book, The Power of Bad, how the negativity effect rules us and how we can rule it. 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. People who listen to Something You Should know are curious about the world, looking to hear new ideas and perspectives.

So I want to tell you about a podcast that is full of new ideas and perspectives, and one I've started listening to called Intelligence Squared. It's the podcast where great minds meet. Listen in for some great talks on science, tech, politics, creativity, wellness,

and a lot more. A couple of recent examples, Mustafa Suleiman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, discussing the future of technology. That's pretty cool. And writer, podcaster, and filmmaker, John Ronson,

discussing the rise of conspiracies and culture wars. Intelligence Squared is the kind of podcast that gets you thinking a little more openly about the important conversations going on today. Being curious, you're probably just the type of person Intelligence Squared is meant for. Check out Intelligence Squared wherever you get your podcasts. So, John, one of the things, in fact, I just recently spoke with someone about relationships, and they said, well, constructive criticism is still criticism, and that you're better off, at least in a personal relationship like a marriage,

to shine a light on the positive things people do and ignore the bad ones, because by praising the good things, they'll do more of them. That's true. I was speaking there about when you're a teacher or you're a supervisor who's evaluating someone, and your job is to get them to improve. So in that sense, you've got to do the criticism. In personal relationships, you also, when there's something wrong, when there's something really seriously wrong, you have to talk about it.

But in general, in relationships, it's great. The more you can tamp down the negativity and stress the positivity, the better it is. You know, we pride ourselves on the many good things we do for our family and our friends for going the extra mile. But what really matters is what we don't do. You know, avoiding bad is far more important than doing good. You get relatively little credit for doing more than you promised, but you pay a big price if you fall short of a promise. And researchers who've tracked couples over time to see which marriages survive and

which ones don't, they find that it depends mainly on how spouses deal with negativity. You want to avoid saying hurtful things. You want to avoid doing hurtful things. And you also want to give your partner a break. In really successful marriages, people maintain what researchers call positive, and in fact, there's some great brain scanning experiments where the part of their brain that makes negative judgments shuts down when they look at a picture of their partner. They've learned how to do this. And the great thing is, is that when you have these positive illusions about your partner, they eventually start believing them too. They've been unrealistically high and it works for both of you. So, I mean, it is really important to avoid needless negative things, to give your partner the benefit of the doubt when something

goes wrong, to don't, you know, don't assume that because they did something that bothers you that they were selfish or that they were trying to hurt you. You know, assume that there might have been some other reason for it. Look for that other reason. And also, really capitalize on the good moments. Researchers use this term capitalization to talk about how you can put those good moments and those good, you know, since I did a study of this research, I've been, I try to do it, you know, every day is that when someone, when you have good news, share it with someone because sharing it makes it much more powerful. And when you hear someone's good news, don't just sit there quietly nodding. You know, you should do something like say, that's great. Ask some questions about it.

Talk about it. It makes the trying more significant. It makes, it makes both of you feel better, makes you feel closer, and it really does magnify the joy. You know, there's a great aphorism from Mark Twain from Puddenhead Wilson where he says, to get the full value of a joy, you must have somebody to divide it with. And that's crucial to do in a relationship. It almost seems that today, the idea of penalizing or punishing someone for something they've done wrong, or they've not performed well, that penalizing them for it is almost archaic, and that the enlightened approach in some circles is to praise the positive and ignore the negative when what you're clearly saying is to just praise the positive is a fairly weak way to motivate people's behavior or performance.

Penalizing does work. I mean, it works with workers, and there have been experiments with teachers who either get bonuses if their kids do well, or they get paid dock from them if the kids don't do well. And, you know, the threat of that penalty is enough to really motivate the teachers to do better. And

students are the same way. So I think, again, we don't want to go back to corporal punishment, but we do think there should be some kind of penalty mixed with rewards. I know you talk about the power of getting other people's view on what's wrong with your life, because just as we can see more objectively other people's problems, Other people can see more objectively what's going on in our lives because we're just too close to it. I mean, the power of bad, we have the story from a novel by Anthony Trollope about this marriage that fell apart for absolutely no reason.

You know, the husband and wife, nothing bad happened really, but they both just kept antagonizing the other one and it just built up and built up. And early in the novel, when the wife is upset about something the husband said, her sister offers the best piece of advice in the novel. As we say, it's, if I were you, I would forget it. And in that sense, relying on someone else to make a judgment for you, going to them, because they don't feel personally threatened. They don't feel personally affronted by it. There are interesting experiments when they ask people to gamble in laboratories that when they ask you to decide how I should bet, you will make much more rational decisions than I will. Because you're not personally involved in that.

You don't personally feel that sense of loss. And so you can be much more rational decisions than I will because you're not personally involved in that. You don't personally feel that sense of loss. And so you can be much more rational about it. Football coaches are just incredibly irrational. We see this every Sunday where they keep punting on fourth down when all the odds, all the statisticians tell them you should go for it. That you'll score a lot more points in the long run if you go for it on fourth and short, almost anywhere on the field, beyond your own 10 or 20-yard line. It really makes sense to go for it. And yet the coaches are so afraid of that failure.

What if we don't make it? It'll be on the highlights reel. People will blame me for the loss, and they just keep punting instead of it. And we tell the story of one high school football coach in Arkansas, who he trained himself to overcome that negativity bias by he said, I'm going to, I'm not going to go with my gut. I'm going to pay attention to the statistics and the way I'm going to avoid, you know, being swayed by my emotions in the moment is I'm going to make a rule beforehand. These are the only situations in which I will punt. And otherwise, I automatically go for it. And his team punts once a season.

And they have won the state championship year after year. You know, they score 50 points a game. They always go for it. Even if he's on his own one-yard line, he goes for it. Isn't that interesting when the statistics, the facts, fly in the face of punting on fourth down, and yet everybody does it? And it's amazing. I mean, you watch the games on television, and the commentators are the worst of all.

They're, oh, my God, he's going for it on fourth and one on the 50-yard line. I mean, it's ridiculous to punt in that situation. You're going to gain maybe 30 or 40 yards, but you're giving up the chance to score. And that is so much more valuable. This negativity bias, the negativity effect where we tend to notice more the negative things in our life, seems to not only apply to individual lives, but also in a broader sense, in that people seem to think that the world is getting worse. And yet, objectively, from what I've read, that things are actually getting better in almost every area of life. The better life gets, you know, the more assiduously we look for bad things. And there's an old saying, no food, one problem. Much food, many problems.

We suddenly invent these first world problems. And it's very sad to me because virtually every measure of human well-being is improving around the world. It's amazing how much better off we are than our ancestors. We're the luckiest people in history. We live longer, we're healthier, we're wealthier, we're better educated. And yet, when you ask people how things are going, are things going to keep getting better? If you go to developing countries where they can see this progress right away, they're optimistic. But in rich countries like the United States and in Europe, people are more pessimistic because they're so swayed by this negativity

effect by seeing bad news all the time that they don't realize how much better life is getting for everyone. Well, it would seem that just being aware of this, being aware of the tendency to focus on the negative can really help you shake loose of it because you're on guard for it. I try to not read all the news because I know how much my fellow journalists hype things. And I look for, you know, the big question I ask when you hear about some new awful trend is, or about some new awful problem is, what's the trend? I mean, there's always going to be problems in the world. There'll always be some people who are doing worse in some ways. But what's the long range trend? Are things getting better or worse

in this case? And what you find over and over again is that over the long haul, things are getting better. There are blips sometimes and some people suffer, but on the whole, things are getting better and we solve these problems. You know, when something comes along, we come up with a solution that typically ends up leaving us better off in the long run. When the dust settles from all of this, what's the takeaway? What's the message here? We want people to realize that there is much more good in the world than bad, and that there's much more to celebrate than to mourn. And again, we want people to know how to exploit the power of bad when it's useful. It's a great way to learn. You learn more from failure than from success. And instead of being devastated by a setback, we want people to learn how to look

for the lessons from it. But above all, we want people to overcome the negativity effect, to see how much is going right in the world and how much can be going right in their lives, and to be optimistic about the future. Things really are getting better. Well, it's a good message. People would remember it better if it was a bad message, but I'm glad it's a good message. John Tierney has been my guest. He and his co-author Roy Baumeister have written a book called

The Power of Bad, How the Negativity Effect Rules Us, and How We Can Rule It. And you'll find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, John. Thank you very much, Mike. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan, the Magical Millennial.

And I'm the Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover. We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney-themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life.

So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. 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. 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. You are surrounded, well,

sort of surrounded, by liquids. Liquids are everywhere. 70% of the Earth's surface is covered in a liquid. Liquids fuel your car's engine. Liquids are the most likely thing the TSA will confiscate from you at the airport.

Some liquids can be turned into solids. Some solids can be turned into liquids. But you've probably never once stopped to consider all the liquids in your life and why they're so important. Well, that's about to change, because with me is Mark Myodownik. He's a scientist and author of the book, Liquid Rules, the Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives. Hi, Mark. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Hello. Nice to be on the program. So explain why we're talking about this. Why are liquids worth discussing? Why are they worth being a segment on Something You Should Know? Why are liquids interesting to you? I'm a material scientist by trade so i spend my days in labs looking at different materials and of course i go to conferences uh to talk about

this work and of course when you get to the airport the things they're really worried about are the liquids in fact they're so worried about them they kind of frisk you for them and so i thought whoa why is that so dangerous What is it about liquids that is so much more dangerous than solids, let's say? And so I started to think about that. And then I realized, of course, that the whole journey across the Atlantic is dominated by different liquids, the liquids that fuel the aircraft, the liquids you drink to make you feel better about flying or just enjoy the flight. And the liquids you need, you vitally need to actually eat anything at all. You don't have saliva, you ain't eating.

It just struck me as a brilliant topic. They're dangerous, but they're also wonderful, you know. I mean, we wouldn't be without a beer. We wouldn't be without tea, coffee. and so what makes a liquid a liquid yeah you thought there'd be a good answer to that wouldn't you i'd be able to just reel it off but and that's that's one of the fascinating things about liquids there isn't actually a very good definition of what a liquid is we know what a solid is it's stuff that stays put when you put it there it stays there and we know what a gas is because you know it's it's atoms you breathe it in and out and they expand to fill the space

but liquids well liquids are somewhere between the two states of matter and they have components of both there's the dynamicism of a gas for instance liquids they can get up to stuff on their own um you see this with rivers of course and and and kind of the oceans are constantly moving about. It's not us that's moving them. If you spill something, off it goes somewhere else. It's not just gravity that creates the dynamics of liquid. So liquids have a sort of lifelike quality, a dynamicism, but they're also somewhat like solids. I mean, if you jump out of an airplane,

for instance, and hit the sea, it's going to behave like a solid. You're going to basically go splat. That's interesting, isn't it? That liquids sit between a gas and a solid. They have elements of both in terms of how they behave. And yet, they're very hard to kind of pin down. Well, and we think of liquids as, well, remember in school you learned that liquid water finds its own level and that basically it flows downhill, but you point out that sometimes liquids flow uphill. Things shouldn't go uphill, but they do. And how do we know that? Well, that's how trees work. You know, trees are drinking liquids up from the ground. Plants do the same thing. So that's all to do with capillary action. There are these weird words that you know that are to do with liquids.

Capillary is one of them. Surface tension is another one. You know they're important, but how are they important? Why is it that some things can walk on water, for instance? Why can some insects do that and others don't? Why can't we do it? It'd be great if we could. Why do some insects walk on water? The thing about liquids is that they have this thing called a surface tension. It's basically

because the surface of the liquid is the same molecules that are in the liquid, but they're not surrounded by liquid. They're surrounded by a little bit of liquid below them, but above them, there's a gas usually. In the case of a pond, you've got this gas and that means that those liquid molecules, they're not as happy as the ones that are in the liquid. And because of that, if you can kind of let some of them not interface the gas, they're quite pleased about this. And that's how surface tension works. So some insects have worked out that if they can create a surface that the liquid would rather be next to then it will it will support their weight and you see it you see it you know in

human-made technologies too you can you can design surfaces that repel water and this is the essence of waterproof you know jackets and trousers and you know all of that stuff i mean we spend quite a lot of our time you know having to combat the rain, for instance, and stop getting wet. This is all about controlling how liquids sit on surfaces. You started the conversation by talking about how when you go to the airport, they're very concerned about your liquids. No water, they're going to take your shampoo if it's more than,

what is it, three ounces or whatever it is. What is it that they're so worried take your shampoo if it's more than what is it three ounces or whatever it is what it was why what is it that they're so worried about with liquids the thing about it is that liquids have very little structure the atoms in them they're often connected to their neighbors but apart from that there isn't much structure that's how they can flow that's what's different from a solid but but that means that when you x-ray them or you interrogate them with these with these techniques that we've got used to for security like to detect something like a gun or a knife they're very good at finding those in luggage with these techniques but if you're shooting that stuff at a liquid it's very little for it to get hold of it's

the form of the liquid is not there they don't have a form do they they take the shape of any form and that's another one of their sort of slightly sinister properties so you can't look for a form so what do you look for well you'll look for a kind of chemical signature because you're looking for explosives mostly they're looking for explosives or poisons or viruses, all these things that could be weapons. And it's very difficult in a short space of time with those kind of detectors to find those. And, of course, when you're trying to get thousands of passengers through an airport, you cannot afford basically to take samples of everyone's liquids, do a little chemical test, and then let them through onto the plane.

The whole of the airport system would just grow into a halt. So instead of saying that or instead of doing that, they're basically having these blanket bans because they basically don't know what's in your liquids. So basically try and keep the liquid volume to the small amount. You said that a liquid is hard to define, but that a solid stays put, it stays where it is and it looks the way it looks, whereas a liquid will take the shape of whatever it's in. So does that mean that stuff like peanut butter and toothpaste are technically liquids?

Because I don't think of them as liquids, but maybe they are. Well, basically peanut butter will make the shape of the container. So if you take the peanut butter out of that container the jar it'll just fall and puddle on the floor or the table and that's the hallmark of a liquid so toothpaste the same these things that kind of flow and you you might ask the question well how what's the time frame it has to flow. Obviously, honey is very viscous, but we'll agree that honey is a liquid. Toothpaste is a liquid. Peanut butter flows very slowly, but it is also a liquid. But how about this? The tar on the roads that we drive around on is also a liquid by that definition.

We drink a lot of liquids, beverages, so those must be important liquids. Obviously, we've got the liquids that we drink every day, tea and coffee. And there's a big debate, especially coming from Britain, where I come from, which is the better drink. Worldwide, tea is a more popular drink, i.e. more people drink tea than coffee, although that ratio is changing. Could you ever define the best, most refreshing drink in the world could we actually have a is there a kind of quantitative measure of refreshingness tea you know has that sort of air of a kind of quiet drink a drink that isn't about you getting up and going and taking the day by the horns um so in a way starting the day drinking tea does seem a bit odd you know it's a quite a subdued way to start the day whereas coffee you know fires you up with a big caffeine

hit but it's also quite an astringent taste in the mouth and it and it has a flavor profile that's very kind of chocolatey and has these different you know flavor components that are kind of fiery so these drinks tea and coffee they sort of do different things for people but they are there's no doubt about it they're very sophisticated in terms of chemistry so they have thousands of flavor molecules and um that fascinates me because the drink that everyone thinks of as the king of drinks let's say the most sophisticated drink in the world, isn't tea or coffee. It's wine. Now, how did wine end up being the de facto most sophisticated drink in the world? It's not that wine has a more sophisticated chemical makeup, has more flavor molecules than tea or coffee. It's just that

the people who make wine want you to think that this drink is the epitome in sophistication, in taste. If you can detect the difference between this wine from this region, then somehow that says something about you. You are a sophisticated person. You don't have to tell me whether you know maths or chemistry or poetry or Shakespeare. You are sophisticated because you know the difference in these drinks. And that's the kind of idea that's going on here. And there are lots of props that this industry uses to kind of get that across. One of the props is the label on the wine. Another prop is the pulling of the cork and the sound of it another prop is the fact that there's a wine menu in a restaurant right there's not a tea menu i mean and sometimes there is a coffee list but it's quite restricted

but there's a wine there might be 25 30 wines and what they're basically saying to you is this drink is so special. We've got a whole other booklet of stuff. I don't know if you looked at this, but one of the things that's interesting to me is somebody figured out sauces. Like if we put this on that, it'll make it taste even better. Ketchup, gravy, things like that. And they're all liquids for the most part and and it's somebody had to figure that out in the mouth you have taste buds but it's not the solids it's not the solid food that's getting those flavors to those taste buds it's the liquids so if you don't have saliva which is the main liquid that conveys the flavor you you just don't taste stuff. The other thing that's really important to taste is your nose.

So when you eat stuff in your mouth, it releases the aroma and the aroma goes up the back of your nose, the back of your mouth into your nose. And that gives you this very wide ranging flavour profile. But the other thing that liquids are doing in your mouth is they are and it doesn't sound very nice thing but it is really important is they stop your soft palate being lacerated by the food and again this is about lubrication so what those sauces that you're talking about ketchup and mayonnaise and hot sauces what they're doing is that partly they're delivering flavor and these lovely tangy, you know, to your taste buds, and partly they're lubricating the mouth.

Talk about water, because without water, we wouldn't be here. So water is probably our most important liquid. What about it is interesting? The first thing to say about water is that we believe it's something called a universal solvent so what does that mean a solvent things that dissolve other things are solvents um uh so salt for instance dissolves in water and and that's great and oil oils will dissolve organic molecules um so that's that's why you cook with oil a lot of the time because a lot of the flavor that's coming out is an organic molecule from the plant or the meat and it's going into the oil and then you taste it on your taste buds via the oil

so oily foods are often very delicious foods but there are these two things the kind of carbon world and the kind of mineral world they tend to be very separate that you know one side will will dissolve one type and the other side will dissolve the other type. But water straddles the gap. Water will dissolve organic molecules. Not oils, but it will dissolve carbon molecules and we know this. Things like sugar is dissolved in water and it's carbohydrate, it's a carbon-based molecule. Well, one of the things I remember from science class is that, unlike most things that expand when you heat them and contract when you cool them,

water is just the opposite. When you freeze water, it expands. And so why is that? Why is it against the grain of everything else? Yeah, that's another one of those things, which is kind of counterintuitive, but yet so vital to a lot of the way life has evolved on the planet. Because if it was the other way around, lakes would freeze from the bottom upwards. And then essentially, in the winter, everything would die, because the ice would just get to the top and there'd be nowhere for the fish and

the other organisms to survive. The fact that you can have ice that not only does it freeze at the top but it floats because it's less dense than the liquid phase means that that then insulates the rest of the water from being frozen and so allows the life to survive underneath it. I mean, that is just miraculous. But how does that work it's very unusual but yeah because liquid is a um you know the molecules in a liquid tend to be disordered and so that means there's some space between them where there's no order and that usually means

they are less dense than the solid because the solid that comes out of it, like gold liquid goes into a gold solid, or iron goes into an iron solid, the solid is always a much more organized form of the matter, and therefore denser. So basically, iron solid sinks in its own liquid. But in the case of water, that doesn't happen. Ice floats. And so how can it be that there's more space inside ice, molecularly wise, than there is in the liquid? And it's to do with the way the crystal forms in ice, and there are actually many different types of crystal phases in ice. And that's partly, I think, to do with the fact that H2O, that molecule, has this very many different types of way of bonding to itself, which is how crystals form.

So yeah, I mean, it is a very special molecule in so many ways. Oil is an interesting liquid in a lot of ways, I guess. But you talk about how oil helped to light the world back before electricity. Light is such an important thing, indoor light. And if you're living in a cave, or even if you're not living in a cave, if you're looking in a hut or some sort of brick, mud brick construction, for most of the time, the world's in darkness. You might have a fire for warmth, but that's a flickering light so people really wanted and therefore found ways to get

indoor light that wasn't just for heat and the way to do this is another incredible property of liquids which is that this capillary action it'll go uphill if you get oil and you put a little bit of a fabric in it or string then the oil will travel up this string because its interaction with that string means that the surface tension pulls it up and when it gets the top if you then light the top the oil being you know flammable will burn. You get this little flame, but it won't burn down and keep going down towards the pool of oil. It will actually just stay up there. And why is that? Because the oil can only burn where it can find oxygen and oxygen. So it just has enough oxygen up there to burn, but it can't go further down.

So you have this brilliant technique, which is a pool of oil. It goes up this little bit of fabric or string and you get a light and it's called the oil lamp. It's been around for thousands of years. So early ancestors of us all collected seeds and things like olive berries and crushed them for the oil, and had indoor light, but also used it to cook. So this was an incredibly valuable substance. It's 101 survival for early civilizations is to harness oil, not just for cooking, but also for indoor light. And it turns out that early civilizations paid their taxes through oil. And any place that had more than one oil lamp,

you know, lots of indoor light during the night, people displayed well through the amount of indoor lighting. We're used to electricity now being mostly cheap, but that was not the case, emphatically not the case, until quite recently. Another liquid that's probably worth talking about is ink. Ink in a pen. We take it for granted that obviously the ink is flowing from some reservoir.

Often you can see it as a little tube of ink and off it goes onto the page. And it happens sort of so easily. You kind of don't give it a second thought. But actually, it's taken a thousand years to get pens pens to do that turns out to be really difficult thing because and i'll just sort of describe the problem if you make the liquid ink too runny then it basically just flows out of the nib of the pen and you just get a mess or you get it all over your hands and this happened i mean most of the great books of the world, the literature of the world that we're familiar with, were written by these pens that were basically leaking the whole time over there, over the authors. But if you go the other way,

if you try and make the ink very viscous, so it doesn't flow very far, and so it's not going to get everywhere on your hands or all over the page, then you have a real trouble getting it to flow. So with a pen, you've got to get this ratio right. And the perfect ink, if you think about it, is something that only flows when it's going through the nib onto the page, at that moment where they contact. And after that, it becomes viscous again and stops flowing. So it's not going to go over the page or onto your hand.

And equally, it's not going to run out of the pen and get everywhere. But how could you design an ink that only becomes runny at the moment you put it on the page? Well, that is what the inventor of the ballpoint pen did. And I think that is such an incredible invention. And it's about property of liquids. We sort of a strange one called it's a viscoelastic property. Sometimes liquids behave very viscously and sometimes they behave, you know, like they run it very runny.

And there's a whole set of liquids which behave in this way where they're non-newtonian so-called so under certain pressure they run and under when you take the pressure away from them they become like almost like a solid so it's not the pen it's the liquid in it that's so tricky yes and that's what you don't appreciate when you're kind of writing, and actually that's thousands of years of people fiddling with that system trying to get the right liquid. Well, I must admit I have never sat down and had a serious discussion with someone about liquids before like this, but that's what I like about my job. I get to talk to interesting people about interesting subjects like liquids. And this time it was Mark Myodownik. He's a scientist and author of the book, Liquid Rules, the Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives.

There's a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Mark. Thanks for being here and talking liquids. Thanks, Mike. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. I'm sure you know that the clothes you wear communicates a lot about who you are and how you see yourself. So when you're going on that all-important job interview, what color of clothes you wear can make or break your first impression. According to 2,099 hiring managers and human resource professionals who participated in a survey, blue and black are the best colors to wear on a job interview. Orange is the worst. In fact, the study found that 25% of those people think that not only is orange the worst color to wear in a job interview, it's also most likely to be associated with a lack of professionalism. Conservative

colors such as black, blue, gray, and brown seem to be the safest bet when meeting someone for the first time in a professional setting. The goal of any interview is to communicate what is unique about you and what you bring to the company and its culture. So a good rule of thumb is make sure people remember you more than they remember your clothes. And that is something you should know. So I'm on this mission to build up our subscriptions on Apple Podcasts. Well, really anywhere, but Apple Podcasts in particular. And, you know, subscribing is free. The episodes get delivered right to your phone or tablet.

It's a great thing to do. So please subscribe to this podcast. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point

their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions,

and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Supernatural. It had a pretty good run. 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again.

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