Something You Should Know - Why We Like Superstitions & Science You Never Knew

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Starting point is 00:00:27 Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know. Why is it sometimes so hard to say I'm sorry? Then superstitions. Why do we have them? And we have a lot of them. About lucky charms, broken mirrors, black cats. Europeans started associating black cats with witches. So that's why black cats crossing your

Starting point is 00:00:51 path was thought to be a sign of bad things to come. As a result, black cats are not adopted as much from shelters. Also, what should you do if you see an egg on the ground that fell out of a nest? And fascinating science, like the only way to cure a hangover and why we use maggots to heal wounds. Unfortunately, the grossness is really what prevents people from using this treatment. Maggots are not used nearly as much as they should, given their effectiveness, just because of the gross out factor. All this today on Something You Should Know. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem

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Starting point is 00:02:01 And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, here we go with another episode of Something You Should Know. And we start today with the topic of apologies. You ever find it difficult to say, I'm sorry? It's hard for a lot of people. And there is some research that sheds light on why apologizing is so difficult. And it really comes down to the fact that not apologizing just feels better. Two groups of volunteers agreed to write letters addressing something they had done wrong. While the group who apologized had a better sense of integrity after the fact,

Starting point is 00:02:47 the group who refused to apologize felt more empowered and had a greater sense of self-worth. The author of the study says that apologies make apologizers feel a little better, but refusing to apologize makes a lot of people feel a lot better and in more control of the situation. It also turns out that a voluntary apology feels a lot better than an apology given because somebody told you to say you're sorry. And that is something you should know. There's a pretty good chance that you engage in some superstitions some of the time. Maybe you have a good luck charm, or you walk around a ladder because you don't want to walk under it, or you avoid black cats, or you have a lucky number. I mean, there are a lot of superstitions.

Starting point is 00:03:41 So where do they come from, and why do they persist? Do all cultures have superstitions? Well, here to take a look at the history of superstitions and why we have them is Heather Alexander, who has gone back and researched some of our favorite superstitions, as well as some strange ones as well. Heather is author of The Good Luck Book, a celebration of global traditions, superstitions, and folklore. Hi, Heather. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi. Thanks for having me. So what is a superstition, if you had to define it?

Starting point is 00:04:16 So the actual definition of the word is it's an irrational belief. So it's a belief that's not based in knowledge or fact. Doesn't mean we still don't have them, but it is not a scientific fact-based belief. And do you know, are superstitions pretty much everywhere all around the world? There are superstitions everywhere. Sometimes they vary from place to place, but there are superstitions everywhere. And why is that? Why do human beings cling to what we know are irrational beliefs, and it is universal all over the planet? I think in the beginning, way back when our ancestors, when we didn't have a lot of knowledge that we do have now about science and how things and the world and how animals and how people work,

Starting point is 00:05:06 humans naturally look for explanations. And so if there wasn't a ready scientific explanation for something that was happening around you, we tend to fill in the gaps with stories and we connect things that sometimes are not meant to be connected. And that gives us a sense of relief and a sense of comfort to know that there is an explanation. But what's so interesting is that now that we have some explanations, we still have the superstitions. Exactly. And some of it is passed down. We're taught it at a very young age from our family. Some things we don't even realize are a superstition. For example, blowing up candles on a birthday cake or covering our

Starting point is 00:05:52 mouth when we yawn all come from superstitious beliefs. They're just so ingrained in us that we never take a moment to stop and think, why not? And then a lot of other times people say they're not superstitious but they actually do a few little things just to be sure because you sometimes don't want to tempt the fate so what's the difference between a superstition and a ritual because I would think of blowing out birthday candles I've always thought it's just a ritual that people do I didn't know it was a superstition, or maybe I don't understand the difference between those two words. Right. So there are many, many rituals that are based or born from superstitions. So they've become rituals for us now. For example, blowing

Starting point is 00:06:41 out the birthday cake candles. German kids back in the 1700s were giving cakes with candles on it for the first time. And the candles were lit throughout the day of your birthday. And when it was cake time, you blew out the candles. And there was a big candle in the middle. And if you blew it out, the superstition was that you would then live to see your next birthday. Granted, these were times where children died young or adults also died young. So it was a big deal to wish for your next birthday. Now we blow out candles and we say we make a wish. We don't necessarily all wish for health and to see our next birthday. We might wish for

Starting point is 00:07:25 something else. But that's where the superstition came from. If you blew out the candle and you were able to have enough breath to blow out the candle, you would then get to see your next birthday. So from your research, tell me a strange kind of bizarre superstition that you uncovered that I would find fascinating? So one of the ones actually that I found an amazing story behind was the idea, I was always told that eating carrots would give me great nighttime vision. And actually this superstition is traced back to the United Kingdom during World War II. In 1940, a Royal Air Force pilot was the first to shoot down a German plane in the nighttime using what was then secret radar technology.

Starting point is 00:08:14 But the British at that time, or the British media, the British military didn't want the Germans to know that they had this technology. So they fed to the media that this pilot's super night vision was the result of eating lots and lots of carrots. And actually, I'm not sure that the German military believed this, but parents believed it. Yeah, my grandmother believed that. Exactly. And so they decided, well, I'm going to tell my children that and they started packing carrots for lunch and carrots for here. And it was actually something that was just put out in the press, but it became a belief. And that's actually how a lot of

Starting point is 00:08:56 superstitions get their start. Two different things that have nothing to do with each other. You put together, this one was put together for you, but a lot of times you put them together in your mind. So if I wear my lucky red underwear and I get an A on the test, I then start to believe, and it happens a second time, that red underwear equals an A on the test, sort of forgetting that I did study for this test or I did listen in class. There's a lot of superstition. I don't know if there's a lot. There are several superstitions that come to mind that come from like Halloween, dark side, you know, black cats, broken mirrors, that kind of stuff. Where do they come from? The black cat superstition?

Starting point is 00:09:47 I mean, cats go back to ancient Egypt, ancient China. They were honored as goddesses. Cats were a very good thing. But back in the Middle Ages, Europeans started associating black cats with witches. And they feared that the witches kept the cats as companions or that the witches could then turn into cats. So that's why a black cat crossing your path was thought to be a sign of bad things to come because witches would either be in your life, would be coming into your life. The Puritans, when they traveled to America, brought this superstition

Starting point is 00:10:27 with them. Black cats actually are not unlucky in other countries. Actually, in Japan, United Kingdom, a black cat crossing your path is considered lucky. The problem with the black cat one is, as a result, black cats are not adopted as much from shelters. So it actually is a problem for the black cat community, as it were. That's really interesting that the superstition actually has consequences. Well, as you say, to the black cat community, which I'm not. Right. There's actually a lot of them. For example, the giant anteater is seen as an animal that brings bad luck in South and Central America. And as a result, it's been hunted, or it's hit by cars. And now the giant anteaters are endangered and it's a direct relationship between the feeling

Starting point is 00:11:28 that this animal in particular is bad luck so it actually does have for her animals it does have consequences isn't that weird yeah and what about the broken mirror seven years bad luck thing do we know where that's what that's about the superstition is seven years bad luck thing? Do we know what that's about? The superstition is if you break a mirror, you get seven years of bad luck. It's believed that it goes back to ancient cultures. Back then, the idea of a person's reflection was not only to show their physical appearance, but it was also a doorway into their soul. So shattering a mirror was like shattering or damaging your soul. As far as the seven years, seven is a number that comes up a lot in

Starting point is 00:12:13 superstition, both for good luck and bad luck. But as I understand it, ancient Romans believed that a person's body renewed itself every seven years. So the idea that the luck would come back if you waited, you had to wait now seven years for your body to renew itself, for your soul to become whole again. Another part of that though is that years ago, mirrors were very expensive and fragile and you didn't wanna break a mirror because it

Starting point is 00:12:47 cost a lot of money and was hard to replace so a lot of superstitions also are a not-so-subtle way for parents and others to say don't mess with the expensive stuff Heather Alexander is my guest we're talking about superstitions why we have them and what they do for us. Heather is author of The Good Luck Book. Metrolinks and Crosslinks are reminding everyone to be careful as Eglinton Crosstown LRT train testing is in progress. Please be alert as trains can pass at any time on the tracks. Remember to follow all traffic signals. Be careful along our tracks, and only make left turns where it's safe to do so.

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Starting point is 00:14:07 So Heather, if you had to like divide the world of superstitions between superstitions for good and bad, are there more superstitions about bad things happening or good things happening or is it 50-50? I don't know that it can give you a percentage, but there actually are quite a lot of good luck superstitions, especially good luck charms, things that people either do or physically hold on to, to bring good luck, as well as different ways that we make wishes, whether it's wishing upon a star, wishing, finding a four-leaf clover, horseshoes hung up in a barn to gather luck. So actually, I probably think there is a little bit more good luck than there is bad luck. Oh, that's interesting. Well, what's the deal with, you know, like, I used to have,

Starting point is 00:14:59 like, rabbit's feet when I was a kid, and I have no idea why that's supposed to be good luck. It's not good luck for the rabbit. No, it's definitely not. And it's another one, though, that has had not good consequences for rabbits. What about just the idea of a good luck charm, that having this thing in your hand or in your possession will bring you good luck. It comes back to confidence. And you will see it, especially in athletes, as well as people going on stage.

Starting point is 00:15:35 When there is a chance of something going wrong or a situation where you're not exactly sure, if you're up at bat at a baseball game, how it's going to actually play out as it were. Certain behaviors or lucky uniforms or the way you wind up before you hit or the way you start, for example, certain tennis players bounce the tennis ball five times. If they bounce it six times, they have to start again and bounce it five times. It's more, this superstition is more a way to calm nerves. As a result, sometimes people can't get beyond

Starting point is 00:16:17 that superstition. There's actually a story of Pele, the soccer player, who had a lucky jersey that he wore. And he once gave the jersey away to a fan. Then after the jersey was given away, he went into a scoring slump. So he decided that he needed to have this jersey back immediately. Actually, he had given it away to a fan, had no idea where the fan was, actually hired a private detective to track down this fan. Weeks or months later, the private detective comes back, tells Paley, I found the jersey. Here it is. Paley puts the jersey back on.

Starting point is 00:17:04 Lo and behold, he scores in the next game and the game after. What Pele didn't find out until much later was the private detective could not find the fan that the original jersey was given away to, pulled another jersey out of his kit that Pele had owned, dirtied it up a little bit, gave it to Pele, and the belief that he was wearing the lucky jersey was enough to give him, whether it's the confidence or the oomph, to score. So that's a lot of these ones as well. Isn't that interesting? Well, see, like the example that you gave of the bouncing the ball five times, to me, if you asked me, I would say that's a ritual. That's not really a superstition.

Starting point is 00:17:49 But I guess the line is kind of blurred. Look, there is a blurry line between when rituals and superstitions and where you cross that line. But it's an irrational belief that if I do something a certain way, something else will happen. And I mean, there's NASA, for example, NASA, there is a lot of rituals and beliefs before space travel that happen. And this is a group of scientists who are doing, for example, astronauts before any launch, no matter what time of day the launch is, they will eat a meal of steak and eggs before the launch. And this happened because Alan Shepard, that was his meal before he made that first mission launch in 1961. So let me ask you about a couple of, I guess they're superstitions.

Starting point is 00:18:53 And one is, you know, at Thanksgiving, the wishbone, the turkey wishbone, and you pull it apart and whoever gets the biggest piece gets their wish to come true. Where did that come from? This is actually a story. It goes back to the Etruscans, which were an ancient civilization who lived in what's now Italy. And they believed that chickens had the power to tell the future. I don't know why. So they would actually draw a circle on the ground and divide it into wedges, sort of the way you would cut a pie, and write a letter of the alphabet inside each wedge. And then grain was sprinkled in each wedge, and a rooster was placed in the middle.

Starting point is 00:19:32 And the local priest would ask the rooster an important question about the city's future, and then watch to see which wedge the rooster would eat from. And that's how they got their letters from those, their answer from those letters. So then after this fortune telling rooster died, its bones were left out to dry in the sun. And the V-shaped wishbone was used as a lucky charm. And so anybody who would walk by would stroke it while making a wish. So then the Romans came about and they liked this lucky wishbone idea, but there weren't really enough chickens to go around. So they began breaking the bone in two. And so this way there are more bones, more wishes for everyone. And then the Romans introduced the wishbone to Europe and Germany actually used geese for the wishbone. And in Britain, some people actually, there was a thing way back when where you would try

Starting point is 00:20:31 to balance the wishbone on your nose before making a wish. And that leads us again to the pilgrims who left Britain and sailed over to what's now the United States. And there weren't many chickens to be used for wishbones then, but there were turkeys. And so they said, okay, we'll move it over to the turkey. And they started making the wishes on the wishbone of the turkey. But the word wishbone didn't come into being actually until about the mid-1800s and that's when after abraham lincoln declared thanksgiving a national holiday that the wishbone became associated with thanksgiving so one of the one a really good example of this is the you know don't walk under a ladder that it's bad luck to walk under a ladder. And everybody, any rational person will tell you that that just can't possibly be true.

Starting point is 00:21:32 And yet people will go out of their way not to walk under a ladder, even though they know, because I guess you don't want to tempt fate. But we all know that walking under a ladder doesn't do anything. It's not 100% sure where it comes from, but ancient Egyptians would place a ladder inside the tombs so that in the afterlife, the dead could climb up to the heavens. And they believe that the triangular space under a ladder was filled with spirits, and essentially the spirits kind of get cranky when they're disturbed by humans. So the fear of walking under the ladder. Others have said that the ladder's triangular shape represents the Christian belief in the Holy Trinity,

Starting point is 00:22:23 and so that walking through or essentially breaking the Trinity is showing disrespect. So those are two options as to where it comes from. But then again, a lot of superstitions really are warnings of what not to do. So no, don't walk under a ladder because it could fall on you or a can of paint could fall on you so that's how it happens i just find it interesting what you said at the beginning that you know superstitions were a way to explain things we didn't know and now today we do know the truth about science and whatnot but we still cling to these superstitions. Superstition has really good PR.

Starting point is 00:23:13 It seems that they just keep going in the face of the truth. And I guess it's because we see like famous people with their superstitions or their rituals that kind of help perpetuate it all. A lot of famous people or celebrities have superstitions that they do. For example, Taylor Swift finds the number 13 lucky and does a lot of things on the number 13. Opera singer Luciano Pavarotti insisted that he could only perform with a bent nail in his pocket because that was his good luck charm but he had to find the bent nail on his way to the stage so he had to find it backstage as a result in opera houses all over the world they would have assistants drop a few bent nails on the pathway from the dressing room to the

Starting point is 00:24:06 stage so he would be sure to find one in order for him to be able to go on and perform. So that's a fun one there. Yeah, and there's got to be more to that story, like why a nail? But so many of these superstitions seem so kind of random and weird, but kind of fun to talk about. I've been speaking with Heather Alexander, and she's author of The Good Luck Book, a celebration of global tradition, superstitions, and folklore. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks for coming on and talking about this, Heather. This was fun. Thanks, Mike, for having me. It's been wonderful talking to you. This is an ad for better help.

Starting point is 00:24:44 Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat. Visit betterhelp.com to learn more. That's betterhelp.com. 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.

Starting point is 00:25:31 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. One thing that often happens to people such as you who listen to this show is you learn

Starting point is 00:26:23 lots of new and interesting things. And in this next segment, you are going to learn several new things you probably didn't know from the world of science. And I think you'll find it quite fascinating. My guest is Chris Balakrishnan. He is co-founder of something called Nerd Night, where for over 20 years,

Starting point is 00:26:42 Nerd Night has delivered to live audiences around the world some interesting, fun, and informative presentations about science, history, the arts, pop culture, and more. He's also author of a book called How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi, collected quirks of science, tech, engineering, and math from Nerd Night. Hey, Chris, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, Michael. Thanks for having me, and good to be here. So let's start with the hangover, because anybody who's had a hangover

Starting point is 00:27:12 knows that feeling of wishing there was a cure for it, and over the years, people have come up with various ways, various ideas of how to prevent a hangover, how to cure a hangover. I don't know how successful those are. So what prevent a hangover, how to cure a hangover. I don't know how successful those are. So what is a hangover and what's the science about this whole thing? A hangover is generally a combination of symptoms that you feel after drinking too much. This can include things like a headache, nausea, and even worse.

Starting point is 00:27:45 It's a really uncomfortable set of symptoms. And these symptoms actually, believe it or not, cause a significant economic cost. Well, sure, because you think about all the people who are hung over the next day and don't go to work and add all that up and the lost productivity itself is is pretty substantial but is there any progress towards a cure for a hangover and maybe it's hard to do because it's it's not a thing it's a group of symptoms but where are we with that the simplest of course, and the one nobody wants to hear, is that the only sure way to not have a hangover is to not drink. But for many of us, that's not a tenable solution. What other kinds of options are there? Well, unfortunately, the only proven treatment that reduces the effects of the hangover is one that we've all heard about, and that is drinking more alcohol.

Starting point is 00:28:53 So why does drinking more alcohol help? To understand that, you have to understand how alcohol is metabolized in the body. And basically when you get a hangover, the reason you have a hangover is because of the toxic metabolites of methanol. And so there are two kinds of alcohol that you might run into in your drinks, ethanol and methanol, and the majority will be ethanol. But if you drink a lot, the toxic byproducts of methanol build up in the bloodstream. And methanol and ethanol both compete for the same enzymes that process alcohol, and your body preferentially processes the ethanol. And so by drinking more alcohol, you're giving your body

Starting point is 00:29:46 the ethanol that prevents these toxic byproducts of methanol from forming. These are things like formaldehyde. And so by giving your body ethanol, these toxic byproducts of methanol just don't form. And again, those byproducts like formaldehyde are the things that contribute to the hangover. It does seem like a weird solution to the problem because, you know, we've heard that alcohol is poison basically to the body if you drink too much of it. And so if you take poison to then take more poison to combat the poison, doesn't seem like it would make much sense. This is the context where this really comes up. That is, you're in the hospital, things have gotten so bad that this is really a good idea. And doctors will prescribe, for example, IV alcohol

Starting point is 00:30:36 to help with the extreme symptoms that you're suffering. Really? So when you have alcohol poisoning in the hospital, they treat you with alcohol? Yes. In extreme circumstances, yes. Wow. Methanol poisoning specifically, yeah. So is there any other treatment, any other cure, any other wife's tale about curing a hangover that doesn't involve drinking more alcohol that has any value at all. Yeah. So the other possible treatment is a supplement called glutathione. And this, it turns out, is a supplement that you can buy over the counter and has now been even branded as a hangover cure. Glutathione, what it does is, well, first of all, the amount of glutathione

Starting point is 00:31:28 in your body is reduced while you're drinking. And so you're depleting your glutathione supply as you drink. And it turns out glutathione is a cofactor that helps these enzymes that process alcohol in your body to function. And so you've depleted your glutathione by drinking. And so bringing those levels back up can help these alcohol processing enzymes work more effectively. There are here as well a couple of caveats. One is that glutathione itself also has side effects. And these are not enjoyable side effects. They're gastrointestinal side effects. And so you can imagine. So it's really sort of a trade-off as to whether the benefits outweigh the cost

Starting point is 00:32:23 of the hangover. Well, and as you said at the very beginning, the best cure for a hangover is to not drink, and then you can't get a hangover. Let's talk about maggots, because there's some science here. People are pretty grossed out when they see maggots, but there is some scientific use for them. Yeah, so this was a really interesting thing that I just learned,

Starting point is 00:32:54 and that is how maggots are used in hospitals and in the context of wound healing. And so it turns out that maggots are actually an approved therapy for treating poorly healing wounds. And there are old anecdotes going back to Napoleon's army and the Civil War that suggested that people who have maggot-infested wounds actually healed better than people who don't have maggot-infested wounds. And this was actually tested by a medical intern at the time named Ron Sherman, who set up an experiment with 103 people with poorly healing wounds. And it turns out that about 80% of the people who were treated with maggots achieved complete debridement, whereas only about 48% of those without maggots had complete debridement. And so in 2004, Ron Sherman applied for FDA approval for maggot therapy. And in 2007, maggots became the first FDA approved animal treatment.

Starting point is 00:34:08 And the maggots that are used are not like the ones in your garbage. I mean, there's medical maggots, right? There are medical maggots. And Ron Sherman has been the key entrepreneur in developing this business. So he basically started a company where maggots can be grown in sterile conditions. They're sent to hospitals on like a circular gauze type thing as eggs, and they can be placed on the wounds and grown in sterile conditions. It sounds so gross, and yet it's apparently it's very effective. It's so effective and unfortunately the grossness is really what prevents people from using this treatment or even offering this treatment in some cases. So maggots are not used nearly as much as they should be given their

Starting point is 00:34:58 effectiveness just because of the gross out factor. So I'm almost afraid to ask, but what is it that the maggots do that makes it so successful? Basically, maggots have evolved prickly spines that they use to basically loosen the dead flesh. And this turns out to be a much gentler way of removing dead tissue than a surgeon's scalpel. They also, like many babies, they can't chew food. And so what maggots do is they basically release their digestive enzymes onto the tissue itself. And that, again, helps soften and digest the dead tissue, but it spares the living tissue. And the enzymes involved also have antibiotic properties, and then that's where the infection management comes in. And so that's

Starting point is 00:35:53 also a contribution of maggots. Finally, there's a part that no one understands, but also appears to be true, is that having treatment with maggot actually improves blood flow to the wound and stimulates blood vessel growth. And this also improves the healing in these poorly healing wounds. Misophonia you talk about, and we touched on it before in a previous episode, but I think it's so interesting because people don't know it's a thing. And well, you talk about it. Misophonia is a condition that's really only recently come to attention where the sufferer is extremely sensitive to particular repetitive noises. And by sensitivity, what I mean is that someone with misophonia feels a real emotional threat when they hear these repetitive sounds. These

Starting point is 00:36:52 repetitive sounds include things like the sound of chewing, the sound of snoring, the sound of someone blowing their nose. So these are sounds that we hear every day in normal life. And many of us are able to filter these sounds out and not even notice them from the, and they're just sort of part of the background noise. But someone with misophonia really feels anxious and stressed when they hear such sounds. And it turns out that estimates say that roughly 20% of people suffer from some form of misophonia, but only really 10% of people or so have actually ever heard of misophonia and when people hear about misophonia lots of people are like oh I have that I've always I've always wondered what was wrong with me and and it turns out that there's lots of other people that that have this condition talk about the tea test because this

Starting point is 00:38:00 this is something I'd never heard before and and it has to do with the beverage, tea, and how you prepare it. And so I'll let you tell the story. So a famous statistician named Ronald Fisher was making tea for his colleague, Muriel Bristol, another scientist. And she was unhappy with the tea that was made. And she said it was because of the order that the tea was made. That is, was milk added first to the tea or was the tea added to the milk? And Fisher thought this didn't make any sense. You should be able to add things in either direction and have the same outcome. But Fisher played an important role in the origins of statistics and experiments. At this time, there were not standardized methods for experiments. And in

Starting point is 00:38:52 the context of this tea experiment, he devised an experiment to really test Muriel as to whether she could distinguish the two types of tea. And so what he did was he made eight cups of tea, four of which were presented milk first, four of which were made tea first, and he randomized the order of presentation. And he just simply asked Muriel to identify whether the milk or the tea had been added first. And it turns out that Muriel was able to correctly guess the order of milk adding 100% of the time. And why that was is simply because of the thermodynamics. When a small amount of milk hits hot tea,

Starting point is 00:39:42 that milk becomes a little bit burned and develops a caramelly taste, and she could detect that. But what's really important here is that this little experiment was the foundation of modern statistics and modern experimental design that we use now today. This led to the Fisher's Exact test, which is a long-standing statistical test used in experiments all around the world. So I know your specialty is birds. So tell me something fascinating, interesting that I probably don't know about birds. Have you ever heard of parasitic birds? No, but do I want to hear about parasitic birds?

Starting point is 00:40:24 It sounds a little gross. So it turns out there are birds that are parasites. And these are not blood-sucking parasites or anything like that, but they are brood parasites. And so what that means is that these are birds that lay their eggs in the nest of a different species, and then that species raises these young as their own. And it turns out this behavior in birds has evolved independently in seven different groups of birds. That is, these birds don't build their own nests, and they don't raise their own young. These are all very birdy things that you assume all birds do.

Starting point is 00:41:10 But instead of that, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and pawn off that entire effort of parental care onto a different species. And would I know of some of these birds? I mean, are they commonly known birds or are these very weird birds that nobody's ever heard of? You might know about them. If you follow birds even a little bit in North America, you've probably heard of one species that is the brown-headed cowbird or the cowbird. This is a bird that's known to lay its eggs in over 200 other different species' nests

Starting point is 00:41:42 and has been implicated in the declines of a subset of those species. So people tend to hate the cowbird because of this brood parasitic behavior and because of this assumption that it's causing problems for other bird species. So that is one famous one. The other famous one is one that I think it's maybe less known that they're parasitic, but they're cuckoos. So like the cuckoo clock. So European cuckoos, which are the species that the cuckoo clock is designed to reflect, is also a brood parasite. Unlike the cowbirds, they are very picky in where they lay their eggs. They lay their eggs in just typically a single host species. And in fact, in cuckoos, the eggs of the parasite actually match the eggs of the host

Starting point is 00:42:32 so that the host can't tell which eggs are their own versus the parasites. And this is to avoid things like having the host eject those parasitic eggs from the nest. Do all birds in that species do it, or just some birds decide, you know, we're not going to raise our own here, we're just going to have the birds in the other tree do it? That's a great question. So the birds that I was talking about are species where they do it all the time. 100% of all the birds are parasitic. So they do it 100% of the time. On top of that, there are other species of birds that only sometimes lay their

Starting point is 00:43:13 eggs parasitically. So there are some ducks that do this, where they'll just occasionally drop an egg into a different bird's nest. All different versions of this behavior have evolved. And in fact, it isn't just birds that do this. There are fish that are parasitic. There are insects that are parasitic. Basically anything that lays an egg, any group of organisms that lays eggs, there are examples of this type of parasitism evolving. Lastly, because I think this is interesting, is the songs that songbirds sing, how they come to sing them. Talk about that. The songs that they sing, which we all hear all around us, are learned. They learn these songs from their parents. They're not born with them.

Starting point is 00:43:58 And so the way that songbirds learn their song is very similar to the way that humans learn to speak. And very few other animals in the animal kingdom have this type of learned communication. So even chimpanzees, their vocalizations are innate and not learned. But songbirds, parrots, and humans are examples of learned vocal communication. And so, as I promised at the very beginning of this segment, at least I know I've learned several new things I didn't know before, and I imagine most people did too, thanks to you, Chris Balakrishnan. He is co-founder of Nerd Night that delivers live presentations

Starting point is 00:44:41 about science and history and pop culture and things around the world. And he is author of a book called How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi, Collected Quirks of Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math from Nerd Night. If you'd like to check that book out, there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes for this episode. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate you being here. Thank you, Chris. Appreciate you being here. Thank you very much. In springtime, it's not that uncommon to come across an egg on the ground that has fallen from a nest in the tree above. So the question is, if you come across one of these eggs,

Starting point is 00:45:18 should you put it back in the nest? And the answer is probably not. If an egg has fallen out of the nest, it's fallen pretty far and is probably damaged, and a damaged egg will not hatch. Also, many bird eggs found on the ground have actually been kicked out of the nest by the mother. Some mother birds can determine whether an egg is viable or not and gets rid of the ones that aren't. And in other cases, the egg has been stolen by another critter and dropped. The other problem is, if that egg that you find isn't from the nest that you think it is,

Starting point is 00:45:55 many mama birds will actually abandon an entire nest if there is an unfamiliar egg placed in there. So it's really best to let fallen eggs be. And that is something you should know. Just a reminder that we publish three episodes a week, on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings. And if you become a follower, if you haven't already, you become a follower on the platform you listen on, those episodes will be delivered right to you.

Starting point is 00:46:26 I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. And me, Melissa D. Montz, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? We're serving up for hilarious shows every week designed to entertain and engage and, you know, possibly enrage you. In Don't Blame Me, we dive deep into listeners' questions, offering advice that's funny, relatable, and real. Whether you're dealing with relationship drama or you just need a friend's perspective, we've got you. Then switch gears with But Am I Wrong?, which is for listeners who didn't take our advice and want to know if they are the villains in the situation. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events and present situations that we might even be wrong in our lives. Spoiler alert, we are actually quite literally never wrong. But wait, there's more. Check out See You Next Tuesday, where we reveal the juicy results from our listener polls from But Am I Wrong. And don't miss Fisting Friday where we catch up,

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Starting point is 00:47:49 We were both on a little show you might know called Supernatural. It had a pretty good run, 15 seasons, 327 episodes. And though we have seen, of course, every episode many times, we figured, hey, now that we're wrapped, let's watch it all again. And we can't do that alone. So we're inviting the cast and crew that made the show along for the ride. We've got writers, producers, composers, directors, and we'll of course have some actors on as well, including some certain guys that played some certain pretty iconic brothers. It was kind of a little bit of a left-field choice in the best way possible.

Starting point is 00:48:26 The note from Kripke was, he's great, we love him, but we're looking for like a really intelligent Duchovny type. With 15 seasons to explore, it's going to be the road trip of several lifetimes. So please join us and subscribe to Supernatural then and now.

Something You Should Know - Why We Like Superstitions & Science You Never Knew

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