How You CAN Change Other People & Some Interesting Science Explained

Today on Something You Should Know, the problem with listening to music with headphones and how to solve it. Then, can you really change other people? Sometimes, if you know the process.
There is no point in this process where I am telling her what to do or giving her advice. I'm engaging with her in thinking about it and asking certain questions that always keep her in control.
Also, you've heard that having a pet is good for your health. So how does that work exactly? And some everyday science explained on things like plastics, old book smell, and superfoods.
No food really merits being labeled as an angel or a devil because it's possible to eat blueberries every day and still have a terrible diet. And it's possible to never eat blueberries and still have a good diet.
All this today on Something You Should Know. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Shifting a little money here, a little there, and hoping it all works out? Well, with the Name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can be a better budgeter and potentially lower your insurance bill too. You tell Progressive what you want to pay for car insurance, and they'll help you find options within your budget.
Try it today at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates.
Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.
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. Hey there, welcome to Something You Should Know.
When you listen to music, there's a pretty good chance that you listen on headphones or earbuds. I think I, whenever I listen to music practically, I'm listening on headphones or earbuds.
And the question is, does listening to music on headphones or earbuds cause hearing loss? Well, it does for a lot of people. You see, according to experts at Harvard, regardless of the source of the sound, hearing loss is the result of three factors.
Volume of sound, the duration of the sound, and how far away the source of the sound is from your ears. Well, if you're listening to music on headphones, the volume can be pretty loud, the duration can be pretty long, and it would be hard to be any closer to your ear than headphones get.
So, you see the problem. There's an additional issue.
Portable music devices have updated over the years to adapt to higher qualities of digital sound. With old audio devices, when the sound got too loud, the music didn't sound right.
The bass would often distort and it would just sound horrible in your ear so you would naturally lower the volume. But now with digital sound, you can turn up the volume and it doesn't distort, so there's a tendency to turn up the volume.
Just be aware that listening to loud music for long periods of time on headphones or earbuds will take a toll on your hearing. It pretty much has to.
And that is something you should know. I'm sure you've heard the common wisdom that you cannot change other people.
That generally people don't change. And if they do change, they have to change themselves.
That trying to change other people is a waste of time. Well, meet someone who disagrees with that.
Peter Bregman. Peter is a well-respected consultant and coach who has authored several books, one of which is called You Can Change Other People.
And as he'll explain, it's not about manipulating people and, well, I'll let him explain it. Hi Peter, welcome to Something You Should Know.
Thanks so much for having me, Michael. It's great to be here.

So since there is this common belief that you cannot change other people,

explain why you can and why you would and why you'd want to,

and what's the point of all of this?

You can change other people.

It's just that the way we try to change other people doesn't work because we're doing and saying the wrong things and we're actually creating resistance. People don't resist change.
They resist being changed. And so I change all the time.
But if you try to change me, forget it. I'm going to fight because that's my loss of control.
So we have to change people in ways that doesn't elicit the kind of resistance we end up fighting against. It also seems though that one of the reasons people don't change is that when you try to change somebody, you're trying to change them to fit your needs and wants and desires.
It may have nothing to do with them. You want them to do what you want to do.
Exactly. And this process is not a magic manipulative process where I'm going to give you three words to say and people will instantly hypnotically change.
It does drastically increase your hit rate in helping people change, but it is ultimately about them. So most often we want people to change, right? Because there's something we're frustrated about.
But that frustration is coming out of a place of care.

Usually when you're frustrated or angry about something, it's because you care deeply about

something.

And almost always, the thing you care about is in your mutual interest as well as their

individual interest.

But it's not being framed that way at all because you're coming off as sort of a critic of their behavior as opposed to an ally working with them. And so we've been talking so far in kind of the abstract.
Can you give me an example of how you would change somebody so I get a better sense of what you're talking about? Sure. And you know what I'll do? I'll give you an example that fits your category of something where I want someone to change, but they don't necessarily want to change.
And I'll up the ante and I'll make it my daughter who's 19, right? So now I want to change one of my kids. One day I went downstairs in the morning and I found her eating a chocolate chip cookie and for breakfast.
And she looked up at me with this guilty expression and she said, yeah, this is the last one. I stayed up till four o'clock in the morning and baked a plate, you know, baked a sheet of chocolate chip cookies and ate them all.
And, you know, my instinct is to immediately criticized, like to be like, what are you thinking? You told me you want to lose a little bit of weight and this is how you're doing it. And seriously, chocolate chip cookies, is this what I've taught you? Chocolate chip cookies in the morning for breakfast? But I immediately shortcut that process because I knew that that would instigate a resistance, denial.
When we criticize someone, we come at them, or even when we give feedback to someone, we're eliciting their shame. We're telling them there's something you're doing that I'm pointing out that's bad.
People will do almost anything to avoid shame. What do we do? We go into either denial or defensiveness, because those are the easiest ways to avoid, which is to say, I'm not doing it, or I don't even know what you're talking about.
And then that's a non-starter conversation, because now we're in a conflict. I don't want to be in a conflict.
I'm her ally, right? And so what I said instead, I followed the first step in the four-step process is to shift from critic to ally. And we have a formula for doing that, which is three steps, which is empathize, which is express confidence and ask permission because it always has to be up to them.
So I said, hey, I totally get you eating a plate full of cookies at 4 a.m. when you're exhausted.

And especially your cookies are awesome.

Like there's no way I wouldn't have eaten a bite.

I would have just joined you.

I'm glad I wasn't up at 4 o'clock in the morning.

So I totally get it.

And I also can see the guilt in your face and how frustrating that must feel.

I also know that you can make different decisions and do it differently if you want.

Because I've seen you do that in the past also. And do you want to think about this together? Do you want to think this through together? And so it's express empathy, express confidence, and then ask permission to engage in the conversation.
That's the first step. And so it would seem that if the answer is no, if permission is not granted, that's pretty much the end of that.
And in the case of my daughter, which is why I brought this particular example up in the case of my daughter, she said, no, I don't want to talk about it. And this is what's really important.
That's her call. So I said, okay, no problem.
And then I said, if you ever want to talk about it, I'm happy to talk about it with you. But I gave her the power.
Later that afternoon, she came back to me and she, you know, with the confidence that it was up to her to say, hey, and a little distance from the situation and from her own shame around it and said, hey, will you, can we talk about it? I kind of do want to talk about it with you, but I want to stop whenever I want want to stop, you have to stop. And I said, that's fine.
You're totally in control of this. This is for you.
The second step is to identify an energizing outcome. So when there's a problem, when we're giving someone feedback, when we're telling them we want them to change, it's often de-energizing.
We're basically telling them this thing they're doing is bad. People don't like to sink into problems.
People get very narrow-minded around problems. Their energy gets sucked out.
So the first thing you do is you say, what is the outcome you want that would actually be exciting to you? So that's step two. The negation of the problem, meaning if the outcome were just, I don't want this problem, it's I don't want to eat so much sugar, right? That's not very inspiring.
So my next question is, for the sake of what? Like, what do you hope not eating sugar will give you? The answer became, I'm an athlete and I want to think and act like an athlete. I'm a skier.
I'm an ice skater. I want to do a double

axle. Like I need the right strength to weight ratio to do that.
So think about like how much more inspiring it is to have an outcome that says, I want to act and be an athlete as opposed to, I want to stop eating sugar. One is just depressing and the other is sort of exciting.
So, okay. So now that's step two.
So we've got this energizing outcome. So step three is what is the opportunity that's hidden in the problem? Because we still have a problem.
It's great that you want to be an athlete, but you still have this problem of eating too much sugar. So then the question is, what's the opportunity there? And after asking certain questions, right, we get to the point that actually the reason I'm eating that sugar is because I'm exhausted.
And it's, you know, in this particular case, it was four in the morning and I was exhausted, but in general, I work myself too hard. I push myself so hard and sugar gives me this burst of energy.
Well, all right, that's interesting. So the opportunity that you find hidden in the problem of eating too much sugar is rest.
It's like, I need to rest. And by the way, an athlete, like probably the most important thing that you can do for yourself as an athlete is to rest.
So now we've got this outcome of an athlete and we've got the opportunity, which is I need to find more rest. When I am yearning for sugar, that is a sign that I'm overtired and that I need to rest and I need to build rest into my life and I need to build rest into my schedule.
And then that, once we figure that out, now we're up to the fourth step, which is to plan. Specifically, what am I going to do? By when? How am I going to do it? And that plan is an experiment.
So it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be right.
We don't necessarily need to know that you will solve this 100% this week, but we want to know that you can choose some action that you can do that will reflect movement towards the solution, towards the outcome that you want to achieve. So clearly in a situation like that, the person you're trying to change has to value what you have to say.
In this case, your daughter obviously is going to value what her father has to say, but that isn't always the case. People have varying feelings about the people in their life who are trying to change them and may not respect what they have to say or advice they have to offer.
So here's the thing. There is no point in this process where I am telling her what to do or giving her advice.
I'm engaging with her in thinking about it and asking certain questions that always keep her in control. It's her change.
It's her choice. What about the momentum of this? It seems like you could have this conversation with your daughter, but a week later, there might be another plate of cookies again.
Exactly. So it's a great point, Michael.
And that's why step four is the plan that says, I'm confident that I'm going to follow through on this, but it's not necessarily going to solve the whole thing. It's an experiment.
I don't know if it's going to work or not. I just care that you're going to follow through on something that looks a little different.
Let's get together again in a week and see how it's going. No shame with failure.
That's just part of the process. We're scientists here.
We're experimenting. We don't know what the solution is about how to get better as opposed to just where we started, which was me criticizing you.
What about though, when you're in a situation with someone and let's just change the nature of the conversation, you walk in your daughters eating the last cookie of this plate of cookies that she's been up till till four in the morning and she doesn't see a problem with it. Why don't you just get off her back? So I think that that is absolutely her choice in a sense.
This will not work with everybody in every situation because in order for people to change, they need four things. They need ownership.
They need independent capability. They need emotional courage, and they need resilience, future-proofing when it gets hard, right? They need those four things.
Emotional courage is the willingness to feel hard things. We could build all of those things.
But if ultimately she says, I don't care, I'm happy with eating those cookies. I don't really care what my weight is.
I'm not so interested in being an athlete. I don't really care.
I'm good. So you have to realize that when you want other people to change and you want to help them change, you show up as an ally to support them, but it's not going to be a, and you could predispose them to it.
You can open to them, them to the possibility of making the change. You could support them in making the change.
You could give them ideas and ways of approaching it, but ultimately it's going to be their call if they decide they don't want to. I'm speaking with Peter Bregman, and we're talking about how to change other people.
Peter is a well-respected consultant and coach and author, and the name of his book is You Can Change Other People. We talk quite a bit about health on this podcast,

and I can tell you I try to take care of myself.

I mean, I work at it.

And for a while now, I've been taking this supplement called MitoPure.

And I can tell you, I feel stronger.

When I exercise, I recover faster.

What MitoPure is, is a precise dose of something called Urolithin A.

I've read a lot about it. It's a natural compound that's produced by gut bacteria.
And mitopure is this precise dose that encourages cellular renewal. Mito-pure is the only urolithin A supplement on the market clinically proven to target the effects of age-related cellular decline.
And that's the thing. See, it works on the cellular level.
And with regular use, you'll see and feel the difference. In the form of improved energy levels, more endurance, and when you exercise, you'll recover faster.
As you get older, you probably know that you lose muscle strength. So this is important.
MitoPure is shown to deliver double digit increases in muscle strength and endurance without a change in exercise. So awaken the strength, power, and resilience already in you with the first and only supplement clinically proven to rejuvenate health at the cellular level.
I encourage you to read more about it on their website. Timeline is offering 10% off your order of MitoPure.
Go to timeline.com slash something. That's T-I-M-E-L-I-N-E dot com slash something.
I am a food lover. I love to cook.
I've collected probably 100 cookbooks over the years. Good food is important to me.
But some days I can't cook or I just don't want to cook. But I still want to eat well, which is why I love and want to tell you about Factor Meals.
Factor meals are freshly prepared meals delivered to your door. And to be clear, these are not frozen meals.

This is not a kit of ingredients that you have to make.

These meals are complete restaurant-quality meals.

You simply heat them up for two minutes. These are not frozen meals.
This is not a kit of ingredients that you have to make.

These meals are complete restaurant-quality meals. You simply heat them up for two minutes.
Eating well has never been this easy. They have 45 weekly menu options.
You can pick gourmet meals that fit your goals. Choose from CalorieSmart, Protein Plus, Keto, Vegetarian, and more.
Meals like ginger teriyaki salmon, cheesy chicken and broccoli casserole, garlic rosemary pork chops. What we do at our house is we serve the food on nice plates, maybe with a glass of wine, and I swear you would think you're eating at a fine restaurant.
The food is really that good. Factor also offers satisfying breakfasts, lunches, and guilt-free snacks and desserts.
So look, here's an offer that makes this easy to give it a try. Get started at factormeals.com slash something50off and use code something50off to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.
That's code something50off at factormeals.com slash something50off for 50% off plus free shipping. And I'll put that promo code in the show notes.
So, Peter, so far we've used this example of you and your daughter, but that kind of relationship is a very close relationship and as your, she respects you and cares about what you think, I imagine. So what about though in a work situation where you've got somebody who needs to change, maybe they're a member of the team, but they don't see a problem.
They're hard to align with and be an ally for to solve a problem if they don't see the problem. So change is one thing.
Boundaries and consequences for how you operate as a team is another. So, and Alan Mullally, who was the CEO of Ford for the turnaround in 2008, and before then he was the CEO of Boeing during September 11th.
I mean, he's an unbelievable leader. And he was amazing at this.
Whereas what he would do is he would say, these are the standards. And by the way, when he, just to give you an example, when he turned around Ford, Ford was losing billions and he turned it around so they were making billions.
And this was during the recession when everybody else was taking bailouts. And he made that turnaround with essentially exactly the same team.
There was a turnover of one person. But otherwise, the same 16 people who were driving Ford into the ground rescued Ford.
So he changed them. He changed what they were doing.
And he had a view of creating a certain set of boundaries. This is how we act on the team.
These are my expectations. And if someone wasn't fulfilling their expectations, he would say to them, that's okay.
That's really your call. It's your choice whether you do this or not.
There's nothing wrong with you for deciding to act differently than I'm stating that we're going to act. But you just can't do that here.
I will help you leave well. It's your call.
And the one person who left, he had this conversation with and they left. Another person he had this conversation with and they decided to stay and change.
But when you're working in a system, when you're working in a team, it is completely valid to set up clear standards of how we operate and hold people to it and then support them in changing if they want to. And if they don't change, then that's okay too, but there may not be a place for them on the team.
I wonder what it is that if people want to change, why they need somebody else to help them change, why they need that ally, what happens there that people just don't do it on their own? I love that you asked this question. The clients that I work with are not remedial.
I'm working with the top CEOs in the top companies. They are incredibly successful people.
They're not people with tons of problems. Then the question is, well, why do they need me? And the answer is when you are stuck in a problem or stuck in a rut or stuck in a problem or a habit or a challenge that you're not getting over, you cannot think your way out of it with your current capability because you're in it.
You need, you know, if you're struggling in water, think of if you're like drowning in water and you can't swim, like you still need an arm to reach out and pull you out of the water. That arm is really important.
So you don't have to be a brilliant person with all of the solutions already to help people. You just have to help them through a process where a different mind is thinking about their problem with them and helps them to see things they can't see otherwise.
Yeah, well, that makes perfect sense that, you know, you're too close to the problem. It's your problem.
It's always easier to help other people. It's always easier to solve somebody else's problem than your own.
100%. And I, that's true for me.
Like I've been, you know, I've honed this process over 30 years of doing this and I still need someone to think through the problems with me.

I can't think, even though I know the process better than anybody, I still need someone to help me through it.

How do you start this process?

How do you approach someone who you would like to see change and get them to buy into this?

The most important step, the sort of turning the light on step step is that first step of shifting from a critic to an ally. So when you really shift from this sense of, I care about you and I care about this and I'm not coming at this from anger or frustration, but I'm coming at this as someone who wants to help if it's helpful to you.
If it's not helpful to you, it's not a problem either. That approach as an ally versus a critic is the thing that switches, you know, kind of switches the light to say, yeah, I have the control and I'd be willing to talk about it.
It certainly puts your defenses down, I guess, because if, you know, if somebody comes to you as a critic, you get defensive and off we go. But this way, there's nothing to be defensive over.
Yeah, and if they say no, they don't want to talk about it with you, your acceptance of that no reinforces that they have the control. And what they realize, what they know, and what often happens is they will then come back to you, like I described with my daughter, because you're not threatening to them anymore.
Like something has changed and they know, well, you know what, I really do want to get better at this. And actually here's someone who was willing to talk to me about it.
They're probably my best bet. And I didn't feel judged by them.
Well, yeah, that's a kind of a good way to feather the nest there and make it so that that conversation goes so much better. But I think you have to be very careful not to slip back into critic once the conversation starts.
Seems like that would be very easy to do if you're not careful. 100%.
100%. It is very, very tempting.
You know, you really have to keep reminding yourself i'm here in support of them it's not about me i'm here in support of them and uh and yeah that's that's really critical but it does get back to the idea that you know you can't change people who don't want to be changed. You can't solve a problem that the person doesn't think exists.
Yeah. And, and I think the real focus then is to sort of say, what is that outcome that we're trying to go to? So when you shift to the outcome and you're no longer talking about the problem, then the, then, then, you know, you're, you're in a more interesting, positive, engaged conversation.
It's actually one of the things I always suggest to leaders that I'm coaching, which is if you're disappointed with someone's behavior and they've made a big mistake, if you go back and say, what were you thinking? What were you thinking in this when you decided to do this? That is a setup for a disaster of a conversation. And the reason is because they're going to tell you what they were thinking.
It obviously wasn't smart thinking, but they're going to tell you what they were thinking. They're going to answer your question.
And that's going to sound defensive. And you're going to see the holes in it because it obviously didn't work.
And then you're going to get mad. And then they're going to get defensive.
And it's just going to go back. And instead, I always suggest you say, instead of saying, you know, what, what were you thinking or what you say, what would you do differently next time? So now you've gone from a defensive, shameful conversation to one of hope and opportunity and, you know, energy.
When I think about trying to get someone else to change, I've always thought of it more of as a, you know, I'm right, you're wrong kind of problem. That you need to do this because I, I guess because I said so.
And what you're talking about is a very different approach that aligns the parties and probably has a lot better chance of success. Peter Bregman has been my guest.
He is a consultant and coach and author. The name of his book is You Can Change Other People, and you can find a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes.
Thank you, Peter. Appreciate the insight.
Excellent. A lot of fun, Michael.
Thanks so much. This is a message from sponsor Intuit TurboTax.
Taxes was getting frustrated by your forms.

Now, Taxes is uploading your forms with a snap and a TurboTax expert will do your taxes for you.

One who's backed by the latest tech, which cross-checks millions of data points for absolute accuracy,

all of which makes it easy for you to get the most money back guaranteed.

Get an expert now at TurboTax.com.

Only available with TurboTax live full service. See guaranteed details at TurboTax.com slash guarantees.
I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times. And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer, and director.
You might know me from The League, Veep, or my non-eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters. We come together to host Unspooled, a podcast where we talk about good movies, critical hits, fan favorites, must-sees, and in case you missed them.
We're talking Parasite the Home Alone. From Grease to the Dark Knight.
So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure. Listen to Unspooled wherever you get your podcasts.
And don't forget to hit the follow button. How often have you heard people make a claim about something and say, but it's scientifically proven.
There's real science here. Often it involves food, nutrition, or some other health claim that must be true because of the science.
Well, not so fast. Here to give us all a better understanding

about what is and isn't science

and how that word science gets misused

in order to mislead

is Dr. Joe Schwartz.

He's director of McGill University's

Office for Science and Society.

He's the author of several books.

He's been a guest here before.

And his latest book is called Superfoods, Silkworms, and Spandex, Science and Pseudoscience in Everyday Life. Hey, Joe, welcome back.
Merry Christmas. Hi, Michael.
So let's start with superfoods, because I hear that expression a lot that, you know, blueberries are a superfood or, you know, pick your food, but that a lot of foods are labeled superfoods. What are a superfood or you know pick your food but that a lot of foods are

labeled superfoods what is a superfood it's an expression that i dislike even though i used it in the title of the book and i don't like it because no food really merits being labeled as an angel or a devil you you know, as a superfood, because it suggests that it has some sort of health quality. And usually there's a lot of hype in there.
Now, obviously, food is very, very important in terms of health. There's no question about that.
We are constructed of the food that we eat, right?

I mean, food is the only raw material that ever goes into our body.

So we are indeed made of the food that we eat.

And, you know, Hippocrates supposedly 2,000 years ago said,

let thy food be thy medicine.

Although, frankly, I've never found any concrete evidence that he ever said that, but he could have. It's much reported in the literature.
So diet is certainly important. And go back to the Ebers Papyrus that was written 1500 BC, suggested already that half an onion and the froth of beer is a delightful remedy against death.

Well, that's an overstatement.

But of course, since that time,

we've had many, many allegations of, you know,

there being foods that were deemed

to be especially healthy.

Sylvester Graham gave us the Graham Cracker,

you know, high fiber food.

Kellogg regaled us with stories about the health benefits of yogurt. And today, of course, there's a whole collage of foods that are labeled in the popular press as super foods, ranging from olive oil to blueberries.
And what I point out is that while certainly there are diets that are healthy and diets that are unhealthy, it is a mistake to label any single food as that. And that's why, you know, whenever students or members of the public ask me to kind of have a look at their diet and evaluate it, I say the only way we can do that is if they keep a diary in which they write down everything that they eat, including amounts that they eat for several weeks, then we can have a look.
Because, you know, it's possible to eat blueberries every day, which actually I do try to do. It's possible to do that and still have a terrible diet.
And it's possible to never eat blueberries and still have a good diet. So it's the overall components of the diet that will determine whether it is healthy or less than healthy.
And that's why I don't like the idea of superfoods. So I use it in the title so I can discuss all of these nuances.
So talk about this term biobase. We hear this a lot about fuels, like, oh, we need more biobased fuels because that's better for the environment and we're going to run out of fossil fuels.
What about that? Right. Well, we will run out of fossil fuels.
That's a given because the earth is of a finite size. And, you know, we only have so much in terms of raw materials.
I don't think we have to worry about running out of fossil fuels within our lifetime. But eventually it is going to happen.
So there is a search for alternatives. Bio, of course, comes from the Greek word meaning life.

So we're looking for substances that are replaceable, usually because they are isolated from crops that can be grown. We cannot manufacture any petroleum, right? I mean, that's a given amount that we have in the earth, which is really the end result of the degradation of vegetable matter and animal matter over millennia.
So we're not going to replenish petroleum, but we can grow crops from which we can isolate useful components. So we can grow corn, we can grow canola from where we can extract oils, and those oils can be used as fuel.
And those would then be termed as bio-based. And that is certainly a legitimate endeavor.
For example, we are already doing that to some extent. As you may know, gasoline can have up to 10% ethanol

content. And that ethanol can come from corn because the glucose in corn can be fermented

to produce alcohol. So that would be biofuel.
And then, of course, we also talk about

biodegradable substances. And that is also a very important concept in terms of environmentalism, because we don't want substances building up in the environment that will stay there forever.
We would like them to decompose into innocuous substances. So there's a lot of work on that as well, especially when it comes to plastics.
Plastics have been demonized recently. And there's, of course, some legitimacy to that.
We don't like to see plastic bags fluttering in the breeze or hanging in trees. We don't want to hear about this giant plastic garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
We don't want to hear about nanoplastics, which are the end product of the badgering by sunlight and waves of plastics that get into the ocean and which eventually end up in our body, right?

We don't want micro-nanoplastics ending up in our body.

So the question is to produce substances that are biodegradable, meaning that they will

break down.

And we can do that with certain plastics.

Polylactic acid, for example, is made from corn and it is biodegradable. However, there's a but.
There always is a but in science. We tend to give with one arm and take away with the other.
So it would be great to have the one-armed scientist who only gives us good things. The fact is that these biodegradable plastics are biodegradable under ideal conditions, which usually means some sort of, you know, industrial commercial composting facility.
And I can tell you that I've done an experiment where I have one of these plastic cups, the polylactic acid cups that are biodegradable, and I've left it out in my backyard and now for two years, and I can tell you that it has not degraded at all. It looks the same as it looked then.
But if it were present in a compost pile that is constantly being turned all the time and where the microbes are monitored and where the temperature is monitored, then it would degrade. Talk about the science of old book smell.
Anybody who has opened an old book, maybe in a library or something that hasn't been opened in a long time, there's a very distinctive old book smell. And you talk about that.
What is that smell? If you've ever opened an old book, I mean, we're talking, you know, at least decades old, probably a book that has not been stored very well, that has been, you know, exposed to mold or fungi, mostly humidity. You can develop a variety of smells.
and that originates from the breakdown of the cellulose, which of course is the fundamental building block of paper, and also from the infusion of fungi. Fungi are everywhere.
They're present in the air. They're microscopic, so you don't see them.
But when they get into a book and especially aided and abetted by moisture, they will start to use the cellophane or the cellulose, that is the essential part of paper, as food. And when they digest that, they crank out some pretty smelly compounds.
What's the science behind duct tape or the science about duct tape?

Duct tape is fascinating, of course, in many ways. First of all, the name, it actually comes from a Dutch word, and it has nothing to do with ducts.
It has nothing to do with D-U-C-K. And it turns out that during the Second World War, ammunition boxes were sealed with a type of paper tape, but that paper tape would tear very easily.
So when soldiers in the heat of the battle had to open these ammunition boxes, the tape would tear and they wouldn't be able to open the box. And that precipitated a search to find a tape that would be hardy, but that would easily be removed without tearing.
And that's what gave birth to what we now call duct tape. Now, one interesting connection there is that that tape originally was made with a

backing of a rubber adhesive and some polyethylene that made it waterproof. And in between those was

a sandwich, a type of fabric that was referred to as cotton duct. That was the name of a type

of fabric. So that also is one of the reasons that people have used the word duct tape, D-U-C-C-K.
And there are all kinds of uses, as you can imagine, for duct tape. It saved the lives of the Apollo 13 astronauts, where a catastrophe was averted, because the astronauts were able to rig up a contraption to remove carbon dioxide from the air that they exhale.
And they used duct tape in order to do that. You know, it's been said that WD-40 is what you need to make things go and duct tape is what you need to make things stop.
We hear a lot today about PFAS that, I mean, I get press releases all the time about, you know, this is the end of the world kind of thing. And I think people don't really know much about it or really know how big a concern it is.
So clear that up. PFAS stands for perfluoroalkyl substances, which are really a family of compounds that have some very interesting properties that are commercially useful because they make substances water-resistant and oil-resistant.
So PFAS would be used, for for example in the making of of rain gear it is used in firefighting foams because it can very effectively blanket a fire and seal out oxygen it is used in the manufacture of of teflon it has a myriad of uses. Your pizza box in which your pizza is delivered.
You don't want that box to be greasy or wet. So it is treated with these chemicals.
Now, the problem is that whatever makes these so useful also creates a problem. The carbon-fluorine bond is a very, very strong bond, and it is responsible for all the beneficial properties of these compounds, but it also means that they are very difficult to break down.
So these are not biodegradable. These substances build up in the environment.
Now, of course, then the question comes up, so what? Well, once we find that they build up in the environment, we start looking for them everywhere, including in our urine and including in our blood. And it turns out that they are there.
It is, however, always important to point out

that the presence of a chemical

cannot be equated to the presence of risk.

That's a different question.

So just because they're present in our urine and our blood

doesn't mean that they're creating

some sort of havoc in our body,

but it does mean that it requires further exploration.

And that further exploration has been done.

And it turns out that there are links

Thank you. but it does mean that it requires further exploration.
And that further exploration has been done. And it turns out that there are links to elevated blood pressure, to greater risk of kidney disease, to greater risk of diabetes, when there is an excessive amount of these chemicals in the bloodstream, which unfortunately can happen because they are so widely used in so many commercial items.
However, the real problem is that they get into the environment, not from the products that we tend to use on a daily basis, but from their manufacture. So it's not the pizza box from which we eat the pizza that has transferred some trace amount of PFAS into the pizza that gets it into our body.
That's not the major problem. The major problem that these chemicals are manufactured on a gigantic scale around the globe because they are so much in demand.
And when you're manufacturing things on such a large scale, it's impossible to prevent their entry into the environment. So they get into the water, they get into the air, they get into the soil.
And from there, they get into our body because we drink water, we eat food, we breathe air. So really the only way to try to battle this problem is to cut down on the overall production of these substances.
But that means that you've got to find replacements. And right now, there are no substances that can do the job as well as these PFAS.
However, I think in this context, it also needs to be mentioned that we are exposed to literally millions of compounds on a daily basis. Chemical abstracts, which is a service that basically lists all known chemicals.
There are over 160 million chemicals that are now listed. Now, of course, we're not going to encounter all of those regularly, but we certainly encounter thousands of chemicals on a daily basis.
Just to give you an example, when you drink a cup of coffee, you're consuming over a thousand compounds, over a thousand compounds, including some like caffeic acid or furfural, which are known carcinogens. Now, if we label something as a carcinogen, it means that we know that at some dose in some animal or in some laboratory trial, it causes cancer.
It does not mean that it does so in humans. That's a common misconception that people make.
They think that if something is labeled as a carcinogen, it means that it causes cancer in humans. No, it just means that it has the potential to cause cancer.

Now, we know that coffee does not cause cancer. We know this.
If coffee did cause cancer, we would know because there's enough coffee consumed by enough people around the world that this would reveal itself epidemiologically. So here we have a situation where we have known carcinogens present in the coffee, but of course, the whole coffee as an entity doesn't cause cancer.
Why? Because the amounts of the carcinogens in there are in very, very small doses. And coffee also contains some compounds like antioxidants, which can mitigate cancer.
Well great Joe, it's always a pleasure to have you on I enjoy listening to your scientific explanations

because they're unique

and they make you think. I've been speaking with Dr.
Joe Schwartz. He is director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society.
He's the author of several books. His latest is called Superfood, Silkworms, and Spandex, Science and Pseudoscience in Everyday Life.
And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes if you would like to buy it. Thank you for coming on again, Joe.
Always a pleasure. I appreciate that very much.
Thank you. You've probably heard the theory that having a pet dog is somehow good for your health.
And you may have wondered, well, how? How does that work? Well, here's one way it works. Scientists took a look at 421 heart attack victims, some dog owners, some not dog owners.
They found that dog owners were far more likely to survive the heart attack than the non-dog owners. Dog owners are less obese and more active physically and socially.
Another study found that pet owners have to go to the doctor less often than people with no pet. The study looked at kids, too, and those kids with pets had stronger comforting and empathy skills and a better sense of overall well-being.
So those are just some examples of how having a pet dog is good for your health. And that is something you should know.
I assume you've enjoyed this podcast since you made it all the way to the end of the episode, and so since you did enjoy it, perhaps you could tell someone you know and ask them to give a listen and help us grow our audience. I'm Micah Brothers.
Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Have you ever heard about the 19th century French actress with so many lovers that they formed a lover's union? Or what about the Aboriginal Australian bandit who faked going into labour just to escape the police, which she did escape from them.
It was a great plan. How about the French queen who murdered her rival with poison gloves? I'm Anne Foster, host of the feminist women's history comedy podcast, Vulgar History.
Every week I share the saga of a woman from history whose story you probably didn't already know, and you will never forget after you hear it. Sometimes we reexamine well-known people like Cleopatra or Pocahontas sharing the truth behind their legends.
Sometimes we look at the scandalous women you'll never find in a history textbook. Listen to Vulgar History wherever you get podcasts.
And if you're curious, the people I was talking about before, the Australian woman was named Marianne Bug and the French actress was named Rochelle. No last name, just Rochelle.
And the queen who poisoned her rival is Catherine de' Medici. I have episodes about all of them.
Hello, I am Kristen Russo. And I am Jenny Owen Youngs.
We are the hosts of Buffering the Vampire Slayer once more with Spoilers, a rewatch podcast covering all 144 for episodes of, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer once more with spoilers, a rewatch podcast covering all 144 episodes of, you guessed it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We are here to humbly invite you to join us for our fifth Buffy prom, which, if you can believe it, we are hosting at the actual Sunnydale High School.
That's right. On April 4th and 5th, we will be descending upon the campus of Torrance High School, which was the filming location for Buffy's Sunnydale High, to dance the night away, to 90s music in the iconic courtyard, to sip on punch right next to the Sunnydale High fountain, and to nerd out together in our prom best inside of the set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
All information and

tickets can be found at bufferingcast.com slash prom. Come join us.