The Dark Side of Achievement & The Astonishing Science of the Sea-SYSK Choice

Speaker 1 Lately, it feels like every headline about Planet Earth is another reason to worry. But then, I found something that does just the opposite.

Speaker 1 It's a show that reminds you why there is still so much to be hopeful about. It's called Planet Visionaries, hosted by Alex Honneld.

Speaker 1 He's the climber from that wonderful National Geographic documentary Free Solo, and now he's taking on a different kind of challenge: protecting our home planet.

Speaker 1 Each episode feels like its own journey.

Speaker 1 You'll meet Chris Tompkins, who left her job as CEO of Patagonia to devote her life to rewilding South America, returning millions of acres of land back to nature. And Christina Mittermeyer.

Speaker 1 She's a world-renowned wildlife photographer who captures the beauty and fragility of our oceans and still finds hope in every image she takes.

Speaker 1 What I love about Planet Visionaries is how human it feels. It's not doom and gloom, it's people doing extraordinary things, proof that optimism isn't naïve, it's a strategy.

Speaker 1 Listening reminded me that a better future isn't some distant idea, it's already being built one story at a time. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries.

Speaker 1 Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening to this podcast.

Speaker 1 Today on something you should know, the answers to three questions you've probably wondered about, about calculators, portholes, and time. Then, toxic achievement.

Speaker 1 It's when you define yourself by your success.

Speaker 2 The messages perhaps that you got growing up were that you're only as good as your success. So when you're not successful, that's when you can really, really struggle.

Speaker 2 When we really couple couple our worth to our achievements, it makes us less resilient.

Speaker 1 Also, one simple thing women could do to motivate any man. And a peek below the surface at what's going on in our oceans.
And there's a lot going on.

Speaker 3 I do think that we need to get away from this idea that the dominant thing we know about the ocean is that it's mysterious. You know, if you want mystery, look into space, it's empty.

Speaker 3 The ocean is doing so many interesting and beautiful things.

Speaker 1 All this today on something you should know.

Speaker 1 I've learned from experience that hiring isn't easy, even when you know exactly who you're looking for.

Speaker 1 Running a business doesn't automatically make you good at hiring people. It's a skill and it takes time, sometimes too much time.
That's why I like Indeed.

Speaker 1 It makes the whole process faster and easier, and the results are better. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you you need.

Speaker 1 Instead of struggling to get your job post noticed, Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps you stand out. Your listing jumps right to the top of the page for the people you actually want to reach.

Speaker 1 And that saves you days, maybe weeks of waiting. And the numbers back it up.
According to Indeed Data, sponsored jobs posted directly on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsored jobs.

Speaker 1 What I like most is there are no monthly subscriptions, no long-term contracts, you only pay for results. And while I've been talking, 23 hires were made on Indeed worldwide.
It's that fast.

Speaker 1 There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed.

Speaker 1 And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com/slash something.

Speaker 1 Just go to Indeed.com slash something right now now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash something.

Speaker 1 Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed is all you need.

Speaker 1 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.

Speaker 1 Hello, welcome to Something You Should know.

Speaker 1 I'm going to start today's episode with three questions. Three questions you may have wondered about, didn't know the answers, and now you'll have the answers.

Speaker 1 Number one, on a telephone keypad, the lowest numbers, one, two, and three, are across the top. On a calculator, they're at the bottom.
Why are they different?

Speaker 1 Well, they each travel down different evolutionary roads. The calculator descended from the old adding machine, which which had lower numbers at the bottom.

Speaker 1 The touchtone telephone descended from the dial telephone, which had lower numbers at the top. Why are the windows on many ships round? They're portholes rather than windows.

Speaker 1 Actually, on many old wooden boats, the windows were square, but when ships switched to metal hulls, that's when things changed.

Speaker 1 When you cut a rectangle or a square into a piece of metal, the metal is subject to more fatigue at those corner corner points.

Speaker 1 Naval architects quickly learned that round portholes eliminate the problem.

Speaker 1 And the third question: what time is it in the North Pole? And the answer is any time you want it to be.

Speaker 1 Theoretically, all time zones converge at the North and South Poles, so there is technically no time.

Speaker 1 And that is something you should know.

Speaker 1 It's hard to argue with the concept of achievement. We are taught to achieve in school and at work.
Achievement is good. It's how we get ahead.
We judge our success by our achievements.

Speaker 1 But can achievement become toxic? Can we become so wrapped up in our achievements that they define us? That may not be so good, and it seems to happen quite a bit.

Speaker 1 Joining me to talk about this is Jennifer Wallace. She is an award-winning journalist, social commentator, covering parenting and lifestyle trends.

Speaker 1 She used to work at 60 Minutes and she is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

Speaker 1 She's author of a book called Never Enough, When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It. Hi, Jennifer.
Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 2 Oh, thanks so much for having me on.

Speaker 1 So state your case here because you know, achievement seems like a good thing. So at what point does achievement become not a good thing?

Speaker 2 Achievement becomes toxic when our sense of self is so deeply intertwined with our successes or our failures, that's when it becomes toxic, when we only feel as good as our next achievement or we feel as bad as our failure.

Speaker 2 So when our... when our self-esteem, when our sense of self, when our sense of worth rests on our accomplishments, it becomes toxic.

Speaker 1 So it would seem to me, though, that we are wrapped up in our achievements, that

Speaker 1 achievements are a big part of us.

Speaker 1 That if you, for example, get a job you've always wanted and you finally achieve that, and then say the company goes out of business or you get fired or whatever, that's going to be a huge blow.

Speaker 1 You're going to feel terrible about that because your achievements are a big part of you.

Speaker 1 So at what point do you say it's toxic? And at the other point, there's a line where you feel horrible and that's okay?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's obviously a normal reaction, right?

Speaker 2 So mental health is not about having positive emotions all the time, but as psychologists point out, having good mental health means that you have a reaction that's appropriate to what you're going through.

Speaker 2 Where it would become toxic is if getting fired really becomes an indictment of your worth and you sink into a depression or you turn to substances to cope, that the messages perhaps that you got growing up were that you're only as good as your success.

Speaker 2 And so when you're not successful, that's when you can really, really struggle.

Speaker 2 When we really couple our worth to our achievements, it makes us less resilient.

Speaker 1 And where does this come from?

Speaker 1 Why are people feeling this way?

Speaker 2 What I believe

Speaker 2 is at the root of much of our anxiety and depression, the loneliness epidemic, is this unmet need to matter. And mattering is a psychological construct that's been around since the early 1980s.

Speaker 2 It was an idea, a concept that was initially conceived by Morris Rosenberg, who is the social psychologist who brought us the idea of self-esteem in the 1960s.

Speaker 2 And what he found in the early 80s was that kids who did well, who enjoyed healthy self-esteem, felt like they mattered to their parents, that they were important and significant.

Speaker 2 What I am seeing now in my own research, what I'm reading from national surveys is that there are many people in the world who feel like they don't matter, meaning they don't feel valued by

Speaker 2 anyone, by family, by friends, at the workplace. They feel

Speaker 2 easily replaced.

Speaker 2 They don't feel known or seen or heard. And these are basic human needs that are going unmet.

Speaker 2 And when, you know, Researchers who study it say that after the drive, the human motivation for food and shelter, It is the instinct to matter that drives human behavior for better and for worse.

Speaker 1 I get that people don't feel like they matter and that it would be good if they did, but what does that have to do with achievement?

Speaker 1 I mean, I know

Speaker 1 I get it, but I want you to make the case because it seems like we're talking about two different things.

Speaker 1 We're not, right?

Speaker 2 Okay, so when we talk about achievement that is excessive and felt like excessive pressure, what we are talking about is the idea that our sense of self is contingent on our achievements, that we only matter when we achieve.

Speaker 2 So the kids that I met who seemed to be suffering the most were kids who felt like their mattering was completely contingent on their performance, that they only mattered if they got good grades or if they made the A team or they got the starring role.

Speaker 2 They felt that they, that only certain people in this world mattered. And that if they weren't performing at a high level, then they didn't actually matter.

Speaker 2 The other group of kids who were suffering that I met were kids who got the messages at home that they mattered. They heard from their parents that they were important and significant.

Speaker 2 But no one ever relied on them or depended on them to give back in any way other than to themselves and their own resumes.

Speaker 2 And so what these kids lacked was what I call social proof that they mattered. They heard it in words, but they didn't see

Speaker 2 how they actually made a positive impact on the world around them.

Speaker 1 But what you just said sounds like an argument to try to achieve, to use that feeling of not mattering as fuel to

Speaker 1 show the world that you can achieve, that you can do something, that you do matter. And one way to be acknowledged as mattering is for people to see what you've accomplished, what you've achieved.

Speaker 2 Oh, I think it's the opposite of that. I'll talk about myself.
I am extremely ambitious. I am a high performer.
I get a lot of joy out of my achievements.

Speaker 2 But what I am driven by is what I call a healthy fuel. And that healthy fuel is that I don't feel defined by my achievements or my failures.

Speaker 2 I'm able to reach higher for bigger goals because I know if I don't succeed, it's not an indictment of who I am versus other people I know in my life who have a very fragile sense of mattering, a very fragile sense of self-worth that they only feel worthy when they're achieving.

Speaker 2 And so this can backfire.

Speaker 2 They are less likely to reach for super high goals because they are holding on to the little mattering that they have.

Speaker 2 I suppose what we're talking about, if you really zoom out, is about values and how they impact achievement and our well-being.

Speaker 1 And so your values of having this healthy outlook on achievement come from where?

Speaker 1 Was it from your parents, from your? Yeah,

Speaker 2 there's a social psychologist,

Speaker 2 Gregory Elliott, who writes, What gets in early gets in deep.

Speaker 2 So our first sense of self-worth and self-esteem is not created in a vacuum. It is

Speaker 2 what researchers call a social barometer to see how we are doing in the eyes of others.

Speaker 2 And the first people that we get this sense of self-worth from are our parents, the feedback that they give us, the signals they send us about whether or not we are worthy.

Speaker 2 just for being who we are.

Speaker 2 And I will tell you, I grew up with a deep sense of mattering and I didn't realize how unusual that was until I went out into the world and I was working in very hyper-competitive environments like 60 minutes.

Speaker 2 And, you know, many of my colleagues really struggled with feeling worthy.

Speaker 2 One colleague said to me, you're only as good as your next story here.

Speaker 2 That is not a great environment. to raise children in, to be working in ourselves.

Speaker 1 It seems that we live in a culture where

Speaker 1 it's a never-ending wheel that if you want to achieve, one way you achieve and you get opportunities to achieve is because of your past achievements, your experience achieving other things. So

Speaker 1 it never ends. And like with school, I have a son who's going into college.
And I mean, the pressure of getting into a college is all about what have you achieved. It's all about achievement.

Speaker 2 I wrote an article in 2019 that was

Speaker 2 for the Washington Post about a newly named at-risk group. And these are kids attending what researchers call high-achieving schools.

Speaker 2 Those are public and private schools around the country where kids go off to competitive four-year colleges.

Speaker 2 Those kids are now at risk, meaning they are two to six times more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression and and substance abuse disorder than the average American teen. That is a problem.

Speaker 2 When the kids in our culture who are given so many opportunities are doing as poorly as students living in poverty, there is something upside down wrong in our culture.

Speaker 1 We're talking about achievement. toxic achievement and the human need to matter.
My guest is Jennifer Wallace.

Speaker 1 She is an award-winning journalist and author of the book, Never Enough, When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It.

Speaker 1 It's time for Black Friday, Dell Technology's biggest sale of the year. That's right.
You'll find huge savings on select Dell PCs, like the Dell 16 Plus with Intel Core Ultra processors.

Speaker 1 And with built-in advanced AI features, it's the PC that helps you do more faster.

Speaker 1 From smarter multitasking to extended battery life, these PCs get the busy work done so you can focus on what matters most to you.

Speaker 1 Plus, earn Dell rewards and enjoy many other benefits like free shipping, expert support, price match guarantee, and flexible financing options.

Speaker 1 They also have the biggest deals on accessories that pair perfectly with your Dell PC, improving the way you work, play and connect.

Speaker 1 Whether you just started holiday shopping or you're just finishing up, these PCs and accessories make perfect gifts for everyone on your list. Shop now at dell.com slash deals and don't miss out.

Speaker 1 That's dell.com slash deals.

Speaker 1 We frequently talk here about AI and how to use it, and I've just started using something that you need to know about called Notion.

Speaker 1 Now, if you've ever felt like there just aren't enough hours in the day, you've got notes here, projects there, emails everywhere, you're going to love what Notion has built.

Speaker 1 It's called the Notion agent and it's like having another version of you that actually finishes your work. Here's how I use it.

Speaker 1 After I finish an interview or a meeting, my Notion agent reads through the notes, pulls out the action items, and then puts them in the right pages inside Notion.

Speaker 1 It even tags teammates automatically, which means I can focus on creative work instead of chasing details. Notion brings all your notes, docs, and projects into one connected space that just works.

Speaker 1 It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and it's actually fun to use. With AI built right in, you spend less time switching between tools and more time creating great work.

Speaker 1 And now with Notion Agent, your AI doesn't just help with work, it finishes it. Try Notion now with NotionAgent at notion.com slash something.

Speaker 1 That's all lowercase letters, notion.com slash something to try your new AI teammate, NotionAgent, today.

Speaker 1 And when you use our link, you're supporting our show, notion.com slash something.

Speaker 1 So Jennifer, it seems like there is some attention being paid to what you're talking about in the sense that we hear things about, you know, mental health days and self-care and the four-day work week and, you know, flexible schedules, that there's some attempt to address this?

Speaker 1 Or is that, in your view, just lip service?

Speaker 2 No, I think there is an attempt to address it. I think you're absolutely right.

Speaker 2 There's certainly more of an awareness, but I do believe that we are sold a bill of goods when it comes to the multi-billion dollar wellness industry.

Speaker 2 You can't download a meditation app or have a mindful day at work.

Speaker 2 Resilience rests fundamentally, this is according to decades worth of resilience research, on the strength and depth of our relationships.

Speaker 2 The problem I saw, and I saw it over and over again, was not that adults today didn't have friends. The adults I interviewed had friends.

Speaker 2 What they didn't have was the time and the bandwidth to deepen those friendships so that they could be sources of support when needed.

Speaker 2 So, in order for parents, for example, to act as first responders to our kids' struggles, we need one or two people in our lives outside of the home.

Speaker 2 And I want to underscore that because our in-home relationships are already overtaxed, trying to be these, you know, one household villages.

Speaker 2 So, really, it's one or two people outside of our home that we can open up to, that we can feel heard, that we can feel seen, that we know we matter.

Speaker 2 And that is what builds up our resilience.

Speaker 1 Do you think, you know, if you stopped people on the street and asked them if they saw this as a problem in their life, that they would agree with you?

Speaker 1 Or because, you know, your life is your life, you don't really have anything to compare it to, that they don't see this as a problem. This is just the way things are.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 there have been studies done asking the very question, do you feel like you matter? Do people notice you? Do people depend on you?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 a very large percentage of adults and youth do not feel like they matter and they're aware of it.

Speaker 2 This is an instinct to matter. This is

Speaker 2 This is something that we have all evolved to feel.

Speaker 2 So you can feel like you don't matter.

Speaker 2 You can feel invisible, but you notice, you know that you're, I mean, do you think about it in your, in your own life?

Speaker 2 I mean, there have been times, our sense of mattering fluctuates throughout our lifespan.

Speaker 2 So you could be a busy young mother and actually feel like you matter too much because you're exhausted and your kids are pulling at you all day long.

Speaker 2 And then your children could leave and go to college and start their own lives.

Speaker 2 And you wonder if you're not sort of feeling like you matter in other domains of your life, you can really struggle with not feeling like you matter.

Speaker 2 People in retirement can feel like they matter at work and then feel invisible when they're out of the workplace. No one is asking anything of them, no one is depending on them anymore.

Speaker 1 I don't know if that's the actual question you would ask people, but if you ask somebody, do you think you matter?

Speaker 1 I mean, there's kind of a tendency to say no because of the way the question is served up.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it isn't like you don't matter to everybody. Maybe you don't feel like you matter at work, but you know, I don't think too many people feel like they don't matter to anybody, to anywhere.

Speaker 2 Oh, I think you're wrong. I think this is part of our devastating loneliness epidemic.
I don't have the data in front of me, but

Speaker 2 there have been national surveys asking people, if you were to go in for surgery, would you have someone to call you to pick you up? I mean,

Speaker 2 there are so many lonely people in the world. I don't think it's the majority of people, but I think it's an alarming percentage of people.

Speaker 2 And I think what we're seeing with the opioid epidemic, with,

Speaker 2 you know, substance abuse disorder that's running rampant in our society is a way of coping with feeling like you don't matter.

Speaker 1 So if you feel like you don't matter, how do you fix that?

Speaker 2 So it was funny. I was doing a presentation for a major corporation that I won't name, and a 30-year-old raised their hand and said, you know, some days I really don't feel like I matter.

Speaker 2 Some days I really don't. And is there a mantra that I could say to myself? And I said, I have something better than a mantra.

Speaker 2 I said, what I think you should do on those days is go to the cafeteria and say to the man or the woman who serves you that delicious warm lunch that brings a smile on your face and thank them for always making your day a little brighter.

Speaker 2 So the way to unlock our mattering is by unlocking it in others. The more we can unlock mattering, even just small talk at the deli or thanking someone sincerely for doing something for you,

Speaker 2 that is how we build up our own sense of mattering.

Speaker 2 It's one way.

Speaker 1 That's an interesting way of, because I wouldn't think that would be a way, but anytime you have one of those conversations you always feel pretty good you always feel like when you when you tell somebody how grateful you are for what they do that feels good to you exactly it's a you know they call gratitude

Speaker 2 a social glue what binds people together so when you feel appreciated the person you know even Let's let's Let's call it a colleague. Let's not say it's a stranger.

Speaker 2 Let's say it's someone in your workplace really takes time to appreciate something that you've done and say it out loud. What does that do? It binds you to them.

Speaker 2 It helps you notice that they are potentially a good relationship partner, somebody that maybe a relationship, a friendship that you want to nurture. So, and then it binds you to them.

Speaker 2 The find, bind, remind theory is what I'm talking about, which is something researchers who study gratitude have found with couples and with long-term friendships that expressions of gratitude can actually act like a booster shot,

Speaker 2 reminding you of the value of that relationship and bonding you to them.

Speaker 2 That gratitude plays an evolutionary role in making our social connection strong.

Speaker 1 So I guess, and you kind of questioned where I was coming from early on, and I think what I was thinking was more when I saw the title, this overachievement culture, and the solution is to lower your sights.

Speaker 1 Don't try so hard.

Speaker 1 You're just ruining your life. And, you know, settle for less.
And that's not your message.

Speaker 2 No, my message is the opposite. My message is be ambitious for more.

Speaker 2 Be ambitious for more than just a narrow definition of success. What does it mean to you to live a successful life?

Speaker 2 And what a successful life looks like to me is having a successful marriage, having a successful, strong relationship with my kids, being a friend that people know they can depend on, enjoying hobbies, having time for joy in my life, having enough time to rest.

Speaker 2 So what I'm saying is not to be

Speaker 2 not ambitious, but to be ambitious for more than just being a cog in the machine.

Speaker 1 Well, it's a great message, and I think one a lot of us can take to heart, those of us who perhaps have put too much emphasis on achievement in our life, and maybe there's a different way.

Speaker 1 I've been speaking with Jennifer Wallace. She is a journalist and social commentator.

Speaker 1 She's a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal in the Washington Post, and she is author of a book called Never Enough. When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic and What We Can Do About It.

Speaker 1 There's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Appreciate you coming on.
Thanks, Jennifer.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 With the weather getting colder and the holidays upon us, I just want my wardrobe to be easy. Things that look sharp, feel great, and last season after season, which is exactly what I get from Quince.

Speaker 1 I reach for my Quince cashmere sweaters constantly. They're 100% Mongolian cashmere, and somehow they're just 50 bucks.
Soft, warm, and the kind of everyday luxury that doesn't feel overdone.

Speaker 1 And their denim is another favorite, great fit, easy to wear, and it holds up beautifully. And if you're looking for a holiday gift to give without the big price tag guilt, Quince is perfect for that.

Speaker 1 Those cashmere sweaters I just mentioned, they make great gifts. And their wool coats, you gotta check them out.
They're stylish and durable and their quality is top of the line.

Speaker 1 It's amazing how many people have found Quince and love it. What I love is how Quince works directly with ethical factories and top artisans cutting out the middlemen.

Speaker 1 So you get premium quality at half the cost of other high-end brands. It's luxury without the markup, which means you can give something nice this season or keep it for yourself.

Speaker 1 Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with Quince. Go to quince.com/slash SYSK for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.
Now available in Canada too.

Speaker 1 That's quince.com slash SYSK. Free shipping and 365 day returns.
Quince.com slash SYSK.

Speaker 4 This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies just to see if you could save some cash? Well, Progressive makes it easy.

Speaker 4 Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your your home and auto policies.

Speaker 4 The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you could save.
Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Speaker 4 Potential savings will vary, not available in all states.

Speaker 1 There is something awe-inspiring about the ocean. Just looking at it can give you an amazing sense of wonder.

Speaker 1 The oceans cover so much of our planet, and yet many of us know very little about what goes on beneath the surface, or even on top of the surface.

Speaker 1 And many of us don't really understand what the oceans do. Here to take us on a fascinating journey of the world's oceans is Helen Chersky.

Speaker 1 Helen is a physicist and oceanographer at University College London's Department of Mechanical Engineering, and she is author of a book called The The Blue Machine, How the Oceans Work. Hi, Helen.

Speaker 1 Welcome to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 3 Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 So I have always loved the ocean. I've lived near the ocean.
The ocean, there's something about it that just does it for me. But what is it you find so fascinating about the ocean?

Speaker 3 It's that it's so many different things.

Speaker 3 The way you see the ocean depends on your perspective at that time. And it's kind of the same as, you know, we all understand that a human being can be many different things, right?

Speaker 3 Someone can be a poet and a great badminton player and also a skeleton that's got, you know, some lungs and kidneys hanging off it.

Speaker 3 And there's all these different ways of looking at what a human being is. And in the same way, there's lots of different ways of looking at what the ocean is.

Speaker 3 And I think the great shame is that our society really only sees one or perhaps two of those things. And there's all this richness behind it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, of course, that richness is all underwater, so it's kind of hard to see unless you really make an effort to go look.

Speaker 1 And I think that's why we're so mystified by it, because it isn't easy to see.

Speaker 3 No, it isn't. Of course, we're land mammals and, you know, the ocean is far away from many of us, and it's quite hard to get out into the middle of the ocean, all of those things.

Speaker 3 But really, the great tragedy of the ocean, I mean, all of that is also true for the sky and for the moon and, you know, for the stars.

Speaker 3 The great tragedy of the ocean from a human point of view is that you can't see into it, that light doesn't travel very far. Because just imagine if you could really see into the ocean.

Speaker 3 You know, we think that water is transparent to light because when you turn on the tap, you know, what comes out is colorless, even though actually we all teach our children to draw, you know, with blue crayons, to draw water with blue crayons, which is just crazy.

Speaker 3 If there's enough water altogether, it does look blue.

Speaker 3 But we think of water as something that light travels through, but actually it doesn't. It'll go a couple of hundred meters on a good day.
And so it stops us. The ocean hides itself from us.

Speaker 3 And that's the thing that, you know, we're such such visual creatures that because we can't look into it in the same way that we can look into the sky, we sort of think it isn't there.

Speaker 3 And as you say, that makes it harder to appreciate.

Speaker 3 But it does mean that once you start to be able to look, you know, as technology gets better, as we get better at telling these stories, there's a lot to see there.

Speaker 1 Can you give me just some of the ABCs of oceans? Like, you know, how many are there? How much of the earth does it cover?

Speaker 3 Just some of the basic facts and figures about the ocean as it relates to us well i guess the statistic that most people are familiar with is that the ocean covers about 70 of earth's surface the thing that the statistic interestingly i think most people are less familiar with is that there's only one ocean that's it there's one because it's all connected and you can see it like this there's a type of map um known as the spillhouse projection because the guy who came up with it was called athelstan spillhouse and you know so every two-dimensional map is a version of a three, you know, you take a three-dimensional sphere and this spherical surface and you kind of try and flatten it out somehow so you can put it on a piece of paper.

Speaker 3 And he said this very profound thing. He said that in order to see the land, we always cut the ocean.
So in order to see the ocean, we must cut the land.

Speaker 3 And when you draw the map like that, when you unwrap Earth so that you cut the land instead of the ocean, then you can see it's one big global ocean.

Speaker 3 On average, it's just a little bit under four kilometers deep. And I guess one other perhaps statistic about it is that just under half of all photosynthesis on Earth happens in the ocean.

Speaker 3 So, you know, we think on land, we think about trees, plants, all those green things harvesting sunlight and turning it into a form that other... you know, other life can eat, basically, like us.

Speaker 3 And just under half of all of that process for Earth happens in the ocean, even though we can't see plants and trees and that sort of thing in most of the ocean. So yeah,

Speaker 3 it's an important place. There's lots going on there.

Speaker 1 Well, you say it's all one ocean, but

Speaker 1 I remember it wasn't that long ago I saw that picture or maybe it was a video of where the Atlantic, I think it's the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean meet and the waters don't mingle, that you can see the line between one and the other.

Speaker 1 So how are they all one if they don't mingle?

Speaker 3 So the area you're talking about, and I think you're talking about the area off South Africa, that's the most famous place where you see that.

Speaker 3 You know, fish can just swim from one side to the other. It's clearly connected, but the water doesn't have time to mix up.

Speaker 3 Whatever's generating the distinctiveness is kind of generating distinctiveness faster than the mixing can even it out.

Speaker 1 But you say you say fish could swim between the two things. They can go and do they?

Speaker 3 Yeah, that's right. So, and actually, there are, because of this distinctive anatomy, you know, if you, so to us, it just looks like water and more water and other water.

Speaker 3 But if you're a fish, especially if you're a predator that can swim long distances to find food the ocean to you is a has structure in the same way that we look at land and we see hills and forests and streams you know we see different types of environment um if you're underwater and you're a predator you can effectively distinguish different types of environments.

Speaker 3 So for example, the Gulf Stream, so the Gulf Stream is the big fast warm current that comes up the side of North America in the Atlantic and then turns across and comes out towards us in Europe.

Speaker 3 And it's generally drawn on a map as a kind of smooth line kind of curving around.

Speaker 3 But actually, if you look at what it's really doing, it's much more interesting than that because this river of water within other water is sort of wobbling and meandering as it goes.

Speaker 3 And sometimes as those wobbles grow, they get big enough. So imagine a kind of

Speaker 3 a stream going along that starts to generate a loop. And the loop gets bigger and bigger until eventually a whole part of that loop can kind of break away and it just spins by itself.

Speaker 3 And so the Gulf Stream is doing that all the time. And it's kind of budding these spinning islands of water that we call mesascale eddies.

Speaker 3 And they can be 50 to 100 kilometers across, they can last for several months, up to two years.

Speaker 3 And that little spinning island, either of warm water within cold water or a spinning island of cold water within warm water, the Gulf Stream kind of buds these off and then they sort of drift off either north or south.

Speaker 3 And they've got quite distinctive ecosystems. And so, for example, bluefin tuna will go looking for those eddies because they know that they're good places to hunt and the yellow fin

Speaker 3 and big-eyed tuna they'll go looking for the cold ones and the blue fin tuna go looking for the warm ones and the sharks are often found at the bottom of the warm ones and the swordfish hang around outside so so absolutely they can swim across the ocean because they know that these features are going to be there they know that they're it'll have the thing they want to hunt and so they can swim into them and once they've found one they'll kind of stay with it and you know scoff themselves silly fill themselves with food food.

Speaker 3 And then, if it starts to dissipate or to mix in with the rest of the ocean, they'll just go and find another one.

Speaker 1 What makes the ocean salty?

Speaker 3 So, it's quite a profound question. It was first, Aristotle is the first person we have a record of asking that question.
And he came to the conclusion, you know, before the age of

Speaker 3 what we now recognize as science and experimentation. He thought that the sea was salty because when sunlight hit it, it became salty.
And it wasn't until the

Speaker 3 1600s when a guy called Robert Boyle, who was very much into experiments, actually left some water out in the sunshine to see if it would go salty. And it didn't.
It just started to stink.

Speaker 3 So that was that idea out the door.

Speaker 3 And there is a lot of salt in the ocean. And where it comes from, a mixture of places.

Speaker 3 So we think of salt as being a solid because, you know, that's what you put on your chips or whatever, your fries.

Speaker 3 But actually, only what salt really is, is it's a mixture of different components that are all dissolved in the water.

Speaker 3 So you might have chloride, and sodium, and magnesium, and iodide, all these kind of components. But it's only when you take the water away that they join up to form a solid salt.

Speaker 3 So, salt is actually lots of different things that are all mixed in to seawater. And

Speaker 3 the mixture of them is the same everywhere, which is quite interesting. But it's just because they've had so long to mix up.
And so, those components came from different places.

Speaker 3 But there are two major sources.

Speaker 3 One of them was that on the early Earth, there were huge amounts of acid rain because way back then the environment was much more harsh, the rain was slightly acidic, and as it ran over rocks, it dissolved some minerals from the rocks like sodium.

Speaker 3 So that's where the sodium comes from. And of course, the rivers then ran down into the sea and the sea gradually got more and more sodium.

Speaker 3 And then the other place you get ions from is from underwater volcanoes, which are belching things out from underneath the earth. And that's where the chloride came from.

Speaker 3 But once they're all in the ocean, there's no way for them to get out. So over geological time, you know, know, they've kind of accumulated in the ocean.

Speaker 3 And now there's a kind of balance between salt that goes, you know, the same process is adding

Speaker 3 little bits more salt to the ocean and the processes which are kind of putting salt high and dry on land. So, you know, in Utah, you get those salt flats.

Speaker 3 Well, that's salt that used to be in an ocean and now it's dry on land, so it's not in the ocean anymore. But there is a huge amount of salt in the ocean.

Speaker 3 If you, you know, you take a household bath and you want to make it as salty as the ocean, you have to put a whole bucket full of salt in it. It's It's a lot of salt.

Speaker 1 The temperature of the ocean is regulated by what?

Speaker 3 Temperature is really important in the ocean because it's a water is a really good way of storing heat.

Speaker 3 And we know this because if we try and, you know, if we heat up some water in a pot on the stove or in a kettle, It takes an enormous amount of energy to do it.

Speaker 3 You have to put a lot of energy in to warm up water by even a little bit. So that means that if you if you've got some water, you can add lots of energy to it.

Speaker 3 You can effectively store the energy there, but you've only heated up the water a little bit. So the ocean is an enormous store of heat energy and it comes from the sun, almost all of it.

Speaker 3 You know, there's tiny contributions from geothermal energy underneath, but they are absolutely minuscule. So the ocean's heated from above.
And

Speaker 3 Because of the way the ocean engine turns, it turns out that the bottom of the ocean is filled from the poles and that at the poles is obviously much colder water so the water that flows that fills up the bottom of the ocean from different places on the world that's cold water so at depth it can be maybe four degrees Celsius while at the surface where it's all being heated by the sunlight it in the tropics it could be 30 degrees Celsius so you get this temperature structure which is part of the anatomy of the ocean and and one of the things the ocean does together with the atmosphere is move heat overall to move heat from the equator towards the poles, helping to drive the weather.

Speaker 3 And of course, that influences what happens on land. So it sounds, you know, the sort of things that a child might know about the ocean are that it's warm or cold, it's salty and it's wet.

Speaker 3 And those are quite fundamental things that determine the character of the ocean and why it's so important for our planet.

Speaker 1 So if I go stand on the beach and look at the water in the ocean

Speaker 1 that I can see, and I come back a week later and do the same thing. Am I looking at the same water? Or is this all new water that's moving around?

Speaker 1 And maybe this was in Japan three weeks ago, and because everything's moving, or is it pretty stationary?

Speaker 3 It's almost certainly moved somewhere. It does depend a bit on where you are.
Yeah, that water's been on a journey, and you don't always know where it's come from.

Speaker 3 These days, actually, we have quite clever computer models which we can sort of run backwards. You know, if we say, if we're here, where do we think that water came from?

Speaker 3 So it will have come from somewhere else and it will have mixed in with water from lots of different places, actually. So as the ocean engine turns, there is a very slow mixing.

Speaker 3 So, you know, over here,

Speaker 3 if I was to dip a toe in the water off the coast of Scotland, for example, I would be getting some water from over on the American side of the Atlantic that's travelled across with the Gulf Stream.

Speaker 3 I would probably be getting some water that's come down from the Arctic.

Speaker 3 There might be some water that has perhaps it got rained onto land and it it went into the baltic and it's come out into the north sea so you know if you were to trace the distant origins all water has probably been everywhere but the interesting thing is that actually some of the water if you're in some places in the world where you get an upwelling from the deep the water that you're seeing might not just have come from another country but it might have been down in the deep ocean for so long that it hasn't seen sunlight for a few hundred years so you're also kind of going back in time you You know, the last time it was connected to the atmosphere, connected to the rest of the planet, could have been a long time ago.

Speaker 3 So the water is also coming to you from different times in time, as well as different places in space.

Speaker 1 What about the ocean do you think people maybe don't know that that would be fascinating because it either affects them, it affects us, or it happens and we don't see it, or just something that's really rather amazing that is under the radar?

Speaker 3 If I had to pick one thing, off the top of my head, you know, I would say how important sound is in the ocean.

Speaker 3 We have this idea that the ocean is kind of silent, partly because of films and partly because of one specific film, The Silent World, that Jacques Cousteau made back in 1956.

Speaker 3 And we don't prioritize sound very much on land. We're visual creatures.
We look for things. We look at things that are a long way away.

Speaker 3 And we kind of know that we usually can't hear things that are a very long way away. But in the ocean, it's exactly the other way around.
Light doesn't travel very far.

Speaker 3 Light is not a long distance messenger. But sound is absolutely critical.

Speaker 3 So I think in terms of things that we don't think about when it comes to the ocean, the importance of sound and the number of different sounds there are.

Speaker 3 So on a coral reef, for example, or the fish and the crustaceans, whatever's down there, they're basically chattering away. They're grunting and squeaking and making all kinds of noises.

Speaker 3 They're talking to each other. They're paying attention to what's around them because they can hear what's around them.

Speaker 3 And it's been shown, a scientist called Steve Simpson at the University of Exeter recently did a study showing that if you've got a dead coral reef, you know, one that's been bleached, and so there's not very much living there, if you play the sounds of a live coral reef in that place, then the larvae of fish that are kind of floating around in the water are more likely to settle there.

Speaker 3 So coral larvae, for example, or small things that need an anchor point, you know, barnacles and so on, they're more likely to settle

Speaker 3 in a place that's got the right sound.

Speaker 1 So but when you see like a hurricane, a big weather system, and the water looks all chopped up and big, huge waves out in the middle of the ocean, ships being thrown around.

Speaker 1 But you get the sense that just below the surface, things are quieter. That if you go down not too far, things kind of remain the same.
Is that true?

Speaker 1 And maybe that's because when you swim in the ocean and you go down a few feet, things seem pretty calm versus the waves on the top of the water is is that true in the ocean

Speaker 3 uh no

Speaker 3 but the reason it's not true i mean it's the waves waves are pretty turbulent and and they're you know that's part of what i study in my academic job but actually it's to do with how we look at the world so we have a we have eyes and senses that can see waves but they can't tell the difference between different types of water, you know, but what we can't see is all the other character of the water.

Speaker 3 So we can't directly detect the amount of living

Speaker 3 things that are in the water and most living things in the auto in the ocean are really really tiny on land we tend to think of you know that kind of life as being trees big things that we can see but in the ocean it's far too small to see and I estimate if you look at the numbers I estimate that just over 60% of all ocean life is too small for us to see with the naked eye.

Speaker 3 So we can't see what's happening with the life for a start.

Speaker 3 And even then, there's small things in the water that we technically could see if we were looking for them, but they tend not to come out during daytime.

Speaker 3 So for example, the biggest migration on Earth happens at dusk in the ocean, where lots and lots of very tiny creatures that have been hiding down in the darkness, as the sun comes...

Speaker 3 goes down they rise up in the water column and come up to the surface to hunt and then when the sun you know when the sun rises again they go they sink back down so we tend not to see those because we tend not to be swimming in in the dark.

Speaker 3 So it's not that there aren't things happening. It's just that our senses are biased.
So we don't see them.

Speaker 3 We're not aware of them in the same way that smaller creatures or creatures that live in the ocean that have to navigate through these conditions would be able to tell.

Speaker 3 So there is, it might be calmer in the sense that it's not like a washing machine. You've not got that kind of turbulence that's smashing everything about.

Speaker 3 But it is definitely the case that there are lots of things happening and there is a huge amount of character, but we can't see it directly.

Speaker 1 Are there any misconceptions, things people say about the ocean that drive you crazy that you know aren't true or anything like that?

Speaker 3 So I've got a right B in my bonnet about this comparison between the moon.

Speaker 3 People sometimes, there's this statement people say that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about deep ocean. It drives me mad.
It's wrong. It's wrong in every possible way.

Speaker 3 And I'll spare you the full rant.

Speaker 3 But the basic reason it's wrong is that there is so much more to know about the ocean it's a much richer environment and the moon is a dead rock that hasn't changed for two billion years and you know it's perfectly nice and I have nothing against the moon but it's a static environment that kind of you know it's not doing anything and it's relatively limited in what's on offer there whereas the ocean is enormously rich it's got all these different types of life it's got all these different types of chemistry it's moving it's changing with the seasons it's changing with the time of day, it's doing things all the time.

Speaker 3 So it's a far richer environment.

Speaker 3 And that statement about comparing the moon to the deep ocean drives me nuts because it implies that the deep ocean is only as interesting as the moon and it's much, much better.

Speaker 3 There are lots of interesting things that we don't know about the ocean. You know, we've never seen giant squid or colossal squid mate, for example.
We don't know where they do it or how they do it.

Speaker 3 There's plenty of, you know, we don't really know what sea turtles do when they're not nesting or feeding because they're off on the beaches. Those are just two biological things.

Speaker 3 There are lots of physical things as well. So just exactly how water is moving along and how it really mixes in the deep ocean.
There's lots of questions there.

Speaker 3 But we also do know a lot about the ocean. We're just not very good at talking about it.
So we absolutely do have a very good picture of this engine and how it works.

Speaker 3 But I do think that we need to get away from this idea that

Speaker 3 the dominant thing we know about the ocean is that it's mysterious. You know, if you want mystery, look into space, it's empty.

Speaker 3 Have your mysteries out there. The ocean is doing so many interesting and beautiful things.

Speaker 3 We need to look at that for what it really is, to appreciate that for what it really is, rather than just sort of dismissing it as a mystery.

Speaker 1 Well, okay, if you say so, but one of the things I find so interesting about the ocean is the mystery of so much that I have no idea what's going on down there. And that somehow fascinates me.

Speaker 1 I've been speaking with Helen Chersky. She's a physicist and oceanographer at University College London's Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Speaker 1 And she's author of a book called The Blue Machine, How the Ocean Works. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes.
Thanks for this little tour through the ocean.

Speaker 1 Appreciate it, Helen.

Speaker 3 No problem. Thanks for inviting me on.

Speaker 1 Men need praise. That's according to Dr.
David Clark, author of a book called The Total Marriage Makeover. He says the more a woman praises her man, the better the relationship will be.

Speaker 1 But he says most women aren't very good at it. The tendency is to focus on all the things men are not doing or are doing poorly.

Speaker 1 And maybe all those criticisms are valid, but they totally demotivate a man.

Speaker 1 So instead of criticizing a man for spending too much time at work, Praise him for the time he does spend with you and the kids.

Speaker 1 When women criticize men for what they're not doing, it breeds more of the same.

Speaker 1 Praise, on the other hand, is such a deep need for men that they will go to great lengths to get more of it, including doing what you want him to do. Try it.
Dr. Clark says it always works.

Speaker 1 And that is something you should know. You know, it's not uncommon for fans of this podcast, and there are many of them,

Speaker 1 They'll ask me, like, what can I do to support your podcast? Well, one great thing you can do is to do business with our sponsors.

Speaker 1 If they're offering something that sounds of interest to you and you do business with them, that helps us. I'm Mike Carruthers.
Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

Speaker 1 Next up is a little song from CarMax about selling a car your way. You wanna sell those wheels? You wanna get a CarMax instant offer? So fast.
Wanna take a sec to think about it. Or like a mom.

Speaker 1 Wanna keep tabs on that instant offer. With OfferWatch.
Wanna have CarMax pick it up from your driveway.

Speaker 1 So, want to drive? CarMax. Pick up not available everywhere.
Restrictions and female play. The Infinite Monkey Cage returns imminently.

Speaker 1 I am Robert Ince, and I've sat next to Brian Cox, who has so much to tell you about what's on the new series. Primarily eels.
And what else?

Speaker 1 It was fascinating, though. The eels.
But we're not just doing eels, are we? We're doing a bit.

Speaker 1 Brain-computer interfaces, timekeeping, fusion, monkey business, cloud, science of the North Pole, and eels. Did I mention the eels?

Speaker 1 Is this ever since you bought that timeshare underneath the Sagasso C?

Speaker 1 Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.