Something You Should Know
Where To Find Answers to Your Toughest Problems & How Weather Works
Thu, 20 Feb 2025
How dangerous can a pair of shoes be? Really dangerous, particularly if they have big heels. We begin this episode looking at the long story of high heel terror plus other interesting facts about women’s shoes. https://reut.rs/3rXNqoR & https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150521120924.htm Most day-to-day decisions you make based on your own judgment. Things such as what career path to take, who to marry, what to do to make yourself happy and other life-changing decisions you make all on your own. However, for all those and other decisions there is solid data that can help. Here to explain this is economist, and former Google data scientist, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, author of the book Don’t Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life (https://amzn.to/3kiHySZ). What’s the difference between rain and a rain shower? What causes dew and frost? Can clouds predict the weather if you know how to read them? These are some of the questions I explore with Tristan Gooley author of The Secret World of Weather (https://amzn.to/3MFQBcv). This discussion will change the way you look at the weather. There are some people who just can’t seem to stop working. They work on weekends, holidays and even while on vacation. That might sound like dedication, but it is actually a problem. Listen as I reveal the dangers of working too much and what you should really be doing with your time off. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/169/5/596/143020 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! FACTOR: Eat smart with Factor! Get 50% off at https://FactorMeals.com/something50off DELL: Anniversary savings await you for a limited time only at https://Dell.com/deals SHOPIFY: Nobody does selling better than Shopify! Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk and upgrade your selling today! HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING right now! CURIOSITY WEEKLY: We love Curiosity Weekly, so listen wherever you get your podcasts! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the dangers of women's shoes?
Hi. I'm one of those people that doesn't really like wearing shoes all that much. Around the house, I pretty much wear socks, and I'll admit that I'm not wearing shoes right now. And I may be on to something because wearing shoes can be dangerous, especially high heels. In fact, in one survey, over half the female population in the U.S. say they have been injured as a result of wearing high heels.
And according to data from the Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, there have actually been injuries associated with wearing high heels that resulted in trips to the emergency room. In fact, between 2002 and 2012, there were 123,355 high heel related injuries seen in the emergency room during that period. That's about 12,000 a year.
and it was people between the ages of 20 and 29 who were most likely to suffer an injury. Now, some historians suggest that high heels have been around for nearly 300 years, and medical professionals have been warning about the dangers of high heels for roughly the same amount of time.
60% of women claim to regret at least one purchase of shoes, most women only wear four pairs of shoes regularly, and 25% of their shoe collection have only been worn once. And that is something you should know. You make a lot of big decisions in your life based solely on your gut. What feels right? Mostly because there really isn't much else to go on.
So you use your own judgment to decide things like who to date, who to marry, what career path to follow, figuring out what makes you happy, how to be a good parent. But what if there was some objective data on these topics that could really help you make better choices? Well, there is, according to economist and former Google data scientist Seth Stevens Davidovitz.
He's author of a book called Don't Trust Your Gut, using data to get what you really want in life. Hi, David. Welcome to Something You Should Know.
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Chapter 2: How can data help you make better life decisions?
Hi, Michael Carruthers. Thank you for having me.
So I really like this idea, this idea of like using data and algorithms to make better choices, which we generally don't do. So explain how you came up with this idea.
But one of the motivations was that I'm a huge baseball fan and any baseball fan knows the story of baseball the last 25, 30 years, which is the explosion of analytics and data analysis to make decisions. So baseball has just totally been transformed by data analytics and
and i'm a data scientist so i've worked at google as a data scientist you know every decision is based on data but it kind of occurred to me that certainly in my personal life uh like i don't really make decisions based on much data i kind of just like do what i think seems about right trust my gut basically and it occurred to me that you know maybe it'll be interesting to explore some of these bigger areas of life so you know
dating, picking a romantic partner, career success, happiness, parenting. What would data tell you about these topics? Kind of a money ball for your life approach to the biggest questions that we face. And also, I knew because I'm kind of in the field of data analytics that there's been an explosion of really credible research in these big areas.
To which some might say, well, maybe some of these big questions are not better served by data. Maybe the old-fashioned way of trusting your gut and doing it the way grandma did it is better. So as you look at the whole thing, when the dust settles, do you come away saying data's a better way, or it's too individual, or data's not a better way?
I pretty strongly believe data is a better way.
Somehow that doesn't surprise me.
I kind of came into that with that idea because it's been proven in like every area it's been tested. They've tested judges if they have to decide whether someone on trial is going to commit another crime or should they or is it safe to let him be out, that algorithms are better than judges at doing that.
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Chapter 3: What does the data say about achieving wealth?
Yeah, they are very low. It's not as crazy as you might sometimes think trying to be a celebrity because there are ways you can dramatically increase your odds. The data also shows. And there have been actually studies of artists and what it takes to be a successful artist.
And usually what separates them is not necessarily the art they've created, that the art is so much better than everybody else's, but they were just much more aggressive hustlers.
So, for example, there have been studies of hundreds of thousands of painters, and they found that the painters who made it traveled widely to every possible gallery, different regions of the country, different countries. Any gallery that would take them, they showed their work there, and eventually they kind of stumble on a big break.
And the painters who didn't make it, they just kind of presented their work in the same place over and over again, hoping that someone would find them, and nobody actually did.
Well, isn't that true of any business? The people who, no matter what business, the few that are the real high achievers are the hustlers.
Yeah, I think you can definitely take the lesson from artists who made it. It depends a little on the field. So the more talent, the more you're judged objectively based on your talent, the less hustling is going to matter. So athletes, for example, sometimes it matters less how much you hustle because it's much easier to see how good you are. So, you know, a lot of the NBA stars are
They didn't even play basketball when they were kids. They were just, you know, doing something else. And then they turned out to be seven feet tall and everyone's like, here, here, play basketball, dunk it. And they ended up being among the greatest basketball players of all time. So the world kind of just found them and discovered them and coached them and did everything for them.
Many fields are more like art than like athletics, where it's much harder to judge who's got the most talent or produce the best work. And in that case, hustling is kind of the answer. And you can take the lessons from the data of artists and apply it in your own life. And don't just stay in the same place, hoping that the world's going to find you. Travel widely to get your big breaks.
So let's talk about happiness, because I think people have a sense of what happiness is and where it comes from. What does the data say?
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Chapter 4: How does data change our understanding of happiness?
They try to date people similar to themselves, even on silly dimensions. They try to date someone with their same initials. It's been shown that you're 11.3% more likely to match with someone if they share your initials. For some reason, people think this is attractive to people. And when you actually look at the data and what makes people happy in romantic relationships,
These things that people are drawn to tend not to correlate with long-term happiness. People who end up with beautiful partners really don't report that they're happier. People end up with taller men or men in desired occupations, or even people with lots of similarity to themselves don't report greater happiness.
If there's anything that leads to happiness, it tends to be the psychological traits in a partner. a partner having a growth mindset, being conscientious, satisfied with life, happy. This is from the largest study of romantic partners, more than 11,000 couples.
What in all the data that you looked at, what, if we haven't talked about it, surprised you the most or that you found the most interesting?
Also dating, there's this Christian Rudder studied hundreds of thousands of couples on OkCupid, an online dating site. And he found that the most successful daters tend to be beautiful people. Think of Brad Pitt or Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo DiCaprio. Okay, yeah, we get it. Everybody wants to date them. They're beautiful, whatever. But then he found other people
who did really well, these are people who had extreme looks. So think of like heterosexual woman who shaved their heads or people who dye their hair blue or wear wacky glasses. And what happens with these unconventional daters is they polarize people. So some people think they're really, really unattractive, but some people think they're really attractive.
And in dating, that's kind of all that matters. So the data suggests that you can get 70% more matches. If you're not conventionally beautiful, you get 70% more matches by being an extreme version of yourself and kind of just appealing to a niche market who will be really into you. And yes, some people will think you're disgusting or hideous. Who cares about them?
A small group will really like you. So that really surprised me.
I know you found some surprising data on parenting that I think any parent would be interested in hearing about what affects how their kids turn out.
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Chapter 5: Can data guide us in finding love?
Yeah. Well, not only have I never noticed that, but as you say, you know, it's counterintuitive to think that under a tree would be warmer. You would think that, that out in the sun you would be warmer and under the tree it would be colder, but, but the reverse is true. And yeah, these are things like you would never, well, how did I not notice that?
Yeah, and so much of my work is obvious in hindsight, but people can go their whole lives and not notice it. So, I mean, my work is rooted in natural navigation, finding our way just using nature's signs. And there are over 20 ways we can navigate using a tree, but I'm fairly confident that, you know, fewer than one in a hundred people will know more than one of those 20. So,
But once you explain that trees are bigger on the southern side and that the angles of branches are different, people go out there and they see it. And once you see these things and experience these things, you can't unknow that, if you know what I mean. Every time it's there, it sort of announces itself to you. And that's what I mean is you go like, wow, it's really not, it's not deeply hidden.
We don't have to peel back 10 layers to find this stuff. It is in front of us, you know, and I mean, I often say to people when they don't understand the strange line of work I'm in, and I don't presume people should understand it. It is quite odd what I do. But I say to them, pick anything that you've seen outdoors today, literally anything. And you can do this now, Mike, if you want.
And I will find a clue in it.
So tell me some of the ways that trees help. You said that the southern side of a tree is bigger. What do you mean?
Yeah, so one of the cornerstones of natural navigation is that the sun is due south in the middle of the day. For everyone north of the tropics, which is almost all of the USA, all of Europe and lots of other places as well, the sun reaches its highest point when it's due south in the middle of the day, halfway between sunrise and sunset. And that's when it gives us most of its light and energy.
And of course, the trees need this light. It's their breakfast, lunch and dinner. So it'd actually be quite odd if trees were symmetrical, bearing in mind You know, light is what's feeding them. So what they tend to do is they respond to these stimuli like light, and they actually just grow more on their southern side.
So if you look at a tree from all directions, you walk around one, you'll very quickly realize that there's no such thing as a symmetrical tree. And on average, there's just more tree. There are bigger branches and more branches and more leaves on the southern side. I never knew that.
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Chapter 6: What role does luck play in success?
They are saying that there is convection, there is warm air rising in that particular spot
for me as a natural navigator there's some really fun things you can do with them in terms of making a map so they form over islands they form over dark woodland and they form over towns because each of those landscapes warms up more quickly than the land around them so whether it's a pacific navigator in the middle of the ocean looking for an island they'll be looking for cumulus clouds or if you're walking or driving across a wild area looking for a town
there's a very good chance that if it's, if it's a blue sky day, there'll be cumulus clouds over the town, but not anywhere surrounding it equally over dark woodland, the same thing. And then the third, the third family are the high wispy ones. I forget what the, what you, what you call it in the States. We call it candy floss, that kind of sugary candy stuff that we get at fairs here.
Do you know the stuff I mean? Cotton candy. Cotton candy. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. I forget. I forgot the term, but it's, It looks very wispy. It's very high, this cloud. The Latin is cirrus. Sometimes people think it looks like feathers, and it does have lots of different forms. And that can be used for longer term forecasting.
So if you've had a period of sunny settled weather, one of the early signs that things are about to get worse is this wispy cotton candy, feathery high clouds is one of the earlier signs that because it's so high, It's the leading edge of a warm front system coming through, which can lead to a couple of days of bad weather.
So this might be fun, maybe. Let's take a walk down an imaginary street or imaginary path and tell me some of the things that you would notice that tell you where you are or where you're going or help you navigate.
As I look out of the cabin window that I'm in at the moment, I'll just pick a couple of things I'm seeing there.
leaves for example so leaves are smaller on the south side of a tree and bigger on the the north side of a tree uh and the and the way their angle changes as well so they tend to be they tend to point more down towards the ground on the south side and they tend to be closer to horizontal on the north side and it's not you know the tree or the leaves don't care about north south east west these are these are just obviously organic responses to to what's going on out there if um
And just looking at the ground, I can actually see a puddle. We've had a bit of rain today and puddles can form anywhere, but the way they dry is quite specific. So they're obviously going to dry more quickly in the sun and more slowly in the shade. And if you're walking along a track or a road, the south facing side is actually the north side.
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Chapter 7: Are there myths about success that data debunks?
If the following night, those clouds have cleared away and you've got clear skies, the land gets very, very cold overnight, the moisture in the air, and there is always moisture in the air, even over the hottest deserts in the world, there's some moisture in the air. There's no such thing as
perfectly dry air on planet Earth, then that moisture comes into contact with the cold ground, it condenses and forms dew, and if it's cold enough, it will form frost. So frost is just frozen dew? Yeah, there are different types of frost, but the one most of us are familiar with, that's the exact process. It's dew forming at a cold enough temperature that it freezes on contact.
And one of the fun things we can do is, both dew and frost, is just notice how it disappears when you walk under any form of shelter. So whether it's a jutting bit of a roof or a tree or anything else that stops heat escaping. And you can probably start to sense how the pieces sort of come together here. We have a sun pocket we're warmer in because the heat can't escape vertically upwards.
But the flip side of that is if the heat can't escape vertically upwards, that bit of ground will stay warm overnight and you won't get dew or frost there. And I think, again, everybody's had that experience where you go out and you see a frosty landscape.
But if you just pause for two seconds, you go, I'm used to kind of seeing it, but I've never actually thought, why is it more frosty there than there? And why is there no frost there?
So what's one more way that you can navigate in the world through looking at nature?
The other sort of real cornerstone is prevailing wind direction. So in most of the temperate parts of the world, it's a little bit different in the tropics, but in you know, most of the US and Europe, we find that the wind blows from one direction more often than any other. And that leaves footprints absolutely everywhere. So the tops of trees will reflect that direction.
So you can't predict what the wind's going to do from the prevailing wind direction. So the wind can blow from the north, south, east or west on any day of the year. But over the course of a year, there are patterns and they're fairly dependable. So if it In my part of the world, the wind blows from the southwest more than any other direction.
And that means I can look to the tops of trees and quite a few other places just to see that footprint. You just see the trees bent over from southwest to northeast. And wherever you are in the world, you just tune into what your local prevailing wind is.
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