Ever notice how restaurant kitchens have huge exhaust fans over the stove? They have to have them. It’s the law. You have an exhaust fan over your stove too. Listen as I begin this episode by explaining why you need to use it more often – a lot more often. https://polk.ces.ncsu.edu/2023/04/how-and-why-to-use-your-kitchen-exhaust-fan/
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” “Drinking wine is good for your heart.” “you should really cut back on red meat.” These are examples of some popular and sincere beliefs about food - but are they really true? We will examine these and other strongly held beliefs about the foods we eat with cardiologist Dr. Christopher Labos. He is the co-host of a podcast called, The Body of Evidence (https://www.bodyofevidence.ca/) and he’s the author of the book Does Coffee Cause Cancer?: And 8 More Myths about the Food We Eat https://amzn.to/3sjzetM
Imagine our world without the common nail or the wheel or springs. These humble human inventions have had profound impacts on the development of the modern world. Joining to explain what those profound changes are and where these inventions originated is Roma Agrawal. Roma is a structural engineer who has designed bridges and skyscrapers and she is the author of a book called Nuts and Bolts: Seven Small Inventions That Changed the World in a Big Way (https://amzn.to/3Sr5cyF).
If you ever suspect someone is telling you a tall tale or lying about something that happened, there is an interesting clue to look for in the way they tell the story, according to people who spot liars for a living. Listen and I’ll tell you what to look for. Source: https://lifehacker.com/true-or-false-pay-attention-to-a-storys-structure-and-5959543
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Food safety is butchers that, fortunately, a cop roast party trays, gourmet, cookies and cakes.
Some things that I love the most like stormy, candy and fresh
the promise of fresh produce, they make had holiday again
raising a toast
who'd cities help is
all that it seems to me
me why nobody does food or the holidays like food safety.
today on something you should know, there's something right above your stove. I want you to pay attention to that.
There are a lot of myths about food and drinks, and today we're going to bust a few people will say in a fork. It's the other way to me. This idea of port being white meat is actually a marketing slogan. It has nothing to do with size. Have you ever heard of the expression? Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That's a marketing slogan. It actually has no basis in science whatsoever, also an interesting way to tell if someone is lying and simple inventions that changed the world like the mail did. You know, nails were once very valuable in the sixteenth and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, americans were actually burning their houses down if they didn't leave that house and go somewhere else, because they would collect up the nails now. Take those nails to the in text. Location, all this today on something you should know.
If you ve been around long enough, you know that online shopping has come a long way and
leading the way is shopify shop.
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something you should now fascinating, enter the world's top experts and practical advice. You can use your life today, something you should now make her rather is welcome to another episode of something you should know glad to have you here, there's a guy
enjoy, even if you're, not a big time, fancy cooked when you do
or do anything on the stove, do you turn the exhaust fan over the stove on each time? Probably not, but you should use ie just that.
active cooking, produces many unwanted air pollutants that can actually be dangerous to your health overtime. Fine print
kill it matter and gases, things like nitrogen.
oxide in formaldehyde can contaminate
the air as a result of cooking. That's why restaurants
required to purchase large exe
save exhaust systems meant to protect employees from cooking related air pollutants and accidental cooking fires
for private homes. Private kitchens. There are no building codes requiring that which mean some people may not even have a kitchen exhaust system. But if you do
all the science says. It is a good idea to get into the habit of use
fan every time you cook and then leave it on for a while after you're done that will draw out those pollutants.
That is something you should know,
the
any time you go to a party or an event, and the topic turns to food and diet, and health is somewhat
often says something that makes us
up in wonder I've heard people say things like: oh, I don't drink coffee, you know it causes cancer or you know breakfast is the most important meal of the day or I drink
red wine, because it's good for your heart and I wonder well really- maybe I don't know- sometimes there might be a grain of truth to that or maybe it is true or maybe it's not true.
So here too bust a few myths and to confirm a few truths is cardiologists. Doktor, Christopher Laos. He co host a pod cast called the body of evidence and he's author of a book called. Does coffee cause cancer and ate more myths about the food we eat? I doktor well
do something you should know. Oh thank you for having first, let me ask you about salt, because we hear salt,
is bad for you. We should cut back. We should be eating less salt, so
Why assault so bad for you, when we talk about salt would actually talking about his sodium
right- and you are right- it is these sodium that is problematic are kidneys, have a very, very specific mechanism, which is they hold on to all the sodium that we eat and the more sodium that your kidneys hold onto the
Are your blood pressure gets the more water you hold on to so people who have issues with retaining water with legs swelling one of the things we tell them medically is cut salt out of your diet, cut sodium out of your mind,
as much as possible and showing your young and healthy. You might be able to get away with it
When you are young, you know your body can metabolize cardboard.
and you know nothing you do is really gonna have. This is really going to have an effect on, but, as we start to get older, we also tend to become more and more salt sense that have been so particularly older. Individuals
the more salt feed in their diet, the more their blood pressure tends to go up, the more they retain water and the more they start to get into cardiovascular problems as a result of it.
and I always have the sense that chest cutter
Back on the salt that I sprinkle at the table on my food isn't
with a whole lot because I hear that there is so much salt
how much sodium already in so many food,
in so many processed foods. So-
air. Where is the problem I mean, if you, if you want to cut back on, saw how do you do it? The greatest contribution of sodium to our diet, especially here in north america, is the salt that comes from restaurants of you're eating out
somebody else's, making your food for you. If you are ordering it from another location that food is very high and salt very high in fat, in
Generally speaking, a lot more unhealthy than the food that you're gonna make for yourself at home. Somebody who eats at home and cooks for themselves is
going to invariably be healthier than somebody who goes out and eat at eats at restaurants, because you are going to look out for yourself, whereas the person making you the food just wants the food to taste, good they're, not overly concerned about your long term, health and cardiovascular status,
So, red meat- let's talk about that because it that's another thing where it seems to go back and forth in their different diets. You know high protein diet,
that that rely on red meat and other diets that are vegetarian and so were away
the dust all settles. Where are we with that? This is a fascinating
big because when you really look at in our various groups that have started tried to analyze the data, you have different groups that can look at the same data and come to different conclusions by emphasising different aspects of the data.
questions of certainty. If you are somebody who says, I want
it'd be you know: double blind, randomized controlled trials where we take one group and give them red meat, and we take another group and we give them in a meat substitute that looks identical and tastes identical to me, but isn't actually meat. Then I want to follow these people for thirty years to see if they're less likely to get cancer in middle age. Those types of studies don't exist because it's practically impossible to do something like that. It's very hard to do randomized studies in
nutrition research because you can't force people to eat a particular way. After about a few weeks, people are better revert back to what their normal diet would otherwise be so if you're somewhere,
He goes and says I want there to be randomize controlled, that there isn't very much of that, and so, if that's your camp, you're gonna look
The data and say I am unconvinced by the evidence we should still be beating red meat and make no change.
If you are somebody who's willing to look at what we refer to as observational data, were you compare different people in different countries, some of whom eat a lot of red meat in some of folk we'd? Less you see a general association that the groups and the people who eat less red meat are healthier overall, particularly with the decreased risk of colorectal cancer, where the strongest association exists. So it's a question of what evidence are you going to use
for your decision. How much uncertainty? Are you willing to tolerate and are you willing to change your behaviour? The fundamental risk assessment, if you get into it, is that if Europe, if you're an average risk individual, if you have no family history of colorectal cancer, your lifetime risk of getting colon cancer is about five percent. And if your somebody who regularly eats meet like every day,
that risk may go up to about six percent. So you can look at that number and say you know a five to six percent increase that isn't enough for me to change my behavior, then that's fine you're, just going to
have to absorb and tolerate that increased risk of colorectal cancer. But if you're somebody who says low hole,
I can. I don't want to be at higher risk for no reason. I'm going to cut back and I'm going to substitute out some of the red meat and replace it with fish and vegetables and other sources of protein. You know that's a pretty good choice too, so that it becomes almost have
www based decision it. I've always wondered why people say red meat, because we, mostly that means beef chicken. His white meat beef, is red meat
but why why the colors? From the scientific standpoint your people would say in a pork, it's the other white meat. Pork is not considered white meat. Anything that walks on the ground and has four legs in a mammal is red. Need that this idea of pork being white meat is actually a marketing slogan. It has nothing to do with signs a lot of the things that people say and repeat often they think they are scientific terms. They are in fact marketing slogans which just gives you an idea of how much marketing shapes the way. We think and, and talk about food, have you ever heard of the expression breakfast of the most important meal of they owe all the time that some working slogan it actually has no basis in signs whatsoever is just something that the catalogues brothers enough kellogg cereal. They started repeating to to get people to buy more breakfast cereal. It were the use of yeah it work. They
bacon. We we we today associate bacon as a breakfast food, whereas you know as a century ago, it was more of a dinner food. It was something you ate, as you know, as a meal, as you know, your meat plate and I was largely a marketing campaign. They wanted to get a marketing company worked for the industry that sold for companies that there would sell bacon they sort of started a marketing campaign to get people to think of bacon as a breakfast food and- and it worked now, you can make the argument that they didn't have to work that hard, because people like the taste of bacon this and fine but
So much of of how we think of food is really has really been shaped by cultural influence is rather than by actual scientific fact.
You realize that you sort of
basic well, there are no rules like I don't have to do these things just because I can change, and once you accept the principle that you can change making these changes becomes a lot
is your. It has certainly become.
Pretty well accepted that
a little red wine is good for you. It's not just not bad for you, it's actually good for you. It does something positive, true or not know.
Not true at all. I mean, though, that the french paradox the idea that red wine is good for your heart. I mean that is. That is a myth that just will not die. Despite
agnes, there's been a lot of research in all against it, especially in recent years,
For people who don't know where this comes from again: yes, there,
a little bit of a science influence, but the idea of the french paradox really entered the publican,
imagination as a result of of morley safer, doing a story on sixty minutes where he was talking about. This name is talking about research,
regarding red wine in your white as friends have less heart disease than the uk or the? U s, and he said anything is actual line- was
Maybe the answer lies in this inviting glass of red wine and after that story aired on sixty minutes.
Red wine sales in the? U s at least shot up, and that ideas stayed with us every day.
The reality is once you start to actually pick apart. What the red wine, with the french paradoxes about you start to see some flaws into a first of all. If you were to actually watch this.
The minutes story. Now a lot of the thing
they saying and are very very dated, but this aid-
of red. Wine has really really stuck around in its largely its explain
bull using a concept called reverse causation and or the sick quitter effect, and it basically goes something like this very few p.
bull in society. North american society drink zero, alcohol, most people drink some. There are people who drinks zero for religious reasons and cultural reasons, armies, but
if you were to go and look at all the people who drink no alcohol, you would find something very, very interesting. There is a big difference between people who never drank and people who used to drink and then quit, and so there is a difference between never drinkers and former drinkers.
And the people who are former drinkers, usually quit for a reason, usually
because they got sick. They develop liver problems, they develop the heart condition. They had high blood pressure.
And the general recommendation is you know alcohol increases your blood pressure. If you have high blood pressure cut back on the alcohol, you will consume less sugar. You will lose weight. Your blood pressure will go down. A lot of good stuff will happen to you so a lot
The people who, in these studies were being captured as people who consumed zero alcohol were not never drinkers. They were former drinkers who quit because they already at heart disease and had made those people look as if they were higher risk and that's what created this? U shape the soul
creation. So there are. There are ways to explain away the french paradox and when you actually do jeanette
studies and more complicated forms of analyses. You see that no, it is a pretty little linear association, which is
the more and more you drink, the worse off, you're gonna, be we
Our busting, some myths about common foods that we eat in my guess is cardiologists doktor, christopher Laos and the name of his book is: does coffee cause cancer and ate more myths about the food we eat?
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ales good apprise, picks, dot, com, slash s, why s, K and use code s why s k for a first deposit match up to a hundred dollars. This episode is batsy by medical history. Imagine if your car,
could turn into port side seats at anything.
If you're living room could transform into renaissance vanish from assassins greed nexus. If your hallway could be along fair way and golf plus. Imagine if your breakfast, nor could we give it back
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see chalciope guidance, gardens online account for ten plus their naps games and experiences may be suitable for a more mature audience. So Christopher talk about eggs,
because it seems that has gone back and forth in eggs are good for you than them. They are not good for you that in fact their bad for you and it,
to do with the cholesterol so clear that up right, if you go back to the nineteen
these? Ninety nine, these you had these increasing rates of cardiovascular,
these, which was due to a number of factors, but you had increasing rates of cardiovascular disease and there were
very many good medications to do anything about it. I'm gonna ask you a question.
now, do you know when we started giving people with heart disease aspirin
Nineteen eighty eight, which is pretty red
If you think about it, I mean for a lot of human history. We basically had nothing to treat heart disease as opposed you know, apart from you, know, really hoping the patient got better on their own, so you know you.
These increasing rates of heart disease, the really weren't very good medications to treat high blood pressure or collapse drowning. You had
diabetes medications, but nowhere near as good as the stuff we have now.
So there was really this this searching to be like whoa. What can we do and
lot of it, was well, let's start cutting fat out of our food, because this was very much. The era of the you know for a gone leaden for for breakfast generations is ok. We gotta do something about the fact that Diana fatter, a diet and get her class brought out law
story short what we have seen now, forty years after the fact is that for most p,
for a lot of their cholesterol is genetically mediated and that if you want a lower someone's cut cluster, ah, which you do, if you want to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, the best way to do that is with medications that can actually inhibit the enzymes in your liver that are going to manufacture club.
while internally diet matters a bit may be, it accounts for ten to fifteen percent of your cholesterol. But if you have heart disease, if you had a heart attack,
drug. Undeniably, you are less likely to have a second event. If I can get you
less draw down to near zero levels, but you can't accomplish that without medication is so that's where the medical community has really shifted their focus. To be it's, not the cholesterol in your died. So much as it is the
last rolling your blood, and so what's the recommendation? Should you cut back on it?
are they good for you or they bad for you, the bullet, here's the thing! No,
food is really good for you, and no food is really bad for you right. If I can get. If we back up to two salt sodium is not bad for you, you
sodium. If you had no sodium, you would die yourselves would stop working. It is a critical element,
had you rule for the normal functioning of the human body. Our problem always becomes one
Excess? You need sugar without sugar, you go into a coma, your brain dies, but too much of and you get diabetes
And that's the real issue here is
we live in a society of access.
But I think it's just human nature. People would like somebody
like you to say, for the average
three eggs a week is about tops or a dozen eggs or just
to have some sort of guideline, rather than while no food is good for you. No food is bad.
because that doesn't does doesn't help.
I get what you're saying and it's funny, because when I started doing science communication for the public, one of the first radio interviews ever ever gave was with a local host here in montreal and during the commercial break he started. Joking with me said you know, you should really read a diet book and I said yeah, but you know palmer died. Books is that people write them and then six months later, they're out of date,
because the researchers changing said that doesn't matter you just want a neck. You running, you won the next year s wine arrive, I'm not
tell you what to do, because nobody can tell you what to do because there
he's no right or wrong answer, and I think
You learn that once you see why that's the case, it's actually a little bit. Freeing because you don't have to worry about, is looking good
for you is tomato bad for you. Should I eat chaos treat this you can eat.
Whenever you want, you just probably eaten
less of it and do most them
cooking your home. If I'd one piece of advice for people honestly, if you want to be healthier, do most of your cooking at home and you will guarantee
he'd be healthier as a result, because the food that is pre prepared, that is pre processed by somebody else, whether it's a company or a kitchen at a restaurant, is not going to be as healthy. Is the food
you make for yourself talk a bit about the science of supplements, young people. I think so
Take vitamin c for a cold to prevent a cold or treated called people. Take
to vitamins or or lots of vitamins, because they think it keeps them healthy, but talk about the science there,
Very little reason why you should take any environment.
Supplement. Unless you have a specific deficiency, so just going out and taking a multivitamin airmail
I was young. I used to take a flintstones chewable vitamin everyday. My parents gave me what, if it did, did nothing
and there is so much research on this now, if you would think that vitamin c is gonna through the common cold, it actually want.
In vitamin d again. This was heralded as the thing that was going to cure both heart disease and cancer and everything else under the sun. In only was it was going to be the cure for covered at some point. Do
the problem is: is that when you actually test these things in objective manners, they don't work when you take somebody who has heart disease and give them vitamin d versus a placebo, no difference if you take people with cancer, give them vitamin d versus a placebo, no
France is so a lot of this stuff is low,
largely being driven
I initial enthusiasm that is not borne itself out over the people who are out there taking supplements and buying stuff over the counter. You probably don't need it. I didn't talk about this in the book, but omega threes is something I see a lot of my clinical
activists. People cannot mean billy, I'm a meaning. I'm buying these omega three supplements you're. Really, that does not. Even if your heart disease, there's no reason for
and in all in this day and age, when money is tight, because everybody's feeling, the pinch of inflation not having to spend twenty two,
dollars per month and supplements that don't work makes a huge difference, and that is the harm of these things. You you'll get people say well, what's the hurry,
There's no down settlement. Will there is a downside, they cost money, and you know I don't have money to burn and all but the rest of you, but I would rather not,
least my money on stuff that doesn't actually work
While the reason I imagine that your parents gave you a flintstone vitamin, and I I I had you know a one day, vitamin when I was a kid at you hear the word
insurance, it's it's insurance in case you're, not eating those vitamins in your food. This I'll make sure you you get what you're supposed to get
and even if you are eating those nutrients in your food, no harm done well. Here's the thing
no child in north amerika is going to get rickets unless they happen.
they are truly malnourished? But then this
pollution tamil nourishment does not give children vita minutes, give them proper food so that they are well fed on a daily basis.
You will not gain anything.
once you are no longer deficient in vitamin c vitamin d. If you work
I believe, vitamin c deficient. You are going to get scurvy and unless you're an eighteenth century british sailor you're not going to get scurvy, and you know if, if you are deficient in certain b, vitamins you'll get things like beriberi and
pellagra and if you don't know what those diseases are, is because you ve never seen a case because they just don't exist anymore. So
This idea of all, if a little bit
good, more must be better, doesn't actually hold true because
your body has all the vitamins that it needs. It just excludes the rest of them in your urine, and so the
joke is when you're buying vitamins what you're doing is you're buying expensive urine. That is largely true. Why think, there's a
desire. I think people really want to know the truth about noon.
written and diet and food, and all that because I mean it affects us all, it affects us in very important ways.
There are a lot of myths and things that get passed around a lot of it. Just because that's what people group,
believing. So I think it's really important to hear the truth. I've been
king with cardiologist doktor, Christopher Laos. He is the co host of the podcast, the body of evidence and he's
author of a book called does coffee cause cancer and ate more myths about the food we eat and there is a link to the pod cast an eye to the book in the show notes. I appreciate you come on Thanks doctor, you take care. Thank you, sir.
This episode is brought to you by male chin and we're here to talk about class tumors.
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we are in your morning is a whole lot better
still the kids runnin around and there's never enough time to get them and you ready and where did that come from whatever there's bacon smoke for twelve hours with
real woodchips and hand jump from the finest cut, so you know it takes great family will love it. Keep it ask her by
ask him of bacon. Today, wherever is sold,
have you ever
stopped and wondered. I ask this because I've done this
You ever stopped and wondered how different our lives and our world would be if simple things that we take for granted
the common nail string, the wheel, those
things as simple as they are have change the course of the world. Well,
someone with a similar curiosity, has taken a look at several of these seemingly small inventions. To see where
they came from and just how much they did change the world. Roma
aggro wall is a structural engineer who has design bridges and skyscrapers and all kinds of things she's. The author,
of a book called nuts and bolts
seven small inventions that change the world in a big way roma. Well,
is something you should know thanks. So much valued me MIKE. So if we can, let's start with the nail, because
what what could be simpler than a nail? We don't look at one with any great sense of wonder, but
but imagine life without nails. If I open up the drawer
it's next to me on my desk. There are lots of nails, just kind of rolling around at the bottom, and I might pick one out and I might wacky it and it bends, and I don't really care and but once upon a time
Nails were extraordinarily precious pieces of engineering and in others
story of the nail really begins with the story of metal. So it was
when our ancestors started mining and working metal to create intricate objects that they started, the thing hang on a second: we can actually fashion this metal into something that has a sharp point and maybe that can help us join stuff together. Now the problem was that the early metals that we
afterwards, which were gold and silver orbit to soft, and it was only really when bronze and copper became a thing. That peoples,
I said ok now we can create this hard enough thing. That would allow us to put different objects together and we think everybody
of evidence that the ancient egyptians were using nails and even rivets, which is a cousin of the now about between four and six
thousand years ago, so that that some of the very earliest archaeological evidence that we have of the net itself
and is the nail today pretty much been the nail for a long long time ever. Have there been like big huge, improve
it's too it or nails and ale,
males are now, and I love this question, because that,
is mostly yes, it's the same and
as there are a few little subtle differences, perhaps that may come in, but the phone
sure of a nail is to have in a shop point that allows you
to whack it into a different material, usually wood and then
is friction the friction force between its own body and then the body of say the wood that it's been backed into and that friction basically ties and binds the two things together and in that principle, that now has not changed
thousands of years. In the ways that has changed is the way we make it the materials we use and, of course, the economic impact.
visions of buying a now and the idea that once upon a time say in the sixteenth and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, that americans were actually burning, their houses.
and if they were going to leave that house and go somewhere else, because they would collect up the nails that held that old house together
take your nails to then text. Location to to build up
reason was that britain was
using nails. Britain was
colonise or of america at the time, and they said where not sending these precious commodities across
on to the americans, and so americans kind of have to make do with the nails are already existed, but
we see that they wouldn't be that hard to make even back, then they did the other. You know
like you, say, nails and ellomenus. Is this little piece of metal and need minute be made up, make em fast, but you could make em that
trick here is with the materials that we used. We had a good quality, I'm good quality steel were difficult to come by, and then you have to put in a lot of hard labor to actually create the
and so there are all these stories of how nails have been created, pre industrialization. There
the story of the women and the chill-
when in the middle of england, in this sixteen seventeen nineteen centuries again
where you know women use to gain these
tools to make nails and then men would aspire to marry a nailing wench as they call them, because that meant that they would get a little bit of income on the side.
There is also the story of Thomas jefferson, of course, founding father of the. U s and
his plantation and want to cello, had become fallow and wasn't producing much crops and much income for his family. So he actually had four hundred
and slaved men and boys manufacturing between eight and ten
thousand nails a day in this foundry that he created just seven years before he became president. So there's the such interesting history. So let's talk about string because
I am actually surprise that that's on your list of seven thing
seven inventions, the change the world cause- I don't think of string- is all that important
I'm surprised it's on the list to see no one I was breaking down.
all of these objects in my head thinking, you know what are the core little elements that allow us to create complex things
am string was not one that I was expecting to london, but we figure this out. Our ancestors figure this out a long time ago. They used vines, they used natural fibres and
One it wasn't. Even human set invented the first kind of manufactured string. It was actually the neanderthals and we found evidence of this in a cave in france
Only two or three years ago, like while I was writing about string those like oh here's, a new discovery which was fantastic sets, you know potentially forty to fifty thousand year old technology and the beauty of the string that the neanderthals invented was that they took these natural fibers from a coniferous bach. They twisted them together and then they took three of these strands and then twisted them together. Again
Now I took up knitting and crochet, and the yonder I use basically has the same construction as this forty to fifty thousand year old string and that kind of bloom
mind. It seems as if a lot of string today that you, you know by the hardware store, is not made from anything in nature and same with rope that that we ve moved beyond natural.
Cereal to make stronger or better string,
though nylon being the first one that was invented and about the nineteen thirties and then
Also, the incredible technology, that's known as kevlar, which was invented by Stephanie Kuala. Can she was a chemist working in the united states. She was a polish immigrant,
and she almost made this fibre by mistake, she was trying to create a fiber that could strengthen the ties of racing cause.
But that was much lighter than the steel wires or the metal. Why is that? They were using sofa and she came up with this in artificial
fiber. It's it's a string of polymers, you know like plastic, and this
stuff is so strong that it's used in bulletproof, vests and again the idea that street
which again is it seems really fraudulent, delicate, but it can stop a bullet in its tracks and I think that's a really incredible piece of engineering,
you talk about the importance of the lens and he,
everybody
faces with lenses, we wear glasses, there's lenses in microscopes and telescopes him in his lenses everywhere. I lend speaking at carved
of glass or any other transparent materials or something that lets light through and that
ben. Settle manipulates. It in some way said the ability to manipulate light allowed us to see things that we could never have seen
for you know we, it allowed us to discover bacteria and algae and in a microscopic stuff, and it also allowed us to discover
the solar system and galaxies and the milky way and extraordinarily large things
and I one of my favorite stories in the research I did was of a physicist called it an het thumb who was practicing science in about two thousand eighty and seven hundred
as before newton did any of his seminal work, even though her come had written a book on optics, and he was the first person to understand how light really worked. How site worked the fact that I put it
has a lens inside it and he recorded all this incredible work. Yes, seven hundred years before newton did,
so the wheel- I guess you have to come in the We'Ll- have to be a mere list, because imagine life
without the wheel, and I was surprised to read that, according to your
Expert engineers, opinion fred, flintstones car wheel would,
ever work, but because I always thought that with such a great wheel- and I mean it
it looks like a great will, and it's taken me many many years of deep study.
And engineering qualifications, to ascertain that it wouldn't work. My favorite fact about the wheel is, is that it wasn't invented for transport, a couple that
with the phrase we shouldn't reinvent the wheel or dont reinvent the wheel. I say to people that that phrase really upsets me.
because if we hadn't been reinventing the wheel throughout our history, we wouldn't have any vehicles that could run on a wheel in actual because in fact it was invented for poetry in ancient mesopotamia
I really kind of push this idea that we should be reinventing the wheel. I talk about the pot his wheel, going to a solid caught we'll going to a much lighter, spoke to wheel from the spoked. Will we go to the wire wheel, which is familiar to us on a bicycle,
those, and then you could even take the a little bit father and think about all the gears that are at the heart of our machines and even to gyroscopes, which are based
spinning wheels that have more
and turn, and you can do really cool things with such as navigate the international space day.
So when you say that the wheel was not invented for transport. How we're things transported, pre wheel was adjust, exist,
Was there any other device, or was it just? Let's all lift and care
it over there, so that there was a
of lifting and unfortunately, animal friends had to do a lot of that lifting so we have. European
animals and so on. What the wheeler
to do was to navigate. You know a whole range of terrain and by creating carts and wagons we could then harness animals onto that, and it was, I guess, easier for them to pull
The notes that way, so it changed the way society was set up. So, whereas you would need you know dozens of people, if not more, to create enough agricultural crops to sustain a settlement of people, then, once the wheel came along than a family, could do it by themselves with an animal and a plow, and so it really does.
Change. The way people lived. It seems that when people think of the wheel, they think of the transport we'll book on a car or a vehicle,
but wheels are used in a
in so many things not to move stuff but too well. I guess it is to move
but you know I mean like in in devices in it
I insist and things like that. Yes- and one of my favorite stories is about
an american woman inventor called Josephine cochrane and she
grew up in nineteenth century. U s! At a time when
women were, of course, not allowed to really get degrees, particularly not an engineering, but she came from a family of engineers. She got irritated that her precious vintage crockery set used to get chipped after she'd hosted people I'm like
she did as soon as a good housewife, and then her husband dies, leaving her in debt. So put all of these things together,
and she went. I'm gonna invent a dishwasher that actually works because,
brave men had tried and not really succeeded
she m put together a patent prototypes displayed at an exhibition and created the fust autumn,
dishwasher and so explain how she use wheels the technical
g of wheels to make that dishwasher work,
created a Y, a cage in which she put all her crockery and her plates and her cups and everything, and then it was
the drum and she used these gear mechanisms and leave us.
spin this drama around, while it was being pelted with. So
and hot water, and so on, as you needed that spinning action in order to create this effective machine. So yeah, that's that's where the wheel comes in
Talk about the magnet because that that's different from some of the other ones, because we didn't invent the magnet
Magnetism just exists, but I think people find
agnes, ism, very mysterious. Some agnes was a funny one, because we didn't really completely invent the magnet we found them. We discovered them in nature.
but the magnets that we see in nature are weak. There quite bearable that difficult to find, and so the not very effective as a piece of engineering and humans did a huge amount of work to create two different types of magnets. One is the permanent magnet, the sort that we put an average.
You know to hold up our grocery lists and the other one or the electromagnets, which really are the core: the heart behind all of our communication technology, to the fact that we can be you know thousands of miles apart and have this conversation is thanks to electromagnetism. So I talk about how electromagnetic technology that and-
pins communication systems change during three generations of my family, so zero starting off with the telegram which,
is used by my grandfather and my uncle to exchange messages. What the telegram
Does it use magnet, send electricity to convert
letters or symbols into other letters or symbols that can be picked up miles away. The telephone which my aunt, who emigrated to the? U s, with her husband in the nineteen seventies, used to communicate with her family back in india and that uses a magnet and electricity. Again, but this time it converts electromagnetic forces into vibrations that we can hear. I talk about the tv that uses magnetism to shoot. Electron beams across us
in and create moving pictures and internet technology as well, where everything to do with our internet ports. The way radio waves are sent to satellites that allow us to use gps,
it is all underpinned by magnetism unite. I think that magnetism is a little bit magical,
as you say, I dont think any physicist really understands how it works,
and so would all of those things be impossible without magnets would or
Would there be another way to do it? I think that instant and quick longrange communication would be impossible without the magnet, so even the microphone that I'm speaking
view today. The speakers that your listening to me on this does magnets underpinning all of that technology.
Let me ask you to talk a little bit about the spring.
Has anyone. Everybody knows what a spring is. You know it's in a lot of things, but you
We have included it in your list of seven great small invent
so why this spring suspect
Was actually one of the trickiest ones for me to define like what is a spring, and I am sure that if you asked a different engineer that probably come up with a slightly different explanation, but my take on it is that you have some kind of material that you,
come to form which allows it to store some energy
and then when you release set, so it kind of undue forms itself. It really
so that energy and then we can do something useful with it. So the first picture that might come to mind are those you, the coiled metal springs
those actually were only invented relatively recently in human history before that came the bow and arrow em and the ball is in fact a spring. The reason it's a spring is because you ve got say a piece of wood, its curved. You pull a string, your default
coming at you changing the shape of it, which puts some energy into the arrow that you're holding the string
and then, when you release that arrow, the energy from this deformed both
it goes into the arrow and allows you to you know, create a projectile that would go much further than if you tried to throw that her arrow by hand. That's an example of deforming something creating energy and then using that energy to do something useful with and the spring can be used in everything from mechanical watches to weapons am and even in earthquake, isolation and buildings, and to create the best concert halls in the world there are
in springs that allow us to do all of that or how do springs, help a concert hall. So the idea in the concert hall is you want to create silence. Okay, so you're sitting in a city in a building- and there are cars and trucks rumbling outside there might be a train line or ships. People shouting.
I am making noise does hornsby paying you don't you can imagine that kind of sound escape and yours
inside the building, and you don't want any of that sound to come in. So what you do is you create a room within the room, so it's called a box in a box and between these two boxes is an air gap
whether a springs, so you your essentially, is suspended within this. In a box
and when these sounds are trying to make their way to you, the springs vibrate they absorb that energy and they don't allow it to come inside your concert halls with stops that sound from coming in that's pretty clever the the kind of extreme application of this. You know we've seen some really devastating earthquakes this year and there are ways in which you can put enormous springs under the columns. You know the vertical elements of a building that carry all this weight. You put springs under them at ground level, and so if the earth is actually shaking underneath that building the spring can do, some work
to absorb those vibrations and dissipate some of that destructive energy before it finds its way up into the building, and so it can be an effective way to limit destruction, even in some of the most devastating. Mr devastating earthquakes.
But this has been really fun and interesting, and I love the story about how people burn their houses down in order to.
like the nails, I'd never heard that before.
I think it has one of my favorite stories night. I would I
I think I mentioned when we talked about It- is that the state of Virginia actually had to pass a law that band people from binding thousands down. That's incredible: I've been speaking
rama, agra wall she's, a structural engineer and author of the book nuts and bolts, seven small inventions that changed the world in a big way and,
we'll find a link to bet book in the show notes, Pritchett your
I'm thanks for coming on. No thank you mike,
the next time. You hear a story, that's hard to believe pay attend.
into the order in which the story is told according
who PAMELA Meyer she's a certified fraud examiner liars
to tell their story in chronological order and build up to a big finnish. When we
tell a true story for the first time, we tend to blurred out details that had the biggest impact on us randomly
necessarily in the order that they happened.
Give away to a phoney or exaggerated story is the end. Truth tellers tend to incur
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Transcript generated on 2023-11-11.