A lot of people still send checks in the mail. Increasingly that is becoming a bad idea. Listen as I reveal why postal authorities and banks are recommending you not use the U.S. Mail to send money anymore. https://www.businessinsider.com/post-office-check-fraud-mailing-be-careful-usps-scam-2023-6
The world is full of strange and bizarre stories. And if you listen to this episode, you will hear a bunch of them, such as how one U.S. President prevented his own assassination; how The Beatles drummer Ringo’s unique drumming style is the result of exorcisms, how the Los Angeles Dodgers paid a guy to beam positive messages to players during games from 3000 miles away and many more. These all come from my guest Dan Schreiber. Dan hosts a podcast called There is No Such Thing As a Fish (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/no-such-thing-as-a-fish/id840986946) and he is author of the book The Theory of Everything Else: A Voyage Into the World of the Weird (https://amzn.to/43eruph)
Athletes who perform at the top of their game can teach us all a thing or two about life and how to do our best at what we do. Joining me to offer her unique and compelling perspective on this is Sally Jenkins. She has been a columnist and feature writer for The Washington Post for more than twenty years. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 and in 2021 was named the winner of the Associated Press Red Smith Award for Outstanding Contributions to Sports Journalism. She is the author of 12 books including The Right Call: What Sport Teaches Us About Work and Life (https://amzn.to/44wtc6y).
Why do the people who work at Trader Joe’s wear different colored Hawaiian shirts? Why are they so friendly and why do they keep ringing that bell? Listen as I reveal a few behind the scenes secrets from Trader Joe’s. https://www.businessinsider.com/trader-joes-slang-terms-only-employees-know-2023-7?utm
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Today on something you should know why you shouldn't send checks in the mail anymore then
weird stories about amazing people like ronald reagan, nobel prize winners even ring from the beatles his grandmother.
Multiple exorcism saw him because she believed that the devil was inside of him because he was left handed and she needed him did not be left handed. Anyone that's what gave the beatles their beaks and that's all down to the video queen of liverpool, who gave exorcisms to expel the devil. Also, what you didn't know about trader Jos, and what we can learn from top performing athletes like performing well under pressure athletes,
far more vulnerable to pressure than we realise what the best ones are able to do is learned to mitigate stressed to the point that there,
Ordinary everyday performance is what's coming forward, its not rising to the moment it simply not deteriorating. Under the pressure of this
today on something you should know.
Are you currently enjoying the show on the stitched up, then? You need to know. Sticker is going away on august, twenty nine yup going away as in conflict, guy's, dead, rest in peace dinner and thanks for fifteen years of service to the pod cast community, so switch to another pod cast out then follow this show their apple,
spotify or wherever you listen.
Something you should now fascinating, enter the world's top experts and practical invite. You can use your life today, something you should make her rather tight. Welcome,
I don't know if you remember this year, not it wasn't all that long ago, but I remember a lot of people were afraid of online banking. Didn't want to pay for things on line because what
their information got stolen. What, if someone got ahold of your credit card number, the whole idea
of online transactions seem very risky. It was much better to just put.
Check in the mail rather than pay online world.
advice has now been flipped on its head today. Putting it
check in the male is a risk,
a proposition and postal authorities and banks are suggesting you stop put
checks in the mail because bad guys are stealing the? U s post
inspection service, reported roughly three hundred
I was thousand complaints of male sefton, twenty twenty one, which was more than that-
the prior year
and how are they stealing the male well made?
carriers are actually being robbed mailbox
are being broken into and the criminals,
targeting envelopes that look like they have checks in them and then what they do is something called check. What
She were a criminal steals, a check, then proceeds to choose
the pay ease, name and the check him out, and it gets even more severe,
katy than that. But the point is that
a lot of businesses are accepting only electronic payments, and that may be for the best. If you do,
have to mail a check, the advice
to at least use a secure male drop, such as inside the post office, but not a mail box in that
something you should know
The
there are a lot of weird things in the world. I guess you know that, and so
of them are really fascinating. Mind boggling hard to imagine and men
of them. You may not know about, or have heard of, but europe
to settle in here and listen to dance schreiber dennis
author and pod, castor. He hosts pod cast called no such thing as a fish. His latest book is
the theory of everything else, a voyage into the world of weird,
welcome to something you should know: hey thanks for having me my
before we learn a little more about you and why you're into weird things I want
jump into one good, weird thing here it and this one is about the los angeles dodgers, baseball team and I live in southern california, and I bet even a lot of die, hard dodger fans
I haven't heard this before so
likely. Neither have many other people so tell that tell that story. Happened is amazing
story which we only really kind of found out about, because the owners of the dodgers went through a very messy divorce and as part of the papers showing the financial side of what was going on with the dodgers were brought into court. It got revealed this thing, which is that for five years from two thousand and ten, the dodgers baseball team was basically paying a russian scientists to being positive thoughts at the players during matches from three thousand miles away to improve their game. But he couldn't improve it by a huge amount. He could only promise a sort of increase of the
a ten to fifteen percent in extra abilities of the players on the team, but he was on the payroll and he just used
sit there in his flat somewhere in america, could see emigrated to america, just watching the tv and just
focusing really hard and- and he was on the media, there was a salary- the dodgers did start kind of getting better when this was
happening, but in the uk there is one of the most extraordinary stories that ever happened where a team was at the bottom
premier league table and the chances of them winning with something like fifteen thousand to one. If you were placing any bets on them and they managed to win the top spots of the premier league that year and it was largely down to obviously an amazing team, but in the background the owner, who is a tie billionaire, he had hired a bunch of monks to come in and every match, or at least every home match,
they could manage, they would come in and bless the grounds they would be, hitting all the players on the legs. With these sort of prayer stakes will that we had women on them. They were out there the bubble,
game was going on. They were sitting in a specially made room that had all sorts of proper
ledges iconography inside and they sat and they and they come in.
Married him and chanted the whole match through, and so you know, a lot of people said well as the monks that helped Leicester win the football season that year. So it's not it's not just the dodgers, there's all sorts of different teams.
we're doing this great. So let let me now ask you like how you got into this, why you know so much about weird things. Well, in the uk, I've been working for the last two decades or so for various different companies that
largely about information and comedy being smash together and finding the interesting stuff in every single possible thing that you lookin
so there is a show in the uk called q. I, which has a nineteen
rolled. I join straight out of high school without any qualifications, and so my whole training since been I dunno. Nineteen has just been reading books within
to spot something that's out of the ordinary that you might not know about what is quite a well known subjects and then
being converted into away that comedians can play with it and then
So I've been doing that my whole career in very different ways, hosting a podcast and that's the core bit of it interesting thing with funny jugs around it,
so I'm sure everybody has heard
Pcr pcr was the test or is the test for covered that became,
if a familiar to us a couple of years ago and there
a weird story about the guy who came up with that, so go ahead, tell them
story when I was putting together the book. It was just the sort of tail end of the first big batch of the pandemic, locked down in the uk,
and what surprised me was is that this word that suddenly became a household word which was pcr. I'd never heard a pcr prior to the panel
pcr, as you might know, is an extraordinary moment in chemistry that kind of changed the way that almost everything is looked at now so from forensics and police work all the way through
the archaeologists and then, of course, coming up with the use of the pcr tests to help us curve
the corona virus covert nineteen and
allow for millions of lives to be saved most likely as a result of it. So I was thinking well how come I don't know when this came about, and I looked into it
and I discovered that it was a single person who invented pcr geico, carry mullahs
californian guy who was working out there and one night had the idea for pcr. Why is hit miserly? Not a household name? This guy's literally just saved the plan,
With this thing, almost you know at least help us to take until the vaccine came in and
realized. Why? Because he was a very odd cookie and there was.
so bizarre things about him. The most striking one was that one night when he was out it is a cabin which was out somewhere in in California. He was walking to the toilet one night and ass. He was walking to the toilet. He was confronted with a english speaking glowing raccoon, who then adopted him most likely to a spaceship is his opinion
and that struck me as very interesting- that someone who was able to save the world also spent the vast majority of the rest of his life, trying to prove that a glowing raccoon abducted him, and that happened the exact same year that he,
vented pcr? Well, and also you you mention other
like nobel laureates who you clearly are brilliant, but but pretty weird in other ways you have others. This thing that you must have heard of. I guess I certainly am of which is noble, licence the nobel disease and,
the thing which is the idea that once you, when the nobel prize, the power of it,
The adoration is so great that you son
You think why must be a genius about everything and you start spouting opinions about stuff that you have absolutely no background in, but everyone believes you because you're a nobel prize winner, there's people like wolfgang Paoli, who was seen as one of the the the eagle
eyes of science. You know he would he would not let anything get by yet he was pretty convinced that there was something involving till a consensus and to let the t going on with him, because everywhere he went things broke, and it wasn't just him that was noticing that there was a whole
group of scientists who genuinely, though, if Paoli is around this stuff is going to break and in some cases a few scientists actually banned him from entering the laboratories where they were working, because they were working on something important. I thought they cant have paoli come in and mess it up
his presence and was known as the policy effect, and then people wrote
down many examples of where this happened. There was one time when a bunch of students tried a prank him
rigging up a chandelier to drop to the ground as soon as he walked into the room. So they could say no look at the paoli effects, but when he entered the room, the device
actually gonna drop the chandelier broke, and so it didn't drop, hence of like a polly effect: inaction that the prank failed.
Like even linus pauling amene ever ever, who seem so like mainstream vitamin c it for you, but but he's he believe, some weird stuff, yeah
It was a guy who his his weird one was eugenics right and he believed in eugenics so much that he thought he. I believe he actually recommended
that people who had a lower, I q or any kind of genetic defects should be given a physical mark on their head, so that people knew not appropriate with them
I very bizarre these scientists it
hard to imagine anyone listening who doesn't know who the beatles are, but but this story
ring go the drummer ringo,
never heard, and I always thought
new quite a bit about the beatles and end their music and everything else. But I hadn't heard this so tell that story ringo if you
He was inducted into the hall of fame a few years ago and there was multiple amazing
where is that we're up on the screen? Talking about what an incredible drummer he is, and there's always been this joke that he wasn't even the best drummer in the beatles. But the fact is is that rinko is up. There is one of the greatest drummers ever, particularly specifically, I guess for pop music and rock music. What
what we say is that button dave girl would say this kind of thing. You know you'd be in a studio if someone's playing too tight like it's just not quite got a sort of
Why of like music, he would say: give me
ring, give us more ring go and what more ring go is play a little sloppy here. Late,
slightly out of time, and that was a style that ringer developed, because when he was a kid, his grandmother performed multiple exorcisms on him, because she believed that the devil was inside of him because he was left handed and she needed him did not be left handed anymore. So
simple exorcism performed on him. She was known as the booty queen of liverpool, but she spent her time whatever those excesses
were getting Ringo from going being left handed person to a right handed person
so when he started learning to play the drums, he was a right handed drummer any at a right handed kid. But then, after he left in moved out from his grandmothers house slowly, he started favouring the left hand again, but he didn't change
right handed kit, because his feet were familiar with it. It just made sense to him, but what it means is:
when Ringo has to get to all of the drums are on the right of him and do those fills instead of his hand, going up and around its leading with the right, which is super easy. He has to go underneath and lead with the left and that little extra time that it takes him to do that creates a micro lag. That means that the beatles had this just unique beat that was really hard to replicate. So that's what gave the beatles their beat and that's all
to the video queen of liverpool, who gave exorcisms to expel the devil said if it's just a weird, tiny little nugget about rock history that again rarely gets mentioned. So I can't
wait for you to share the story about the: u s, president, who stopped his own assassination, I'm speaking with Dan schreiber, he's author of the book, the theory of everything else. So, Dan of all of your stories, I think I'd like the one I like the best is the one.
of the united states president who stopped his own assassination. That was ronald reagan, Gina story about ronald reagan and jerry are the secret service,
And so a so nineteen eighty one ronald reagan is coming out of the one of the washington DC hotels and
there's an assassin waiting outside for him and he takes a published shots at reagan, but fortunately the quick thinking secret servicemen get in the way. I think one of them takes a bullet, sadly, and jerry par grabs. Ronald Reagan quickly, bundles him into the back of a limousine, and they quickly drive away, and they checked the president to see if there's any injuries and he's clearly bruised his his ribs from being thrown into the limousine, but outside of that they can't see
that a bullet's gone in there, certainly no blood coming out, so they go. Okay, let's get back to the white house as their driving back to the white house. Tiny bit of blood comes out of ronald reagan's mouth and jerry parr sees that and instantly knows that he must have been hit by bullet somewhere. It just has to have happened, so he goes against all protocol.
Get him to a hospital. Now we need a. We need to save his life, so they made
that they go to a random hospital. They bring the president, then they complete the president's there. The doctors managed to save his life
they later say. You know if he was five minutes later. We will have been able to save him, so that was it was jerry parts, quick thinking that allowed for him to to remain
live and jerry power. As a result, the all these amazing you know
metals and all these Britain honour is as a result of being a hero, but for jerry par.
There was something more going on in that moment, which he later told ronald reagan, which was that when jerry parr was a kid, he was taken to the cinema to be to to see a movie with his dad and they went see a movie called code of the secret service and because of that movie, it's the only reason that he was there on that day because he fell in love with the secret service in any thought. That's exactly what I want to do with my life in his whole, life led up to doing that to to looking after a president, the person who plays the role of the secret service agent.
In that movie was ronald reagan. So it's a full circle story. Ronald Reagan basically saved his own life. He inspired him to be covered,
in service agent and ten years later, he ends up. Saving is like as one it's I'd, just fine
really awesome story,
This was weird. Maybe some people know about this, but I said
they didn't, and that has to do with the savanna air
port and an runway ten at the savanna airport. That has graves in it. So explain that
during one of the wars. They were needing to expand the size of the airfield and had more runways, but there was a graveyard that was attached to a farm and a family there that was sitting on the spot, and so they had to pay them to move and they said will dig up every grave and will put them into a new cemetery and will make sure it's all done. Respectfully, but one thing that they couldn't do was agree on the four people
who ran the place the to owners, and then I think, the cousin and a brother, and so they are still there, the graves of them.
Are literally in the runway and as your taxiing down the runway? If you look
the window on one of those runways, you're gonna, see the two headstones at length flat, but you then go
over on as your flying off wherever you're going. So those other people of vienna claim that there they ve seen ghosts and so on, and I interviewed a pilot. You said she thinks that was a rumour that was made up as a joke by someone, but that you, don't you can ask for the haunted graveyard, run,
if your taxing out as a pilot there. So you right in the book about a guy named John lily Jonathan,
It was a he kind of became eventually part of the big psychedelic movements and he invented those tanks that you go into and you lay in and refloat flotation tanks he's the inventor of that. But his big project was trying to communicate with dolphins and at one point he was partly funded by nasa to teach dolphins to speak, and this was his mission for with the funding to teach dolphins to speak english, so fluently that they would be given a
chair at the united nations so that they could speak on behalf of all marine mammals and he he set up this house which was along the ocean. It was half flooded and he would have the dining room so that the table was flooded
at the knee. If you were sitting down in a chair, and so you would eat your dinner with the dolphins, but then they would have their room to sleep and you'd. Have your room to sleep in and his his work was so looked on as an interesting development of communication between human and animal that, at the very founding meeting of Seti, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, where frank drake was, and Carl Sagan,
was and so on other amazing scientists. He was also there and gave the opening lecture on how we might be able to find aliens, because if there was another intelligence, that's evolved on our planet, they thought it's the dolphin, and so that's. If we can communicate with that, we'll be able to communicate somehow with the aliens. It might give us an an insight. So I just thought: I'd just love that this guy who ultimately failed- and there was a huge, a lot of controversy. I got lot of these people eventually caught a lot of controversy in their lives, but the very very first meeting of seti was with a man who believed
that he was going to create cars, that dolphins could be driving themselves in the street. A topic that I remember years ago was kind of a hot topic. People were talking about it about back masking about how you know when you play a record backwards. There's the same.
panic messages in it and and you
about that and explain why you write about that. This is the same
of how, in ninety ninety four the beatles go back together to do to songs as a threesome john has passed away by fifteen years of fourteen years at this point and they get a demo
from Yoko I know, and it's called free is a bird and
three of them for the anthology project, which is telling their life story get together and
ray record over John Lenin's demo with him singing this new track and when them in the steward.
pull. The entire time is saying I with John is here I just I just I could
I feel his energy, and I feel like he's going to make himself known somehow and they're all thinking, that's not going to happen poll and so
go on recording. He makes a few points at certain times here. Look it's john, and everyone thinks it's not
and so they just do the whole song and, at the end of the song, there's a bit on free as a bird that you can hear. If you go in places like spotify, listen to it, where
they decided at the end of the song to do some back masking onto the track and the beatles were very famous for back masking it's. The idea of taking a bit of vocal spoken word, flipping it backwards and laying it down onto a track so that you hear it.
Backwards when its played, when a played normally war and fans of vine
back then used to love going and playing songs backwards to see any hidden messages, so the beatles were famous for that were accused of demonic influence for doing it.
And in ninety ninety four. They thought. Let's do that again. Is a nice little nuggets and
Though easter egg for the fans, let's do some back masking, so they
to the engineer is there any
John, just talking randomly on any of these demos, and he says he- I Annie finds a spit and it's a phrase. It says, turned out nice again, saving
that's great and is actually really nicely at because at the end does ukulele playing and one of those
most. People for ukulele in the uk was george form b and his phrase was turned out. Nice again, which it just so happens, is what john is saying
the n on that little audio extracts. It was perfect, so they slip it backwards, they put it on and they play the song out.
While their mastering the song. One of the engineer says: did you:
Did you go stress here that I want? You said: listen to that again, the ban,
words mumbling of John lennon, and this is what is impossible
when you play the song a highly encourage everyone listening to do this as soon as I finish, the show
When you listen to the backward words of John Lennon, which should absolutely be nothing but mumbles, you can
hear him say the words made by John Lennon
says his own name in the backward words of a thing that it's impossible
absolutely impossible and pull said there- you go he's done it he's come through he's shown us
he's here he's here on the song. I mean it's,
really there when you listen to it and- and that has to be impossible. I can't work out how how the probability of that is is possible. I said possible a lot but yeah it's it's weird! You talk about the the first
mission to find the titanic and lately tightened.
He's been in the news because those people died, but the first mission defined titanic was, while you you tell it the very first ever scientific expedition to go and find the titanic was led by a billion ethical jack grim, but he had the top scientist emotional prefers on the boats to
We look for the titanic and the hour before they set off. He almost ruined the entire thing because he said to the top signs as to where there, by the way
as one more crew member? That's joining us on this trip and then
introduce them to the latest member of the group, which was a monkey who had been trained to psychically point out where the titanic was gonna, be on a map and that's what they were going to follow.
Find the titanic, and so they all said. Are you now
we're not going on an expert
in brooding reputations by being led by literally
monkey pointing at a map, it's either it's
also the monkey and he picked the monkey. He was fortunately
walked the monkey right at the last second and the scientists did go, but if he had had his way, the first expedition would have been with just a monkey pointing at a map
what I find so weird about
All these weird things that you talk about is a lot of
I think I should have known this like. I should have heard this story before about ring or,
or ronald reagan or bad. If so, I'm
I'm glad you found them in and were able to sheriff, I'm speaking with dancing
or he is an author pod, castor. His podcast is called no such thing
as a fish and I'll put a link to that podcast in the show notes, and his latest book is called the theory
of everything else, a voyage into the world of the weird and there's a linked to that book in the show.
As well thanks to appreciate you coming on
So much like there was so much fun.
When you look at
rate athletes who are at the top of their game in any sport football, basketball, baseball tennis. It can be
no pleasure to watch, but what you often don't think about is how they get there.
They become so great at what they do and is there something
learn from them and use in our own lives to become better at what we choose to do well,
answer is a resounding yes, according to Sally Jenkins Sally,
a columnist in feature writer for the washington post for more than twenty years. She was a finalist for the pulitzer prize in twenty twenty. In
twenty one. She was named the winner of the associated press red smith award for outstanding contributions to sports journalism. Sally
Also, the author of twelve books, her most recent being the right call. What sport teaches us about work and life eyes?
Welcome to something you should know, thank you for having me so in our culture theirs.
A lot of admiration for top athletes. But what is it that you think athletes and sports can teach us about life on our own life? Athletes have alive
to teach us about performance under pressure and that we under study and under use them at most of us who work from the neck.
Sitting at desks- are struggled to make the connection between what they do and what we do. Look a michael Phelps or a peyton manning have a lot to to teach you about how to perform under pressure in your own life
so make that connection for me, because it's not always easy to see how I can
learn something from someone who's justice superstar at a sport at how that impacts, how
be used in my life. Does it truly
intelligence going on in a great athlete whose performing under pressure. But the thing that people
need to realise is that that deep intelligence is earned and its laws
and it's not natural, born talent. We make them.
Stick so often of of mistaking the eu
There are great athlete performs with as
I think that's natural born in them. And it's really it's truly. Not it's! It's a it's a method. It's a result of a a great deal of dirty, tedious practice
and real method. Unreal discipline- and
think the more we learned to unpack. What's in that prof,
and the more we can export some of the things that those people do into our own lives and our own endeavours. So let's unpack it and let's talk about how about works because its
As you just said, we look at some athletes and we think it is just a gift it.
So simple and so easy to them that that has no application in my life. So what is it?
and how do you take that? What you see in sports and apply it to life? One of the things that you can take away,
athletes is the value of physical conditioning when it comes to executive function and judgment
there's a mountain of neuroscience that shows that people who are sitting
tasks are actually working really really hard decision of fatigue is huge, but that's related to physical fatigue, a grand master, chest pain,
might burn six thousand calories in a day of of chess play.
so now, Mary, that to your own life and and understand that, when you're trying to make critical decisions, your body is actually having a lot to say about your job
So that surprises me that that chess player could burn six thousand calories playing chess kissed it. It doesn't seem like that's a very
strenuous sport, its fascinating, isn't it so I'll? Give you a couple of examples, Magnus karlsson, whose really the regnant chess player in the world these days they have fit bits.
these days in chess, it there's a game within a game of pudding, fit bits and other sorts of you. No physical tools onto chess player
to see what's going in their body, what's going on in there
body physiologically, while their thinking and Magnus karlsson, his heart rate, can get up to a hundred and thirty beats per minute. When he's trying to make a decision that the chessboard under pressure, you know of chess player, name Mikhail antipater,
measure in one turn when he lost five hundred and sixty calories in two hours of hard thinking. So these are the types of things we are talking about it. It's that the stress tests
the body when you're doing some really really hard thought and particularly stressful thought can be yellow
into running a marathon or or some kind of really arduous physical undertaking. So so this is my point that athletes have a
to show us if we would look at them as something more than entertainment. Yet it's it's
an accident that nasa has begun to train astronauts very much like athletes. You know they've adopted,
very, very athletic training for people who are going to be in critical situations in deep space.
So what does that mean, though, for the average person to condition
You're not gonna, do what lebron James does every day. That's just unrealistic sure, but you can hydrate better. You can get your ass. You can
listen to a guy like Dana cavalier, the long time performance coach for the new york yankees, who actually now has aside
in his training executives
helping them understand what pressure is doing to your body and
how to mitigate it.
Pressure is not a state of mind. It has actual physical properties
and once you understand that you can set out to sort of counter some of its its its effects on you that
I'll, be undermining your performance that yeah that's it.
Darting spaces, just understanding what's happening in your body when you are
your pressure and under stress what I'd like
explore that a little more because everybody's been the case in the position of being under pressure under stress the deadline thing, some
do whatever and it does
like a state of mind that europe beer in that
of mind of being under pressure, so how
counter that, so you feel it physically right at its it that you can see
I feel like you know, there's an actual weight on you, your eyesight, you get tat tunnel vision. One thing that happens to under stress is the fighter flight react
and kicks in, and your body is actually shunting blood for
your small muscle groups, to your large muscle groups. There was a great example in the french open a couple of weeks ago when a great hugely fit
Player named Carlos L actually went into of cramping on the court, just
the pressure of facing novak joke of ich across the net, the number one player in the world and alcor as wasn't cramping, because he was tired,
It was quite early in the match. He was cramping from nerves and stress and pressure that the guy who pioneered
best research in distress, a guy named hans, sell. You here
use. The word stress. He borrowed it
from engineering to describe the stresses that
and to say you know, like a bridge when a lot of cars have been driving over it stress is, is truly a physical man,
the station in your body and when you understand that the blood is rushing from small muscle groups to large muscle groups. It starts to explain why
you might be losing fine motor control, as you are like. Let's take an example typing on deadline at the superbowl, to use a personal example, I'm here to tell
you like my typing gets really really bad under pressure, because I'm
in blood in my fingers. That's literally,
the reason why so you you start to
socket the thing you really need to be good at and which really gonna ruins every anyway. We talk about.
Choking a lot him, and you know: you'll watch a great tennis player, double fault and you're like how could that person double fault at this stage of the match? When they're, you know a top five ranked player, how could a great golfer on the p g a tour miss a three foot putt
Well, stresses the reason, And- and you and me are experiencing the very same things is the truth, but not everybody chokes
not even people who choke choke all the time, so
I wonder why? Well people took more than you think. Athletes are far more vulnerable.
Pressure than we realise we tend to think of a la braun james. As someone who order narrowly just performs at all
really really high level under pressure. But the fact is, if you examine
braun james's statistics in the clutch, what they call a clutches
in the NBA meet even the greatest clutches
in the nba. You have to understand
and is missing well over fifty percent of his shots. It's not that athletes its performance.
Really really really high level under pressure. What the best ones are able to do
is learned to mitigate stressed to the point that their ordinary
every day. Performance is what's coming forward. There just operating
or their own standard they're. Not you not achieving some other worldly level. They are just being
themselves in the moment, and that's the real key of dealing with stress its that's. What real grace under pressure is. It's not right
is it to the moment, it simply not deteriorating under the pressure, but haven't
you ever been
in your line of work as you
say when you're typing and at the end of the super bowl and and your typing saxon and you ve got a fight that but haven't their other than other time
where you ve been under similar pressure
somehow you just flow and
Somehow it just happens for you. Yes and what action
Stu as they examined the difference between those two circumstances with really really fine diagnosis, and that is what I ve learned to do from them more than anything else, as a writer is to understand that athletes aren't confused about the difference between their good performances and their bad performances
the rest of us can be ye? I can remember an editor asking me: what do you know the difference between that story? You wrote that was really really good and, and this other store, you wrote that wasn't,
oh good- and I was a much younger writer and the truth is that I did not understand the total difference between those two stories, and so one thing that athletes great athletes like a peyton manning has taught me to do just by covering him. An interviewing him over the years is to understand. How do I get more consistent and how to create the circumstances that allow the good performance to come through
so I'll. Give you just one example from my own life. I go into the superbowl much more prepared than I used to on the day
I know I'm gonna- have to write a thousand words in two hours
wes on deadline when the game probably
and even decided until the final two minutes of the game in a late at night. I'm
sure I have like a good five hundred to six hundred words of material ready at my left hand of material I've been preparing all week long from listening to interviews from
reading statistics and understanding where the pressure points in the game are liable to be because it's a,
easier to write. Four hundred to two five hundred words under pressure than a thousand words under pressure right. So if you have to
material ready to go, and you ve really done your homework. Your flow that flow performance that you're talking about is much more likely to come from
and the same thing is true: if you haven't been eating junk food in the press box all afternoon,
which is something else I used to do quite a lot of so those are two pretty simple basic examples, but they make a world of difference in performance.
Let's talk about practice because you hear that in practice is what makes success that here we gotta put in the time the ten thousand hours you ve got a practice practice practice, but a lot of you.
Practice and they still don't get to the top of their game. So what's the deal
You know, there's a lot of bad practice in the world mike I mean, I think, a lot of people
and understand what the right kind of practice is. There's a lot of purposeless activity.
right, a lot, a meaningless activity where people think that practices just head banging really good practices is what's caught known as deliberate practice, which is you, diagnosis, a weakness, and then you specifically work on measurable improvement at that weakness and I'll give you one example:
manning who I love to to use just because he was a holler famer and a suitable winner and is also very very
Self aware, with his explanations of how he was able to perform. Peyton manning told me that you know, as a younger quarterback, his his record by his third year in the nfl was just thirty. Two and thirty two
He was a five hundred quarterback who led the league and interceptions and one
These issues was his feet were not great under pressure. They had a tendency to jack hammer and he get very stutter stubby he's
sat down with his coaches, tony dungy and his quarterbacks coach, Jim Caldwell, and they examined tape of every single interception he had thrown in his first three years in the leak every single one, and then they looked at a different tape. What peyton cause a more and more hidden tape, which was tape up all of the past, is that he threw that should have been in
at it, but he just got a little lucky. They died knows the commonalities and all of those poor throws and all of those circumstances it turned out. He was, he was nervous. His feet got very nervous when large defensive linemen were hurling themselves below his knees, so, understandably, of that kind of pressure made his feet unstable the drill that they design, the coaches would take very, very heavy sandbags and throw them at manning's feet in practice until he learned to set his feet and get more stable under pressure and that cleaned up a lot of his error.
So that's that's an interesting example in a very hard core example of using practice in the right way. You know a directed correction, not
head banging going out in throwing a million a million balls. You know if pavement
had gone out there and just thrown pass after pass after pass. He wasn't going to get any better at the thing that was really holding him back it will you
The only that's the difference- and maybe it's just a semantic thing, but that's the difference between practise what I think of his practice.
It is doing a lot of repetition. You could say it's conditioning and what you just described, which is coaching. It takes like a
their person to come in and identify those flaws and help you
you're out which a lot of stone, we don't have a clue.
We have to figure it out ourselves, correct and an eric ericsson, the great sociologist who-
is really the guy. Who is the basis for that sort of myths about ten thousand hours of practice makes an expert it drove Eric,
a little crazy because, while there some truth to that, it there's a difference between practice, which is what you and me do when we say
got the guitar and we want to get pretty good at the guitar. We we learn the guitar. We practise the guitar,
and then we sort of plateau there's a stage at which we don't get a whole lot better or tennis. You know
mostly because, when we take up tennis, we get to a place where pretty good and then
run around our weak backhand for the rest of our lives. The really
really really really accelerate something. They use those ten thousand hours to find what they're there are not very good
that they were far more on their weaknesses, then their strengths and that's a critical distinction and that's what ericsson called deliberate practice. So there's.
Big difference between just learning scales at the piano and then we're
at something you need to understand
where are your
It's literally your your weakest finger is on, on your left hand at the piano and why you're having trouble mastering a certain measure of music? But don't you think, though, that there are just some people, Michael Jordan, lebron james, those kind of people? They just have something that other people don't have
no. I dont believe that- and I am I base this on thirty years of covering those people. I don't believe it.
have something extra than you or me. It's taken me a long time to get to this conclusion.
But I truly don't what they have is love of their craft. There,
found something they truly truly love to do, and they have gone all in with every piece of themselves. If, if you
me found the thing that we love to do with that,
of enthusiasm. I've come. I am a hundred percent certain that we can achieve the same level
success in our own fields. You're. Our own endeavours it's about going all in so talk about failure because
that that's the thing that stops alot of people and it certainly discourages alot of people and yet it's part of the big bids, part of the game. It's the thing that stops most people, it's the thing that stops almost everybody
the the separate or between the people. I'm talking about you know:
peyton manning who again was just thirty, two and thirty to his third year in the league. The thing that's that that they have is resilience and they acquired it. That's an acquired trait resilience were not born with it
you develop it through failure. Very much like.
engineers sort of understand and entrepreneurs understand that you have to stress things, and
break things in order to improve them and to arrive at better answers? The great big with surfer, laird hamilton, who
Energy. Quite a lot over the years, including for this project laird, is really eloquent because he's
he's an engineer and a builder and an entrepreneur, as well as the greatest big waves surfer, who ever lived and
as a designer of of lots of different types of surfboards and instruments for travelling over water
laird understands that your first couple of tries are gonna, be failures. You know, he's built a lot of things that broke in the water and that needed improve
and he feels the same way about the human body and the human psyche in approaching a big waves surfing and so athletes are good.
Sailor state. Then their gracious losers, the great
and you never hear them bitch about the officiating. You never hear them talk about. You know how they got screwed on the field or got a bad break.
And they do those things do happen to them, but they don't
this on those aspects of the of the outcome. They focus on their own performance
And their very, very resilient about unpacking the result, learning from it and
I a little bit better the next time, one of my
read stories is the story of the kansas city chiefs, who played probably the greatest football game
it's game. I ever saw in person against the new new england, patriots and Tom Brady a few years ago, and they had
patriots and brady on the ropes in the final two minutes of the game when they intercept
Tom Brady and the interception was called back
by an off size penalty of flag, a guy.
had lined up four inches off sides and Brady got the ball back, completed a path
as he drove his team down the field to tie the game and send it into overtime, and the patriots won the game in overtime to go onto the super bowl
can't city chiefs and Andy read just absent?
refused to scapegoat the guy who had lined up off sides and all Andy read said after the game was listen. We all could have been four inches better and for
next year, the chiefs mantra was four inches better four inches better and the predictable thing happened
They won the superbowl the following year. As a result of that attitude we
have such a unique perspective.
The relationship between sports in what it
teach us about life. I really appreciate you sharing these stories. I've been talking with,
Allie jenkins she's a columnist in feature writer for the washington post for more than twenty years. The name of her book is the right call. What sport teaches us about work,
life and there's a linked to that book in the show notes. Thank you sally. Thank you, my
you ve probably show
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There are over four hundred stores in forty two states, and while there you may have noticed that the people who work there are particularly friendly and happy to help that friendly
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and three rings is a call for manager assistance, and that is something
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Transcript generated on 2023-07-20.