Something You Should Know – “Simple Habits For Better Decisions & How Modern Tech Predicts the Weather”

Host: Mike Carruthers
Guests: Annie Duke, Decision-Making Expert & Author; Dr. James Marshall Shepard, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
Release Date: August 30, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of Something You Should Know tackles two big themes: practical habits for better decision-making in everyday life, and the state-of-the-art advances in weather forecasting you probably never realized. Mike Carruthers brings on former poker pro and decision consultant Annie Duke to demystify how we make choices (and how most choices just aren’t as important as we think). Later, Dr. James Marshall Shepard, meteorologist and host of the Weather Geeks podcast, explores the science and technology that enable today’s remarkably accurate weather forecasts.

Segment 1: How to Make Better Decisions

Guest: Annie Duke, former professional poker player, author of How To: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Are We Bad at Making Decisions? (07:09)

  • "If we were really terrible at making decisions, our species wouldn't exist... The problem is that there’s a whole set of circumstances under which [our decision rules] don’t work.” – Annie Duke (07:09)
  • Most decisions are made via heuristics—shortcuts and rules of thumb—that generally serve us well, but biases creep in during certain situations.

• Commitment vs. Second Guessing (08:09)

  • For “big” life choices like marriage or career, second-guessing can reduce happiness. Commitment matters, but it's also important not to rule out changing course when new information arises.
  • “You need to get a balance between committing to the thing you’re doing, but also paying attention to the signals that that job might not be for you.” – Annie Duke (09:45)

• Timing in Decision-Making (10:14)

  • People often spend too long on low-impact decisions (e.g., what to order for lunch) and should go “faster” for these.
  • Reserve slow, careful decision-making for high-impact, hard-to-reverse choices (marriage, hiring a CFO vs. an intern).
  • “Are you dating or are you marrying? If you have a bad date, it’s not a big deal. If you have a bad marriage, it is.” – Annie Duke (14:18)

• Overthinking Future Outcomes (16:31)

  • Humans tend to fixate on possible negative outcomes—called loss aversion—which leads to decision paralysis.
  • In reality, most predictions about the future don’t come true, especially as the timeline stretches.
  • “When we’re making decisions, at the moment we make them, we know very little in comparison to all there is to be known... most of the outcomes we’re imagining aren’t going to happen.” – Annie Duke (18:05)

• The Role of Temperament and Bias (20:09)

  • Both excessive optimism (overconfidence) and pessimism (risk aversion) skew our decisions.
  • Solution: Seek outside advice. Others give more objective, higher-quality perspectives than we give ourselves.
  • “There’s all sorts of evidence that shows when people give other people advice, the quality is much higher than the advice you give yourself.” – Annie Duke (21:02)

• Advice as a Mirror (22:04)

  • Research shows giving advice to someone else with your same problem can actually clarify your own choices.

• Permission to Quit (23:08)

  • Many fear that changing course or “quitting” equals failure. In fact, most people who quit wish they’d done so sooner.
  • “Once we start something, we think that stopping it is like a failure...there’s so much science that shows that we don’t quit things soon enough.” – Annie Duke (23:08)

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• “If we were really terrible at making decisions, our species wouldn’t exist.” – Annie Duke, (07:09)
• “Most decisions that we make are actually pretty low impact...Just go fast on those things.” – Annie Duke, (14:18)
• “There’s all sorts of evidence...the quality of advice given to others is much higher than what we give ourselves.” – Annie Duke, (21:02)
• “Most people who quit something, after the fact, wish they had done it sooner.” – Annie Duke, (24:00)

Segment 2: How Modern Technology Predicts the Weather

Guest: Dr. James Marshall Shepard, Atmospheric Scientist, University of Georgia; Host of Weather Geeks podcast

Key Discussion Points & Insights

• Accuracy Has Transformed (27:57)

  • Modern weather forecasts, five days out, are about 90–95% accurate. Technology has advanced drastically since the 1970s and 80s.
  • “We’re really in the golden age of weather forecasting.” – Dr. Shepard (28:10)

• How Forecasts Are Made (29:29)

  • Weather is predicted using physics-based computer models, massive datasets from satellites, radar, weather balloons, and more.
  • “The atmosphere...is just a fluid...We solve very complex equations on supercomputers to predict how that fluid changes.” – Dr. Shepard (29:38)
  • Percent chance of rain means the confidence that a percentage of the forecast area will receive rain—not simply “it will rain today.”

• Limits of Forecasting (33:23)

  • Up to 7–10 days out, forecasts are highly accurate, but reliability declines afterward due to the inherent chaos in the atmosphere (chaos theory).
  • “Just don’t fall for the tendency...that if your picnic got rained out, you remember that one miss, but not the nine days we were right.” – Dr. Shepard (36:18)

• Understanding Weather Terms (31:06)

  • “Partly cloudy” and “partly sunny” refer to ranges of cloud cover; “chance of rain” describes probability across the area, not a “yes/no” for your backyard.

• Climate Change & Weather Extremes (36:54)

  • Despite some misconceptions about hotter historical periods, scientifically we are warmer now.
  • Human activity has added a “steroid” on top of normal climate variation, intensifying things like heat waves and rainfall.
  • “As our climate system is warming, there’s more water vapor available to these rainstorms...we are seeing a generation of what we call rapidly intensifying hurricanes.” – Dr. Shepard (38:48)

• Common Weather Misunderstandings (39:46, 45:20)

  • Hail forms in thunderstorms, not winter; all rain starts as snow up in the clouds; there’s no such thing as “heat lightning”; deserts can get very cold.
  • Urban heat islands (cities being warmer) influence local weather and even rainfall.

• Why Weather Isn’t the Same Globally (42:18)

  • Large-scale atmospheric waves, jet streams, local features like mountains, and ocean temperatures create regional differences. Global events like El Niño shift patterns worldwide.

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• “We’re really in the golden age of weather forecasting.” – Dr. Shepard (28:10)
• “The atmosphere is just a fluid...we solve very complex equations on supercomputers.” – Dr. Shepard (29:38)
• “Humans are the fertilizer on the lawn of the climate system.” – Dr. Shepard, on how we’ve amplified natural change (37:44)

Highlighted Tips & “Something You Should Know” Nuggets

• Cell Phone Statistics (03:11–05:09)

  • Americans check their phones 144 times/day; 57% consider themselves addicted; 46% look at their phones on dates.
  • “89% check phones within 10 minutes of waking up...47% feel panic when battery drops below 20%.” – Mike Carruthers (04:10)

• Why Not to Drink with Antibiotics (46:40)

  • The issue isn’t reduced antibiotic effectiveness, but intensified side effects and delayed recovery.

Key Takeaways

• Decision-making is less about finding “the right” answer and more about good process, adjusting as you go, and not getting stuck on low-impact choices.
• Weather forecasts have become impressively reliable thanks to advances in technology and modeling—far more accurate than public perception often allows.
• There's value in seeking outside perspective—whether from a mentor for decisions, or experts for interpreting weather data.
• Climate change is real and quantifiable; local weather idiosyncrasies often have global drivers.

Notable Quotes

• “Most decisions just aren’t that important. Save your time and energy for the few that are.” – Annie Duke (14:18)
• “People think we get the weather wrong a lot. That’s a human perception issue. We remember the misses. Most days, forecasts are actually right.” – Dr. Shepard (28:10)

Useful Timestamps

| Time | Segment/Topic | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------| | 03:11 | Start of main episode; cell phone statistics | | 06:57 | Introduction to Annie Duke on decision-making | | 07:09 | Are humans bad at decisions? | | 10:36 | Decision types: move fast or slow? | | 14:18 | “Are you dating or marrying?”—Importance of impact | | 16:31 | Loss aversion & overthinking future outcomes | | 18:05 | Why most future scenarios don’t happen | | 21:02 | Why getting outside advice helps | | 23:08 | Permission to quit; we don’t quit soon enough | | 27:00 | Introduction to Dr. Shepard & weather’s daily effect | | 27:57 | Radical improvements in weather forecasting accuracy | | 29:29 | How meteorologists make forecasts | | 31:06 | Weather terms explained | | 36:54 | Myths about past heatwaves and climate change | | 38:48 | Climate change’s effect: hotter, wetter, more severe weather | | 39:46 | Hail vs. sleet vs. snow: Weather misconceptions | | 42:18 | Why weather is regionally different: waves, jet stream, El Niño | | 45:20 | Urban heat islands and local weather effects | | 46:40 | Why not to drink with antibiotics |

Final Thoughts

With its trademark mix of practical wisdom and scientific clarity, this episode offers tools for both your mental toolkit (stop sweating the small stuff; be willing to quit; ask for advice) and your daily life (understand and trust modern weather forecasts, know how the climate is really changing, and get the science behind weather terms we all use).