← Something You Should Know
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- [00:02]
Mike Carruthers
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Alex Hutchinson
Get member only deals every week and.
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Mike Carruthers
Access to free standard shipping. Plus members earn points toward exclusive rewards. Join for free today. Lowe's we help you save. Points are awarded on eligible purchases. Programs subject to terms and conditions.
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Alex Hutchinson
Free standard shipping not available in Alaska and Hawaii.
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Mike Carruthers
Exclusions and more terms apply. Details@lowe's.com Terms subject to change.
- [00:32]
Alex Hutchinson
Today on something you should know why do commercial airliners still have ashtrays then? When is it best to take a risk and try something new? Or when should you play it safe?
- [00:45]
Mike Carruthers
If we want to think in terms of minimizing regret, which, believe it or not, mathematicians have a definition of regret, which is the difference between basically what you got and what you could have got if you had a crystal ball and have been able to make perfect decisions. To minimize regret, you do best if you choose optimistically, if you're more willing to take a chance.
- [01:02]
Alex Hutchinson
Also, memory loss starts a lot sooner than most people think, and I'll tell you what you can do about it. And strength training, building muscle. It has a lot of benefits.
- [01:14]
Michael Joseph Gross
Strength training improves bone density, blood pressure. It helps treat type 2 diabetes. It reduces risk of cancer. It helps with obesity.
- [01:26]
Alex Hutchinson
All this today on something you should know. Whenever I've had to hire someone, I didn't have the luxury of taking my time and thinking about it. It was always we need someone and we need them now. And if you ever find yourself in that situation, Indeed is all you need. With Indeed Sponsored Jobs, your job postings really stand out. It's simple. With Sponsored Jobs, your posts jump right to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster. According to Indeed data, Sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. And that's the thing, right? You need good quality candidates fast so you can review them and quickly move on to the hiring phase. Indeed makes this whole thing easier than trying to do it on your own. And with Indeed, you only pay for results. How fast is Indeed? Well, in the minute I've been Talking to you, 23 hires were made on Indeed, according to Indeed Data worldwide. Look, there's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com something just go to Indeed.com something right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast, indeed.com something terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Something you should know, fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today. Something you should know with Mike Carothers. Hi, welcome to Something youg Should Know. So for the past eight years that I've been doing this podcast, sitting here interviewing people and editing the show and putting it all together, sitting here with me has been my dog, Taffy. And sadly, Taffy died the other day. She was 15 years old and getting up there. Taffy was a Lhaso apso shih tzu, Jack Russell terrier. And we had her DNA done and she was a little bit of everything. And she was not the friendliest dog to strangers. You had to really earn her friendship. And it took a while. Taffy was a rescue dog, and I always had this sense from her that she was really, really grateful to have been rescued. She was very loyal. Followed me everywhere, my wife, everywhere. She was a great dog. And she's really. It's very sad to sit in here and do this and. And she's not there. So this episode we are dedicating to the memory of Taffy. First up today, people have a lot of common questions about flying, and I've got some answers. One of those questions is, do you really need to turn your phone onto airplane mode? Well, it's tricky because you're supposed to, but probably nothing's going to happen if you don't. There has never been an incident where the interference from a cell phone has caused a crash. However, it's been said that cell phones can interfere with radio frequencies, potentially harming communication between the pilot and air traffic control. What if your plane is struck by lightning? Well, it happens, but planes are built with a protective metal that's engineered to prevent electric buildup while protecting the plane from power surges. So nothing much is likely to happen. Why do airplane wings have red and green flashing lights? Well, the lights are there to signal to planes crossing in their path. The red light is always on the left side while the green light is always on the right. This way, the crew on another plane can determine the direction of travel of your plane. Why do planes still have ashtrays in the bathroom when smoking is prohibited? Well, even though smoking is not allowed and hasn't been for a long time, the FAA actually made ashtrays a requirement. That's because in the event that some passenger pulls out a cigarette and starts to smoke it, there will be a place to Put it out. Can the doors on a plane be opened in mid flight? No. Planes are designed so the door remains shut throughout the flight. There is so much more pressure inside the plane than outside the plane that the door is constantly being forced closed. You would have to be Superman to open it. And why do airplanes leave that long white trail in the sky? Well, these condensation trails form when humid exhaust from jet engines cools very quickly in cold, dry air at high altitudes. It's kind of like the fog that results when you exhale on a cold day. And that is something you should know when you're faced with the opportunity to try something new. Does that sound exciting or scary? Are you someone who likes to stick to the tried and true, do what you did before? Or do you like going out on a limb and trying something different? It can be as small as trying something new from a menu or just get the same thing you always get, or take a vacation to a new destination or go back to the same place you always go. It's your willingness and desire, or lack of it, to explore. That's what we're about to look at with my guest, Alex Hutchinson. He's a columnist for Outside magazine who has contributed to the New York Times and the New Yorker. He's author of a book called the Explorer's why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the map. Hey, Alex. Welcome to Something youg Should Know.
- [07:35]
Mike Carruthers
Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me.
- [07:37]
Alex Hutchinson
So when I first saw this, I started thinking, well, what do I like to do? Am I more the explorer? Do I like to stick with the tried and true? And the answer really is it really depends. And, you know, some days I want the same thing that I got before on the menu, and other days I want to try something new 100%.
- [07:55]
Mike Carruthers
And that's, I think, one of the realizations I've come to after, you know, spending three or four years digging into the research about how we decide when to explore. I kind of thought that exploring is so cool. We should always explore more. How do I explore more? But I've. I've come to a different position, which is it's about knowing when to explore and when to exploit as the, you know, if you think of that as the opposite of explore. And, you know, if you. If you did nothing but explore, it's. I think of it in the context of music. You know, if you're always searching for new music, that's great because you're finding new things. But if you were to never listen to the Same album twice. Because you're so dedicated to always finding something new, that would be kind of sad too. You'd never actually be enjoying. So it's absolutely important to, to explore and to exploit and to try and think, be thoughtful about when you're doing each one.
- [08:47]
Alex Hutchinson
So here's an example from my life that I would like to get you to comment. I have a tendency, like if, if we're going to go somewhere on a vacation, my tendency is to go back to where we've been before because it's comfortable, I know what to expect. And yet when I go somewhere new, I almost always love it and the next time want to go back there. So I'll stretch and try something and explore and usually like it. But my tendency is the tried and true.
- [09:21]
Mike Carruthers
I think that's a tension that exists in all of us, you know, maybe in different contexts and different respects. Thinking of the food example, example, again, one of the interesting things. So you can do huge, big data analyses of millions of orders from food delivery companies to try and get a sense, rather than just talking in the abstract of do we like trying new dishes or do we like going back to old favorites? We can see what people do and how they rate those meals. And when people try something new on average, like if they order from a restaurant they've never ordered from from before, on average, they tend to rate that meal lower. So by exploring, they've actually taken a hit. They've got on average, a meal that's worse, but over time, they have a mix of good and bad meals and they drop the duds and they add the good new one into the rotation. And so as a result, their ratings creep up over time. So exploring pays off in the long term. But we kind of know, we kind of have the realization that it comes with a risk and it means that sometimes we're going to get worse results. So you may, you may decide to go somewhere new on vacation and you realize that by taking a chance that you may end up with a crummy vacation. So it's natural to feel that, that, that worry or that, that resistance to exploring. And I think what, you know, one solution is to try and zoom out at rather than thinking about how am I going to enjoy this week? It's like, will I be glad in a year or, you know, in the a year from now that I took a chance and maybe discovered something that will make my future vacations even better.
- [10:55]
Alex Hutchinson
So I imagine everybody has heard this idea that people on their deathbed say that looking back, they wish they had taken more risks. They wish they had asked that girl out. They wish they had taken that job in that other place or that they had explored a little more. I don't know if that's true or not.
- [11:16]
Mike Carruthers
I think we have an intuition about that, right. That most people that you look back and you say, boy, I wish I'd asked her to dance. More likely than you are to be worrying about, oh, I can't believe I asked her to dance and she said no. The things we did that didn't turn out don't generally stick with us as much as the things that might have been. The scientists who studied decision theory and who try to understand what is the optimal way of making decisions, they have an approach. It's called the upper confidence bound algorithm, which is a complicated name, but the basic advice that they come up with based on the mathematics, is that you should make decisions based on what has the best realistic upside, what has the chance of turning out really well. If you're choosing between a job that's stable but kind of boring and not what you're interested in, versus the job that maybe is a little more uncertain, maybe has a lower starting salary, but has a pathway towards your, your dream job, their advice is, you know, all else being equal, take a chance on the. The job that has the bigger upside. Because again, to your point, when you're, when you're sitting on your deathbed or even a year or five years from now, you're going to look back and say, boy, I'm glad I took a chance on something that had a great possibility of paying off even if it didn't work out, compared to never knowing whether it might have worked out.
- [12:43]
Alex Hutchinson
There's always that wondering about the road not taken. No matter what you do, you didn't do that other thing. And I wonder, what if I had?
- [12:52]
Mike Carruthers
That's the human condition. We can't split ourselves in two and know how both options would have turned out. So I think the advice is to choose optimistically, to go for the thing that you think will be best, recognizing that, A, it might not turn out, and B, you'll never know. If you had chosen the other path, maybe it would have turned out to be great. But this is the human condition.
- [13:19]
Alex Hutchinson
So it does seem. And I think I put myself in this category of I don't want to look back and wonder, what if? Yeah, I don't want to regret. I've got plenty of those that I don't want to keep doing that. And so avoiding regret drives a lot of the decisions I make, and I imagine a lot of people are like that.
- [13:42]
Mike Carruthers
If we want to think in terms of minimizing regret, which, believe it or not, mathematicians have a definition of regret, which is the difference between basically what you got and what you could have got if you had a crystal ball and have been able to make perfect decisions to minimize regret. You do best if you choose optimistically, if you're more, more willing to take a chance. Not a reckless chance, not a, oh, you know, if I invest all my money in lottery tickets, there's a chance I might be a billionaire, that's not a good decision. But when there's a, a realistic chance of a good upside, if you, if you're in a position that you can make that gamble without exposing yourself to, to terrible problems, it's probably a good idea to give it a shot.
- [14:20]
Alex Hutchinson
Because who doesn't have one of those regrets, Whether it was the high school dance or whatever, One of those, if only I had asked her out or if only I had gone to that thing. And you'll never know. So you'll always regret it. And if you had to do it over, you probably would do different.
- [14:42]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah. And we will always have those regrets. It would be impossible to live a life with none of those regrets. But, but boy, if you can try out some of those things. After all, I think in general you're happy you did, even if it put you through a little bit of awkwardness or some uncertainty in the moment.
- [15:00]
Alex Hutchinson
But in the research of looking how people make these decisions, what about personality? I mean, there do seem to be some people who are very cautious and the stress of trying something new might be overwhelming. And maybe they're better, you know, getting that same old hamburger at the restaurant.
- [15:20]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah, I mean, this goes back in part to, to what we were talking about earlier with the idea of an explorer's gene, that some people really are wired to enjoy uncertainty and novelty more than others. And there's also, I think we have to recognize that even within a given individual, I'm, I'm very exploratory in some aspects and I'm, I like my routines in other aspects in other parts of my life. And so there are times, depending on the context, where I might be more exploratory. And what the, you know, example that springs to mind for me is there's all this research on when should you take a parking spot versus this is part of the exploring research. When should you grab the parking spot you see versus keep driving towards your destination and hope you get a parking spot that's closer to you and you know you can do this. All these sophisticated calculations about, well, how many, what is the rate of empty parking spots, you know, how far are you from the destination? But for me, I hate parallel parking under pressure with cars behind me and I don't mind walking. So if I see a parking spot that's really wide and I can go in front ways rather than backing into it, I take it and I don't care what the math says. And to your point, that's my anxiety about parallel parking. That makes it worth taking what I've got rather than gambling that there'll be something better down the road.
- [16:32]
Alex Hutchinson
So we're talking about our desire to explore and try new things versus our tendency to want to just stick with the tried and true. My guest is Alex Hutchinson. He's author of a book called the Explorer's why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the.
- [16:49]
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- [19:57]
Alex Hutchinson
So Alex, I wonder if we learn from those regrets that you were talking about. Do we take those regrets and then say, you know, next time, given the opportunity, I'm going to go for it or do we just lament our regret and don't learn from it?
- [20:15]
Mike Carruthers
This idea of an explore exploit dilemma, it comes from a Stanford University management professor named James March who wrote about it back in the 90s. And his, his main, he was talking about it in a corporate context. Should companies invest in R and D or should they invest their money in, you know, marketing their current product line? And his, his main contention was that companies tend to systematically under invest in exploration in R and D because the returns are, they take a long, it's a long time before you, before you know whether you've made a successful gamble. So if you invest in marketing you can see a sales bump and you right away you're like that was a good thing to do, I'll do more of it. If you invest in R&D, three years later you're still not sure whether the product's going to pan out. You don't know whether it's going to be success or failure. So the feedback is less direct. And I think that applies in personal lives too that taking a chance we don't always know as clearly we don't see the effects right away. Whereas sticking with what you know, you know what you're going to get, and you get this positive feedback. So that leads us maybe to, to not learn as well as we should about those times when we took a chance and it, and it paid off. So I think it requires sort of being aware of that and stopping and thinking, okay, what are the things that were meaningful in my life? What are the. What are the decisions I made that I'm really happy I did? If you ask me to list the five best decisions I made, do I look back and say I'm really glad I just stuck with the tried and true and didn't try out this other thing? I think for most people, that's not the case.
- [21:44]
Alex Hutchinson
As I listen to you talk, I wonder, psychologically, what is it that makes somebody want to be more of an explorer versus somebody who wants to not explore so much? And even within the same person, some days you want to try something different on the menu, and some days you just want to go with what you know you like.
- [22:07]
Mike Carruthers
You know, there's. There's an area that I found really interesting in psychology called the effort paradox. Because when we talk about exploring, we often end up telling these tales of, you know, explorers who crossed the ocean or, or whatever, and three quarters of them died of starvation. And it's, it's very hard. And even in our own conversation right today, we've been talking about exploration, but we've been talking about taking a risk and the possibility of failure. And so there's a tendency, I think, to think about exploration or about the challenges we might face as a price you have to pay for the occasional, for the payoff that, yeah, it's going to be hard if I try and do this thing, but there's a chance it's going to lead to something good. So it's worth putting up with the difficulty. And what the ever paradox says is that's the wrong way to think about it. That in fact, if something is hard, if running a marathon or climbing a mountain is hard, that's actually part of the attraction. We do it because it's challenging, because the feeling of doing something challenging makes it feel meaningful to us. And so that is a different way of thinking about the challenge, that we shouldn't run away from things that are hard, but we should realize that whether it's running a marathon or whether it's having kids or whether it's buying furniture from Ikea, sometimes doing things that are hard Actually is kind of the point and is what makes it feel good?
- [23:28]
Alex Hutchinson
What is it that drives the desire to explore? Is it just simply curiosity that I wonder what that's like, so let me go check it out, or is there something else?
- [23:39]
Mike Carruthers
I think we can answer that on a few different levels. And I think if we go deep enough, what we're really saying is that being curious about the unknown, always wanting to know what's behind what's around the next corner or what's over the horizon has been good for us as a species, that it's helped us to survive, it's helped us to find new resources and figure out better ways of doing things. So we explore fundamentally because it helps us learn about the world. Now, that's not, you know, when I'm on vacation, I'm not necessarily like, I really need to know what's around that corner so I can learn about the world and propagate the species. Over time, we've evolved so that exploring feels good. It feels. It feels fun to resolve to find an area that I don't know something about, to find an area of uncertainty and to resolve that uncertainty to learn about the world. So I think in the modern sense, in the proximate sense, we're driven by curiosity because it's fun, because it feels good, because we enjoy it. But the underlying reason is because that's a good thing for a species to have is the desire to learn about the world.
- [24:48]
Alex Hutchinson
And is there therefore some evolutionary deep satisfaction that exploring gives you because it's kind of worked its way into us, or no?
- [25:02]
Mike Carruthers
I think so. And I think, you know, when I talked to one of the psychologists who works on the effort paradox a bit about this, we got into talking about the, you know, the meaning. Meaning in life, which is a heavy topic, right? And so I was like, I. I don't know what meaning is. What does it mean to say that something is meaningful? And he said, well, when you, when you ask people whether, you know, an activity like having kids or, or, you know, going on a trip or something, they can't articulate what you. What they mean by meaningful, but they can answer whether something was meaningful or not. And I think meaning is. It's a big word, it's a heavy word, and it's a very imprecise and hard to define word. It's one. It's something that we get from undertaking adventures and explorations and opportunities to discover new things that we don't get necessarily from sitting on the sofa and watching a documentary about someone else. Going and, you know, having an adventure.
- [25:56]
Alex Hutchinson
Well, that is really interesting that people know what's meaningful, but they can't tell you what it is. But they know what it is, but it's. It's unspeakable.
- [26:06]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah, it's. It's, you know, the topic or the debate that has launched a thousand arguments in, you know, philosophy departments around the world. And I certainly can't answer what meaning is, but, yeah, I can think back in my life and say, wow, that was a really. I'm glad I did that. For reasons that I can't articulate, it felt really meaningful.
- [26:24]
Alex Hutchinson
Yeah. Because you often hear things like people who go in the military or people who were drafted into the military and desperately tried not to be, but they will often talk about their days in the military as a. Not a great time, but as a meaningful time. They seldom. Is it a joyful time, but there was something very meaningful about it. And even my son, who was. He was. He wanted to go to a military school or camp, summer camp, when he was 12 years old. And we tried to talk him out of it because it was a Marine camp and he was 12, and he went. And it clearly was one of the most meaningful things that ever happened to him. But he doesn't describe it as a wonderful time.
- [27:13]
Mike Carruthers
Yeah, those are two very different things, aren't they? And obviously, meaning is about more than exploring. And so you can add in factors like purpose. And I think people in the military feel a powerful sense of purpose, too, but they're doing something hard and they know that it's not something that's. It's not necessarily something fun, but it's something that is meaningful.
- [27:36]
Alex Hutchinson
Do you think, or is there evidence to show that this is something people think about? I think about this, but I don't know. Do other people think about, should I take more risks? Should I try new things or not?
- [27:51]
Mike Carruthers
If I was to generalize, I would say no. I don't think people think about this a lot. And even when I started to dig into this literature and the science and ask people about it, you know, there are some scientists in the world who are thinking very carefully about it, but most people, you, you know, they say they're not analyzing their decisions. People, especially as we get into adulthood and, you know, we're all busy and we're all trying to pay the bills and take care of the family and all that. We're just trying to. In a sense, we're trying to minimize decision fatigue where. So it takes some energy to stop and think about why am I making this decision? Is this the right decision? Am I. Am I considering what could be if I did something different, or am I just trying to get through the day? And so it's understandable, but I think a little more introspection on how and why we make our decisions is probably a good thing.
- [28:46]
Alex Hutchinson
Lastly, anything else about this whole idea of exploring that you think people would be fascinated to know?
- [28:53]
Mike Carruthers
I think there's a bunch of research on how exploring changes across the lifespan and we naturally explore less as we get older, and that. That makes sense because we know more about the world, so we don't need to explore as much and we have less time left to enjoy it. To be brutally frank about it, there's less value in discovering something new at my age than there was when I was 8 years old and would have had an extra 4 decades to enjoy whatever that thing is. So there's a tendency to kind of accept this slide of this gradual decrease of exploration. It makes sense. One of the research researchers I spoke to, I asked a lot of researchers, like, should we be trying to explore more? And he said, you know, it's this, this. This decline in exploration is natural. But what you have to remember is that unlike a million years ago, when we were evolving, if you're 60 years old, you've probably got a good, you know, you. And. And if you happen, if you're lucky enough to be healthy, you've got a good two or three decades more of living and enjoying things. So you need to still be exploring because we live a long time now and we have the opportunity to keep discovering new things. So that's a message that really struck home for me.
- [30:06]
Alex Hutchinson
Well, I find this helpful because sometimes I think I play it too safe, and then other times I think, why did I do that? That seemed pretty risky at the time. But everybody's different, and not everybody is the same in all situations. And it's really good to get this perspective from you. Alex Hutchinson has been my guest. He's a columnist for Outside magazine and he's author of the book the Explorer's why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map. If you'd like to read his book, there's a link to it at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Alex.
- [30:41]
Mike Carruthers
Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate you having me on.
- [30:44]
Alex Hutchinson
Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real. And so is the relief from Ebglis. After an initial dosing phase of 16 weeks, about 4 in 10 people taking.
- [30:55]
Mike Carruthers
EBGLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin, and most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear.
- [31:01]
Alex Hutchinson
At one year with monthly dosing. EVGLIS Lebricizumab LBKZ, a 250mg injection, is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40 kilograms with moderate to severe eczema, also called atopic dermatitis, that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies. Eglis can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. Don't use if you are allergic to ebglis. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. Eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglis. Before starting Epglis, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about ebgliss and visit.
- [31:38]
Mike Carruthers
Epgliss.Lily.Com or call 1-800-lilyrx or 1-800-545-5979. I was never really a runner.
- [31:46]
Alex Hutchinson
The way I see running is a.
- [31:48]
Mike Carruthers
Gift, especially when you have stage four cancer. I'm Anne. I'm running the Boston Marathon presented by bank of America. I run for Dana Farber Cancer Institute to give people like me a chance to thrive in life, even with cancer. Join bank of America and helping Anne's cause. Give if you can@b of a.com supportann what would you like the power to do? References to charitable organizations is not endorsement by bank of America Corporation Copyright 2025.
- [32:17]
Alex Hutchinson
We all know how important it is to exercise. Yet for many people, when you say the word exercise, they think of aerobic exerciserunning, walking, biking, swimming, exercise class, things that get your heart rate up. Yet there's another important kind of exercise, and that is strength training. Building muscles by lifting weights. Essentially. Somehow strength training in many people's minds just isn't as important. And then there are the fears that if you lift heavy weights, you'll get all bulky like the Incredible Hulk, which is extremely unlikely. Or you sometimes see people lifting weights, but they're very lightweights and doing that's probably fine, but it doesn't really build muscle. Yet as you age, muscles deteriorate. That's why you often see older people having trouble getting out of a chair or getting out of a car, or having trouble opening a jar or lifting something. It's lack of muscle strength. And as you're about to hear, keeping your muscles strong not only helps with those things I just mentioned, but has a lot of other benefits, too. Here to discuss this is Michael Joseph Gross. He is a longtime contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and he's author of a book called the Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives. Hey, Michael, welcome to something you should know.
- [33:43]
Michael Joseph Gross
Thank you.
- [33:44]
Alex Hutchinson
So let me ask you first to address the disparity between aerobic exercise and and building muscle, why there's a difference and why they're two different things and not part of the same thing.
- [33:57]
Michael Joseph Gross
Well, the reason we learned to think it wasn't important goes back thousands of years. At the very beginning of scientific medicine, doctors and athletic trainers were competing to see who could corner the market in what we now call health care. Now, the most famous doctor in ancient Rome, whose name was Galen, he argued that trainers who encouraged athletes to build mass, what we now think of as building muscle, were actually making those athletes suffocate their souls. Now, this idea of muscle as being both kind of superficial, the opposite of healthful, continues into the modern era. Kenneth Cooper, who wrote the most popular book about exercise in the 20th century, the book called Aerobics, which really put aerobic exercise at the center of our idea of what exercise is, said that building muscular fitness was just like putting a shiny new paint job on a car, when in fact, what we needed to be doing was give the body a new engine, a better heart and.
- [35:13]
Alex Hutchinson
Lung system, which I think still persists to some extent. And so explain how important muscle is.
- [35:22]
Michael Joseph Gross
Muscle is so much more than what most of us have grown up thinking it is. I think a lot of us have grown up thinking that muscle is mainly a matter of appearance. When we think about its function, we think about how it moves us. But muscle is performing a huge number of jobs inside the body. Let's start with metabolism. Muscle is the main sink for disposal of blood sugar, making sure that our metabolism is healthy. Muscle is also the main reservoir of the proteins that do the work of healing us when we're sick or building our bodies when we're children and adolescents. Growing strength and muscle even shape our whole identity. There are connections between muscle and mind, muscle and mental health that have only begun to be discovered in the past few decades. For instance, for many people, in the first proper randomized controlled trial of heavyweight training as treatment for depression, for 75% of people in that study, lifting heavy weights treated depression as well as the best antidepressant drugs. As we get older, muscle more and more becomes a matter of life and death. Our muscles are interacting with our bones all the time. And if we lift heavy weights, we're allowing the muscles to make more strain on the bones, which makes the bones stronger. Which means that if you're an older woman and you fall, you're much less likely to break your hip. If you've been lifting weights for the past few decades, heavy weight training is one of the best preventive measures for osteoporosis.
- [37:20]
Alex Hutchinson
So I've heard that exercise in general helps fight depression and is good for mental health. I hadn't heard that specifically strength training. Was that it was just exercise in general?
- [37:34]
Michael Joseph Gross
No. It's now very well established that both weight training and aerobic training are effective as treatments for depression. That's recognized in the clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of depression in a number of countries, not so much in the United States yet. But the World Health Organization recognizes that this, and there was very recently a big global consensus statement about exercise and optimal health throughout the lifespan that really established definitively weight training is as important for mental health as aerobic training.
- [38:15]
Alex Hutchinson
So Kenneth Cooper wrote that book, Aerobics, and it was a huge book. Has he ever restated his position or modified his position about strength training?
- [38:27]
Michael Joseph Gross
By the time he turned 70 years old, Kenneth Cooper, the father of aerobics, had committed to a regimen of lifting weights. The Cooper Institute has longitudinal data on the health of thousands of people that they have been monitoring for decades. And when they went into their data starting a couple of decades ago, they realized that over time it turned out that strength training, muscular fitness, was on par with aerobic fitness for long term health.
- [39:09]
Alex Hutchinson
When we talk about strength training, lifting weights, building muscle, there is a lot of confusion as to what does that mean. How big a weight? You don't want to hurt yourself if you lift weights that are too heavy. So what does it mean to strength train and what are the parameters? How do you do it?
- [39:29]
Michael Joseph Gross
Strength is defined in most scientific literature as maximal force. The basic concept for measuring strength is called the one repetition maximum. A one repetition maximum or one rm is the heaviest weight that a person can lift one time with perfect form. It's not a grunting effort. It's not, you know, wrenching your body around to see if you can get the weight up. It's one perfect rep. Now to train for strength. It has traditionally been accepted that since about the 1940s that training at about 80% of one repetition maximum will get the best strength response. We can go Way down the rabbit hole on sets and rep schemes. Some people are going to say if you're lifting anything lighter than you can lift for five or six reps, you're wasting your time. Other people say you should really be lifting the amount that you can lift for eight or ten times. The truth is, for people who are just starting out, really anything they do is going to be building strength. But our muscles adapt very quickly. Muscle is one of the most adaptable tissues in the human body. And after a very short period of time, you know, couple three months, if you don't start moving into those higher ranges of weight, you won't continue to be building strength. And the basic principle of progression there, progressive overload, adding strength as you go on so that you can increase your capacity. That's the most basic principle of strength training.
- [41:30]
Alex Hutchinson
And talk about just the immediate benefits of just having stronger muscles.
- [41:36]
Michael Joseph Gross
Can I tell you a little story about that?
- [41:38]
Alex Hutchinson
Yeah.
- [41:38]
Michael Joseph Gross
There was a young girl in California in the 1950s who loved to go visit her grandmother. They would turn on the Jack LaLanne show and do exercises together in front of the TV. And this little girl grew up learning to love exercise because of that. Now she gets older, and her grandmother gets older, and her grandmother has a bad fall. Eventually she breaks her hip. She goes into the hospital, she goes into the nursing home, and it's just that slope that we've all seen too many times. Now by this time, the young girl has become a medical student, and she decides that she's going to specialize in the treatment of old people because she wants to try to help older people avoid her grandmother's fate. Maria Fyodoroni Singh went on to become the first doctor to use strength training in the way that we've just defined it, lifting heavy weights at about 80% of one repetition maximum for frail elderly people. The way she came to that idea was she went to a nursing home called Hebrew Rehabilitation center for Aged in Boston, and she had a meeting with the residents, and she said, I need to run some kind of a study here, and I want it to be a study that's going to improve your lives. What would you like? What can I do for you as a doctor? Would you like to live longer? And a man raised his hand in the back of the room and he said, I'm 90 years old. I lived through the Holocaust. I don't want to live longer. I just want to be able to get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom and get back to my bed by myself. Now that was the light bulb moment for her. She thought, what if I came in and tested these people's strength and worked with them to lift weights at a high level of intensity, 80% of their one repetition maximum. Nobody had ever done that before because everybody thought it was dangerous for older people's hearts. But she ran the study 12 weeks later. The minimum strength gain in these older people's legs was 64%. The maximum strength gain was 374% and the average was almost double, about 175%. She went on to run a bigger randomized controlled trial of strength training for the oldest malnourished people and had the same results. But it not only made them stronger in the sense of testing their strength, lifting heavier weights, it made them walk faster, it increased their spontaneous activity. They were just walking around the nursing home more than they did before moving around the nursing home. Some of them actually were walking. Who hadn't been able to walk on their own before. They'd been using walkers or canes. A couple of them just threw those canes away. But for everybody, the result was an increased ability to act on the world in the ways that they wanted to do.
- [45:17]
Alex Hutchinson
We know what diseases, other than being able to move around in the world better, what specific diseases, besides the mental health thing you mentioned, does strength training improve, if any?
- [45:32]
Michael Joseph Gross
The list is long. Strength training improves bone density, it improves blood pressure, it even improves aerobic fitness as much as moderate intensity walking, especially for older people. A lot of people can't believe it when they hear that. It improves body composition, it helps treat type 2 diabetes, and that's especially true for older people. It reduces risk of cancer. It actually reduces the risk of cancer mortality much more than aerobic exercise does. It reduces the risk of falls, it reduces the risk of osteoporotic fracture, it even helps with obesity and overweight. This is something that Maria Fiatironi Sing often emphasizes. For younger people who maybe are heavier and aren't very comfortable doing aerobic exercise, strength training is a great alternative. And it's something that they can be really good at and also something that at the same time is making them healthier, establishing a foundation for long term health as well.
- [47:02]
Alex Hutchinson
I think one of the things that puts people off on this whole topic is if you say you need to exercise, well, I can walk, I can walk fast, I can walk on a treadmill, I could even run a little bit. That's very easy for me to do. I walk into a gym and look at this big thing of weights. I Wouldn't many people would say, I wouldn't even know where to start, what to do, how to put my toe in the water with any of this.
- [47:33]
Michael Joseph Gross
It's a great question. Where does a person start? The best thing, if you can afford it, is to hire a good trainer. And if you're on the fence about whether you can afford it, it's I think, a good thing to remember that building our muscles and strength is really like saving for retirement. It is that important. There are some resources on YouTube channels like Squat University that are really good about providing guidance on safe progressions and safe form. But when you're starting out, you really do need in some form, in some way to get some help if you want to just maximize your chances of doing this as safely as possible for as long as possible.
- [48:34]
Alex Hutchinson
And what do we know? Because people here, if you're going to do aerobic exercise, you should do it, you know, a minimum of three times a week. More is better. But what about strength training? How much do you have to do and how and when does it start to. The effects wear off if you don't do it for a while. What just that, that type of information.
- [48:57]
Michael Joseph Gross
Most of the national and international exercise guidelines put out by government health departments or by the World Health Organization recommend strength training, full body program, two or three times a week. For some people, more is better. For people who have depression, greater frequency of training will help. For people with type 2 diabetes, greater frequency of training, I think it's now acknowledged, will help. One of the most important things is actually probably the most important thing is consistency. You can't go heavy all the time. Sometimes you have to back off, sometimes you have to just rest. But showing up week after week really on a regular basis is absolutely necessary. The study of high intensity strength training in 90 year olds in the nursing home found about three months later that most of those people who'd made the spectacular gains in strength, the people who'd been able to throw away their canes and walk on their own again, had lost most of the capacity that they'd built. This is true of people of all ages. This is true of teenagers too. You can train for months and then in a couple of months lose most or all of what you've gained. But it's also true that once you've built it, regaining it comes faster.
- [50:46]
Alex Hutchinson
I mentioned it at the beginning, but we didn't really address it. And that is the fear that people have. The reason that they don't lift weights is the fear of getting big muscles and Looking like a bodybuilder.
- [50:59]
Michael Joseph Gross
Those fears are almost completely unfounded. Gyms around the world are full of men who've been trying for years to get bulky without success, eating tons of food, showing up every day for workouts, trying to get bulky, and they just can't do it. Now, men have a hormonal milieu that allows them to build mass much more easily than most women. The question to the question of safety. All of the reviews of safety data have shown that with good form, with proper progression, lifting weights is extremely safe. And in one study by the cdc, it was even shown to be safer than walking.
- [51:55]
Alex Hutchinson
Most of us have, I think, have older people, grandparents, people we know who are older, and encouraging. This seems like in older people, encouraging this would seem to be a great idea.
- [52:09]
Michael Joseph Gross
Maria Fiatoroni Singh, the geriatrician, often says that for her, as a geriatrician, as somebody who's treating old people, weight training is the most powerful medicine we have, full stop.
- [52:27]
Alex Hutchinson
Well, you couple that with all the other benefits you mentioned. Mental health benefits, weight control, help with diabetes. I mean, there are so many reasons to do this. And I've been doing strength training for a long time and I, I don't know if I enjoy it, but it feels good. It feels good to do it. It feels good to feel strong. I've been talking with Michael Joseph Gross. He is a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and he's author of a book called the Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Michael, appreciate you coming on the show today.
- [53:05]
Michael Joseph Gross
Thanks, Mike, it's been a pleasure.
- [53:10]
Alex Hutchinson
I think there's a tendency to believe that memory loss, mental decline is something that, you know, old people have to deal with. But when does the process of mental decline actually begin? It actually begins at 35. A study of about 50,000 people aged 10 to 89 was conducted by MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital. And here's what they found. Working memory, that ability to hold onto facts, names, numbers for a short amount of time that peaks at around age 25, and it holds steady till about age 35 and then slowly starts declining. Long term memory actually increases until about retirement age before it starts to decline. We also know that adults hold onto their memories longer than in previous generations. Apparently we're doing something right, although no one's exactly sure what that is. It may be education, diet, crossword puzzles, who knows? But it is clear from the research that the more you exercise your brain, the stronger it gets. And that is something you should know. I can't tell you how dog eat dog competitive it is out there in the podcast world, competing against bazillions of literally millions of podcasts. And the best way to get new listeners is to have someone like you tell someone you know, because they're more likely to listen to you than to a commercial or something else. So please, if you don't mind, it would sure help us if you would share this podcast with a friend. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know. Hello, I'm Robin Inks.
- [54:56]
Mike Carruthers
And I'm Brian Cox. And we would like to tell you about the new series of the Infinite Monkey Cage. We're going to have a plan it.
- [55:01]
Michael Joseph Gross
Off Jupiter versus Scepter.
- [55:06]
Mike Carruthers
That was very well done that because in the script it does say wrestling voice.
- [55:10]
Alex Hutchinson
After all of that, it's gonna kind of chill out a bit and talk about ice.
- [55:14]
Mike Carruthers
And also in this series we're discussing history, music recording with Brian Eno and looking at nature shapes.
- [55:21]
Alex Hutchinson
So listen wherever you get your podcasts.
- [55:25]
Mike Carruthers
I'm Amy Nicholson, the film critic for the LA Times.
- [55:28]
Alex Hutchinson
And I'm Paul Scheer, an actor, writer and director. You might know me from the League, Veep or my non eligible for Academy Award role in Twisters.
- [55:37]
Michael Joseph Gross
We love movies and we come at.
- [55:39]
Mike Carruthers
Them from different perspectives.
- [55:41]
Alex Hutchinson
Yeah, like Amy thinks that, you know, Joe Pesci was miscast in Goodfellas and I don't he's too old.
- [55:47]
Mike Carruthers
Let's not forget that Paul thinks that Dune 2 is overrated.
- [55:50]
Alex Hutchinson
It is.
- [55:52]
Mike Carruthers
Anyway, despite this, we come together to host Unspooled, a podcast. We talk about good movies, critical hits.
- [55:58]
Alex Hutchinson
Fan favorites, must sees, and in case.
- [56:00]
Mike Carruthers
You missed Ems, we're talking the Home.
- [56:02]
Alex Hutchinson
Alone From Grease to the Dark Knight.
- [56:04]
Mike Carruthers
We've done deep dives on popcorn flicks. We've talked about why Independence Day deserves a second look.
- [56:09]
Alex Hutchinson
And we've talked about horror movies, some that you've never even heard of, like Kanja and Hess.
- [56:13]
Mike Carruthers
So if you love movies like we do, come along on our cinematic adventure.
- [56:16]
Alex Hutchinson
Listen to unspooled wherever you get your.
- [56:18]
Mike Carruthers
Podcasts and don't forget to hit the follow button. Ra.