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Something You Should Know
Why You Should Take Fun Seriously & Electricity’s Amazing Story - SYSK Choice
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- [00:01]
Capella University Representative
Imagine what's possible when learning doesn't get.
- [00:03]
Mike Carruthers
In the way of life.
- [00:04]
Kathy Joseph
At Capella University, our game changing flexpath learning format lets you set your own.
- [00:08]
Capella University Representative
Deadline so you can learn at a time and pace that works for you.
- [00:12]
Kathy Joseph
It's an education you can tailor to your schedule.
- [00:15]
Mike Rucker
That means you don't have to put.
- [00:16]
Capella University Representative
Your life on hold to pursue your professional goals.
- [00:19]
Kathy Joseph
Instead, enjoy learning your way and earn.
- [00:21]
Capella University Representative
Your degree without missing a beat. A different future is closer than you.
- [00:25]
Kathy Joseph
Think with Capella University.
- [00:27]
Mike Carruthers
Learn more at Capella Eduardo today on something you should know if you're having trouble resisting temptation, there's a way to turbo boost your willpower. Then, if you want to be happy, maybe you should stop trying to be happy and just have fun.
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Mike Rucker
Once you orchestrate a life where you're having fun deliberately, then happiness is an amazing byproduct. It's when we kind of focus on happiness that it becomes problematic because happiness is really a lagging indicator of the things that are happening in our life, right?
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Mike Carruthers
Also, some great advice for the next time you're feeling a little bit down and how electricity got into your house. In fact, having electricity in homes was not the initial goal.
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Kathy Joseph
Everyone at the time thought that the real money was not in electrifying houses, but the real money was in providing electric buses because only the very wealthy could afford light bulbs.
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Mike Carruthers
All this today on something you should know. So I want to talk to you if you have a lot to do this time of year and also have to hire someone like you really need that to add to your to do list. But if that's the case, really, it's time to try Indeed. Indeed is your matching and hiring platform with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast and without all the busy work and paperwork. And here's what I love about indeed. They walk you through the entire process of matching just the right person to the job opening you have, and they do it really well. In fact, three and a half million businesses worldwide use Indeed to hire great talent fast. So they must be pretty good at what they do in the minute I've been talking to you. 23 hires were made on Indeed according to Indeed Data worldwide. Look, you can try to wing it by yourself or you can put Indeed to work to help you get the right person quickly. 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. Need to hire you Need Indeed. Something you should know, Fascinating intel, the.
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Mike Rucker
World'S top experts and practical advice you can use in your life today.
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Mike Carruthers
Something you should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something you should know. This is that time of year. As this episode publishes in January, this is the time when people start to maybe fall off the wagon for their New Year's resolutions. And wouldn't it be great if you had like a willpower button that you could press when you were trying to resist temptation? Well, according to a study, we actually do have a willpower button. So before you reach for that donut that you swore you wouldn't eat in 2023 or buy those shoes that you know you don't really need, make a fist. Just make a fist. Make it tight and hold it until it's really uncomfortable. That secret willpower is actually in the discomfort. And you don't have to make a fist. Exactly. You can flex any muscle and it will work. Participants in the study were told to tighten their muscles, hands, biceps, calves, whatever, as they faced a challenge to resist temptation. Those who clenched demonstrated more self control than those who didn't. Most of us naturally clench our muscles when we're exerting our willpower. If you want to use the trick strategically, you'll need to flex at just the right moment. The study found that clenching before the temptation arrived was counterproductive. Not only did it not help the clencher, it left them a little weaker and more vulnerable. You have to wait until you're tempted, and that is something you should know. Do you have fun? I mean, do you deliberately set aside time to do fun things to get away from work and reset, recharge, and just have fun? By the nature of the word fun, it might seem that doing things for fun is frivolous, maybe even a waste of time. But if you think that, you may be looking at this all wrong, according to Mike Rucker, he is an organizational psychologist who studies fun and he's author of a book called the Fun Habit. Hi Mike. Welcome to something you should know.
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Mike Rucker
Thank you so much for having me.
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Mike Carruthers
So today there seems to be a lot of emphasis on happiness, tons of books and podcasts and seminars about being happy. And, and I know you say that's problematic, that rather than focus on being happy, we should focus on having fun. So why is that? What's the problem with happiness?
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Mike Rucker
So the primary problem about using it as a construct for success is it's an exercise in evaluation, right. It tends to happen in the rearview mirror. And so especially if you're in an area of life like in the book I write about losing my younger brother. But whether that's a divorce or just a time in life where, you know, extreme positive emotion isn't necessarily the appropriate response because you need time to mourn or you need time to figure out how your life has changed. Once you start to ruminate on the fact that happiness is out there on the horizon and you are where you are, something quite terrible can happen. And what that is is that you start to subconsciously identify as being unhappy. Like, okay, well, I guess I'm just not a happy person. And over time that can lead to a self fulfilling prophecy. And again, a lot of research suggests that that's exactly what's kind of happened. In this era of toxic positivity. What fun does is it really allows you to take this action oriented approach where it doesn't necessarily mean you're trying to calculate anything. You're really just enjoying life in the moment by your own design. Things that really light you up.
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Mike Carruthers
So is fun the thing you do or is fun the feeling you feel? Or what exactly is fun?
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Mike Rucker
I've defined fun quite simply. I use an academic term, valence, but that really just translates to pleasurable, Right? So is what you're engaging in, are you enjoying your time or are you not enjoying your time? And so that's a really easy definition of fun. Is what I'm doing right now something I enjoy doing or is it something I, I don't enjoy doing? And I'm certainly not prescribing that we should be having fun all the time. But what I am suggesting is that especially here in the US a lot of us aren't having any fun at all and it's leading to dire consequences.
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Mike Carruthers
And a lot of the times though, people say that the reason you have fun is it makes you happy, right?
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Mike Rucker
Yeah. So that's what's amazing is that once you sort of orchestrate a life where you're having fun deliberately, then happiness is an amazing byproduct. It's when we kind of focus on happiness that it becomes problematic because happiness is really a lagging indicator of the things that are happening in our life. Right. And sometimes happiness can be disrupted because of things that are completely outside of our control. But fun is pretty pedestrian in the sense that generally we can go off and just do it, you know, by our own design. And we don't necessarily need to identify as happy in that moment.
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Mike Carruthers
So what do you say to people? Because I'm sure people will tell you this, that my work is fun. I love my work. It's so much fun. So I don't need other fun because that's my fun.
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Mike Rucker
Well then that's amazing, right? Good for them. I would still suggest that when you look at time based studies that folks that don't have a transition ritual into leisure, even if their work is so fun that they don't need a lot of leisure, will ultimately find over time that one, they are burning themselves out. But that two, when you don't index kind of a tapestry of different interesting things in your life. You know, when you get into older age, those things that you've habituated kind of get stored in your memory as one event. It's this concept called index time, right? You'll look back at that and go, okay, I guess my life was just work. There's a lot of regret when you've kind of just let your life be consumed by one thing, whether that's work, domestic duties, or whatever it is. And so integrating at least just some experiences that light you up, that are outside of your main activity become extremely important.
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Mike Carruthers
So what does the science say about what fun does? And what I mean by that is, is taking a break and going and doing something fun intrinsically valuable in and of itself somehow? And if so, how? Or is it really you're just taking a break, you're forcing yourself to not do the work so that you refresh and recharge? Is it that or is it the other?
- [09:59]
Mike Rucker
There's a couple of things. One is called the hedonic flexibility principle. So there was an amazing study that came out of mit, Stanford and Harvard and it essentially said that when folks are taking time off the table for themselves, so they are living a life that's joyful and not sort of rooted in its escapism. So they're so burnt out, right? They're doing things that aren't necessarily leading to betterment, like drinking or gambling, but are doing things, you know, like dance classes or engaging in a hobby, or having amazing social relationships with friends, that they're the ones that actually do the harder stuff, right? And so that that becomes important. Another aspect of this, especially for folks that are in creative positions, is, is that it allows you to think in a nonlinear fashion. So a lot of folks that need to come up with creative solutions, those tend to not happen if you're always engaged in work. You really need to let your brain breathe and do something else so that you can start to connect ideas that don't necessarily fit in a linear fashion.
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Mike Carruthers
When you ask people, when you talk to people and say, who don't have a lot of fun, who really are kind of stuck in the grind. Why, why don't you have fun? What do they say?
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Mike Rucker
For a majority of folks, you know, it's sort of rooted in that puritan work ethic or it comes from a sense of guilt, right? This isn't my idea, but, you know, it's been proven, you know, by various empirical research, this whole idea of the U shaped curve of happiness, right? And so there's this term called the sandwich generation and that, you know, what's happened is in modern life, we're all living a lot, living a lot longer, and we're having kids a lot later, right? And so that means for the first time, we're a lot of us are having to deal with both kids, raising kids, and then also our aging parents. And so rightfully, you know, we're what, what scientists called time poor, right? And so what I suggest is that you don't necessarily need to find something fun to do every day, but figure out how you can take at least two to three hours off the table a week for yourself and then play with that for one to two weeks. Because changing habituated behavior, you know, often the first week there's some dissonance and you gotta get over that. But by week two or three, you'll start to feel that vitality and vigor come back and realize that you're actually able to contribute better. Especially if you see life through the lens of a sense of duty.
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Mike Carruthers
I remember hearing someone say, and when they said it, it kind of rang true for me. And I've always thought this to be true, that when it comes to things like fun, it's not only the fun itself that is beneficial, it's the anticipation of having it that is also beneficial.
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Mike Rucker
What we now know about dopamine, right? I think for a long time it's kind of been thought of this pleasure neurochemical. And so in preparing the material for the book, I interviewed a bunch of different neuroscientists. And they now know that that's not necessarily the case. They think the real evolutionary benefit of dopamine was the anticipation of pleasure, right? And so we get excited about anticipating something novel or surprising or even just enjoyable. And so that works on both the front end, but then also the back end. We know that relishing in really fond memories, reminiscing about Things. That's what builds that resilience. So, yes, it's an enjoyable state heading into something that's fun, but it's also one of the best ways to build resilience after the activity. So it's beneficial on both the front end and the back end.
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Mike Carruthers
What do you say to somebody? I imagine this has happened where someone would say to you, I can't remember. I wouldn't know what to do. I don't know. Okay, I'll have more fun, but tell me how. I don't know what to do.
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Mike Rucker
Yeah, absolutely. So I suggest building a fun file. I think, you know, you can look back at the things that did bring you joy. You know, a lot of us use science brought forth by Stuart Brown, that was a play expert. But I meant the exercise is very helpful to kind of, you know, understand things from your past that light you up, that might still be applicable to, you know, what you're doing today. And then look at friends that are having a lot of fun and see if the things that they're doing are something that you might enjoy. So there are a lot of, you know, folks that are likely in your network that would be, you know, great inspiration for getting you out of the house and enjoying yourself a little bit more and all it takes. And this even works for introverts, right? I'm not necessarily saying, like, go join a big running club. Like, I might because I'm an extrovert, but for my wife, it might be just joining an intimate group, you know, of a book club so that you can just start to reintegrate those things that really are the bomb that, you know, help us endure the slings and arrows of everyday life.
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Mike Carruthers
We're talking about fun. And making the case for you having more fun is Mike Rucker. He's an organizational psychologist, and the name of his book is the Fun Habit.
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Capella University Representative
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- [16:41]
Mike Carruthers
This episode is brought to you by Amazon.
- [16:43]
Kathy Joseph
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- [16:47]
Mike Rucker
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Mike Carruthers
That's painful.
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Mike Carruthers
Delivered to your door. Thanks to Amazon Pharmacy and Amazon One Medical Healthcare just got less painful. So, Mike, you know, it's interesting that we're talking about this and encouraging adults to have more fun because as you pointed out before, when kids have fun, they just have fun. You don't have to tell them to have fun, but when you have to tell somebody, when you have to tell an adult to have fun, it's like, now it becomes a project. Okay, now what am I going to do? Okay, let me think. What could I do? Where could I go? You know what I mean?
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Mike Rucker
Yeah. And you bring up a great point. So thank you. That certainly not prescribing, just adding more to your already busy schedule. Right. So I think one of the first things to do is sort of see where you've habituated time. That's not really leading to your betterment. For a lot of people, that's going to be social media use for folks that, you know, are just working so hard that when they get home at 7pm they just plop down on the couch and aren't really paying attention to what, you know, they're viewing. They just mindlessly, you know, turn on Netflix. So certainly not villainizing people that, you know, really enjoy a certain show and are watching it with a partner. But more the people that are asked, hey, so what did you do last week? And they can't even tell you what show they watched. Those are the opportunities where you can take time off the table and then reintegrate something that really does light you up. And so an important first step is to figure out how you can make that space. What are the things that you really just filling time with because you're in so much discomfort. You really just trying to displace that discomfort with something that's a little bit mindless instead of something that's leading to your betterment.
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Mike Carruthers
Yeah, well, I guess that's a big part of it is I imagine a lot of people say, well, I'd have more fun, but I just don't have time, I'm too busy.
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Mike Rucker
Yeah, that's exactly right. Like a common example that I think is helpful is, you know, you see a busy parent on a park bench just watching their child and mindlessly kind of scrolling their phone. So for them, that's really just another extension of work. Right. I'm here because I have to, because I'm a parent and I need to watch this child and simply just remember something that might be interesting for you. Like, you know, maybe it's building a craft, maybe it's, you know, painting. For me, it's going, I love water slides. So my son and I just went there. So instead of just taking my son on a play date, I actually do something that I enjoy as well. And so that's a great example of switching out an hour that really kind of felt like work. And now I'm having fun with my son. And again, it doesn't need to be sort of this western ideal of an extremely extroverted high arousal activity. Right. It could be something as simple as, you know, going to see a play, introducing your child to Shakespeare or whatever it is. But there are a lot of opportunities where you're already doing something where if you augment it in sort of a joyful fashion, you can add fun to your life and not necessarily go, okay, well, where am I going to find the time to do this?
- [19:56]
Mike Carruthers
When you talk about incorporating fun into your life, if you haven't been having a lot of fun, like, I know it's hard to put a number on it, but people always wonder like, well, so how much is enough? How much fun do I need to have to. To be benefiting from my fun?
- [20:13]
Mike Rucker
Yeah. So I don't like prescribing a number because to your point, you know, especially that's where happiness has become problematic because, you know, you try to hit some, some bar. Right. There's the research that I cite in the book comes from Cassie Homes out of ucla. And so when most people critically look at their schedule, even if they're extremely busy and so obviously working housewives you know, as a generality, tend to have the least amount of time. But even those folks, if you look at their schedule critically, can find two hours. And then someone you know in, in the single population, it tends to be five. So there's a spectrum of two to five hours that we, that most of us should be able to claim agency autonomy over and really incorporate again, you know, leisure activities that bring us joy. If that seems like too much, again, just try two or three a week and see how that makes you feel. So that's where I start, because 2 to 3 is generally, you know, really easily accessible, even to someone that's working, you know, a job that requires 60 to 70 hours a week. Again, there's 168 hours in a week. And so even if you're working 80, you know, and then sleeping 56, there's still a lot of time on the table to go enjoy yourself. And so if you're not, you need to ask why, Right?
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Mike Carruthers
Yeah, well, that's a good question because that's a lot of unaccounted for hours. But, you know, I guess it's, there's laundry to do and grocery shopping and, you know, people can fill it up. They do it all the time with stuff.
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Mike Rucker
Yeah. And so, I mean, it's a trope, right? But you know, what we prioritize happens. And so I think I and others have made a strong case that if you're not engaging in leisure, ultimately you're going to burn out. Right. And so what I think, you know, is sort of at the forefront is the same thing that happened with sleep in the 90s and early 2000s, right. You, you know, hustle porn, as I call it, was really prevalent then. And you had all these folks, you know, the Gary Vee's and the Grant Cordones of the world saying, you know, if you really want to be successful, you put the kids to sleep and you work till 3am and so to Gary Vee's credit and a host of other folks, we now know that if you, if you have a sleep deficit, you can't work. Right. And so you never hear anybody anymore talk about championing sleep deprivation. And I think you're going to see the same thing with leisure because as emerging evidence suggests, if you're not enjoying yourself a little bit, if you're not taking breaks, it's a direct path to burnout and you're not going to be productive anyways.
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Mike Carruthers
One thing I've always wondered is, so if you're going to go, let's Say you're going to go have a fun ski weekend, and you go, and it isn't the fun you expected. It was too cold or it rained or the snow was crappy, or in other words, the experience, the takeaway wasn't what you thought it was going to be. Does it still count? Is it still fun? Or it's just a waste of time?
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Mike Rucker
No, that's a great question. I think for, you know, one way to set you up for success is to try and not make the event outcome focused. So, again, if you kind of stack the deck in your favor and you're with great people when, you know, life kind of gives you lemons, you can still enjoy that time because you're with people that you really like. Right? So, you know, one of the best ways to mitigate that disappointment is to, you know, just kind of be open to whatever that event, you know, whatever that experience kind of throws your way and really try to enjoy the people and the time that you have. One example in my own life was my wife and I tried to do two New Years in one year. So we did an amazing night in Sydney with some friends, and then we tried to beeline to Hawaii so that we could say that we did, you know, two New Year's events in. In one year, and the plane broke, so we didn't make it to Hawaii on time. And my wife had an amazing time, and I was just fixated on the fact, like, oh, my gosh, we spent all this money and it didn't happen. So she was an amazing teacher in that moment. I meant, you know, we could have just enjoyed ourselves the whole time, that the fact that we didn't make it to a second New Year's was just consequential. Right. And instead, I ruined that event because of my sour mood. So to the extent that you don't really focus on the outcome and you really just focus on the fact that you should be grateful that you're with these amazing people and you get to enjoy the time that you have, makes it easier when, again, there's sort of curve balls thrown at you.
- [24:55]
Mike Carruthers
So when you do the types of things you're talking about, assuming you haven't been doing them, like I say to you, okay, Mike, I'm going to go have more fun now, and I do what you prescribe, what's going to change? Specifically, what would I look forward to because I'm now having fun that I didn't have when I wasn't having fun?
- [25:17]
Mike Rucker
Yeah, that's a great question. So again, Going back to the hedonic flexibility principle, what we see is once you start to enjoy yourself, there's a few things. One, you show up as a better version of yourself, right? So you have more vitality and vigor for the things that you want to do oftentimes. To illustrate this simply, I just use a math equation, right? If kind of living in this low level life of burnout, you're able to contribute, you know, 1x every hour that you work, you know, that's 40 hours of output a week, right? But if you start enjoying your life and you can show up to work, you know, with a better attitude and, and more energy, then you start to produce 2x, right? And so, you know, the person that's working 60 hours a week, burnt out, you know, that's 60 units of output per week. The person that is showing up to work, you know, with that vigor and vitality and energy, that's able to produce 2x in just 40 hours a week. Excuse me, just 40 hours a week, they can produce 80 units of output. And so here's one person working a lot less now, has more time for fun and is producing more where the person that's burnt out is working longer and producing less, right? And so that's just a simple way to highlight that, but that's been empirically validated. We know that people that are burnt out, you know, make themselves busy but don't really contribute to work. The second is through, you know, this idea of social contagion, that once we are, you know, we feel more optimistic and we're just living life in a more positive way, a more joyful way. That stuff tends to kind of be infectious. And all the people around us, you know, start to see us happy and want to be happy too. You know, we start laughing more, we start smiling more and just generally clear the air. You especially see this within a family dynamic. So, you know, just integrating a little bit of this into your life creates this upward spiral not just for yourself, but for those around you as well.
- [27:14]
Mike Carruthers
So it seems like one of the key messages here is to, rather than to ask yourself, am I happy? We ought to be asking ourselves, am I having fun? Am I having enough fun?
- [27:26]
Mike Rucker
Yeah, I think so. I interviewed Jordan Atkin out of Duke about this and I think she highlighted it perfectly. I mean, as soon as you take yourself out of the moment to ask yourself whether you're happy, you're now not having fun anymore, right? You're essentially, it's an exercise in retrospection. And so happiness is great. And I think I value it highly and I want the world to flourish. But I think taking an action oriented approach and really being mindful of just enjoying the time that we have here tends to be a better approach than, you know, trying to architect sort of these interventions to try and make ourselves more happy.
- [28:04]
Mike Carruthers
Happiness is really the result. It's the byproduct of the fun. It isn't the thing you do, it's the sensation you feel after the fact.
- [28:15]
Mike Rucker
That's exactly right.
- [28:16]
Mike Carruthers
Yep. Well, great. This has been really thought provoking. I've been talking to Mike Rucker. He is an organizational psychologist and the name of his book is the Fun Habit and you'll find a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks Mike. It's been fun.
- [28:31]
Mike Rucker
Thanks Mike. It's been a true pleasure. Thanks so much for having me Build.
- [28:36]
Capella University Representative
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Mike Rucker
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Kathy Joseph
I was worried we'd bring back the same team.
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Mike Carruthers
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Made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds. Hard to install?
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Mike Rucker
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Mike Carruthers
You probably don't think about it much, but when you walk into a room and flip on a switch and a light comes on reliably pretty much every single time, that's actually rather amazing. You tend to appreciate it more when the power goes out in your house. Then you realize how much you rely on reliable electricity being delivered to your home. But think about it. How did we get from darkness to having electricity streaming through the walls of our homes and businesses? Well, here to tell that story and discuss the miracle of electricity is Kathy Joseph. Kathy has a YouTube channel called KathyLovesPhysics, and she holds multiple advanced degrees in physics and engineering. She's author of a book called the Lightning True Stories of the Dreamers and Schemers who Harnessed Electricity and transformed our world. Hey, Kathy, welcome to something you should know.
- [30:35]
Kathy Joseph
Hi, Mike. Thank you so much for inviting me on.
- [30:38]
Mike Carruthers
Sure. So here we have this force of nature, electricity that somehow becomes domesticated and is now pretty much in everyone's home and business, powering everything. Where did this story. Where did the journey begin?
- [30:55]
Kathy Joseph
This all began in 1831. There was a scientist named Michael Faraday, and he was working for a government job that he hated. So he quit his job, and he posted in his notebook that he wanted to make electricity from magnetism, from magnets. And his idea was. Well, they knew that if you put electricity in a coil wrapped around an iron bar, it would act like a magnet when the electricity was in it, and it would stop acting like a magnet when the electricity was turned off. And this was called an electromagnet. And he was like, maybe the iron helps transfer the electricity. So he's like, maybe I can use one electromagnet connected to another electromagnet by an iron bar. So he had this iron ring, and he put one coil on one side and one coil on the other. And he says, maybe if I put a really strong current on the first one and make it a really strong magnet, I can make the other one get electricity. And he tried it, and it didn't work. And he was super depressed until he unplugged the battery. And then guess what happened when he turned it off? The other one created a little burst of electricity, and then when he plugged it back in, the second one got another little burst of electricity. No matter how strong the magnet was, nothing happened unless it changed. That's what he discovered. He discovered that changing a magnet creates or induces electricity. And this is the basis of almost all the electricity that we get in our walls.
- [32:42]
Mike Carruthers
I imagine when a lot of people think of the start of harnessing electricity, they think of Benjamin Franklin and flying his kite and all that. Is he part of this, or is that more myth and fable, or is that an important part of this story?
- [32:59]
Kathy Joseph
Well, there's so many different starting points for electricity, and Benjamin Franklin with the kite in the rain and with naming positive and negative electricity was very important. But I would say that the start of generating electricity, which is so vital for us using electricity, starts with Faraday in 1831, because he figured out how to use magnets to make electricity.
- [33:31]
Mike Carruthers
So when electricity is generated today, are magnets involved?
- [33:36]
Kathy Joseph
Oh, yes, definitely. So what he figured right after he published his work, so he figured out changing one magnet created electricity or induced electricity in another coil. And he also found moving a magnet induced electricity. And like, months later, this guy in France who was working for Andre Marie Ampere, like amps, like current in the wall, this guy named Hippotoly Pixie, he built this machine. And it was a bar magnet with two coils. And you spun the bar magnet, and as the bar magnet went towards the coil, it made electricity go one way, and as it went away from the coil, it made electricity go the other way. And that's called alternating current, or AC electricity. And we currently generate our electricity basically that same way, except we use electromagnets instead of permanent magnets. So, like, let's see, coal power. You burn the coal, you make steam that spins turbines, which spins electromagnets near coils of wire. Or wind power, of course, or nuclear. There's a nuclear reaction. It makes steam, which spins electromagnets near coils of wire. All of them, except for solar. Use this basic principle. You spin electromagnets near coils of wire, and that induces the electricity.
- [35:10]
Mike Carruthers
So at that time, when they're figuring out how to create, how to generate electricity, was there an understanding that if we get this, you know, this will power lights, this will power things, this will create a lot of power to do things, or was there a big learning curve involved?
- [35:29]
Kathy Joseph
There was a major learning curve. The problem was that they didn't have particularly good motors and they didn't have good light sources. So not only were the generators not very efficient, but also they didn't have good uses for them. And so Faraday made his discovery in 1831, hippotoly pixie made the first generator where you spun something and the magnets moved towards and away from the coils of wire. And it wasn't until the 1850s, that was 20 years later, 1860s, even 1870s, before they started to figure out how to use electromagnets instead of permanent magnets. And then at the same time, in the 1860s and 70s, they started working on different kinds of light bulbs and light sources. And so it took until the 1880s before people like Edison said, I think I have a good idea. We're going to use this kind of generator, and we're going to have light bulbs that aren't very bright, but a whole bunch of them. That was actually Edison's discovery, wasn't the light bulb. It Was the idea that he could make a whole bunch of light bulbs not super, super bright and put them in homes and that it would come from a centralized location. So people were always arguing who invented the light bulb. But there was an electric light created by Isaac Newton's assistant in 1609. These things were old. They just weren't industry ready until the 1880s. And even then it was only very wealthy people would have it.
- [37:25]
Mike Carruthers
Edison wasn't big on alternating current. He liked direct current.
- [37:30]
Kathy Joseph
That is correct. That is because when Edison heard about it, the most powerful generators out there were DC generators. And also at the time when he first started, there is no advantage to AC electricity at the time. It was only after he got everything started that someone else said, oh, there's a trick with these two coils of wire, something called a transformer, where we can take alternating current, make it really high voltage and low current, and make it go long distances without losing power, and then use another transformer to make it safe again. And Edison was like, I have this whole system set up. I don't want to change everything. I don't think that's safe. Anyway, forget it. And then he starts, you know, doing some very unpleasant things to promote his idea that AC was unsafe. But none of that was really influential. Everyone at the time who was dealing with electricity thought that the real money was not in electrifying houses, but the real money was in providing electric buses, electric trains for public transportation, because only the very wealthy could afford light bulbs. But many people rode the bus. And it was only when there was this big World's Fair in Chicago that he lit up with electricity, that everyone said, we have to have our houses electrified, we have to have our stores electrified. And then suddenly America became the most electrified country in the world.
- [39:18]
Mike Carruthers
Was there resistance to it? I remember watching an episode of Downton Abbey when they brought electricity into the castle there, and people were like, afraid that the walls would burst up on fire and that they didn't want it. Was there that kind of resistance to it or that's just fiction?
- [39:38]
Kathy Joseph
Oh, no, that's completely true. And not only true, legitimate. It was a legitimate fear to worry that the walls would light on fire, because they often did. I mean, Edison set up electricity in JP Morgan's house before he set it up in New York. And it did catch on fire multiple times. And it was loud. The initial ones that have generators in the basement, so you can't, I mean, just like shoveling coal into this thing that's groaning and moaning and setting fire to Things. I mean, people who let electricity into their homes at first were either brave or foolhardy. Like, this was dangerous stuff.
- [40:26]
Mike Carruthers
Isn't that interesting that that fear would be justified? But so how did they fix that and when did they fix that? When was the public reassured that your house isn't going to burn down?
- [40:43]
Kathy Joseph
I don't think they were reassured. I think what happened was it became so cool that people didn't worry about its danger as compared to being fashionable. And I think a lot of that had to do with the World's Fair in Chicago. I mean, people wrote poetry about the fair and specifically about the lighting at the fair. And I think something like a third of the country visited the World's Fair. It was ridiculously popular. And so if you had a store and you knew that if you got it electrified, you would get five times the customer base, you were willing to risk a little fire damage.
- [41:31]
Mike Carruthers
But when you think about, if you are to electrify a community, you think about how that has to be done with wires and poles and digging up walls and laying in wire, that this is a huge deal.
- [41:49]
Kathy Joseph
Yes, it's fascinating to me, especially reading Edison's old material, because he kept everything. But it's fascinating to see him, like, complain about how many details they had to deal with. And they formed the first research institute because there were so many details to deal with. How do you deal with the wires? How do you deal with the manufacturer? How do you install things? How do you charge people if you don't know how much electricity they're using? They had to make the first meters to figure out how much electricity people were using. Because if you don't have a meter, you just charge a daily rate. And people left their lights on all day and all night.
- [42:39]
Mike Carruthers
But when it started to catch on, even given all of the logistics of meters and wires and poles and walls and all that, did it happen pretty quick or was there resistance every step of the way?
- [42:53]
Kathy Joseph
I still contend that after that big fair in Chicago that just sort of. That sort of flipped a switch, if you pardon the pun. And suddenly Americans from every city were trying to build as many skyscrapers as they could to compete with Chicago. And then they need to electrify them. And every new business or every old business wanted electricity. And after that, we had just so many light bulbs that when they invented a light bulb in Europe that could deal with higher voltages in Europe, they could just replace the old light bulbs because they didn't have that many in America, they had way too many light bulbs to replace them.
- [43:43]
Mike Carruthers
So you mean that when these more powerful and brighter light bulbs came along, there were just too many of the lower dimmer light bulbs in existence, and the system would have to be completely reconfigured to handle these new light bulbs. So it was never reconfigured, if you've ever noticed.
- [44:03]
Kathy Joseph
You go to Europe, you have like 220, 240 volts, and in the United States you have like 110, 120. That's because we were so advanced that we couldn't make a change to the next advancement.
- [44:22]
Mike Carruthers
As I recall, one of the big problems with getting electricity to people's homes is getting it there, that you lose a lot from here to there.
- [44:34]
Kathy Joseph
Yes, that's true.
- [44:36]
Mike Carruthers
So what is that problem and how was it solved or has it ever been solved?
- [44:42]
Kathy Joseph
Well, it's never been completely solved. Edison's solution was to just put coal plants everywhere. And that's not great for multiple reasons. One, you can't get electricity to the countryside, and two, you got coal plants in the middle of all your big cities. But the solution to that has been to do transfer electricity at, like I said, high voltages, which is dangerous, but allows you to transform it long distances without losing a ton of power. So that you can usually, they say they step up the voltage to transform it and then to transmit it, and then they step down the voltage once they get near a home or near a city. So that's mostly been our solution so far. We just keep on going to higher and higher voltages for the long distances to the power plants that we try to keep far away from us. And then once they're near us, we transform them down so that they're safe to deal with or safer to deal with.
- [46:00]
Mike Carruthers
One of the things that really struck me was that there was a movie, I think in like 2012 or something, Lincoln. And it was Daniel Day Lewis played Abraham Lincoln. And they tried to make it really realistic as to what it was like inside the White House when there was no electricity and it was amazingly dark. And, you know, at nighttime there was just candles and. And it's hard to imagine living that way before the electric light.
- [46:29]
Kathy Joseph
What's amazing to me is how many scientists became sort of philosophers about electricity. Now that we have electricity, people can work for 20 hours a day and only need four hours of sleep. And won't that be wonderful? I'm like, no, that sounds horrible. But they thought they could tell they were transforming their world. And sometimes they had weird flights of Fancy about what that would mean. Meaning like their ideal world was something where people worked ridiculously long hours and had no sleep and no family life because they're like, look, we can now work all the time. Isn't this wonderful? But it's fascinating to see how all these thousands and thousands and thousands of years of having it be dark at night was transformed into our modern world where it doesn't have to be.
- [47:30]
Mike Carruthers
One of the people whose names I hear in discussions about electricity that you haven't mentioned is Tesla.
- [47:37]
Kathy Joseph
Yes.
- [47:38]
Mike Carruthers
Was he not a big player in this, or. We just haven't gotten to him yet.
- [47:42]
Kathy Joseph
It's a difficult thing with Tesla because it's. There's such a mix of myth when it comes to the person. There's this push that he invented everything. On the other hand, he was very inspirational because of two things, two major things. One, he invented a kind of motor that worked with AC electricity. And more importantly, he was the first to patent it. And once he got paid a lot of money for that patent, everyone got interested in AC electricity into AC electricity motors and AC electricity transformers. That sort of broke the stagnation on that issue a little bit. And the second thing is he invented what's called the Tesla coil, which he thought would electrify the entire atmosphere or electrify the entire Earth, or communicate with Martians. He had a lot of thoughts, but it's still this. I don't know if you've ever seen. It looks sort of like a mushroom and you can see these lightning bolts coming off of it. It's one of the most inspirational devices around. And so there's this weird mix of, like, he was more influential than people know, and simultaneously less, if that makes any sense.
- [49:14]
Mike Carruthers
So as revolutionary as electricity was in the 1800s. Are we done? It is what it is. It's electricity. Is there anything new going on or. Electricity is electricity.
- [49:30]
Kathy Joseph
I would never say we're done. I don't think science is ever done. There's a lot of interesting work now with actually going back to DC electricity. See, in the 1800s, you couldn't transform DC electricity very easily to high voltage to make it transform long distances. But now you can. So there is a big interest in going back to the old dc, but using our electronics to transform it.
- [50:03]
Mike Carruthers
Well, as I said in the beginning, you don't really realize how important and how much you rely on electricity until the power goes out, and then you realize you can't do anything. And it's really interesting to hear the stories of how we got to where we are with electricity. I've been speaking with Kathy Joseph. She has a YouTube channel called Kathy Loves Physics. And she is author of a book called the Lightning True Stories of the Dreamers and Schemers who Harnessed Electricity and Transformed Our World. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Kathy.
- [50:40]
Kathy Joseph
Thanks, Mike. That was so much fun.
- [50:45]
Mike Carruthers
You know, people who get down and depressed have a tendency to do two things. This is according to Dr. Jeffrey Rossman, who wrote a book called the Mind Body Solution. The two things people do is they dwell on the past and they worry about the future. So if you find yourself feeling down and doing one or both of those things, try a little mindfulness. That just means being present in the here and now. So instead of going for a walk and worrying about things, go for a walk. Enjoy the walk. One way to do that is to focus on your breathing. Because if you're thinking about your breathing, you can't think about bad things. By bringing your mind into full attention to what's going on now, you can distance yourself from what has you down in the dumps. And you usually find with a little distance that things aren't as bad as you were thinking. And that is something you should know. And now that you've heard something you should know, here's something you could do. And that is to leave a rating and review wherever you listen to this podcast. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to something you should know.
- [51:57]
Capella University Representative
Hi, I'm Sarah Gabrielli and I've traveled to every single lesbian bar in the country for my podcast, Cruising.
- [52:04]
Kathy Joseph
Dancing was a no, no, no. Women dancing. That would be something that, yes, the cops would grab you for. There were no black owned female gay bars. We needed a place to follow on in those days. We went to the bars to socialize because there was no other way. When you went to Brady's bar, you knew you were safe.
- [52:27]
Capella University Representative
This is Cruising, a documentary podcast about queer spaces, history and culture. Each episode of Cruising features a different space and tells the stories of the humans that run it and the humans that call it home. You can listen to Cruising on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Season one and two are available now, so be sure to binge them before season three, which will go beyond the bars to queer bookstores, farms, peace encampments and more. Premiering February 4th. Do you love Disney?
- [52:57]
Mike Rucker
Do you love top 10 lists?
- [52:59]
Mike Carruthers
Then you are going to love our.
- [53:00]
Capella University Representative
Hit podcast, Disney Countdown. I'm Megan the magical millennial and I'm the dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney Disney. The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover. On our show, we are famous for.
- [53:18]
Kathy Joseph
Rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed.
- [53:23]
Mike Rucker
I had Danielle and Megan record some answers to seemingly meaningless questions. I asked Danielle what insect song is typically higher pitched in hotter temperatures and lower pitched and cooler temperatures.
- [53:35]
Mike Carruthers
You got this.
- [53:36]
Mike Rucker
No, I didn't believe that about a wish coming true.
- [53:39]
Kathy Joseph
Well, I didn't either. Of course, I'm just a cicada. I'm crying. I'm so sorry you win that one. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney magic, check out Disney Countdown. Wherever you get your podcasts.