How to Make More Joy and Less Stress For the Holidays & Odd Secrets of Evolution

Some people crave sweets, while others reach for salty snacks — and it’s not just habit. Your flavor preference is shaped by biology and brain chemistry. We begin with a look at what determines whether you’re wired for sugar or salt. Source: https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a19931521/why-some-people-have-a-sweet-tooth/ The holidays promise joy but often deliver stress. We push for perfection, try to meet expectations, and forget that the season is really about connection — not flawless decorations or perfect moments. Psychotherapist Niro Feliciano shares some powerful advice for a healthier, calmer holiday season. Niro appears regularly on the TODAY show, writes the “Is This Normal?” column for Today.com, and is the author of All Is Calmish: How to Feel Less Frantic and More Festive During the Holidays (https://amzn.to/48qLdGM). Animals often behave in strange ways — and those quirks almost always trace back to evolution. From dogs and cats to bees and humans, behavior is shaped by survival. David Stipp, former staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal and senior writer at Fortune, explores some of the most surprising evolutionary stories. He’s the author of Why Rats Laugh and Jellyfish Sleep: And Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution.(https://amzn.to/4opHQpE) What word comes to mind when you think of an owl? Wise? While owls are often portrayed as wise in myths and stories – do they actually possess wisdom? Are they smarter than other birds? Listen as I reveal just how smart these wise birds are? https://www.mentalfloss.com/animals/birds/are-owls-actually-wise PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! AURA FRAMES: Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://AuraFrames.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ and get $45 off Aura's best selling Carver Mat frames by using promo code SOMETHING at checkout. INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! QUINCE: Give and get timeless holiday staples that last this season with Quince. Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! DELL: Your new Dell PC with Intel Core Ultra helps you handle a lotwhen your holiday to-dos get to be…a lot. Shop now at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Dell.com/deals ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ AG1: Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://DrinkAG1.com/SYSK ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get a FREE Welcome Kit with an AG1 Flavor Sampler and a bottle of Vitamin D3 plus K2, when you first subscribe! NOTION: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Notion brings all your notes, docs, and projects into one connected space that just works . It's seamless, flexible, powerful, and actually fun to use! Try Notion, now with Notion Agent, at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://notion.com/something⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ PLANET VISIONARIES: In partnership with Rolex’s Perpetual Planet Initiative, this… is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. SHOPIFY: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial and start selling today at https://Shopify.com/sysk Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 0:30Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, why do some of us like sweet snacks while others prefer salty ones? Then, some really great ways to reduce the holiday stress and increase the holiday joy.

• 0:44Speaker 02

  One thing that I have learned is this idea of connection over perfection. Whether it's creating a beautiful holiday experience to the point where we're exhausted at the end of it, what we often sacrifice is actually being connected to the people who mean the most to us.

• 1:00Mike Carruthers?

  Also, just how wise are owls really? And solving some of the fascinating puzzles of evolution.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  The puzzles are mainly simple why questions, such as why do so many kids say broccoli? Or why do cats often turn up their noses at kibble they've not had before? And I think that when we ask why questions like these, we're often thinking about evolution without realizing it.

• 1:24Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 1:29Mike Carruthers?

  Now here's something that might be worth a minute of your time. How would you like $1,000 to spend on shopping? Especially with the holidays coming. Well, the people behind Shopify have a shopping site called shop.com. And to celebrate the new shop.com, they're giving away $1 million in shop cash. But not to one person. A thousand people will each win $1,000 in shop cash. And shop.com is actually a really clever idea. It brings lots of different stores together in one place. So instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for,

• 2:14Mike Carruthers?

  and track your orders all in one place. Clothes, electronics, gifts, things for the house, all kinds of stuff. And whether you win or not, it's worth knowing. But with 1,000 chances to win $1,000,

• 2:29Mike Carruthers?

  I'd certainly take a look. Enter to win the $1 million Shop Cash giveaway from now until November 1st. Just go to shop.com. There are so many ways to win. That's shop.com. Shopping designed around you. No purchase necessary. Restrictions apply. Official rules available at shop.com.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  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 Carruthers.

• 3:06Mike Carruthers?

  Hi. Welcome to Something You Should Know. The holiday season is a time when, at least in our house, there are a lot of tempting snacks lurking around. And maybe you wonder, well, why is it that some people like sweet snacks and other people like salty snacks? Well, it turns out, a lot of it is genetic. Our DNA determines how sensitive we are to certain flavors. Those of us with a sweet tooth may have a higher sweet threshold, for example, so we crave more sugar to satisfy our taste buds. And you have about 10,000 taste buds on your tongue.

• 3:45Mike Carruthers?

  Just about everyone is hardwired to like sweets because of what happens in your brain. When you eat something sweet, it sends a signal to the reward centers in your brain, which then makes you want more sweets. Aside from genetics, what you crave today has a lot to do with what you've eaten your whole life. In other words, if you grew up feasting on potato chips, you're more likely to prefer that same salty taste as you get older. And that is something you should know.

• 4:21Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it is the season, and the holiday season is supposed to be a time of year when people are filled with joy and the spirit of Christmas. It's supposed to be a special time, a magical time. And yet, it can also be a time when people get overwhelmed, impatient, frustrated, and generally stressed out. I mean, you're busy enough normally, and the holidays add a whole extra layer of busyness. And sometimes, well, we just don't have the bandwidth for it. Here with some really smart and practical help is Niro Feliciano. She is a psychotherapist and an expert on anxiety, stress, and relationships. She's a frequent guest on The Today Show, and her column, "Is This Normal?", appears

• 5:06Mike Carruthers?

  on the website today.com. She has a wonderfully appropriate book about this called "All Is Commish: How to Feel Less Frantic and More Festive During the Holidays." Hi, Naro. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 5:20Speaker 02

  Hi, Mike. Thank you so much for having me.

• 5:23Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So what is it about the holidays? I mean, this is the time of year when you're supposed to be happy and joyful, and everything is supposed to be wonderful. And much of the time, it is, but it's also a time when people get very frazzled. And yet, it's just the holidays.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Well, we lose that perspective, because part of it is there's this external pressure that it has to be magical, and we need to feel joyful. And for many of us, we're trying to create that experience for other people. So, just going by way of tradition, we feel like because we've done it in the past, we have to do it again. So I think part of what I have found with clients, and in my own life, is we have to evaluate every year, what do we want this year to look like? It can be different, and still beautiful, and still magical, and hopefully, a little less stressful.

• 6:14Mike Carruthers?

  Other than the, you know, having to buy presents and ship them off if that's what you need to do, and get dinner ready for Christmas, but we do these kind of things all year long. What is it about the Christmas time that seems to make it so much more stressful?

• 6:33Speaker 02

  I do think there's this overarching expectation that we have to feel joyful. So let me just talk about the clients I work with. These are people going through hard things. They may have had a hard year. There may be financial stress. There may be grief and loss. And all of those things don't stop for the holidays. And when you have this external expectation that you have to feel joyful, but inside you really don't. That's one level of stress during the holidays. But I think for most of us, we're all living our life to maximum bandwidth. No one has any extra mental bandwidth to take on much more these days.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  And I think we're basically adding another to do list on top of our overwhelming to do's to begin with. And that creates a little perfect storm when it comes to why we still feel stressful this time of year.

• 7:25Mike Carruthers?

  And is the goal then to get things off that list? Or is the goal to change the way you address that list?

• 7:33Speaker 02

  Option two. I mean, it can be one as well. We can look at things and say, this no longer is that fulfilling? This actually doesn't bring me joy. And if we do a little cost benefit analysis, what I have to give is far more than what I'm going to get. So perhaps we can take some of those things off our list. But my feeling is there are things that we can do differently during the holiday and still get the things done that we would like to get done, but maybe change the way we feel in the process.

• 8:07Mike Carruthers?

  By doing things like what?

• 8:10Speaker 02

  So one, focusing on being a little bit more present. And I know that we hear this everywhere. We're always told we have to be more present. But what do we actually have to do to become more present? Some of the things that we can do are simpler than we realize. So what do you think, Mike, is one of the reasons why we aren't so present in our life anymore?

• 8:36Mike Carruthers?

  Because there's always something else to think about, to worry about. Oh, I've got that thing tomorrow. And so I'm not thinking about what I'm doing now. I'm thinking about what I have to do later.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. So that is the overscheduling, the fact that we live to that maximum bandwidth. But what we know in psychology as well is the presence of our screens and cell phones are constantly taking us out of the present moment. We have notifications, we continue to check our texts and our emails, and we have it at the tips of our fingers. So there's a constant pull to go to screens. And what we know when we do that is we get these very high hits of dopamine. And when we have those high hits of dopamine, it activates the reward centers in our brain. So essentially, whatever we're doing to get that new information,

• 9:29Speaker 02

  whether it's scrolling on social media, checking our texts, checking our emails, our brain is receiving that dopamine and saying, this is good, do it again. And when we get those high hits repeatedly, what happens is our body goes into what's called a dopamine deficit. Are you familiar with the dopamine deficit, Mike?

• 9:52Mike Carruthers?

  No, I don't think I've heard that phrase, dopamine deficit.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm excited to tell you about this. The dopamine deficit is really important to consider, because it is why psychologists feel now, we are seeing much higher rates of anxiety, depression, and even suicidal ideation in young people. But at the very least, it is the cause of why we are not so present in our life anymore. And what happens is, we're used to these really high levels of dopamine, but they're too high for the body. The body likes physiologically healthy levels of dopamine. So let's say somewhere in the middle, right? But in order to get to that physiologically healthy level, the body has to drop the need for dopamine low. So essentially, it creates a deficit so that

• 10:41Speaker 02

  we'll stop making dopamine to bring it to a moderate level. But when we are in that deficit is when we get these essentially withdrawal symptoms of anxiety, depression, irritability, we might be short with people. And certainly, we cannot tolerate boredom.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  And that's when we go back to our screens. So one of the things that I recommend to people when they have a lot to do, and I've worked with students who've done this, I've worked with busy professionals who've done this, is to put your phone in grayscale mode. What you do is you go into Settings and into Accessibility, and you change the color filter so it's in grayscale. And depending on your phone, you can Google, "How do I put my phone in grayscale mode?" And what happens then is when you go to your phone, because there aren't bright colors, you don't get those hits of dopamine. So eventually, over time, you don't go to your phone as often. And what that does is it enables us to be more present

• 11:41Speaker 02

  in our everyday life if we're not constantly taking our focus out of our life in front of us.

• 11:47Mike Carruthers?

  Wow, that's a great idea. Well, don't you think that a lot of the reason people go to their phones, especially when they're stressed, because I know this happens to me sometimes, is you go to the phone for anxiety relief? Like, you can check and see, "Well, at least no one's trying to get a hold of me. There's no crisis in the world that needs my attention, so I can put that aside for now." But not for long. And then you have to check it again to make sure that in the meantime, no one else has tried to get a hold of you.

• 12:16Speaker 02

  Yes, so when you go to your phone repeatedly like that, does someone need you every time? Is there a fire that you have to put out every time?

• 12:24Mike Carruthers?

  Almost never.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Okay, that's not exactly a real problem. That is a perceived problem. But the fact that your phone is in proximity to you, it calls you. That is part of what you're experiencing, Mike, is that dopamine that you might get if you see that there's nothing there. You know, it relieves that tension that you're feeling. And one way to resolve that is to not have the phone in proximity and to sit with that feeling of discomfort that you have and utilize some of the techniques to bring down your anxiety. One is very simple. It is a longer exhalation breathing cycle.

• 13:07Speaker 02

  When we breathe with a longer exhale, and I like the little phrase, "longer exhalation is the key to relaxation," we stimulate the vagus nerve and we take ourselves out of fight or flight, because that is what you're feeling in that moment, that you're stressed or anxious, that there might be a fire to put out. And it puts us into the parasympathetic mode, which is the relaxation response in our body. And if you do that type of breath, let's say a four-count inhale, a slow six-count exhale, do that six times. You will begin to feel your anxiety lower. And then I would space the intervals out intentionally on how often you go to your phone.

• 13:46Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about how to make the holidays more joyful and less stressful. And my guest is Nareau Feliciano. She's author of All Is Commish: How to Feel Less Frantic and More Festive During the Holidays.

• 14:00Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  Born from the intensity of a night in the Eternal City. Introducing Born in Roma Fragrances by Valentino. Feminine perfume Donna Born in Roma features juicy black currant, central jasmine, soft cashmerin, and warm vanilla. Masculine-leaning but unisex Womo has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver, and mineral salt. Shop holiday gifts at macys.com.

• 14:57Mike Carruthers?

  So, Nareau, for a long time, I've had this sense that one of the reasons people get so stressed out around the holidays is somehow it's become a time where everything has to be perfect. And you can't have that mark on the wall that's been there for three years. All of a sudden, that becomes a priority. Everything has to be perfect and yet no one's gonna notice the mark on the wall. And even if they notice it, they don't go home and go, oh, boy, did you see that mark on the wall? Oh, my.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right. No one is gonna notice that except for the person who notices the mark on the wall. You know, there is a tendency to do that and part of that is we are often very preoccupied with how other people perceive us. Part of that, I believe, comes from the amount of time we end up spending on social media, where life has become very performative and that is carried into our daily life. We're always thinking about how other people are perceiving us and deriving some piece of our value in that. But one thing that I have learned to embrace for myself, and I talk about it and write about it a lot,

• 16:12Speaker 02

  is this idea, connection over perfection. When we are so micro-focused on perfection, whether it's creating a beautiful holiday experience to the point where we're exhausted at the end of it, what we often sacrifice is connection, actually being connected to the people who mean the most to us, connected to our experiences and actually living through them, where we store memories of them, where we can recall these moments later on in our life. That's becoming harder to do, one, because of the pace of our life and how much we take on during the holidays, but also because of that focus on perfection,

• 16:54Speaker 02

  which is taking us out of the present moment and focusing on things that, at the end of the day, aren't that important.

• 17:02Mike Carruthers?

  I've also noticed that there's a lot of stress over, I'm not gonna get everything done around the holidays. People worry that there's so much to do, they won't get it all done. And yet, my experience is you always get it all done. And even if you don't get it all done, Nobody cares.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Hmm, I am with you in that that is somewhat of a mantra that I have learned to tell myself during the holidays when I feel stressed. It always gets done. But what I've found, Mike, is that it gets done, but at what cost? Are we up till two in the morning, the night before Christmas, wrapping presents? That often happens to my husband and I. And in the morning, am I exhausted? Am I taking it in? Am I experiencing it for myself? So that is really the dilemma that I think many people have. Yes, it gets done, but what is the cost of getting it done? And can we do it a little bit differently this year?

• 18:05Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, fair enough. But sometimes it's kind of fun to be up at two in the morning wrapping presents. It's part of the magic. It's part of the, and yeah, it's stressful and people come. I think it's how you approach it. If it, if you think, oh, this is so horrible. I'm up at two in the morning or, oh, isn't this great? It's Christmas and the kids are asleep and we're wrapping their presents. It's really on how you look at it.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  I love that reframe. So you're saying you can create a really beautiful experience even in that same situation, depending on how you look at it. And I, I do believe that you can. I do think there's a level of exhaustion many people reach, especially when you have young kids that at that point, no matter how you create it, you're tired. You're tired. So it is going to be different for different people. But you're right, changing your perspective on it can make the biggest difference in how you experience it, even if it is stressful.

• 19:06Mike Carruthers?

  What about the whole idea of try to do less? I, I just don't think most people have that. They, they take on what they take on because they do it every year. And, you know, there's always that advice of maybe you should, you know, get somebody else to do that. But there, it just doesn't seem to work.

• 19:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I do understand that as well because we like to hold on to tradition. We like to do the things that we've always done. It evokes some of the same Christmas spirit and Christmas magic. There's one thing that I have done, and I've encouraged other people to do, especially this season, is to take a moment to pause at different times and step into that awe and wonder of that moment. What I've found is that even when we're busy, we can take moments to pause and take in whatever it is we're experiencing. Nowadays, we tend to pull out our phones if we're at the tree lighting or recording a concert,

• 20:09Speaker 02

  and we would rather save it than savor it. But what I've suggested to people, and it helps to lower the stress, is take a moment and just make that a moment for you, whatever that special moment is, whether you're out shopping and you're in front of a beautiful window, or you're taking a walk on a wintery evening and you see a winter sky. Take a moment and experience that awe first before you capture it on a screen. And what we know because of the research of Decker Keltner, he's out of UC Berkeley, is when we find awe and we experience awe, and there's so much of it during the holidays,

• 20:49Speaker 02

  we not only live happier, we live longer and healthier because awe will reduce inflammation in our body. They've shown that there are lower levels of what's called cytokine interleukin-6, which is an inflammation marker. And the other thing these moments of awe do is it increases oxytocin in our body. That's our bonding neurochemical. It also elevates our mood, and that we know correlates to lower levels of anxiety. So in addition to the reframe that you talk about, there are other things that we can do such as pausing and taking in that moment.

• 21:24Mike Carruthers?

  There's also the problem, I think, people have this time of year where You miss the people that aren't here anymore. And that it seems to hit, that really hits harder around the holidays than probably any other time.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  You're right, because we have these memories of holidays that were beautiful with these people present. So it is a constant reminder that they're not here. We might sit at a table and notice there's an empty seat this year. So you're very right that, that it does. And what I have said to people who I've worked with through grief is you have to make room for grief during the holidays and you have to honor the grief. And at the same time, there are moments where you can let yourself feel joy. I think especially when grief is recent, we feel like we have to hold on to the grief. It's not honoring to that person if we are stepping into the holiday and experiencing the magic or wonder of it. But two things can be true.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Both can exist in the same space.

• 22:25Mike Carruthers?

  In the final moments here, I've been asking you a lot of questions, but what would you like to say to people who, who deal with all the stress of the holidays?

• 22:34Speaker 02

  I would love to talk a little bit about this idea that the whole thing has to be magical. And what I like to say to people is that approaching the holidays with a little intentionality makes a big difference. And when I say intentionality, I mean, consider the question, what would bring you joy this holiday? A lot of times we're creating joy and this magic for everybody else, but we don't always stop to consider, what are the three things that I want to do that would bring me joy this holiday? And when we identify those things, we begin to look out for them. We begin to anticipate them. And when they're in front of us, we show up for them differently. We tend to bring more an awareness to them.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  Oftentimes I say to people, listen, when you're that busy, it is impossible to be present for everything. So just pick the three things you really want to be present for, you want to experience that you know will bring you joy and bring all your energy to those three moments and do your best the rest of the time.

• 23:38Mike Carruthers?

  You know what I think is interesting, I've done this, is, you know, people are so worried about what other people are going to think and how it's going to go and, you know, is the turkey overdone and nobody ever, you ask people a year later, "Do you remember the thing about the thing that happened?" No, nobody cares, nobody remembers. You get all worked up about something that most people never care about. They can't remember one Christmas from another, they're all kind of blurred together and they're all fine.

• 24:11Speaker 02

  So I love the quote from Maya Angelou, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." And I think there's so much truth to that. And we also know from our psychological research that emotion is a contagion. So if we're able to genuinely authentically feel joy, that will transcend the things that we do or don't do, that we said or didn't say, because people around us will authentically feel joy as well. And when they feel joy, they will remember joy. So oftentimes, that starts with us. That is a beautiful thing

• 24:52Speaker 02

  to make contagious during the holiday season. Joy, peace, calm, those qualities.

• 24:59Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I really like your suggestions, you know, like putting your phone on grayscale. I mean, all the things you said are very easy and practical things to do that I think could really help. I've been talking to Nareau Feliciano. She is a psychotherapist and frequent guest on The Today Show, and she has a book out called All Is Commish: How to Feel Less Frantic and More Festive During the Holidays. Thank you, Nareau.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you so much, and thank you for having me.

• 25:27Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 25:55Speaker 05

  Born from the intensity of a night in the eternal city. Introducing Born in Roma Fragrances by Valentino. Feminine perfume Donna Born in Roma features juicy black currant, central jasmine, soft cashmerin, and warm vanilla. Masculine leaning but unisex Womo has notes of fresh violet leaf, aromatic sage, green vetiver, and mineral salt. Shop holiday gifts at Macy's.com.

• 26:27Mike Carruthers?

  When most of us hear the word "evolution," we think back to something we learned in school. But evolution is happening all around us every day, in ways you've probably never noticed. Evolution explains why you can smell a skunk from a mile away, or why cats tend to outlive dogs. Why bees end up with those bright yellow stripes. None of these things are random. Each has a fascinating backstory, written by millions of years of evolution. David Stipp is here to reveal those stories. He's a former staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and former senior writer at Fortune. And he's author of a book called Why Rats Laugh and Jellyfish Sleep: And Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution.

• 27:11Mike Carruthers?

  David, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Thank you, glad to be here.

• 27:14Mike Carruthers?

  So, tell us what you did here. You took these stories of various creatures to illustrate how evolution works. Explain how this happened.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  So, I picked a series of creatures we're all familiar with, such as skunks and dogs and rats, and pointed to some basic evolutionary puzzles about them in order to show that the theory of evolution can be interesting and relevant in our everyday lives. And the puzzles that I think are of interest to non-scientists here are mainly simple "why" questions, such as, why do so many kids say broccoli? Or, why do cats often turn up their noses at kibble they've not had before? And I think that when we ask why questions like these, we're often thinking about evolution without realizing it. And that's because such questions are basically asking for the reasons

• 28:07Speaker 03

  that certain behaviors or bodily features evolved.

• 28:12Mike Carruthers?

  So those are all good questions and ones we should talk about. And let's, since it's in the title of your book. First of all, I didn't know rats laughed, but they must, or you wouldn't say so. But what are they laughing at?

• 28:25Speaker 03

  You know, that latter question is really a very interesting one that I'd like to circle back to in a moment. But first I should say that the kind of laughter we're talking about with rats is really a more basic emotional response than human laughter at a joke. It's really more like what happens when you tickle a five-year-old human's foot. And rat laughter was discovered in the 1990s by this neuroscientist named Jaak Ponssepp at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. And he was a pioneer in the study of emotions in non-human animals. And rats were one of his main research subjects. And I should point out here that we're talking about domesticated rats.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  These are very tame and docile. And really important, they don't bite when they're gently handled by humans. So in the mid-1990s, Ponssepp's lab began investigating these vocalizations that young rats make when they're interacting in this kind of rough and tumble play that they do. And what the scientists found was that juvenile rats make lots of ultrasonic chirps beyond the range of human hearing when they're playing. And when the scientists electronically process the chirps, it sounded a lot like a bunch of kids on a playground, as Ponssepp once put it.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  So a couple of years later, it occurred to him that these chirps might actually be an ancestral form of human laughter. And so to investigate that, he figured out a very simple clever technique, which was to tickle his rats by gently scratching them on their necks or stomachs. And that reliably generated a lot of ultrasonic chirping. And I know this sounds, it sounds cute and amusing, and it was, but it was also scientifically important because it led his lab to do a lot of very interesting studies on rat laughter. And one of the things they soon discovered is that some rats are more laughter prone

• 30:32Speaker 03

  than others, and that young rats really like hanging out with laughter prone adult rats more than they do with adult rats that don't laugh much. Another thing they did was to breed rats that don't laugh much at all. And what they found is that these sourpuss rats were really bad at socializing with other rats. So what I think these results say is that the main reason rat laughter evolved was just to help facilitate social bonding. And that would be, of course, very advantageous for a rat because it would give it more chances to mate and to find food in group situations and so on.

• 31:12Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's not unlike people. I mean, people bond over laughter as well.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  Exactly. And Ponsev often said that though there's probably an evolutionary basis for rat laughter, it doesn't rule out the possibility that expressing joyful mirth in social situations simply feels good to a rat in much the same way that it does to us.

• 31:38Mike Carruthers?

  So why do so many kids hate broccoli? Because not all kids do. My son, my, both of my sons liked it when they were growing up, but I know a lot of kids don't.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  I think this goes back to the fact that plants can't run away from creatures that want to eat them. And so to protect themselves, they've evolved all kinds of defenses. Some are really obvious, like thorns, or sticky sap, or bark on trees, but many of their main defenses are poisons, what biologists call plant defense toxins. And plants have evolved, you know, many thousands of these toxins through the ages. And in response, we and other creatures that eat plants have evolved ways to avoid getting overdosed on the poisons, including the ability to taste them in our food. And, you know, plant defense toxins generally taste disgustingly bitter to us.

• 32:32Speaker 03

  But even though our crop plants don't really pose a toxic threat to us these days, remnants of these bitter compounds still exist in veggies like broccoli. And I think evolution has equipped young kids to be very sensitive to these compounds. I really, really dislike their bitter tastes of even small amounts of them because the kids' developing organs, especially their brains and livers and kidneys, aren't as good at detoxifying the compounds as adults' organs are. So I think when kids refuse to eat their veggies, I think they're often just acting

• 33:12Speaker 03

  out a kind of better safe than sorry principle that evolution is embedded in the human genome. And when they get a little older, it's really no surprise that veggies usually don't seem quite as awful as they once did.

• 33:25Mike Carruthers?

  So you point out, and I never knew this, that it's very difficult to tell the difference between different species of bees. And so I'd like to hear about that and then the evolutionary explanation for that.

• 33:39Speaker 03

  I got into this question a few summers ago when we had a bumblebee colony under our back deck, and I was trying to figure out what kind of bumblebees they were. And this turned out to be surprisingly difficult. And that was mainly because, you know, so many species have that black and yellow stripey look we're all familiar with. And so one species has actually even been named the confusing bumblebee, or its official scientific name is Bombas perplexus, because it looks so much like other species.

• 34:14Speaker 03

  So I eventually found the reason that so many bumblebees look alike. And it was in a theory proposed way back in the 1870s by a little-known German naturalist named Fritz Mueller. And what he figured out is that birds and other predators learn to avoid insects like bumblebees by sampling them and then coming to associate their looks with bad experiences, like getting stung. And that means some of the insects are continually lost to what people call predator education. But if two or more of the species of these insects look enough alike, this cost can

• 34:53Speaker 03

  be shared between them, and that reduces the predator education burden on each of them. So that causes them to evolve the very similar looks that we see in different bumblebee species. And it's actually now called Muellerian mimicry.

• 35:10Mike Carruthers?

  So I think we all know that dogs tend to live longer than cats do, but different species have different lifespans. So how does the dog-cat lifespan relationship relate to evolution?

• 35:23Speaker 03

  I think the way to look at this is to look at evolution as if we're a human design engineer. And if you were a human design engineer, you would not probably give all the genes you need for very long life to a creature that's likely to be wiped out in the wild very soon. That is, such creatures would be like small rodents like mice and rats. They probably live only a year or less. And so it just wouldn't make sense for evolution to give them genes that spend a lot of inner

• 36:02Speaker 03

  resources on doing things like keeping their cells all shipshape for a really long time. What this says is that if you have factors that cause an animal in the wild to die fairly quickly, it's probably not going to age very slowly, and it's probably, again, not going to live very long. This is a general principle of the theory of aging. Now, a guy you had on the podcast a long ago, Steve Steve Osted, who somebody I know, came up with the idea that cats might live longer than dogs, and they they don't live a whole lot longer than dogs, but I think cats live on average about 15 years, while

• 36:47Speaker 03

  dogs live on average about 12 years. This might be in part because of the ancestors of dogs were very social animals, and that made them more susceptible or vulnerable to infections that would spread among dog packs. And cats are, of course, more solitary, and they would be less susceptible to this major cause of mortality. And so by the reasoning I was just talking about, that would mean cats would age a little bit slower than dogs would. There are probably other reasons, but I think that's one of the most interesting possibilities.

• 37:25Mike Carruthers?

  So talk about dogs and how they how they became dogs from wolves and man's best friend and all that.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  It's it's believed that all the dogs that now exist descended from gray wolves or from an extinct species that looked very much like gray wolves. So the question to me is, how is it that our ancient ancestors hung out with wolves long enough to domesticate them? And, you know, I found this really the most baffling puzzle, because wolves tend, like most predators, they they prefer to go after small, weak prey like juvenile animals. So this would mean that, you know, our ancestors who were supposedly domesticating wolves

• 38:17Speaker 03

  to turn them into dogs, I think their kids would have been in danger. And there's really no hot button that's hotter than the one that's labeled your kids are in mortal danger. So this is a real baffling mystery, and and I I'm not sure that anyone has actually ever solved it in a definitive way. But there is a theory that I think comes pretty close to possibly offering a solution to it. And that was proposed by a Animal behaviorist a few years ago named Janice Kohler-Matznick.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  And she, she thinks that what really happened is that dogs descended from a dog-like creature rather than wolves that lived about the same time, maybe 50,000 years ago, as the ancestor of today's wolves did. And this creature would have been a whole lot smaller and much safer to have around than wolves would be. I mean, it might have been only, say, 25 or 40 pounds, whereas a male wolf can easily be well over 100 pounds. And these, these dog-like creatures would have also been more versatile when it comes to diet.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  So they could have hung around human, ancient humans' camps and eaten refuse, whereas wolves are pretty much pure carnivores, and they need a whole lot of meat to survive. So, you know, it seemed like you could solve some of the problem of safety, at least, by, by this idea.

• 39:57Mike Carruthers?

  Since we're on the subject of domestic animals, let's talk about cats, because anyone who's had a cat knows that very often when you feed them something, they walk away. They turn their nose up at it, they don't, they're not interested, particularly if it's maybe something they haven't eaten before, they just, they couldn't care less.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, we've actually got one of these finicky cats in our family right now. And, and, you know, I think, you know, there are cats that will gobble up any kibble you put in front of them. But, but, you know, as you said, many, many cats are really persnickety, and especially about food they've not had before. So I think, I think there's a very good evolutionary reason for this, and that, which is that predators have evolved a tendency to shy away from unfamiliar prey animals and instead go for ones they've eaten in the past. And the reason for this is that attacking and killing animals is really a very dangerous business.

• 41:00Speaker 03

  A cat, for example, could get a fatal infection if it got a really bad bite from a rat it was attacking. And this kind of ugly surprise is much more likely to happen to a predator if it goes after a source of food that's unfamiliar to it than what it's used to eating. In fact, there are studies showing that various kinds of predators tend to have this kind of dietary conservatism. And I think this general conservatism applies to foods like kibble, too. And it's easy to see where that would be the case, because predators that didn't have this kind

• 41:39Speaker 03

  of instinctive conservatism probably didn't get a chance to have a lot of descendants. So I think persnickety cats are really just acting out a perfectly rational evolved behavior that was handed down to them by their ancestors.

• 41:55Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, but it's so different than dogs, because, you know, at least the dogs I've had, boy, you put food in front of them and they can't, they'll knock you over to get to it, and cats like couldn't care less.

• 42:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Well, cats are solitary ambush hunters, and they may face, I'm just speculating wildly here, cats probably face risks that dogs don't face, because dogs are pack hunters. In fact, I think the ancestors of today's dogs may have been the most dangerous, some of the most dangerous predators that our Stone Age ancestors faced, because they're so smart and they hunt in groups.

• 42:39Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I remember hearing somebody say that animal behavior is usually not just chance, that there's some reason for why we animals and other animals do what we do. And evolution is often the reason, and it's interesting to hear some of the stories. I've been talking with David Stipp. He is a former staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal and former senior writer at Fortune, and he's author of a book called Why Rats Laugh and Jellyfish Sleep and Other Enchanting Stories of Evolution. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. David, I appreciate you coming on today. Thank you.

• 43:16Speaker 03

  It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

• 43:22Mike Carruthers?

  Here's kind of a strange thing I came across that has to do with owls. Because when you think about it, from children's books to ancient Greek legends, owls are often portrayed as being very wise creatures. But are they really wise? No, no, they're not wise at all, actually. In fact, owls may be significantly worse at problem solving than other big-brained birds like crows and parrots. One study found that great gray owls repeatedly failed a simple cognitive test, which was pulling a string to get a treat. Several other species of birds passed that test with flying colors.

• 44:05Mike Carruthers?

  Now, that's not to say that owls are dumb. Studies have found that some owls actually practice a primitive form of tool use. Burrowing owls have been observed using animal dung to lure beetles to their burrows, which they then subsequently eat. Okay, so that's pretty smart. But by human standards, owls do not possess wisdom at all. So where did that come from? Well, it likely originated with legends of the ancient Greek goddess Athena. She was the goddess of wisdom, and she was often portrayed in art, holding an owl. And that is something you should know. You know, podcasting is a very competitive business.

• 44:47Mike Carruthers?

  We're always competing for new listeners, and you can help us by spreading the word. It's encouraged, and it's why there's a share button on the player that you're listening to this on, to make it simple to share with your friends. It's a powerful way to support this podcast, and I'd certainly appreciate it. I'm Mike Herrothers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 45:10Speaker 00

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences, and personalized products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 45:37Speaker 06

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you so they can help personalize coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.