The Nocebo Effect: Placebo’s Evil Twin & Weird Facts You Never Knew

Have you ever been completely stuck trying to solve a problem or come up with a new idea? There is a remarkably simple thing you can do that research shows can get your creative juices flowing. And it works surprisingly well. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2014/04/walking-vs-sitting-042414 Can you actually think yourself sick? Absolutely. It’s called the nocebo effect — essentially the evil twin of the placebo effect. If a doctor warns you that a medication might cause certain side effects, simply hearing that can make those symptoms more likely to occur. The same thing can happen when you read about an illness or medication online. Your expectations can trigger very real physical symptoms. So how does that happen — and how do you protect yourself from it? Helen Pilcher is a science writer with a PhD in neuroscience from London’s Institute of Psychiatry, and she has some remarkable examples of the nocebo effect in action. She is author of This Book May Cause Side Effects: The Curious and Dangerous Power of the Nocebo Effect, Placebo’s Evil Twin (https://amzn.to/4qvrdLU). Why are sideburns called sideburns? How could the first automatic door possibly have been invented before the birth of Christ? And where in the world did the word dude come from? Those are just a few of the strange facts and curious word origins explored by Jess Zafarris. She joins me to reveal some fascinating bits of history and language that will leave you with plenty of things you never knew you wanted to know. Jess is co-author of A Miscellany of Weird and Wonderful Facts for Curious Humans Who Have Nothing Better to Do Than Read (https://amzn.to/4wFtLZq). When you say something embarrassing, have a bad hair day or just feel awkward in a group, it can seem as if everyone notices. But how closely are other people really paying attention to you? Psychologists have studied this, and what they discovered should make your next embarrassing moment a little easier to handle. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/199612/why-bad-hair-days-may-not-matter PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS MONARCH: Write your own money story with Monarch! Use promo code SYSK at ⁠https://Monarch.com⁠ to get your 1st year of Monarch Core half off at just $50 AQUATRU: Head to ⁠https://AquaTru.com⁠ now and get 20% off your purifier using promo code SYSK AquaTru even comes with a 30-day best-tasting water guarantee or your money back! WAYFAIR: Ready to upgrade your home for way less? Head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Wayfair.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now to shop all things home and get your space ready for less. QUINCE: Find your next Fall favorites at Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too! DELL: Built for those who want better. The Dell XPS, built for you! INDEED: Get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/PODCAST⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ 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.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 0:44Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:23Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know. Need to solve a problem or come up with an idea? I'll tell you a great way to do it. Then the placebo effect. How your mind can often make you feel sick.

• 1:37Speaker 01

  Classic example of this is something called medical student syndrome. Very often what you find is in the week they are learning about brain cancer, for example, a significant proportion of them might start to develop headaches.

• 1:52Mike Carruthers?

  Also, why no one is paying attention to you the way you think they are. And some fascinating facts about inventions and words you never knew that are actually trademarks.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  So we all know Kleenex and Band-Aid and whatnot, right? But bubble wrap, same with breathalyzer, jacuzzi, roller blade, super glue, windbreaker, zipper, and TV dinner, which were all originally trademarks as well.

• 2:17Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know. There's probably no better endorsement for a company than this. I keep buying their stuff. That's exactly what's happening with me and Quince. It started with their clothes. I've bought sweaters, polos, pants, jeans, shoes, a belt. And Quince has become one of the first places I look when I need something new to wear. And my wife and son buy from Quince too, all the time. What keeps bringing us back is the quality and the price. Quince uses premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, merino wool.

• 3:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:42Mike Carruthers?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support our show.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  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.

• 4:11Mike Carruthers?

  You know those times when you're sitting around trying to come up with an idea or something, and it's just not coming? There's a simple strategy that can make all the difference. Hi, welcome. I'm Mike Carruthers. This is Something You Should Know. So when you're trying to come up with an idea or solve a problem or figure out what you're going to say, the natural instinct is to sit there and think harder. But you may be much better off getting up and taking a walk. Stanford researchers had people perform creative thinking tasks while sitting and while walking. Creative output increased by an average of 60% while people were walking.

• 4:53Mike Carruthers?

  Surprisingly, walking on a treadmill facing a boring blank wall, that worked too. So the benefit wasn't simply fresh air or interesting scenery. Even better, some of that creative boost remained after people sat back down. There's an important catch, though. Walking seems particularly good when you need lots of possible ideas or a fresh approach. It did not improve performance when people needed to find one precise, correct answer. So the next time you're staring at a problem and getting nowhere, stop staring and take a walk. And that is something you should know.

• 5:34Mike Carruthers?

  What if simply being told that something might make you sick actually increases the chances that you'll feel sick? It sounds a little far fetched, but there is solid research showing that what you expect to happen to your health can sometimes produce very real symptoms. Most of us have heard of the placebo effect, where believing a treatment will help can actually make you feel better. Well, there's a darker flip side called the placebo effect. A doctor's warning, a list of possible side effects, something you read online, even seeing other people complain about their symptoms can sometimes convince your brain and body to experience those symptoms.

• 6:19Mike Carruthers?

  And this isn't imaginary illness. These symptoms can be quite real. So how does your brain manage to do this? And how do you keep it from happening to you? Helen Pilcher is a science writer and former scientist with a PhD in neuroscience from London's Institute of Psychiatry. And she has some fascinating and frankly unsettling examples of just how powerful the placebo effect can be. She's author of a book called, This Book May Cause Side Effects: The Curious and Dangerous Power of the Placebo Effect: Placebo's Evil Twin. Hi Helen, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Hi, thank you for having me.

• 7:00Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So help me understand a little better about the placebo effect and how it differs from the placebo effect, which I think most people have heard of.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  People are a lot more familiar with that. And that's when positive expectations, positive thoughts can have a positive outcome on your health. So we see that in clinical trials where people are given placebo drugs and they start to feel better anyway. Now, in those trials, something really weird happens, right? Because everybody gets given the same information. So half of them are taking the drug, half of them are taking a placebo. Everybody gets warned that the drug they're taking might help, but maybe it will cause side effects. And they might get warned about side effects. And the really weird thing is, and this is the placebo effect,

• 7:54Speaker 01

  is that when you warn people taking a placebo tablet that it could cause side effects, so things like headaches or dizziness or stomach pain, a lot of them go on and develop those symptoms. And the important thing here is that the placebo effect isn't just confined to clinical trials. It's out there in the real world too. So wherever we have thoughts about the way an illness might play out, about a symptom that we're worried about, the placebo effect is at play. So it's basically when we have negative thoughts or expectations about a symptom, about a health condition,

• 8:37Speaker 01

  and that kind of taints our response to what happens in a negative way. Does that kind of make sense?

• 8:43Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So it seems that the same thing is happening. The placebo effect and the placebo effect are kind of the same thing.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  So kind of like one is sort of the light and one is the dark, if you like. Let's think about it in the real world. So in the real world, if a doctor gives you a real tablet and tells you it's going to help, this is going to do great for you, and you start to feel better. Well, some of that improvement is down to the pharmacology of the drug. It's down to the active ingredients that are inside it, the medicine. But part of your improvement is down to the expectation that you believe in the doctor and you believe in the drug. That's the placebo effect, okay? So the placebo effect is part of every drug we take, a small part, but it's part. Now imagine that same doctor says, I'm going to give you this tablet. It's going to be great, okay? Your chronic pain will improve.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  However, there is a possibility that it might, I don't know, cause constipation or make you feel a bit dizzy. Now, just by giving you that information, your doctor has now made it more likely that those symptoms will happen. And when they happen in that context, often they're not caused by the drug, but by your expectation. And a concrete example of that is that during the COVID pandemic, when they were testing out all the vaccines, they did all these huge number of trials. And they were able to pick apart the influence of the placebo effect by looking at the side effects that people got

• 10:20Speaker 01

  when they were taking the vaccine in the trials and the side effects that people got when they were taking the placebo version of the vaccine in the trials. And what they found is that after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, the very first one that was authorized, after the first dose, 70% of the common side effects that people experienced were not down to anything inside the vaccine. They were caused by the belief that it would make you feel quite unwell. And if you think back to that time, certainly here in the UK, people were really nervous and anxious about having the vaccine. You know, it was kind of like the first time we'd had this. We're in the middle of a pandemic. And what I'm saying here is that that collective belief

• 11:04Speaker 01

  that this vaccine might make us feel a bit unwell in the short term actually caused that to happen for some people.

• 11:13Mike Carruthers?

  And what's going on to cause that to happen?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Well, so this is the curious thing. The nocebo effect works in various different ways. So one is that it is caused by conscious expectation, ideas that you can chew over and think about. Conversation with my neighbour, she has the vaccine before me, she says, do you know what, I felt really, really rough afterwards for a couple of days. That's planted the expectation in my brain and made me more likely to get those side effects to it. However, these things can also happen unconsciously outside of our awareness, when our brains subconsciously make a link between two things that aren't necessarily related.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  And let me give you a concrete example of that to bring it to life. So we know that when people who have cancer have chemotherapy, it causes some truly dreadful side effects. The nausea that they experience is a very, very physical reaction to the drugs they are taking. The chemotherapy drugs cause dividing cells in their stomach to die, and that causes nausea. There's a physical explanation from the drug. That's a standard, regular side effect caused by physical processes. Now, let me tell you, 25% of people who are undergoing chemotherapy start to feel terribly nauseous before the treatment happens.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  So this could be when they're in the waiting room, when they're waiting to have the cannula put in, it can be on the way to the hospital. And when those symptoms are happening, before the drug's been anywhere near them, it tells you that something else is going on, and that's the nocebo effect. So their brain has quietly learnt to associate things to do with the experience of chemotherapy, the trip to the hospital, for example, with the side effects that it subsequently causes. And the important thing here is that if we can get a handle on this, and if we can recognise it when it exists, it's telling us there's a portion of our ill health, the portion

• 13:23Speaker 01

  of our symptoms, that is caused by the complex interaction between our minds and our bodies. And if we can get a grip on that, if we can understand it, it then gives us a chance to do something about it. So this is the important thing. I think the nocebo effect is really a fundamental part of all human illness and disease. And by recognising this and by studying it, we can actually find ways to be less ill than we are. I think this is kind of like the missing piece of the jigsaw in human health.

• 14:02Mike Carruthers?

  So it often happens when people, for example, they go listen to a talk by some doctor about some illness, they start to think, oh, maybe I've got that. Maybe, you know, when you're saturated by information about something about the human body, people will start to think, oh, God, I might have that. Is that part of this or not?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Very much so, right? So everything that I have explored when I've been investigating the nocebo effect has been based in science. I have combed the literature, looking at the studies that people have done. And basically, it's incredibly easy to make people experience symptoms just by suggesting them to them, which is basically what you're saying. So you bring a bunch of people into a lab, you put an electrode, you tape it to their finger, it's hooked up to a fancy machine, you tell them when a green light flashes, they're going to feel a little electric shock to their finger, and it all seems very plausible. And then the green light goes and they feel the shock to their finger, they feel the pain in their finger.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Only in this experiment, they never actually switched the machine on, they never delivered an electric shock. The mere suggestion of it created pain in their fingers. If you bring a load of people into the lab and they're students, and you give them a fake dummy pill, and you go, you know what, I think this could cause dizziness, or headaches, or nausea, or fatigue, people very, very, very often experience these symptoms. So we're very, very suggestible. And what I'm saying here, and this is a really, really important point, is that people aren't imagining these symptoms. These are real, these are genuine experiences. A classic example of this is something called medical student syndrome.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  So when medical students are, you know, going through the rotations, the different specialities, and they're learning about different diseases, very often what you find is in the week they are learning about brain cancer, for example, a significant proportion of them might start to develop headaches. In the week they're learning about cardiac problems, some of them might experience breathlessness.

• 16:19Mike Carruthers?

  So I'm wondering, how do you bulletproof yourself, to whatever extent you can, from the nocebo effect? And I want to ask you about that when we come back. A big thank you to today's sponsor, Vinted. I think most of us have what I call "someday clothes". I'll wear that someday, that'll fit better someday, someday I'll have a place to wear that. Meanwhile, it's been hanging in the closet for three years. Vinted offers another possibility: sell it. Every day, people can sell clothes they're no longer wearing and make some extra money. And they've made the process pretty painless. Take what you don't wear, list it on Vinted.

• 17:03Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:45Speaker 04

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• 18:15Mike Carruthers?

  I'm speaking with Helen Pilcher, who is author of the book, "This book may cause side effects: the curious and dangerous power of the nocebo effect, placebo's evil twin." So Helen, this is about expectations, so what, how do you fix it? Because you expect what you expect. Once you expect something, you can't stop expecting it. So, so what?

• 18:43Speaker 01

  One of the really, really cool things is this thing called attention to variability. So we have, let's take chronic pain as an example, maybe chronic back pain is a good example. So when somebody has chronic back pain, the tendency is to create this narrative for yourself that you are always in pain, that it's always awful. And that's, that's a terrible, terrible weight for people to carry. But what people have shown, and this is a technique called pain reprocessing therapy, is that if you can persuade people to notice the bits of the day when the pain is not

• 19:23Speaker 01

  quite as bad, if you can get them to notice that there is variability, this then starts to kind of reset the brain's predictions and dial the pain down. And let me kind of like explain that to you a bit, it's quite abstract. Let me explain that to you a bit better. So there are studies that have been done where people with pain from osteoarthritis, they were sent prompts on their mobile phone at random intervals during the day, asking them to rate their pain. So it was completely random when they thought about their pain. And what they realised was that their pain wasn't always a 10. There were parts of the day when it was slightly better.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  And the more they paid attention to this variability, the better their pain got, because it started retraining the brain to predict periods of wellness. And this, this is something that I, I tried myself when I was kind of recovering from surgery and I had bouts of pain. And the way I kind of describe it is that, instead of always looking at the clouds in the sky, start to notice the bits of blue in between them. And when you do that, when you very, very deliberately turn your attention towards the parts of the day that are better, you start to improve the portion of your suffering that is caused by the nocebo effect.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  And studies have shown that that can make, for example, meaningful differences to the amount of pain that people have in their lives.

• 20:55Mike Carruthers?

  So you mentioned that, for example, medical students will listen to a talk about brain cancer and start to feel headaches and things, but nobody gets brain cancer from thinking it so.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  No, right, and let me be quite clear about this. Like I said, I am not trying to undermine the standard medical model. We know that cancer is caused by genetic mutations. Thinking negative thoughts cannot give you cancer. Thinking positive thoughts will not cure you. I would never want anyone to turn away from the standard treatments that are offered for cancer because they have the biggest weight of evidence behind them.

• 21:40Mike Carruthers?

  So there's a thing I notice about some people. I'm sure you know people like this. They take a lot of medication. They kind of, I wouldn't say they've given up, but they've kind of bought into the role that they're a patient, that they're sick, that they've got a lot of problems. Is that part of this, like, is that part of the expect, if you expect to be sick, you're gonna be sick?

• 22:03Speaker 01

  To a degree, yes. Yeah. I mean, what we know is that the placebo effect kind of makes a difference to how we feel subjectively. And then also, it can potentially bring about objective change in our bodies at the level of cells and molecules and organs and systems. But if you consciously go back to the doctor going, do you know what, that last painkiller you gave me, it didn't work. And you're on like your sixth prescription and you're gonna try something new and you walk in there going, but nothing works. Guess what? It is more likely that nothing will work. And we talk about this concept of a sick role. And I think really that's something that we need to look at very, very carefully. And it's very much

• 22:45Speaker 01

  about switching people's mindsets and looking for the bits of blue sky in their stories and getting them to grasp that and turn that sick role around.

• 22:54Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, exactly right. Because if you, if your expectation is nothing's gonna get better, then you won't, you won't do the things that could help you get better.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Right. So, so at the behavioral level, sure. If you've decided to kind of give up, you're less likely to exercise, you're less likely to eat healthily, you might be more likely to smoke. And there's those behavioral things that will create a self fulfilling prophecy. You're more likely to slide psychologically and feel less well. But what the research also shows is that this can have an effect on your biology. So that if you are negative and down and stressed, that could affect the amount of cortisol that you have flowing around in your body, the stress hormone, that could affect the activity of the immune system and that could negatively affect your health through biological mechanisms, too.

• 23:51Mike Carruthers?

  So you write about it, and I'd like you to quickly tell the story of Sam Schumann.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Sam Schumann. I heard about Sam Schumann 20 years ago from one of the guys who was peripherally, he was a doctor, one of the guys who was peripherally involved in his treatment. And this story has stuck with me ever since. So this is back in the 1970s. Sam Schumann is a guy, he was diagnosed sadly with terminal cancer of the esophagus. And he was given three months to live. And three months later, he died. And that's kind of desperately sad, but not that remarkable. The remarkable bit came next. So they performed an autopsy on him. And at autopsy, they couldn't find any sign of the cancer that was supposed

• 24:40Speaker 01

  to kill him. They found a tiny cancerous spot on his liver, but it was fairly inconsequential. It certainly wasn't enough to kill him. And they launched an investigation and what they found out is that, and you have to remember, this is the 70s, so we didn't have MRI scans or CT scans. And, and all of our notes, all of the patient notes were on bits of paper stuffed into files. And what had happened is that somebody else's notes had got put into his file and the doctor didn't notice. And Sam Schumann was given someone else's prognosis. And the doctor who I interviewed about this particular case said to me, he didn't die from cancer, he died from believing he had cancer. And that, if you like, is

• 25:25Speaker 01

  the thing that sparked my interest in the placebo effect. You have to be careful interpreting it, right? Because this is one person. Maybe there was some other explanation. But I've spoken to lots of oncologists. And what they tell me is that very often, they see the decline of a cancer patient mirroring their psychology more than their biology. And so I think Sam Schumann is a, you know, a desperately sad and poignant story, but just blows my mind in terms of the, the power that the placebo effect could potentially have.

• 26:01Mike Carruthers?

  But you would think, if there was an autopsy, that they would have come up with a true cause of death.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Well, the details have been lost to the mists of time. As I say, this is in the 1970s, so you can't get hold of these, these reports. All that was recorded was that he didn't have esophageal cancer. I'm not quite sure what they put down as his cause of death. And the physicians who treated him, all of them felt very, very strongly that the reason for his decline was the information that he was given, that basically put him into this state of prolonged hopelessness. And then his body followed suit. And that was the end of Sam Schumann.

• 26:42Mike Carruthers?

  And so what is it you want people to understand about this? What's the takeaway here?

• 26:48Speaker 01

  The take home message from all of this is always to focus on the positive and the things that bring you joy. And to dwell on your symptoms and go visit a doctor if you need to. But in between those symptoms bothering you, focus on the good bits in life. Do the things that bring you joy. Because the things that bring you joy activate those parts of the brain that are involved in the placebo response. And they make you happy. So for me, that's the, the big, big message to come out of all of this.

• 27:22Mike Carruthers?

  You know, this, this so applies to everybody. I mean, how many times have you gotten a vaccine or some sort of medication and heard about other people getting sick from it, side effects and all, and, and, and then you got sick from it? Well, was it really the medication or the expectation that you were gonna get sick? So you got sick. This has been very eye opening. I've been talking to Helen Pilcher. She is a science writer and author of the book, This Book May Cause Side Effects: The Curious and Dangerous Power of the Nocebo Effect: Placebo's Evil Twin. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Helen, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  You are so welcome. And thank you so much for, for taking the time to talk to me. It's been a real pleasure.

• 28:07Speaker 04

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• 28:36Speaker 05

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• 29:06Mike Carruthers?

  There are all kinds of things you know, without really knowing why you know. You use words and expressions without knowing where they came from. You encounter everyday objects, customs, and ideas that have strange histories you've never thought to question. And occasionally, you'll hear a fact that sounds completely made up, except it isn't. Those are some of the rabbit holes we're about to go down. A lot of our conversation is about language, the strange origins of familiar words and phrases, but we'll also wander into history, science, pop culture, and some wonderfully odd corners of everyday

• 29:48Mike Carruthers?

  life. My guest is Jess Zafarris. She is an author and language expert who has spent years digging into the surprising histories of words. Her latest book is titled, A Miscellaneous of Weird and Wonderful Facts for Curious Humans Who Have Nothing Better to Do Than Read. And some of these facts are going to make you wonder how you got this far in life without hearing them. Hi Jess, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  Hi, Mike. It's great to be here.

• 30:16Mike Carruthers?

  So I think a fun place to start would be, words in our language that you probably didn't know are words that came from someone's name, like sideburns.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Yes, sideburns. That's a metathesis of Ambrose Burnside, who was a Civil War general. And there, there are a couple of alternate explanations here. One suggestion is that holding a musket up to your, the side of your face could potentially leave a burn and the hair was meant to cover it, or it simply looks like a burn on the side of your face. But every record we have of this word suggests that it was originally from the name of the Civil War general who had a flamboyant set of facial hair, this, this elaborate set of whiskers that made that facial hair popular. And then any, any hair on the side of your face. And it was reversed into sideburns, presumably based

• 31:12Speaker 02

  on a, a misunderstanding that it was connected to him in the 1870s. And then another one that we have is shrapnel, kind of in the same vein. Lieutenant General Henry Shrapnel was a British artillery officer who invented, you guessed it, exploding shells that scattered shrapnel around. Another interesting one, I think, is Franz Anton Mesmer, who was an 18th century German doctor who claimed to heal people via animal magnetism. And he did dramatic trance inducing treatments, including those that involved hypnosis. And he came to inspire the word mesmerize.

• 31:53Mike Carruthers?

  And boycott, that I didn't know where that came. I never knew where that came from.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Yes. Charles Cunningham Boycott was a 19th century English land agent in Ireland who tried to evict tenants. And the community responded by refusing to engage with him in any way. And thus it became the same, our word for a modern protest tactic of avoiding buying something or engaging with some, with a brand.

• 32:19Mike Carruthers?

  I think a word you hear a lot today is the word dude, as in, hey dude. And it has a long and interesting history.

• 32:31Speaker 02

  So the word dude is first recorded in the late 1800s as a word for a foppish or fastidious man. And dudes at this time were reflective of the aesthetic movement of the late 19th century, which championed pure beauty and art for art's sake. Many of the men that fell into that stereotype were high society city dwellers who lived in the American Northeast. They were Yankees who lived in big cities. And in fact, the word dude is thought to have originally been a shortening of Yankee doodle. The British lyrics to that song were written to poke fun at American troops during the French and Indian War. And you'll note that Yankee doodle is described as a dandy who is a fabulous dancer and wears

• 33:16Speaker 02

  a dashing feather in his cap. And doodle is thought to be from a German word meaning fool or simpleton. And dude is a shortening of doodle from that song.

• 33:27Mike Carruthers?

  But that's not what it means anymore. I mean.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  No, it isn't.

• 33:32Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah. How did it morph into what it is today?

• 33:36Speaker 02

  So Yankee doodle, another aspect of this, he calls it macaroni because macaroni was also used as a term for men whose luxurious lifestyles involved wearing the latest and most outlandish styles and enjoying fancy foreign foods. Macaroni didn't quite mean the same thing as it does today with regard to noodles, but it was a fancy foreign food. And written from a British perspective, this song, as I've said, poked fun at American soldiers in particular, who were portrayed as having more concern for their outfits and accessories than their skills on the battlefield. And in the 1700s, there was this group called the Macaroni Club, which was famous for reveling and indulging in foreign goods and apparel.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  They wore these towering wigs called macaroni wigs. Now, the way we shifted back to dude from this emerged from that macaroni style. In the early 1900s, dudes from the Northeast started vacationing in the American West. And the resorts where those city slickers stayed for their authentic Western experience were called Dude Ranches, which we still have now. And the way we use the term dude today as a word for any guy or any, as a gender neutral term, even in some cases, is thanks to 1960s slang from black American communities, which then got picked up by students at universities in California and then across the country.

• 34:59Mike Carruthers?

  So the word factoid, which we use here because we have little factoids in our podcast. And I have no, I just assumed it's kind of like a, like a small fact, like it's a little nugget of information. That's how we use it. I think that's how most people use it.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  It certainly is what that means now, but originally it was not a fact. It wasn't a small fact. It wasn't a fact at all because it was coined in 1973 by Norman Mailer, who wrote about it in his novelistic biography of Marilyn Monroe. And he intentionally structured it using the ending O I Doid, which we also see in words like asteroid, which is a star. It's star shaped, but it's not actually a star. Or humanoid, which is used in sci fi contexts to describe creatures or aliens that are shaped like humans, but aren't necessarily humans from Earth. And he, he meant it to imply sort of the same thing that we use the term fake news for.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  It was a supposed fact in magazines and newspapers that had no basis in truth, but were there to manipulate the emotions of readers. So it was a fact shaped object. We've almost completely lost sight of its original sense. And I don't think there's anything wrong with calling a small fact a factoid now because that's simply how we use it. But I do love that William Sapphire, the writer behind the New York Times column on language, has suggested the word factlet to represent a piece of interesting information instead.

• 36:28Mike Carruthers?

  I was surprised to read about these inventions that are much older than I would have ever imagined. And can you talk about those?

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Yes, this was really interesting. For example, I think the, the one that blew my mind the most was automatic doors. There was an inventor in the first century A D named Heron, who had a, a number of, of inventions before their time. But the idea was that temple doors would open automatically when, when fires were activated and the heat generated steam that moved weights via pulleys and opened up the doors, which I thought was fascinating. Another interesting one, I would say, is contact lenses. Maybe not invented per se, but Leonardo da Vinci sketched concepts resembling contact lenses as early as 1508. The first functional ones are still older than you would think, and they were made

• 37:24Speaker 02

  of glass, which sounds horrifying, but they were made in 1888 by German ophthalmologist Adel Fick.

• 37:31Mike Carruthers?

  I think most people believe, I've always believed, that the flushing toilet is a fairly recent invention, but according to you, it's much, much older.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. Toilets with flushing mechanisms date back to 2500 B.C. And there were a number of like brick toilets that were connected to flowing water systems. That, those seem to have appeared in a few different civilizations as well. I believe ancient, ancient Arabic cultures also, or Arab cultures also had flush toilets as well.

• 38:08Mike Carruthers?

  So let's switch gears here and, and talk about Chopin's Heart, which I didn't know was a topic, but it obviously is.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  This one was written by one of the contributors to the book, a fascinating story. I was delighted that she submitted it. Her name is, is Emily Hightower. She wrote about this. So Chopin, who was the, the composer and pianist, died in France. And while he was dying, he requested that his older sister take his heart to Poland. And it was removed and it was preserved in alcohol, not formaldehyde, because that wasn't used at the time. And it was supposedly preserved in French cognac, but we don't know whether that's true. So his sister smuggled the heart out of France. She concealed it beneath her dress due to the political situation at the time and, and perhaps because that would be a little taboo.

• 39:00Speaker 02

  The heart stayed at their family home in Warsaw until 1879, when the family requested to bury it at a local church, but they were refused because only saints were permitted burial in the crypts of the Church of the Holy Cross. Eventually they reached a compromise. The heart would be placed in a column within the church where it remained undisturbed until 1944, when the Warsaw uprising began during World War II. A Nazi chaplain approached the reverend of the church and offered to take the heart for safekeeping. And the heart was entrusted to him. And soon the column and much of the church were destroyed.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  After the uprising, another officer decided that returning the, the heart would generate goodwill for the Nazis. So he orchestrated, orchestrated a filmed ceremony to return the heart to the Archbishop of Warsaw. It was displayed on a piano before being removed to the Chopin family home. And it stayed there until 1951, where it was returned to the rebuilt Church of the Holy Cross. And in total, it traveled more than 1,000 miles in the years following his death.

• 40:12Mike Carruthers?

  Where is it now?

• 40:14Speaker 02

  It is back in the Church of the Holy Cross.

• 40:16Mike Carruthers?

  Oh, so there are a lot of trademark names that have become very generic words. And most people know about Kleenex and Band-Aid, but there are, there are a lot of other ones that I am unaware of till now.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. So we all know Kleenex and Band-Aid and whatnot, right? But Bubble Wrap was originally owned by Sealed Air Corporation. I believe it still is. It was invented by two guys who were attempting to make three dimensional plastic wallpaper. I don't know why, but they were. And they failed, but they did make a useful packing material. Ping Pong was first trademarked by British manufacturer J. Jacques and Son Limited in 1901, then bought by Parker Brothers, and then bought by Escalade Sports. The name Ping Pong, as in table, table tennis, did exist before that. And the term may have been used before the trademark, but it was trademarked for quite

• 41:10Speaker 02

  some time. Same with breathalyzer, jacuzzi, roller blade, super glue, windbreaker, zipper, and TV dinner, which were all originally trademarks as well. There's a, there's a lot of controversy right now that you may have heard about. Velcro is really trying to get people to use hook and loop as the generic term for what Velcro does. It's hook and loop fastener, but I feel like a lot of people, I think they're losing that battle, honestly.

• 41:38Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, good luck with that. Who's gonna say that? But as I understand it, because I've read about this before, that, that companies really, you would think, well, our product is so successful, people use the name generically, but they don't like that, that, that they're, they lose their trademark because it becomes a generic word.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  They do. And, and it can, it ends up being just the word that everyone uses. And the trouble there is competitors can then also use that term once the trademark supposedly dies.

• 42:08Mike Carruthers?

  A lesser known one, but I think it's still interesting is moxie.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  This word, you know, we use it generally, right, is, um, you've got moxie, kid. That was originally a trademark as well, and it actually still is. And I don't think the trademark has died necessarily because of the way that we use the word, but from 1930, we've been using this term to say, you know, you have moxie. It means you, you, uh, you're bold, you're, you're ready to take on the world. But it is originally from the name of a bitter syrup first marketed as the medicine moxie nerve food in 1876, which was then sold as a soft drink, starting in 1884. You can still get it. It tastes a little bit like root beer. The brand is probably originally, it probably gets its name from an Abenaki Native American

• 42:56Speaker 02

  word, meaning dark water, that appears in the names of some lakes and rivers in Maine. But then that was applied to this medicine, which then turned into a soft drink in the 1800s.

• 43:09Mike Carruthers?

  Have you ever had moxie?

• 43:11Speaker 02

  I have. I had it as a result of writing about it. As a matter of fact, I hadn't had it before because it wasn't sold where I grew up, but then I moved to the Northeast and it's, it's everywhere around here.

• 43:21Mike Carruthers?

  Here's an interesting topic that you write about that people probably don't think a lot about, and that is songs, popular songs, popular music that has been banned by some group or another.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Some of our more popular songs that are in the, in the zeitgeist right now were challenged by religious and government institutions, like, like a prayer, uh, by Madonna in, in 1989 was officially condemned by the Vatican. And although she had, uh, she was endorsed by Pepsi at the time, they canceled their endorsement because of the negative press she got from the Vatican condemning it. The Pope even asked people to boycott her. Though, what, you know, the topic of that song certainly makes sense as far as their reaction goes, though I think that a lot of these institutions, when they, when they

• 44:15Speaker 02

  try to ban a song or try to encourage people not to listen to a song, that probably has that sort of Streisand effect to it. You know, the Streisand effect is when you try to make something less popular and just draw more attention to it.

• 44:28Mike Carruthers?

  Right, yeah. Who's gonna, who's not gonna want to listen to a song that the Pope has said you shouldn't listen to? I mean, yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  Another big one, I would say, that, that many people associate with pacifism, which fairly so, would be John Lennon and the Beatles Imagine from 1971. The, it's a ballad about peace, but it was banned from many outlets during the Gulf War and even post nine 11 for lines like, imagine there's no heaven, even though it's one of the most covered and quoted tracks ever.

• 45:00Mike Carruthers?

  There was one song you wrote about that I thought was interesting was, um, The Kinks. Because the BBC wouldn't play their song because they have a, a ban on playing songs that, that had brand names in them.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Yes, this is actually one of my favorites because it's a, it's a brand affiliation thing. So the BBC wouldn't play songs with brand names in them for a while. So when The Kinks, Ray Davies, sang that champagne tastes just like Coca-Cola in the song Lola, the radio, uh, threatened to ban it. So mid tour in the US, he flew 16,000 miles round trip just to re-record the line as Cherry Cola. And both versions have been produced, so you might hear one or the other when you play that song.

• 45:49Mike Carruthers?

  Well, since you are the language and word expert, give me one more word, interesting word, and the story behind it.

• 45:57Speaker 02

  Okay, this is one of my favorite word stories of all time. I've probably mentioned this to, to anyone who's heard me talk about words before, but you know the word anti-disestablishmentarianism?

• 46:10Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, I remember that. And, and it was like supposedly the longest word in the English language.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Yes, which it isn't. There are many longer ones. Most of them are scientific terms. Most of them have, uh, there's some of them are just silly terms, like, uh, in James Joyce's work, they're extremely long words for the sound of thunder at the, at the dawning of creation. But anti-disestablishmentarianism is notable for being a particularly long word with a practical use that isn't scientific and it, it isn't a compound that's made of like a medicine or, or a condition or something like that. So its original meaning, which you may not know, it pertained to 19th century Church of England politics. The establishment in anti-disestablishmentarianism was the Church

• 47:00Speaker 02

  of England as the state church. It was, uh, a pretty obscure word outside of British theology and politics until 1955, when 12-year-old Gloria Lockerman correctly spelled the word anti-disestablishmentarianism on the quiz show, The $64,000 Question. And she immediately catapulted to fame. She was featured on the Martha Ray Show. She, uh, they joked about the word on the honeymooners as a result of her spelling it. Uh, and one of the reasons that she was particularly notable and gained so much fame is that it was the 1950s and she was black. And she drew the attention of viewers who had preconceived

• 47:42Speaker 02

  notions about race. Uh, she followed up the next week with an even more difficult spelling challenge. She correctly spelled the sentence, "The belligerent, astigmatic anthropologist annihilated innumerable, innumerable chrysanthemums," which, as you can tell, I can barely even say. And, uh, this made her the spelling queen of the airwaves. And she was awesome. She was honored by the NAACP. Um, she ended up being on a bunch of shows. Unfortunately, she ended up sort of retreating from the public eye after some controversy around the $64,000 question came out. But I believe she became a teacher eventually.

• 48:23Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this has been fun. I, I always learn new and interesting things about words and other things every time I talk to you. I've been speaking with Jess Zafarris. She is author of the book, A Miscellaneous of Weird and Wonderful Facts for Curious Humans Who Have Nothing Better to Do Than Read. And there's a link to her book in the show notes. Jess, always a pleasure.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Fantastic. Thank you so much for the opportunity, Mike.

• 48:52Mike Carruthers?

  You ever walk into a room full of people and feel really self-conscious about, I don't know, your clothes or your hair or something embarrassing you just said, and you're convinced that everybody noticed? And chances are, most people didn't. We have a tendency to dramatically overestimate how much other people notice us. In one famous experiment, researchers made students wear an embarrassing Barry Manilow t-shirt into a room full of other students. The t-shirt wearers estimated that about half the people in the room would notice. In reality, only 23% did. It makes sense when you think about it. You are the center of your attention, so it feels

• 49:35Mike Carruthers?

  as if you must also be the center of everyone else's attention. But they're mostly thinking about themselves. That's worth remembering the next time you stumble over your words or wear the wrong thing or make a minor mistake or, or just feel awkward walking into a room. Your embarrassing moment is probably much bigger to you than it is to anybody else. And that is something you should know. It takes a team of people to put this show together, and we have a great team. Jennifer Brennan, Jeff Havison are our producers, and Ken Williams is our executive producer. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 50:16Speaker 04

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• 50:47Speaker 06

  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.