Why We All Crave Social Status & The Extraordinary Sense That Stops You From Falling

You probably aren’t letting your dishwasher do its job the way it’s designed to — and you may be wasting time (and water) in the process. In this opening segment, we reveal why your dishwasher is smarter than you think, how to make it work harder for you, and the one thing it desperately wants you to stop doing. https://www.womansday.com/home/organizing-cleaning/a51170/stop-prerinsing-dishes/ Social status isn’t just for the shallow or phony — it’s something we all crave in one way or another. Whether at work, in friendships, or within communities, status offers hidden advantages. Joining me to explore how status really works is Toby Stuart, professor of business administration at the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, who has also taught at Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago. He’s the author of Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most World (https://amzn.to/421hLEO), and he explains why status-seeking is deeply human — and far more influential than you may realize. You may never have heard of your vestibular system, but without it, simple tasks like walking or even standing would be nearly impossible. It’s the hidden sense that keeps your balance in check, and it’s just as vital as sight or hearing. To explain how it works and why it matters, I’m joined by Dr. Jeffrey Sharon, director of the Balance and Falls Center and associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco. He’s also author of The Great Balancing Act: An Insider’s Guide to the Human Vestibular System (https://amzn.to/4g1rdhC). More and more people are asking visitors to ditch their shoes at the door. But is it really worth it? From hygiene to household health, we’ll explore the surprising benefits of a no-shoes policy — and why you might want to start enforcing it in your own home. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shoes-off-at-the-door-new_b_469245 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! INDEED: Get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ right now! DELL: Huge savings on Dell AI PCs with Intel Core Ultra processors are here, and they are newly designed to help you do more, faster. Upgrade today by visiting ⁠https://Dell.com/Deals⁠ QUINCE: Keep it classic and cool this fall with long lasting staples from Quince! Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://Quince.com/sysk⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns! HERS: Whether you want to lose weight, grow thicker, fuller hair, or find relief for anxiety, Hers has you covered. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://forhers.com/something⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get a personalized, affordable plan that gets you! SHOPIFY: Shopify is the commerce platform for millions of businesses around the world! To start selling today, sign up for your $1 per month trial 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.

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

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  In fact, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed are 95% more likely to report a hire than non-sponsored jobs. So give yourself a better shot at finding the right person. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast.

• 1:23Mike Carruthers?

  Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Today on Something You Should Know, there's something you're doing in the kitchen that you can just stop, and it'll save you a lot of time. Then, the desire for social status. It's something we all care about.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Everyone who doesn't care about status in one walk of life cares about it in another one. So you can be really, really high status in one world and be unimportant in another world, or just an average Joe.

• 2:12Mike Carruthers?

  Then, do you have people take off their shoes before they come into your home? And your vestibular system, it's the thing that keeps you from falling over, and the way it works is amazing.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  It's a system that a lot of people don't know about. We're taught that there's five senses, but that's not remotely true. We have a lot more, and the vestibular system is a really important sense most people aren't even aware of.

• 2:39Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:22Mike Carruthers?

  So instead of bouncing around from website to website, you can search across stores, find what you're looking for, 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 a thousand chances to win $1,000, 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.

• 4:09Speaker 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.

• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  So I'm gonna start this episode by saving you a little bit of time every day for the rest of your life. Hi, I'm Mike Carruthers and we're just getting started on this episode of Something You Should Know. So after every meal in your house, you probably get up and rinse off your dishes and put them in the dishwasher. So every day, you're spending time doing something you do not need to do. And you should stop doing it from now on. And here are the four main reasons why. Your dishes need to be dirty for the detergent in the dishwasher to do its job. The makers of the dish detergent Cascade discourages customers from pre-washing or rinsing dishes

• 5:05Mike Carruthers?

  because it actually inhibits the cleaner from working. Enzymes in Cascade detergent are designed to attach themselves to food particles, according to the Wall Street Journal. So without the food particles, the enzymes have nothing to latch on to. Secondly, you won't get your dishes any cleaner by pre-rinsing them. Today's new-fangled dishwashers are very savvy. They have advanced sprayer technology and sensors to detect how dirty your dishes are. Pre-rinsing or washing dishes by hand wastes water and electricity. You actually waste about 6,000 gallons of water per year

• 5:46Mike Carruthers?

  if you insist on pre-rinsing your dishes, according to Consumer Reports. And as I said, it's a needless time suck. Especially when you probably have other things you'd rather do. And that is something you should know.

• 6:06Mike Carruthers?

  You have probably noticed that people, humans, seek status, social status in their group. And sure, you see people trying to flex their status with a fancy car, or nice jewelry, or a gorgeous home. Those status seekers are easy to spot. But we all want status in our group. Because when you have status, you have resources. And when you have resources, well, then you're all set. Toby Stewart is someone who has studied social status and the people who seek it. Toby is a professor of business administration at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and has previously held professorships at Harvard,

• 6:49Mike Carruthers?

  Columbia, and the University of Chicago. And he is author of a book titled, "Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most World." Hi Toby, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Thrilled to be here. Thanks very much, Mike.

• 7:05Mike Carruthers?

  So it is very easy in our culture to see people in pursuit of status. People want it. They want the nice car, or the nice house, or the corner office, or the best table at the fancy restaurant. Because why? What does that get them, besides a sense of satisfaction that they got it? But when people get it, when they have the status they've been seeking, is that satisfying? Is that the end? Or is that just the beginning of a race to get more of it?

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Boy, that's a great question. Do we want high status? Do we want more status? The general answer is yes. And for nearly all of us, if you could make the choice, do you want to be high up in the status hierarchy? Or do you want to be down by the bottom? It's a pretty obvious answer. You want to be high up in the hierarchy. So in a relative sense, high status is better than low status in kind of all walks of life. But it's a lot more complicated than that. It's easy to look at people who have high status and be envious and think, boy, I wish I was like them. Right. I had the recognition that they have, but it's not always that easy.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  And there are a bunch of downsides for being prestigious. And one of them is, is what you just alluded to, which is, once you get high status in whatever domain you got that it might've been a lot of work to get there. And you think, you know, you think like the hard work is getting up to the top. But it turns out that once you're there, you often have to work even harder to maintain your position.

• 8:49Mike Carruthers?

  Ooh. Well, can you give me an example of that where it's hard to maintain your status?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  First one that pops into my mind is Michelin starred chef. So, you know, the Michelin star is like the Nobel Prize in the culinary world and, and very much a recognized honor if you're, if you're a chef or a restaurateur. And so there's this, you know, incredible effort that people in the business go through to try to get the star. But then when you get the star, it's reevaluated every year. And so then you're in this position where, okay, I got it. This was what I've been aspiring to do. But all the time restaurants, so, so if you know the system, restaurants can get one, two or three stars. Three stars go to two stars, two stars go to one star, one stars go, are removed from the list.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  And so you get there, but then the expectations on you become very, very high. The clientele changes typically, what the clientele expects of you changes. And, and it becomes a kind of a lifelong pursuit to maintain the status that you've already acquired.

• 9:57Mike Carruthers?

  But when you first get it, boy, that's a, that's a high, that's great. But, but now you gotta fight to keep it.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Actually, and there's a whole number of Michelin starred chefs that actually just voluntarily returned the star. Kind of called up the, called up the guide and said, hey, you know, you can have it back. Because they didn't want the pressure and they didn't like the changes that having that start, that status brought to the work that they were doing.

• 10:26Mike Carruthers?

  I don't want to, I don't want to spend too much time on restaurants, but you know what I've always wondered about? So there's trendy restaurants that all the celebrities go to, and I have never understood, is it a trendy restaurant and that's why all the celebrities go there? Or it's because all the celebrities go there that it's a trendy restaurant?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  God, I love that question, Mike. I mean, I just love that question. So you're getting at one of the super interesting aspects of status, which is it flows across affiliations. It's this very interesting resource because for most resources, if you have them and you use them, they're depleted. Right? So, so if you have money and you spend it, you have less money by whatever amount you spent. Right? So you had the resources, you allocated it to something, the resource is gone after you, after you spend it. But that's not true for status. So if you think about, I don't know, Harvard University. So Harvard University every year issues a whole bunch of degrees to people.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Those degrees are a conference of status onto the recipient. But it isn't as if each time Harvard prints a diploma, it loses a chunk of its status. But that's because, and here's where we come back to your question. That's because Harvard's pretty careful about the students that it selects. The university gives its status to the kids who attend. And so it actually, in your restaurant example, is probably reciprocal. So it might start out as the celebrity has status and gives it to the restaurant. But once a bunch of celebrities show up at the restaurant, the restaurant acquires status. And then another celebrity walks in and we're in the reciprocal world.

• 12:12Mike Carruthers?

  And when the celebrity shows up at the restaurant, and by doing so confers status to the restaurant, the celebrity doesn't lose status, he doesn't forfeit status and give it to the restaurant. It just perpetuates.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  It can perpetuate, it is potentially ending. And the reason that it perpetuates, and this is the sort of, you know, insofar as this is a rational system. Let me, let me give you the logic of the rationality. So imagine you're a super prominent celebrity, doesn't matter who, you know, Tiger Woods or Serena Williams. And those people have a business and the business is being really, really good at whatever sport or, or activity they do. But they have a separate business, which is an endorsement business. The endorsement business is about kinetic status, right? So the idea, if you're Nike and you have Tiger Woods and Serena Williams

• 13:11Speaker 01

  on your roster, the idea is you're willing to compensate them a lot because they're, they're super prominent athletes and they'll lend their prestige to the brand. But if Nike were an absolutely terrible product, so if the product that, that a celebrity endorses, or the restaurant the celebrity goes to, or the student that Harvard University admits, are really bad versions of those things, there's actually a loss of status that occurs.

• 13:40Mike Carruthers?

  There are some people though, who seemingly don't care about status, even though, as you pointed out, it, it, it seems innate in organizations, communities, whatever. But there are some people that seemingly just, I don't care. Doesn't mean anything to me, whether we eat at this restaurant or we go to McDonald's.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  So that's absolutely true. There are some people who really don't care about whether they eat at that restaurant or, or they eat at McDonald's, whatever that restaurant is. But that doesn't mean that they don't care about status. That means they don't care about the status of the restaurant. So go to some other walk of life and, you know, I don't, you know, it kind of depends on who this person is. But everyone who doesn't care about status in one walk of life, cares about it in another one. So you can be really, really high status in one world and be unimportant in another world, or just an average Joe. So you might be at work, you know, the, the really prominent person, the big boss up on top of the hierarchy. But when you go to parent teacher conferences at your schools,

• 14:47Speaker 01

  at your kid's school, everybody's kind of the same.

• 14:51Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about social status and why we all seek it in one form or another. My guest is Toby Stewart. He's author of the book Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most World.

• 15:06Speaker 04

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• 15:33Speaker 05

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• 15:59Mike Carruthers?

  So Toby, there are people who seek status by doing things like wearing a really expensive watch or driving a really expensive car. But there are a lot of people who think that's ridiculous. You know, my Timex will keep just as good time, or my 20-year-old car will get me to where I'm going. So they think this person seeking status is really foolish. They don't respect that status.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  Here's another funny thing about status. There's as many status distributions, status hierarchies, as there are social groups. So it's not as if there's just sort of one global status hierarchy, which we all agree on 100%, and we're all ranked in that one global ordering. There's a really interesting academic literature, and it basically shows if you take A any number of random people and you put them into some context, call them a group. So you're running a psychology experiment or you you have a meeting of the students in a yoga class or you have doesn't matter like just random people there in a room.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Let's say they don't know one another beforehand and they're unlikely to have much to do with one another afterwards. Those people form a status hierarchy and they do it even if they're children. So we have this sort of evidence that people sort into groups they recognize, they defer to one another in those groups. And so if you think about that, we have all of these status hierarchies and you and I, we we're different people, we care about different things, we do different things, we face a different reward structure and I don't know whether I'm with you or without you on this. I don't find very expensive cars to be significant status symbols and I feel the same way about watches.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  But, you know, I live in I part of me is an academic, so I I live in the very status hierarchical academic world. So I think about papers and publications and citations and university rankings and faculty achievements and that creates a status ordering in my world and then there's one in your world. And whether or not we buy into the luxury goods market as a status hierarchy, many people do, and of course, that's what underlies the luxury, the luxury goods business. Many, many people feel better about themselves in just the right brands or in the right car, wearing the right watch, whatever right means. But that doesn't mean that all of us feel that way.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  To say that we don't feel that way, however, doesn't mean that we're unattuned to or don't care about status. It just means that we don't care about that particular kind of status.

• 18:48Mike Carruthers?

  Well, it's interesting that you say that everybody seeks status in their own world, in their own status world, status is important. But often when you talk about status to people, it's it's often referred to in a derogatory way, that we all seek status, but when we look at other people seeking status, we we find that distasteful, it's gauche, it's, you know, he's just trying to impress people.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Many of us also have this view of, I shouldn't be a status seeker. Like, it's socially unacceptable, it's bad behavior, it's self-interested behavior, you name it. And so, although most of us really are status seekers, in many domains of life, we are anti-status in others.

• 19:42Mike Carruthers?

  Talk about the relationship between status and money. There has to be a relationship, because money seems to, if you have money, it would seem in almost any status group, it kind of gets you to the front of the line. So there's got to be an important relationship here.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so positive correlation and not a perfect one. Occupations is one example. There are some occupations that pay really well, but they have lower status than, say, doctor or teacher, that are, you know, old venerable professions, but they might compensate less than some job in finance, but have higher status, sort of in the eyes of many people. Though, the general point really does stand, which is that resources go to high-status people. You know, so like, in my world, which really, really is a status system, if you're a prominent academic, and you apply for a grant,

• 20:43Speaker 01

  you're probably a lot more likely to get the grant than somebody who doesn't have a reputation for status. That's true even in a hypothetical world where you submitted exactly the same grant application as somebody else. So if a high-status person and a low-status person submitted literally exactly the same grant application, it would be more likely granted to the high-status person. And in that sense, status converts to money, and we see that all over. So it's not like a strict relationship, but generally speaking, resources, the resources flow to high-status actors.

• 21:21Mike Carruthers?

  One area where status seems to play a big role is in the art world, right? If you, if you own well-known art, if you have a Rembrandt or a Monet, just owning it gives you status that people who don't have that don't have in that world. And, but there are plenty of other people who couldn't care less whether you owned a Rembrandt or a Monet, but, but in that world, it does seem very important.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  The reason for that is that the, the contexts in which status tends to matter the very most are contexts in which it's really, really, really difficult to evaluate something directly. And art is just perfect for that. Like you look at a, you walk into a gallery or you walk into a museum and you look at an, you look at a piece of art on, on, on a wall or a sculpture and ask yourself, is this an excellent piece of art? And how do you answer that question? For most of us, we really struggle with that. Like we, we might, we might enjoy a piece of art more or less, but that isn't necessarily, that doesn't necessarily tell us what we think about the quality of the art.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  And so it turns out that when that's the case, and it's true in, in every cultural market, but it's also true in a whole bunch of areas that you wouldn't expect, like science and technology. When we have evaluative uncertainty, when we look at a product and we just don't know how good it is, we tend to default to, rather than evaluating the product, we evaluate the person or the entity associated with the product. And by that, I mean, if I walk into a museum and I see a piece of art, I don't know if the art is amazing or not, but I've been told all of my life that Matisse is a, is an amazing artist, or a Rembrandt is an amazing artist, or you know, you pick your, you pick

• 23:17Speaker 01

  whatever artist you've, you've read or heard about. And you have a very much a strong association with the quality of the artist. That you do know. And so you assign the quality of the art, of the artist to the art itself.

• 23:34Mike Carruthers?

  Lastly, is seeking status, because you had mentioned the Michelin chefs who give back their Michelin ranking because it just isn't worth it. Is seeking status often not worth it? Is it often empty? Or do people find it quite satisfying?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  Great question, and there isn't one answer to that. So Michelin chefs, for example, the majority of Michelin chefs will tell you that they wanted the star, they worked for the star, they're honored to have the star, and that their lives are better because of it. So the majority will say, "I wanted the status, I sought the status, I received the status, I benefit from the status." But nearly all of those will, one, have the view that it isn't quite the land of milk and honey that they thought it would be. That is, there's a bunch of downsides that they hadn't really thought about or realized when they were in pursuit of that recognition.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  So there are some amazing things that come with it, but there are also some negatives that they hadn't thought very carefully about, and they realize once they get there. So when we look at the high status, I guess another way to say it is the grass often looks very green over there, but when we get there, we realize, hmm, there's some drawbacks of this. But the majority of people will choose the status. Most people who acquire a status really don't want to give it up.

• 25:08Mike Carruthers?

  What is it about status that you find really compelling that we haven't talked about yet?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  Status has almost a self-fulfilling prophecy to it often, and there's a lot of reasons for that, and we probably don't have time for me to go into all of them. But the gist of it is that we often end up in these circumstances where if you go to the starting point, and we have a group of people, let's say they're competing, or they're, you know, it's a workplace and people are trying to get ahead, these very little differences in the early days. Can lead to dramatically different outcomes in the long term. And that's the self-compounding dimension of status where if you get a little bit ahead in the status race, people then start to recognize you as high status.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  They start to evaluate your work through the lens of you're a high-status person. And they start to provide more resources to you, which then just provides an advantage to you as you're, as you move into the next round of competition, so to speak. And we see that in all walks of life, including, by the way, athletes. Like, the number one ranked athlete tends to have a whole lot of advantages entering the tournament. And in that way, status becomes something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. That's so important because, at the end of the day, it really affects how meritocratic the system is. So let me leave you on that one.

• 26:37Mike Carruthers?

  Well, that's a great point because we like to think that everybody has a shot, right? Everybody, it's a level playing field in, say, a tennis tournament or whatever. But really, the champion has an advantage. They have probably the best coaches and trainers, the best equipment. They just have more advantages because they have been given those resources that someone just coming up never has.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  And there's only, it doesn't matter what you're talking about. When you're ranking people, there's only one number one rank.

• 27:11Mike Carruthers?

  Well, this has been some great insight into the status-seeking that we all participate in and that we all see around us every day. I've been talking with Toby Stewart, who is a professor of business administration at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. And the name of his book is Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most World. And there's a link to his book in the show notes. Toby, thank you for coming on.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Mike. Really appreciate it.

• 28:10Speaker 05

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• 28:39Mike Carruthers?

  Think back to when you first tried to ride a two-wheel bike. It was tough. It was hard to maintain your balance. But every day, most of us get up on two feet and walk through the day with no problem. We maintain our balance. You can probably stand on one foot and hold your balance for a while. So how does that work? With only two feet, you'd think people would be falling over all over the place. Well, it's all because of an amazing system in your ear. It's called the vestibular system, and how it works is nothing short of amazing. Here to explain it is Dr. Jeffrey Sharone, who is the Director of the Balance and Falls Center and an Associate

• 29:24Mike Carruthers?

  Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. He's author of a book called The Great Balancing Act: An Insider's Guide to the Human Vestibular System. Hey, doctor, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 29:40Mike Carruthers?

  So this system, this balancing system that prevents us from falling over and allows us to move through the world, how does it work?

• 29:49Speaker 02

  The balance system is comprised of several different parts that come together to enable us to be able to balance and move safely. And it's, one part is our ability to see, and one part is ability to feel the ground beneath our feet. And then the other part, kind of the hidden part in our inner ears, is our ability to sense head movements and body movements, and that's called the vestibular system. System and it's a system that a lot of people don't know about. And it's a system that we're not even taught about. We're taught that there's five senses, but that's not remotely true.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  We have a lot more and the vestibular system is a really important sense that most people aren't even aware of.

• 30:41Mike Carruthers?

  I suspect everybody has heard, I have heard, that the ear, the inner ear has something to do with balance. I've always heard that, but I never understood it. I don't know how the ear impacts balance, but how does it?

• 30:57Speaker 02

  The inner ear is an interesting area because it contains two separate functions that are related. And it contains the organs of hearing, which is called the cochlea. And it contains the organs of balance, which is called the vestibular system. And they're located in the same area because they share the same biological technology. Basically, the hair cell and the hair cell is this remarkable cell that can sense fluid movements at a microscopic scale. And it turns out that that enables you to hear sound, which is vibrations of air and then fluid molecules.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  But also it enables you to sense gravity by having a heavy sensor that then deflects the hair cells. And also enables you to sense head turns. So they're located in the same area because they share the same machinery.

• 32:01Mike Carruthers?

  So say that one part again, because I'd never heard this. What hearing and has to do with fluid movements, liquid, what is that?

• 32:11Speaker 02

  So the way hearing works is that when I talk, when you talk, whenever any sound is made, we're really vibrating air molecules all around us. And that vibration passes as a wave through the air that surrounds us. And then it hits someone's eardrum and the eardrum begins to vibrate and it sends those vibrations along the little hearing bones to the inner ear. And at that point, the sounds are amplified because there's a transition from air molecules vibrating to the bones vibrating and then to the fluid in the inner ear vibrating. And those fluid vibrations in the inner ear are able to be sensed by

• 32:55Speaker 02

  these remarkable hair cells. And they can literally feel the movement. And because of that, they can send a nerve signal to the brain indicating that you're hearing something.

• 33:08Mike Carruthers?

  I never knew that. And that's, that's a remarkable system. It makes you wonder how it even works because there's so many pieces to that system. So as I, so I can understand this, you said that in the ear, the ear is responsible for hearing and also this vestibular system for balance. But are they two independent systems or do they affect each other? Does a deaf person have trouble with balance because they're deaf? Or these are just two systems that just happen to be in the same place in your head?

• 33:40Speaker 02

  They are two systems that are in the same place in your head because they both rely on having hair cells. But because of that, some diseases affect both of them. For instance, if you get an infection in your inner ear, you can lose hearing but also feel like you're spinning around and lose your sense of balance. Or there's a classic disease called many ears disease, which causes people to lose hearing and also to experience pretty vicious attacks of vertigo. And there's even some interesting

• 34:20Speaker 02

  rare diseases where people will both get vertigo with loud sounds, but also hear their eyeballs moving. And it's because the hearing and balance mechanisms are located in the exact same space.

• 34:36Mike Carruthers?

  So we've all had the experience of losing our balance. Everyone's lost their balance. Why do people typically just suddenly lose their balance?

• 34:46Speaker 02

  It's important to keep in mind that certain diseases can affect the balance system in the inner ear. And two of the most common of them that are pretty likely that you know someone in your life who has them are the loose crystals disease, which we call by an acronym BPPV. And also, there's a form of migraine that causes vestibular dysfunction, and we call that vestibular migraine. And those two diseases are incredibly common. The inner ear has two basic parts, one that senses gravity and one that senses head rotations.

• 35:29Speaker 02

  And the part that senses gravity relies on having crystals in their inner ear. And when you look at them under a scanning microscope, you see there's literally crystals there. And they're designed to be heavy, so that they're heavier than everything around them, and they weigh on these hair cells and tell you where gravity is. Well, when you're sick, when you have a head trauma, when you have infection or inflammation in your ear, or sometimes just with aging, they can dislodge from their usual location and end up in the other part of the inner ear where you sense head movements. And that can trick the ear into thinking that it's spinning around really quickly when it's not. And that's what happens with the loose crystal disease or BPPV.

• 36:15Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I've always wondered is like, what is this, that system that keeps your balance and senses movement and all of this? What goes on when you say, go to? Universal Studios and go on one of those rides where you're actually sitting still, but you feel like you're moving, but you're not moving. Like, does the system go, what the hell is going on here?

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely, yeah. So our vestibular system, like many of these systems, is designed for terrestrial life on Earth in a natural environment. And therefore, it can be fooled, just like there's visual illusions, there can be vestibular illusions. And we generally rely on having reliable visual input that corresponds to vestibular input. So if you're on one of those rides where you're surrounded by a screen and your whole visual field, everything you could see is moving, the visual system is making you think, oh, boy, there's a real

• 37:24Speaker 02

  stimulus there. We are moving. And your vestibular system is saying, hey, wait a second, I don't sense any movement. And that disconnect between what you're seeing and what your inner ear is feeling is thought by many to underlie motion sickness. And that's why there are some people who really don't enjoy those rides. The same mechanism would apply for being on a boat and getting seasick because your inner ear on the boat is saying, hey, we're rocking up and down. But your visual system inside the boat is saying, no, we're in the same position in the room. We're not really moving. And that discordance, your brain doesn't know what to do with it. It thinks you've been poisoned, so it makes you feel nauseated.

• 38:10Mike Carruthers?

  Wow, that's really interesting. But, and is there, maybe this hasn't been studied, but like, if you do that a lot, if you work on a ship, or if you're constantly on rides at the amusement park, is there any long-term effects? Or the system just deals with it in the moment, and then you move on?

• 38:31Speaker 02

  You know, I did come across one study looking at long-term effects. And it turns out that your brain can rearrange itself in a sense and change to get you used to these sort of discordant things that make you feel nauseated. And the study was done in whirling dervishes. So whirling dervishes is a branch of Sufi Islam where in order to meditate and get closer to God, the whirling dervishes will spin around for hours and hours. And there was one study looking at their brains and they found that certain brain areas

• 39:14Speaker 02

  that are responsible for integrating this visual information and the vestibular information were smaller than they ought to have been. And it was probably an adaptation to allow them to keep spinning for so long without getting nauseated.

• 39:31Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, but you know, I wonder if, because I've talked to people who work on like cruise ships and whatnot, and they eventually get pretty used to the motion of the boat. Does that affect them when they're on dry land and they're not bouncing up and down? Or the body just adapts?

• 39:52Speaker 02

  In most cases, the body does adapt, but there is a rare disease. It's a French term, so forgive my pronunciation, called mal de embarquement. And it's translated as the malady of disembarkation. And basically, it's a disease where you adapt to being at sea, like on a cruise ship. But then when you get off the cruise ship, you continue to feel a sense of rocking and swaying, and that could last for months or years. And let me tell you one other interesting thing about being on a boat and feeling seasick

• 40:37Speaker 02

  is that people without a functional vestibular system, so people whose vestibular system simply doesn't work, do not get seasick. And it's thought to be that because their vestibular system doesn't work, there's no conflict with their visual system, so they simply don't experience seasickness.

• 40:58Mike Carruthers?

  So you know that sensation you get when you go down an escalator and you get to the end and then you step off and you feel a little uncertain for a second? Is that this? Is that what we're talking? Is that the same thing?

• 41:10Speaker 02

  That is part of the vestibular system. There's a little tiny organ in the vestibular system that senses up and down movements in a straight line, linear movements, called the sacula. And that is what is sensing when you're going up and down in an elevator. But there's an interesting illusion that happens. So the vestibular system is designed to sense accelerations, but it does not sense velocity. So it only senses changes in acceleration. So if you are moving in an elevator, at first you sense the movement, then you reach some speed and there's no more movement, so the vestibular system turns off.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  When you hit the bottom of the elevator, even though you're not moving, there is an acceleration because all the fluid in the inner ear has inertia and it activates the sensor and that causes a bit of a false sensation. And I think that's what you're describing.

• 42:11Mike Carruthers?

  So it is common, well, I don't know how common it is, but you hear about when people get, when people get older, they're prone to falling. Are they actually prone to falling more because of what we're talking about? Or is it that the consequences of falling when you're older tend to be more severe and that's why it's a concern?

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Vestibular dysfunction, so a loss of the normal function of the vestibular system in the inner ear is a risk factor for falls. It's not the only risk factor, but it is one of the things that make falls more likely. One of my mentors did a study looking at various risk factors for falls, including a decreased vision, decreased muscle strength, and decreased vestibular function, and found that the vestibular system was one of the strongest predictors of fall risk.

• 43:09Mike Carruthers?

  Is the vestibular system something you can make better? Or it just does what it does? You can't, it's not like a muscle you can build up or, or not?

• 43:21Speaker 02

  The one of the main treatments for a whole variety of different vestibular diseases is vestibular physical therapy. So the same way you can do physical therapy when you hurt your shoulder to strengthen the muscles around it, you can do physical therapy for your vestibular system to try to strengthen the reflexes and also to train the brain to get over the original problem and move past it and use other strategies and other body systems to compensate. So vestibular physical therapy is really important. Other than that, we're at an interesting moment in time where some people have heard of a cochlear implant.

• 44:05Speaker 02

  A cochlear implant is a device placed in the inner ear that replaces the inner ear and allows someone to hear through the device by having a microphone connected to electrodes that stimulate the hearing nerve directly and give someone back a sense of hearing. Well, right now, there are human trials for a vestibular implant. A vestibular implant would be a device placed inside your skull, connected to these vestibular nerves that would replace a sense of balance. And so for the trials going pretty well, so it seems like in the future, we will be able

• 44:46Speaker 02

  to offer patients a vestibular implant to replace a sense of balance if it's been lost.

• 44:54Mike Carruthers?

  Just to have a sense of this, like, what percentage of the population has a problem with their vestibular system?

• 45:02Speaker 02

  In any given year, about 10% of the population will report that they have a problem with dizziness or imbalance. Not all of that is the vestibular system, but a lot of it is related to vestibular problems.

• 45:17Mike Carruthers?

  You know, those people who walk on tightrope, so they their balance must be really great. How do they do that? Is that related to this?

• 45:28Speaker 02

  That i- it's an interesting question. You probably need a pretty functional vestibular system.

• 45:35Mike Carruthers?

  I would think.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  In order, we do see that when we look across different animal species. For instance, if you look across big cats, the the cat with the largest vestibular system is the cheetah. And that makes a lot of sense when you consider that the cheetah, when it hunts, achieves the fastest speeds of any land animal. And if you try to imagine, how does it keep its eye on its prey when it is running across the savannah at 60 miles an hour? And it needs to be able to steady its eyes despite the fact that its head's bobbing up and down.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  And one of the cardinal functions of the vestibular system is to keep your eyes steady as your head and body move. And so it makes a lot of sense that the cheetah has this extraordinary vestibular system because it needs to in order to engage in these high-speed chases.

• 46:37Mike Carruthers?

  What else about this topic, since you clearly know an awful lot about it? What else about this do you find or people tell you they find this very interesting that we haven't talked about yet?

• 46:48Speaker 02

  We've divided modern medicine into different specialties. And the vestibular disorder seems to fall right between my specialty, ear, nose and throat, and neurology. And I think that's to our detriment because these disorders causing vertigo and dizziness and imbalance affect so many people around the world. And when you start looking at not just the fact that we can diagnose and treat some of these diseases, but when you start looking at the importance of the vestibular system across different areas of life, whether that be, you know, for car sickness, whether

• 47:30Speaker 02

  that be for pilots, who are all trained to understand the vestibular system so that their vestibular illusions don't cause a plane To crash, or whether it's for astronauts because half of the vestibular system doesn't work in outer space, so astronauts become disoriented and half of them end up projectile vomiting on their first spaceflight just because their inner ear can't understand a world without gravity. It turns out that it's it's a pretty important system.

• 47:59Mike Carruthers?

  Well, as you said in the beginning, you know, we're taught we have five senses, but we have a lot more, and this this vestibular system is one of them, that sense of balance that it gives us. And I never knew about it. I don't think most people know much about it or how it works. But we do now. Dr. Jeffrey Sharon has been my guest. He's the director of the Balance and Fall Center and an associate professor at the University of California, San Francisco. His book is called The Great Balancing Act: An Insider's Guide to the Human Vestibular System. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Doctor, appreciate you coming on. Thank you.

• 48:37Speaker 02

  Awesome. Amazing. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 48:45Mike Carruthers?

  I've certainly noticed more and more people asking that visitors take their shoes off before they come in the house. And even people volunteer it. Do you would you like me to take my shoes off before I come in? It has become more commonplace. But if you're still not one who has people take their shoes off, here are some reasons to consider it. Tracked in carpet dust is one of the major sources of home exposure to lead allergens, bacteria, fungi, volatile organic compounds, and pesticides. A large portion of all the house dust in your house comes in on people's shoes. Up to 94% of all the junk on your shoes comes off with the first two steps into the house.

• 49:30Mike Carruthers?

  Things like lead, pesticides, coal tar from your driveway all get tracked in on the bottom of shoes. And carpets are kind of like sinkholes for these things. Once in, they're hard to get out. So if you have children crawling around on the floor, this is a problem. Having people take off their shoes before entering your house will eliminate a lot of this stuff from coming in. If the no shoes rule is not something you can live with, at least get a good quality doormat and insist that people use it and vacuum it frequently. Just those two things can reduce what gets tracked in by more than half. And that is something you should know.

• 50:12Mike Carruthers?

  And now that this episode is over, what you think about it matters to us. So if you would write a rating and review and post it on the app you're listening on, we read them and we really do appreciate them. So please leave us a rating and review and tell your friends about us. I'm Micah Rutherford. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 50:32Speaker 04

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• 51:00Speaker 06

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