The New Science of Effective Weight & What Makes an Idea Scalable

We’ve all heard the advice that when you buy new clothes you should wash them first before you wear them. But what’s the reason? Is it more of a “just to be safe” idea or is there a real concern? This episode begins with an explanation.https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2010/11/wash-and-then-wear-unwashed-clothes-may-have-formaldehyde/index.htm Understanding the science of weight loss has come a long way in just the past several years. It isn’t just, “eat fewer calories than you burn.” There is a lot more to it than that. If you want to know the latest cutting-edge advice on losing weight and keeping it off, listen to my guest, Dr. Richard Johnson, who is at the forefront of research on obesity and diabetes. He is he is a medical doctor, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado and author of the book, Why Nature Wants Us to Be Fat – The Surprising Science Behind Why We Gain Weight and How We Can Prevent – and Reverse It. (https://amzn.to/3tXHbCF). You often hear business gurus talk about how important it is to make your business idea scalable. What does that mean? How do you make something scalable? It seems like many ideas are simply not scalable. And if an idea isn’t scalable, can it still be great? John List is an economist (formerly with Lyft) who explains how ideas scale – or don’t. He also explains how great businesses know how to pivot to stay competitive. John is author of the book The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale (https://amzn.to/3K3cCkT). Listen as he reveals some great examples of ideas that could and could not scale and how he helped Lyft scale their business. Usually, you smile because you are happy. But it may also be true that you can be happy because you smile. And more importantly, smiling can also make you healthy. Listen and I will tell you how it works. https://www.verywellmind.com/top-reasons-to-smile-every-day-2223755 PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! INDEED: Get a $75 SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING Support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms & conditions apply. AURA: Save on the perfect gift by visiting https://AuraFrames.com to get $35-off Aura’s best-selling Carver Mat frames by using promo code SOMETHING at checkout! SHOPIFY: Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk . Go to SHOPIFY.com/sysk to grow your business – no matter what stage you’re in! MINT MOBILE: Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at https://MintMobile.com/something! $45 upfront payment required (equivalent to $15/mo.). New customers on first 3 month plan only. Additional taxes, fees, & restrictions apply. HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk PROGRESSIVE: The Name Your Price tool from Progressive can help you save on car insurance! You just tell Progressive what you want to pay and get options within your budget. Try it today at https://Progressive.com 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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• 0:42Mike Carruthers?

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• 1:27Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know, is it really necessary to wash brand-new clothes before you wear them? Then, a top researcher explains the latest news on weight loss and what really works to shed pounds.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Turns out that people who are overweight are almost always dehydrated. They're not drinking enough water. In fact, one study showed that people who are overweight or obese tended to be 12 times more dehydrated than the lean people.

• 1:57Mike Carruthers?

  Also, how smiling. Just smiling will improve your health. And how good ideas scale and pivot their way to success or failure.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Because in the past, it was move fast and break things, throw spaghetti against a wall, whatever sticks, cook it, fake it till you make it. And what I'm adding here is we need science to figure out which ideas are truly scalable.

• 2:23Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:27Mike Carruthers?

  I imagine most of us shop for clothes online, at least some of the time, and there's always that little mystery. Is what shows up at your door actually going to look like what you think you ordered? We've all had that experience. I know my wife has ordered dresses that look beautiful in the pictures, but when they arrived, eh, not so beautiful. Cheap-looking, disappointing, and that's one of the reasons we've become such big fans of Quince. When we order from Quince, we are confident we're going to get something really nice. The quality is consistently good, and the prices are surprisingly reasonable. I've bought their cashmere sweaters, which are gorgeous, and they start at just $60

• 3:12Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:57Mike Carruthers?

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• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  Hello. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Have you ever gotten like a new shirt? And got it home and you probably have heard something like you're supposed to wash it first before you wear it, but a new shirt never looks as good after you wash it the first time as it does when you take it out of the package, so maybe you wore it. Well, you really should wash it. You see, many new clothes have a coating of formaldehyde to prevent wrinkles. And this formaldehyde can cause itching and skin irritations and in extreme cases even burning, swelling and blisters. Now, some countries have strict limits on how much formaldehyde can be put on clothes,

• 5:06Mike Carruthers?

  but the United States has none. However, testing has found that the levels tend to be pretty low. The good news is that all it takes is one washing before you wear those clothes to eliminate the problem. And that is something you should know. Just about everyone, it seems, is concerned with their weight. Mostly that they need to lose some. If you're concerned about your weight, you've likely read or heard various advice about what causes weight gain and the best way to lose it. Only to find that that advice contradicts some other advice. Maybe it really just comes down to calories. If you burn more calories than you eat, you'll lose weight.

• 5:49Mike Carruthers?

  If you eat more calories than you burn, you'll gain weight. But it all gets very confusing. Then there are all the fad diets. Now, if you're a regular listener to this podcast, you know, we don't, we don't do fad diets here. We don't have people on to talk about the latest oddball weight loss breakthrough because most of the exciting news in weight loss turns out to usually be baloney. But one person who has spent a lot of time researching the latest science on this is Dr. Richard Johnson. He's a medical doctor, a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, and he's been leading research in the cause of obesity and diabetes. His book is called Why Nature Wants Us to be Fat.

• 6:33Mike Carruthers?

  The Surprising Science Behind Why We Gain Weight and How We Can Prevent and Reverse It. Hi, Doctor. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Hi, Michael. Thank you for inviting me.

• 6:44Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So I think a lot of people are skeptical when they hear, oh, there's new news about weight loss because over the years, the advice keeps changing about what makes people gain and lose weight. So what is this new science that you're about to tell us? And how is it different than what we've heard before? And how do we know it won't change in the future?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  It's definitely true that, you know, a number of years ago, it used to be thought that it was just calories that drive obesity and basically lack of exercise. So there was a lot of talk originally, you know, that all you had to do was just kind of reduce what you're eating, the amount you're eating and exercise more, and that would cure everything. But and then that became quite apparent that that's not the case, and that certain foods make a difference. And over the following years, it became more and more apparent that things like sugar specifically tended to make people more obese and develop metabolic syndrome more than,

• 7:47Speaker 01

  for example, starch. So there was a transition where we started realizing that it wasn't just behavior, but that there was something special about the particular foods we were eating. And we were involved in that early work. But what we've done since then has actually kind of given a new insight. And that is that to gain weight, you actually have to activate a biological switch. And that when we studied that and identified that biological switch, it did turn

• 8:25Speaker 01

  out to be due to sugar. And it turns out that sugar contains two, sugar really has two compounds. There's glucose and fructose. There's two carbohydrates in sugar. And it turns out that it's the fructose that triggers this biologic switch.

• 8:44Mike Carruthers?

  So when I think of fructose, I think of fruit, that that's the sugar in fruit. Isn't that fructose?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  So fructose is a carbohydrate. It's a type of sugar. And it's present in fruit and honey. So things that we think of as healthy. But it's also present in table sugar. And it's also present in this sweetener called high fructose corn syrup. In high fructose corn syrup and table sugar. It's actually both glucose and fructose mixed together. Glucose is the main sugar in our blood. It's really the essential nutrient, the essential carb we use to as our fuel for the brain and for our tissues. It's our main carbohydrate fuel. But fructose is a different fuel.

• 9:34Speaker 01

  And it's it's mainly present in these foods. What's unique about fructose is that it triggers the storage of fat as opposed to the production of energy. It really is there to try to shift the calories we're eating from instant energy to stored energy.

• 9:58Mike Carruthers?

  So it sounds like you're saying since fructose is the sugar in fruit that we shouldn't be eating fruit, that that fruit is fattening?

• 10:06Speaker 01

  It turns out that our bodies, we have a sort of a shield in our intestine where we inactivate the first four or five grams of fructose that we eat. So it turns out that natural fruits have only small amounts of fructose. And although it's really sweet to taste, we kind of inactivate the fructose in our gut. So that we don't actually get a big load to a of fructose to our liver where everything happens. And so a natural fruit does not give you enough fructose to activate the switch. Now, if you drank fruit juice, now you're going to get a large load of fructose and you're going to activate the switch. There's another reason too.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Natural fruits have a lot of fiber. And they also have vitamin C and other things. And it turns out that the fiber slows the absorption. And the vitamin C actually helps neutralize the effects of the fructose.

• 11:05Mike Carruthers?

  So the theory that has long been the basis for a lot of weight loss advice and seems to make a lot of sense is if you burn more calories than you eat, you will lose weight, and if you eat more calories than you burn, you gain weight. But you point out that there is more to it than that, that when it comes to your health, a calorie isn't a calorie. It's also about the types of food you eat or don't eat, particularly sugar. So explain that.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  When you give animals the exact same number of calories, the weight gain is still a little bit greater with sugar. But there's a major effect, which is that the other metabolic effects of the switch, which has become insulin resistant and diabetic and developed fatty liver, that still occurs even with controlling, even if you put them on a diet restriction. So if you, if you put animals on a caloric restriction, so they're eating less than normal, but they get a high sugar diet, they're still going to become diabetic. They're still going to get fatty liver. They're still going to get hypertension. So those things are not driven by the excess calories. Only the weight gain is really driven by the excess calories.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  You know, that's what drives the weight gain. But all the other things, you can be skinny and diabetic if you put an animal on a caloric restriction with a high sugar diet.

• 12:29Mike Carruthers?

  But so often you hear that the, the real enemy in trying to control your weight is carbs. You know, pasta, rice, chips, those kind of things, which I don't sense have a lot of fructose in them. So, so how do you fit that into your narrative here?

• 12:50Speaker 01

  It isn't just the fructose we eat. What we discovered was that the body can make fructose. And when the body makes fructose, you can get fat from the fructose you make. There's only one way to make fructose. And you have to make it from glucose. And guess what the best source of that is? High glycemic carbs. So when you eat bread and rice and potatoes and cereal and chips.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Even though they don't contain fructose, even though they don't contain sugar, you can still get fat from them because once you eat them, the glucose can be converted to fructose in the body. And high glycemic carbs do it. Now, the other big discovery was dehydration. So when you get dehydrated, that also stimulates the enzymes to convert glucose to fructose. And when we started studying this, you know, we didn't really understand this, but we started saying this and it turns out that people who are overweight are almost always dehydrated. They're not drinking enough water.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  In fact, one study showed that people who are overweight or obese tended to be 12 times more dehydrated than the lean people. So dehydration is very, very common in people who are overweight. And the main reason they do that is it turns out that when you eat sugar, that dehydrates you. You think a soft drink hydrates you, it doesn't.

• 14:33Mike Carruthers?

  And you say salty food plays a role in this too, so explain that.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  So when you eat salt, the salt concentration goes up in your blood and you get thirsty and you want to drink water. But the salt concentration in the blood activates a biologic pathway to make sugar. And it makes it from carbs. So that's why french fries is so bad because the salt in the french fry actually activates the enzyme to help convert the glucose in the french fry to fructose. And that's why french fries, which have no sugar in them, no high fructose corn syrup, you know, but they're still bad because the salt activates

• 15:19Speaker 01

  this enzyme that converts the glucose to fructose.

• 15:23Mike Carruthers?

  I want to get an idea, based on all the things you're saying, how all this information trickles down into specific recommendations on what to eat, what not to eat, when to eat, all of that. But first, I'm speaking with Dr. Richard Johnson. He is a medical doctor, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, and author of the book, Why Nature Wants Us to be Fat. Well, here's something you should know about your bones. We all hear about calcium and vitamin D, and they're important. But there's another ingredient in healthy bones that hardly anybody talks about: collagen. Think of your bones like a building, right? Collagen provides the framework, while minerals like calcium help give it strength.

• 16:08Mike Carruthers?

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• 16:49Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:31Mike Carruthers?

  You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet, and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably haven't worn in years, and yet there they hang, taking up space. But here's the thing: you could turn those clothes into money. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer wear and make some extra money. Listing on Vinted is so quick and simple.

• 18:14Mike Carruthers?

  And when something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And here's what I really like. Vinted charges no seller fees. So whatever you earn from selling your clothes, you keep. Think about that. Clothes that you aren't wearing, taking up space, could be putting money back in your pocket. So here's my suggestion. Take five minutes, go look at the far ends of your closet and see what's hanging there. You might be surprised. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing. With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn. That's Vinted, V-I-N-T-E-D.

• 18:55Mike Carruthers?

  So Dr. Johnson, I'm wondering, given all you know, all the things you've been talking about, how does this affect specifically what you eat and when you eat? Like, so what did you have for breakfast this morning?

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Well, this morning, I actually skipped breakfast. And, you know, one of the things is, you know, it turns out that things like carb restriction and intermittent fasting and all these things that people are recommending, they're, they're pretty effective at losing weight. And the carb restriction in particular is a very, very helpful because it removes not only sugar, but it reduces the amount of starch you're eating. And remember, the starch can be converted to fructose. So it turns out that that is a major mechanism of protection. So if you want to lose weight, you know, carb restriction, intermittent fasting are great ways to go. But there's also, you know, what we learned from this is there are a lot of nuances.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  For example, it's possible to eat cake and not eat, and not activate the biologic switch. And the reason is that the way fructose works is it's the concentration that hits the liver. When the fructose concentration in the liver is high, that's when the switch activates. So for example, if I did not want to activate this switch...

• 20:18Speaker 01

  I could eat a piece of cake, if I could eat a piece of cake slowly, like over a couple of hours, then it wouldn't activate the switch. Now, the trouble is, of course, that we, you know, our desire to eat the cake outbeats our, our logic where we know that it's not good. It's just like a soft drink. It's hard to tell a person to just sip a soft drink over two hours or over an hour. Everyone will drink it very quickly, and that's the problem. But, but the truth is, when you understand the science, you can actually, um, you know, figure things out. So, for example, if you drink water, uh, i- i- if

• 20:59Speaker 01

  you drink more water, you can block the effects of salty foods. So, we did this. We took people. We gave them salty soup, and we could show that immediately their blood pressure went up and they activated this switch. We could prove it, that they activated the switch. But if we gave the salty soup with water, the salt concentration did not go up in their blood. They did not trigger that enzyme, and they did not develop an increase in blood pressure, nor did they activate the switch.

• 21:30Mike Carruthers?

  And when you say to restrict carbs, you don't mean all carbs. You mean the carbs, the, the simple carbs, right?

• 21:39Speaker 01

  So, what we call low glycemic carbs don't activate the switch. So, vegetables and all those things, they're very good, even though they contain carbs. So, you don't have to carb restrict completely. It turns out that it's certain carbs. It's really only four, uh, or five. Sugar and high fructose corn syrup, I put them together. Uh, and then the other, uh, big ones are bread, rice, potatoes, and cereal. And those are the, the main ones that tend to raise glucose in our blood and activate this, uh, switch where the glucose gets converted to fructose.

• 22:19Mike Carruthers?

  So, what started this? And when did it start? Cause if you look back at pictures of people from, you know, the 30s, or 40s, or 50s, or 60s, we didn't have as many overweight people as we do now. So, why is that?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  You know, I've published on how much sugar people were eating over the decades, actually going all the way back. And, and really, it started really going up dramatically in the 1970s when high fructose corn syrup was added. And, you know, we've done studies and high fructose corn syrup tends to be more fattening than table sugar. Causes more fatty liver, for example. And, and, and it's because there's a little bit more fructose in it and also probably because of its, how it's absorbed. By the 80s and 90s, that's when really obesity and diabetes went crazy.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Uh, and, you know, they continued to accrete, increase now. Uh, sugar intake has decreased, uh, since 2005 and particularly in soft drinks. But there's also been the rise of sugar in, uh, from power drinks and we're also eating more salt than we did, uh, back in the 60s. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of factors.

• 23:41Mike Carruthers?

  So given all this about sugar and carbs and all this, what, what's the advice? What should we be eating and avoiding?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  In general, you wanna avoid liquid sugar because liquid sugar is the worst because you get a lot of sugar in a short amount of time. Liquid, you know, and I include for sugar, I include table sugar in high fructose corn syrup and things like that. So liquid, you know, soft drinks, energy drinks, uh, drinks that have a lot of sugar in it, anything that has, you know, fruit juice, really avoid that. That's number one. That is your number one activator of this switch. Reduce your sugar intake, reduce your high glycemic carbs. Try not to eat, uh, so much salty food and try to drink more water.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Uh, there's certain, uh, umami foods, you know, umami is another taste and, um, they will also enter into this switch, particularly things like beer and alcohol, but beer in particular, which has brewer's yeast in it, actually will activate the switch as well. You know, a lot of meats are good, especially poultry, fish, unprocessed red meats. There are a lot of fats that are good. You know, omega-3 fats, saturated fat, you have to be a little careful with. But you know, there's a lot of monounsaturated fats, olive oil-based diets, Mediterranean diets.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  These are really basically healthy ways to go.

• 25:20Mike Carruthers?

  If sugar is such a big problem and activates this switch, then talk about sugar substitutes because seemingly that would be a good solution to the problem.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Well, there are some problems with sugar substitutes, but in general, the first good thing is most sugar substitutes do not activate this biologic switch. They do stimulate a pleasure response in the brain, what we call a dopamine response. So they do encourage you to eat sweet foods. So if you're trying to, you know, stop eating sweet foods, drinking soft drinks that would, diet soft drinks are, is still going to encourage you to like sweet foods. And so it doesn't get rid of the craving. Most of them do not activate the switch.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  There's a few significant exceptions, like there's one artificial sweetener called sorbitol. It's often put in like sugar-free syrups. That one still activates the switch, unfortunately. So that's really not a good choice. And, and then there are also other issues with artificial sweeteners that, you know, are quite bothersome. For example, aspartame has been reported to, you know, affect memory. And, um, you know, there's some papers suggesting that if you give large doses to animals, that they have trouble going through a maze. So I'm not a big fan of aspartame.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  And, you know, so things like stevia, which is a natural artificial sweetener, Splenda, sucralose, there isn't too much negative about that. But, you know, they are chemicals in some respects. And, you know, we're still trying to figure out what they do and, and how safe they are.

• 27:14Mike Carruthers?

  So help me understand the switch a little better in terms of how much sugar do you have to eat to activate it? When does it just shut itself off? Is it a daily thing? Is it, once you've activated it, it stays on for a month? I mean, help me understand how it works.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Yes, so it turns out the switch is a dimmer switch. What it means that if you take two teaspoons of sugar, you're going to activate the switch, but only mildly. Whereas if you drink a soft drink, you're gonna, where it's like nine teaspoons, you're gonna activate the switch big time. And when you do, you drop that energy and it only will last for a few hours, okay? And then it will recover and everything kind of goes back. But you've now stored that extra fat, right? So initially, it's sort of a short-term effect. But we're eating sugar in almost every meal. You know, it's like in 70% of processed foods. So we're activating the switch a lot, a lot.

• 28:14Speaker 01

  And some of us are almost staying like in an activated state.

• 28:18Mike Carruthers?

  For so long, we have heard that fat is the enemy, that we are eating too much fat, that all this deep-fried goo is making you fat and you're eating too many calories and you've got to cut your calories. Is that no longer really part of the equation?

• 28:37Speaker 01

  No, it's still part of the equation, Michael, because the way, again, the way it works is the fructose is the fire and the high-fat foods are the firewood. What I mean by that is you have to activate the switch so that you don't regulate your appetite. So if you eat the fructose, now you're gonna be hungry and you're not going to control your appetite. And so now, when you could, you could get fat just from carbs, but the carbs are only four calories a gram. So you would have to eat a lot of carbs to gain weight. The fat is like nine calories a gram. So it's very easy to gain weight with fat

• 29:22Speaker 01

  if you can't control your appetite. So that, but if you control your appetite, you're not going to eat excessive fat. So if you are healthy and you're, you have not activated the switch, you can go on a high-fat diet. You won't gain weight. That's what a low-carb diet is. It's a low-carb diet tends to be a high-fat, high-protein diet. And it doesn't cause weight gain because you're on a low-carb diet. It prevents you from activating that switch, which is mainly driven by carbs. So, so a high fat diet with a low, you know, is not going to cause obesity if the switch is not on.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  But now, let's say I give you sugar and I, I give, I give you a lot of carbs and you've activated the switch. Now, if you have a diet that has a lot of fat in it, you're going to gain a lot of weight because that fat is so caloric rich. It's calorie dense and you're not controlling your appetite.

• 30:23Mike Carruthers?

  Well, we've certainly come a long way from it's all about how many calories you eat compared to how many calories you burn. Obviously, there's a lot of nuance to this and it's really interesting to hear the science behind it. Dr. Richard Johnson has been my guest. He is a medical doctor, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, a leading researcher in the cause of obesity and diabetes, and his book is called Why Nature Wants Us to Be Fat. And you'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, Doctor. This has been really enlightening. Thanks.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you, Michael.

• 31:01Mike Carruthers?

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• 33:14Mike Carruthers?

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• 34:26Mike Carruthers?

  I'm sure you've heard people talk about scalable ideas. That for an idea to be truly great, it has to scale. Not just business ideas, any ideas. Education, or ideas in the community. Scalable is a real buzzword today. And to oversimplify, if you're selling your time for money, like a teacher, an accountant, a lifeguard, a taxi driver, that generally isn't scalable. There are only so many hours in the day you can work, so your potential success is limited. Versus an idea that grows beyond just you. Uber and Lyft, for example, are scalable versus a single taxi driver, which is not. Again, an oversimplified explanation.

• 35:11Mike Carruthers?

  But someone who knows a lot about this is John List. John is an economist. He was an economist at Lyft, and has done a lot of research on this. He speaks on the subject, and he wrote a book called "The Voltage Effect: How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale." Hey, John, welcome.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  Hey, thanks for having me.

• 35:32Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So let's start with an example that helps to explain scalability in a little more detail.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  So I started an early childhood program in Chicago Heights whereby I had teachers teach three, four, and five-year-olds. And those three, four, and five-year-olds learned a lot within six or 12 months. Now, the problem with that program is when I try to scale it, when I originally did the program, I hired 30 really good teachers. But when I scale it up, I might have to hire 30,000 really good teachers. So that's a very difficult chore compared to when I hired 30. So that idea is not very scalable. What I should make sure to do in the original study

• 36:24Speaker 02

  is to have teachers who I can hire at scale and make sure my program works with those kinds of teachers. That's one way to think about scalability.

• 36:35Mike Carruthers?

  So in other words, hiring 30 excellent teachers to make the program work is a relatively manageable task. Hiring 30,000 excellent teachers, and they have to be excellent to make the program work, that would be difficult. So the only way to make it scale would be to be able to hire 30,000 teachers, some of whom would not be so excellent, but the program would still work. That's scalable.

• 37:01Speaker 02

  I think that's right, but it's also true that unique humans themselves don't scale. And the reason why is because they're unique for a reason, and it's difficult to teach other people to be unique. So in a way, if one of the important elements of your idea is something that you just can't get at scale, it will never scale.

• 37:29Mike Carruthers?

  So give me an example that you think has been just an outstanding stellar success as a scalable idea.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  So let's take ourselves back to the polio vaccination, and let's think what Jonas Salk did. What Jonas Salk did is he had an idea about a vaccination that could handle polio. So what he did is, he tested it out on his own children to start, and then he tested again to make sure that the original results were not a false positive. So he first of all figured out this thing works by testing and retesting. Then what he did

• 38:18Speaker 02

  is he tried it out on a lot of different kinds of children. So he found out what is the slice of the pie that my idea can work for, that was step two. And in step two, he found, wow, it works for all children. Then after he found out that it worked on all children, he went to step three. And that's, how do we actually get it in people's arms? But the brilliance behind the polio vaccination is that we leverage the healthcare system.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  And what we essentially have done is after you have a child, as those listeners know, if you've had kids, baby comes out, gets whisked away and tested and gets some vaccinations. You bring your baby back in six months, it gets more vaccinations, 12 months more, 18 months, a few more. So the polio vaccination is given in a natural way. Step four in my reasoning is, well, does your idea have spillover effects? And in this case, the idea of a polio vaccination has great spillover effects because once you get the vaccination, you can't pass along polio to other children.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  So that's really good. And then the fifth hurdle that you have to jump over is how much does it actually cost you to provide it and get it in people's arms? And again, with the polio vaccination, the true expense came in the R and D of the actual product. And because we leverage the healthcare system, it's now a pretty inexpensive way to give to people. So really, the polio vaccination passes over these five hurdles of an idea that is perfectly scalable. And in a way, it's worked brilliantly.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  And these features are what is really elemental signatures of ideas that scale.

• 40:28Mike Carruthers?

  One of the ideas that you write about that you say is not scalable is the DARE program. Why is that not scalable?

• 40:37Speaker 02

  The DARE program was a social inoculation program that people basically said, don't use drugs. That original idea came from an experiment in Honolulu, Hawaii with 1777 high schoolers.

• 40:54Speaker 02

  That sent a signal that the idea works. But in the end, it was just a false positive. We ended up trying it in LA. And we tried it in other cities. And we tested it in those other cities and it didn't work. We then went back to Honolulu and tried it there and it doesn't work. So we know that because of science.

• 41:17Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, and to be clear, because I read about this somewhere else. When you say it didn't work is that it wasn't that effective in deterring kids who went through the program from not taking drugs compared to kids who didn't go through the program. But the DARE program is still around.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Well, it's changed. So, so the DARE program representatives read my book and they reached out to me after they read the book. And they said, we don't like chapter one, basically. And I said, is chapter one incorrect? And they said, no. But the DARE program has pivoted and they've moved to a new type of program that they argue now works. So I haven't looked at the new program, but I told them I will look at the new program. And if there's voltage there, then in the next edition, I'll make sure to talk about the new program as well. So I'm talking about the program in the eighties that was simply a false positive.

• 42:16Mike Carruthers?

  When we hear about companies, businesses, ideas that scale well, you know, it's Amazon, Uber, Lyft, those kind of very big companies. But there are a lot of good ideas that aren't that scalable. And in fact, you talk about your father and your grandfather who are truck drivers. So talk about that.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  The idea is not just about growing really, really large and taking over the world. The idea is figuring out how big your idea can be.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  And then you have to determine whether you're happy with that. So, so think about my brother and dad and grandpa. One man, one truck, one good life. They realize their secret sauce is their charisma. And they realize that they can have a really good life with one truck and them driving it. They realize that that's the extent that they want to scale. And they realize that their idea is not scalable. So they have to decide, is that the life that I want? Or should I try something new? And they're happy with that scalable idea.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  So what I'm trying to make the point about is to be scalable, you have to have certain features. But if you don't have all of those features, you still might want to do the idea if that's good enough for you. And there are a lot of ideas that can't take over the world. But there are a lot of ideas that have scaled. And you think about various products and ideas that work. They have the five features that I talk about. Ideas that might only have two or three of the features might scale, but the 10th is much smaller. So the idea is understand

• 44:19Speaker 02

  what are the signatures of an idea? Because in the past, it was move fast and break things, throw spaghetti against the wall, whatever sticks, cook it, fake it till you make it. We've all heard these statements. But it's always art. And what I'm adding here is we need science to figure out which ideas are truly scalable.

• 44:46Mike Carruthers?

  You did some research on the, the smart thermostat, which I think most people would agree is a great idea. A smart thermostat will save energy, will save money. I mean, it's a great idea. But your research was pretty eye opening. So, so talk about that.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  So here's kind of what happened. There was an innovation of the smart thermostat. Put it in your house. It will moderate your energy use over 24 hour day. And the engineers estimated that we will have huge savings because of the smart thermostat. So here's what we did. We chose 400,000 households in California. And we sent 200,000 of them the smart thermostat. And the other 200,000, we didn't send anything and we just observed all 400,000 households. Guess what happens? There is zero energy savings. Now you can say, well, wait a second.

• 45:50Speaker 02

  Why did the engineers so dramatically overestimate what would happen? Well, here's why. They assumed that the end user was Commander Spock. Right? This is a guy who never makes a mistake and he is 100% rational. That's not who the end users are of this product. The end users are more like Homer Simpson. Homer Simpson is exactly what I did. I, I got this new gadget. I did not read the 28 page manual, how to use it. And then I went in and fiddled with the new gadget. And I undid all of the presets.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  I undid all of the defaults. That's what the 200,000 households did in California. They undid them exactly enough on average to undo all of the good stuff with the technology. That's knowing the situation. Know who's going to use your product and give them technology that they can actually use that will help save the earth. That's why that idea did not scale from the Petri dish to the large, because we did not understand the end users are very different than Commander Spock from Star Trek.

• 47:15Mike Carruthers?

  But wait, smart thermostats are a big thing. I mean, I think most new homes that are built have smart thermostats in them. I think people believe they work. Couldn't it just be, even if they're not working now, this is just step one, that eventually they will evolve and people will get better at using them. And this is a necessary step to get to where, I guess, where you were hoping we would be.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  But let me be clear, they're working for some people. So when I say on average it doesn't work, that doesn't mean that it's not working for some people. And you're right. What happens now is you come to smart thermostat level two and then level three. And that product will evolve to be much more user friendly. When we put, I used to be the chief economist at Lyft. And when we put out products there, whether it's called walk and save or wait and save, there's always some beta testing and then some evolution to make sure people understand the new product. The general idea here, though, is you might have a voltage drop

• 48:25Speaker 02

  if your estimates from the beginning were that all the users are going to 100% understand and use a technology as you estimated to start out. And in many cases, that doesn't happen. And that's just a general idea of a voltage drop.

• 48:45Mike Carruthers?

  When you scale an idea, I imagine that how you pull it off, how you execute it, has a lot to do with whether or not it'll succeed.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  If you don't execute on the idea, if you're not a good manager and make good decisions, the best idea won't work. But on the other hand, if you're 100% at execution, if you're trying to scale an idea that doesn't have the good signatures, that won't scale either. So there are ideas all over the world that look good on paper, but because of bad execution, they just don't scale.

• 49:29Mike Carruthers?

  Can you give me an example?

• 49:30Speaker 02

  Uh, many restaurants. When you, when you think about Jamie Oliver, that was really bad execution. So Jamie's restaurants in the UK were really good early on and the execution ended up faltering. And there are many cases like that. I think Sears and Kmart were a bit like that too. Look at the 1955 Fortune 500 companies. In, in 1955, if you look at those 500 companies, only 70 of those are around today. Now, in many cases, those are firms like Studebaker, Zenith, etc. They just did not pivot.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  And when the times caused you to change, they refused to change. Blockbuster is much the same way. And in many cases, when markets change, if you're not pivoting, this is a lack of execution. The idea looked good early on, but then the market changes and you're not pivoting with it. So the world is replete with examples now where folks are not using data or not using new elements of data science to help make decisions. And I would say that those firms are endangered. Blockbuster could have purchased Netflix for pennies on the dollar.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  Had they wanted to, but they thought that's not the future. They could have easily pivoted in that direction and said, "We're going to do both, and we're going to be diversified," but they didn't. When you look at many firms, they start doing something very different than what they become.

• 51:16Mike Carruthers?

  Since you were an economist at Lyft, give me an idea, give me an example of an idea that you came up with or worked with at Lyft that was a scalable idea.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  Let's think about a pricing idea that I had, and this might be familiar to some of your listeners, and it's called left-digit bias pricing. And the idea is that as humans, we engage in shortcuts, and when we see a number, we focus on the leftmost digit. So what does that mean? People open up their apps, and say they get a price of $7.93, and then they make a decision whether to take the trip in Lyft or in an Uber.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Now, that decision is not very different than if they receive a price of $7.94, because humans see $7.94 as the same as $7.93. Now, let's say I change that just a bit, and I give you a price of $7.99 versus a price of $8. That's basically the same as the first example, but now, because people are focusing on the seven or the eight, that penny difference makes a big difference in your decision.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Okay, so I tested that idea using Lyft data and using Lyft, a big field experiment on Lyft, and I find that that one penny change makes a big difference. And I test it again, and I find it's not a false positive. Okay, I then go to the next step to say, "Who does this work for?" It ends up working for everyone. Everyone has this left-digit bias. Okay, now let's go to the situation. You have business travelers, people travel in morning rush hour, afternoon rush hour, going to the airport.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  It works in all of those situations. So now that's great because I can control in a better way using pricing in this behavioral bias. So I can scale that up and I can effectively impact people's choices because of this simple left-digit bias rule. Scalable, it works, it's not costly to do it because remember, we have to give you a price anyway. What does it matter if I give you a price of 7.93, 7.99, or 8? So the supply side of it is great and the spillovers are great too because I can control whether you get it or not.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  So if I'm on the bad end of a market, what I mean by bad end is there are a lot more drivers than consumers, I can move consumption. Or if it's more consumers and drivers, I can move consumption. So now I can use this type of bias that humans have in a way to make the world a better place.

• 54:31Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I've always wondered why. Yeah, because.

• 54:34Speaker 03

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• 55:30Mike Carruthers?

  I imagine a lot of people, when they need a ride, they'll check both Uber and Lyft and compare the price. And sometimes they're close and sometimes they're not close. And I never understood why.

• 55:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, here's a hint. So the main part of both of these algorithms are working on the demand and supply imbalance. So one company might have a lot more demand than they have drivers or vice versa. That's one reason. Another reason is these companies are always experimenting with pricing. So you might just be part of an experiment where you got the bad draw from one company and a good draw from the other one. And by good draw, I mean a lower price. So it could be because of demand or supply or because they're experimenting with the prices. But you're called a dual apper. So a dual apper is always checking both and then taking which one is best.

• 56:27Mike Carruthers?

  Well, as I said earlier, the term scalable has become such a buzzword that, you know, oh, your idea has to be scalable. It's good to get some insight into what makes an idea scalable and not so scalable. John List has been my guest. The name of his book is called The Voltage Effect. How to Make Good Ideas Great and Great Ideas Scale. And you'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Thanks, John. This was interesting.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  Mike, thanks again. It was great chatting with you. I really love your curiosity, by the way.

• 57:00Mike Carruthers?

  Well, thanks.

• 57:04Mike Carruthers?

  People generally smile because they're happy. But it may be a good idea to smile even when you're not happy. The simple act of smiling has a lot of benefits. For one thing, it's associated with a longer life. One study showed that genuine intense smiling is related to a longer lifespan. Smiling also relieves stress, boosts your immune system, can lower your blood pressure, improve your mood, and make you look younger. But that's not all. Smiling is contagious and it makes you seem more approachable to other people. It also makes you appear more attractive and successful. All of that from just smiling.

• 57:47Mike Carruthers?

  And that is something you should know. We rely on you to help spread the word about this podcast, so please tell someone, ask them to give a listen, and let them hear why you like Something You Should Know. I'm Mike Carruthers, thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.