Why You Should Take Fun Seriously & Electricity’s Amazing Story - SYSK Choice

Sometimes your willpower seems pretty good but other times - especially right when you need it – it disappears. What if there was a way to boost your will power right when you need it most? This episode begins with a technique that can help you resist whatever that temptation when it is right in front of you. https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/clenched-muscles-assist-self-contro-10-10-20/ When you think about it, being happy isn’t something you do. Happiness is the result of something you enjoy. In other words, you must do something fun first, then happiness will follow. This is according to Mike Rucker, an educational psychologist and the author of a book called The Fun Habit (https://amzn.to/3inKGPT). Listen as Mike reveals why fun is the key to real happiness. And he explains how it only takes a little fun to create a significant increase in your happiness level. Listen as Mike offers some simple strategies to make time for fun and why it is essential to do so. Having reliable electricity at the flip of a switch is something we all expect. Yet it’s only been in the last 120 years or so that electricity has been in most homes. When you think about how much electricity has transformed our lives, it is really quite amazing. So how did science figure out how to tame this force of nature and harness it so it powers so much of our lives today? That is a story Kathy Joseph is here to tell. She holds advanced degrees in physics and engineering and has a YouTube Channel called Kathy Loves Physics and History (https://www.youtube.com/c/KathyLovesPhysicsHistory). She is also author of the book The Lightning Tamers: True Stories of the Dreamers and Schemers Who Harnessed Electricity and Transformed Our World (https://amzn.to/3CqcyJY) Whenever you feel down or depressed, it is usually because you are regretting something in your past or you worrying about something that may happen in your future – or it could be both. Listen as I reveal what you can do the next time that happens which may make you feel better in the moment. Source: Dr. Jeffrey Rossman author of The Mind-Body Solution (https://amzn.to/3QkommK) PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! SHOPIFY: "Established in 2025". Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk . Go to SHOPIFY.com/sysk to grow your business! 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 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, if you're having trouble resisting temptation, there's a way to turbo-boost your willpower. Then, if you want to be happy, maybe you should stop trying to be happy and just have fun.

• 1:41Speaker 01

  Once you orchestrate a life where you're having fun deliberately, then happiness is an amazing byproduct. It's when we kind of focus on happiness that it becomes problematic because happiness is really a lagging indicator of the things that are happening in our life, right?

• 1:57Mike Carruthers?

  Also, some great advice for the next time you're feeling a little bit down, and how electricity got into your house. In fact, having electricity in homes was not the initial goal.

• 2:09Speaker 02

  Everyone at the time thought that the real money was not in electrifying houses, but the real money was in providing electric buses because only the very wealthy could afford light bulbs.

• 2:22Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:27Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:06Mike Carruthers?

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• 3:47Mike Carruthers?

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

• 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?

  Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. This is that time of year, as this episode publishes in January. This is the time when people start to maybe fall off the wagon for their New Year's resolutions. And wouldn't it be great if you had like a willpower button that you could press when you were trying to resist temptation? Well, according to a study, we actually do have a willpower button. So before you reach for that donut that you swore you wouldn't eat in 2023, or buy those shoes that you know you don't really need, make a fist. Just make a fist. Make it tight and hold it until it's really uncomfortable.

• 5:07Mike Carruthers?

  That secret willpower is actually in the discomfort. And you don't have to make a fist exactly. You can flex any muscle and it will work. Participants in the study were told to tighten their muscles, hands, biceps, calves, whatever, as they faced a challenge to resist temptation. Those who clenched demonstrated more self-control than those who didn't. Most of us naturally clench our muscles when we're exerting our willpower. If you want to use the trick strategically, you'll need to flex at just the right moment. The study found that clenching before the temptation arrived was counterproductive. Not only did it not help the clencher, it left them a little weaker and more vulnerable.

• 5:52Mike Carruthers?

  You have to wait until you're tempted, and that is something you should know. Do you have fun? I mean, do you deliberately set aside time to do fun things? To get away from work and reset, recharge, and just have fun?

• 6:13Mike Carruthers?

  By the nature of the word "fun," it might seem that doing things for fun is frivolous, maybe even a waste of time. But if you think that, you may be looking at this all wrong. According to Mike Rucker, he is an organizational psychologist who studies fun, and he's author of a book called "The Fun Habit." Hi, Mike. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 6:37Mike Carruthers?

  So today, there seems to be a lot of emphasis on happiness, tons of books and podcasts and seminars about being happy. And I know you say that's problematic, that rather than focus on being happy, we should focus on having fun. So why is that? What's the problem with happiness?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  So the primary problem about using it as a construct for success is it's an exercise in evaluation, right? It tends to happen in the rearview mirror, and so especially if you're in an area of life, like in the book I read about losing my younger brother, but whether that's a divorce, or just a time in life where, you know, extreme positive emotion isn't necessarily the appropriate response, because you need time to mourn, or you need time to figure out how your life has changed. Once you start to ruminate on the fact that happiness is out there on the horizon, and you are where you are, something quite terrible can happen. And what that is, is that you start to subconsciously identify as being unhappy, like, "Okay,

• 7:41Speaker 01

  well, I guess I'm just not a happy person." And over time, that can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. And again, a lot of research suggests that that's exactly what's kind of happened in this era of toxic positivity. What fun does is it really allows you to take this action-oriented approach, where it doesn't necessarily mean you're trying to calculate anything. You're really just enjoying life in the moment by your own design, things that really light you up.

• 8:05Mike Carruthers?

  So is fun the thing you do? Or is fun the feeling you feel? Or what exactly is fun?

• 8:15Speaker 01

  I've defined fun quite simply. You know, I use an academic term valence, but that really just translates to pleasurable, right? So is what you're engaging in, are you enjoying your time? Or are you not enjoying your time? And so that's a really easy definition of fun. Is what I'm doing right now something I enjoy doing? Or is it something I don't enjoy doing? And I'm certainly not prescribing that we should be having fun all the time. But what I am suggesting is that especially here in the US, a lot of us aren't having any fun at all. And it's leading to dire consequences.

• 8:48Mike Carruthers?

  And a lot of the times, though, people say that the reason you have fun is it makes you happy, right?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's what's amazing is that once you sort of orchestrate a life where you're having fun deliberately, then happiness is an amazing byproduct. It's when we kind of focus on happiness that it becomes problematic because happiness is really a lagging indicator of the things that are happening in our life, right? And sometimes happiness can be disrupted because of things that are completely outside of our control. But fun is pretty pedestrian in the sense that generally we can go off and just do it by our own design. And we don't necessarily need to identify as happy in that moment.

• 9:28Mike Carruthers?

  So what do you say to people? Because I'm sure people will tell you this, that my work is fun. I love my work. It's so much fun. So I don't need other fun because that's my fun.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Well, then that's amazing, right? Good for them. I would still suggest that when you look at time-based studies, that folks that don't have a transition ritual into leisure, even if their work is so fun that they don't need a lot of leisure, will ultimately find over time that, one, they are burning themselves out. But that, two, when you don't index kind of a tapestry of different interesting things in your life, you know, when you get into older age, those things that you've habituated kind of get stored in your memory as one event. It's this concept. Called index time, right? You'll look back at that and go, okay, I guess my life was just work.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  There's a lot of regret when you've kind of just let your life be consumed by one thing, whether that's work, domestic duties, or whatever it is. And so integrating at least just some experiences that light you up that are outside of your your main activity become extremely important.

• 10:37Mike Carruthers?

  So what does the science say about what fun does? And what I mean by that is, is taking a break and going and doing something fun intrinsically valuable in and of itself somehow? And if so, how? Or is it really you're just taking a break? You're forcing yourself to not do the work so that you refresh and get and, you know, recharge? Is it that or is it the other?

• 11:08Speaker 01

  There's a couple of things. One is called the hedonic flexibility principle. So there was an amazing study that came out of MIT, Stanford and Harvard. And it essentially said that when folks are taking time off the table for themselves, so that they are living a life that's joyful and not sort of rooted in escapism. So they're so burnt out, right? They're doing things that aren't necessarily leading to betterment like drinking or gambling, but are doing things, you know, like dance classes or engaging in a hobby or having amazing social relationships with friends, that they're the ones that actually do the harder stuff, right? And so that that becomes important. Another aspect of this, especially for folks that are in creative positions,

• 11:52Speaker 01

  is that it allows you to think in a nonlinear fashion. So a lot of folks that, you know, need to come up with creative solutions, those tend to not happen if you're always engaged in work. You really need to let your brain breathe and do something else so that you can start to connect ideas that don't necessarily fit in a linear fashion.

• 12:11Mike Carruthers?

  When you ask people, when you talk to people and say, you know, who don't have a lot of fun, who really are kind of stuck in the grind, why, why don't you have fun? What do they say?

• 12:25Speaker 01

  For a majority of folks, you know, it's sort of rooted in that Puritan work ethic, or it comes from a sense of guilt, right? This isn't my idea, but you know, it's been proven, you know, by various empirical research, this whole idea of the U-shaped curve of happiness, right? And so there's this term called the sandwich generation. And that, you know, what's happened is in modern life, we're all living a lot, we're living a lot longer and we're having kids a lot later, right? And so that means for the first time, we're, a lot of us are having to deal with kid, both kids, raising kids, and then also our aging parents. And so rightfully, you know, we're what scientists called time poor, right?

• 13:08Speaker 01

  And so what I suggest is that you don't necessarily need to find something fun to do every day, but figure out how you can take at least two to three hours off the table a week for yourself, and then play with that for one to two weeks, because changing habituated behavior, you know, often the first week, there's some dissonance and you gotta get over that. But by week two or three, you'll start to feel that vitality and vigor come back and realize that you're actually able to contribute better, especially if you see life through the lens of a sense of duty.

• 13:43Mike Carruthers?

  I remember hearing someone say, and when they said it, it kind of rang true for me, and I've always thought this to be true, that when it comes to things like fun, it's not only the fun itself that is beneficial, it's the anticipation of having it that is also beneficial.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  What we now know about dopamine, right? I think for a long time, it's kind of been thought of as pleasure neurochemical. And so in preparing the material for the book, I interviewed a bunch of different neuroscientists, and they now know that that's not necessarily the case. They think the real evolutionary benefit of dopamine was the anticipation of pleasure, right? And so we get excited about anticipating something novel, or surprising, or even just enjoyable. And so... That works on both the front end, but then also the back end. We know that relishing in really fond memories, reminiscing about things, that's what builds that resilience.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  So yes, it's, you know, an enjoyable state heading into something that's fun, but it's also one of the best ways to build resilience after the activity. So it's beneficial on both the front end and the back end.

• 14:58Mike Carruthers?

  What do you say to somebody, I imagine this has happened, where someone would say to you, you know, I can't remember, I wouldn't know what to do. I don't know, like, okay, I'll have more fun, but tell me how. I don't know what to do.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So I suggest building a fun file. I think, you know, you can look back at the things that did bring you joy. You know, a lot of us use science brought forth by Stuart Brown. That was a play expert, but I meant the exercise is very helpful to kind of, you know, understand things from your past that light you up that might still be applicable to, you know, what you're doing today. And then look at friends that are having a lot of fun and see if the things that they're doing are something that you might enjoy. So there are a lot of, you know, folks that are likely in your network that would be, you know, great inspiration for getting you out of the house and enjoying yourself a little bit more. And all it takes, and this even works for introverts, right? I'm not necessarily saying like, go join a big running club like I might

• 15:57Speaker 01

  because I'm an extrovert, but for my wife, it might be just joining an intimate group, you know, of a book club. So that you can just start to reintegrate those things that really are the bomb that, you know, help us endure the slings and arrows of everyday life.

• 16:15Mike Carruthers?

  We're talking about fun and making the case for you having more fun is Mike Rucker. He's an organizational psychologist and the name of his book is The Fun Habit. If you listen to something you should know regularly, you know we talk about sleep quite a bit here. And one of the things I've learned from those conversations is just how important a good night's sleep is. And I've always been someone who loves his sleep. So I was intrigued when I heard about Beam Dream. It's a delicious nighttime drink formulated to help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed. It contains ingredients like reishi, magnesium, L-theanine, epigenin, and melatonin.

• 17:00Mike Carruthers?

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• 17:44Mike Carruthers?

  for the best sleep of your life. So seriously, think about it. I mean, how much would you pay for a truly great night of sleep? Beam is just 83 cents per night. So go to shopbeam.com/sysk now. That's shopbeam.com/sysk.

• 18:05Mike Carruthers?

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• 18:48Mike Carruthers?

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• 19:30Mike Carruthers?

  If you've been thinking about doing something to support your bone health, go to getbetterbones.com/sysk. That's G-E-T betterbones.com/sysk. So, Mike, you know, it's interesting that we're talking about this and encouraging adults to have more fun. Because as you pointed out before, when kids have fun, they just have fun. You don't have to tell them to have fun. But when you have to tell somebody, when you have to tell an adult to have fun, it's like now it becomes a project. Okay, now what am I gonna do? Okay, let me think. What could I do? Where could I go? You know what I mean?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you bring up a great point. So, thank you. That certainly not prescribing just adding more to your already busy schedule. Right? So, I think one of the first things to do is sort of see where you've habituated time that's not really leading to your betterment. For a lot of people, that's going to be social media use. For folks that, you know, are just working so hard that when they get home at 7:00 PM, they just plop down on the couch and aren't really paying attention to what, you know, they're viewing. They just mindlessly, you know, turn on Netflix. So, certainly not villainizing people that, you know, really enjoy a certain show and are watching it with a partner, but more the people that... That are asked, hey, so what did you do last week? And they can't even tell you what show they watched.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Those are the opportunities, you know, where you can take time off the table and then reintegrate something that really does light you up. And so, you know, an important first step is to figure out how you can make that space. Like, what are the things that are you really just filling time with? Because you're in so much discomfort, you really just trying to displace that discomfort with something that's a little bit mindless instead of something that's leading to your betterment.

• 21:15Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, I guess that's a big part of it is, is I imagine a lot of people say, well, I'd have more fun, but I just don't have time. I I'm too busy.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. Like, a common example that I think is is helpful is, you know, you see a busy parent on a park bench, just watching their child and mindlessly kind of scrolling their phone. So for them, that's really just another extension of work, right? I'm here because I have to, because I'm a parent and I need to watch this child. And simply just remember something that might be interesting for you, like, you know, maybe it's building a craft. Maybe it's, you know, painting. For me, it's going, I love water slides. So my son and I just went there. So instead of just taking my son on a playdate, I actually do something that I enjoy as well. And so that's a great example of switching out an hour that really kind of felt like work. And now I'm having fun with my son.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  And again, it doesn't need to be sort of this Western ideal of an extremely extroverted, high arousal activity, right? It could be something as simple as, you know, going to see a play, introducing your child to Shakespeare, or whatever it is. But there are a lot of opportunities where you're already doing something where if you augment it in sort of a joyful fashion, you can add fun to your life and not necessarily go, okay, well, where am I going to find the time to do this?

• 22:33Mike Carruthers?

  When you talk about incorporating fun into your life, if you haven't been having a lot of fun, like I I know it's hard to put a number on it, but people always wonder like, well, so how much is enough? How much fun do I need to have to to be benefiting from my fun?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I don't like prescribing a number because to your point, you know, especially that's where happiness has become problematic because you know you try to hit some, some bar, right? The, the research that I cite in the book comes from Cassie Holmes out of UCLA. And so when most people critically look at their schedule, even if they're extremely busy, and so obviously, um, working housewives, you know, as a generality tend to have the least amount of time. But even those folks, if you look at their schedule critically can find two hours. And then someone, you know, in, in the single population, it tends to be five. So there's a spectrum of two to five hours that we, that most of us should be able to claim agency autonomy over and really incorporate, again, you know, leisure activities

• 23:35Speaker 01

  that bring us joy. If that seems like too much, again, just try two or three a week and see how that makes you feel. So that's where I start because two to three is generally, you know, really easily accessible even to someone that's working, you know, a, a job that requires 60 to 70 hours a week. Again, there's 168 hours in a week. And so even if you're working 80, you know, and then sleeping 56, there's still a lot of time on the table to go enjoy yourself. And so if you're not, you need to ask why, right?

• 24:07Mike Carruthers?

  Yeah, well, that's a good question because that's a lot of unaccounted for hours. But, you know, I guess it's, there's laundry to do and grocery shopping and, you know, people can fill it up. They do it all the time with stuff.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, I mean, it's a trope, right? But, you know, what we prioritize happens. And so I think I've, I and others have made a strong case that if you're not engaging in leisure, ultimately you're going to burn out, right? And so what I think, you know, is sort of at the forefront is the same thing that happened with sleep in the 90s and early 2000s, right? I mean, you, you know, hustle porn, as I call it, was really prevalent then. And you had all these folks, you know, the Gary V's and the Grant Cordon's of the world saying, you know, if you really want to be successful, you put the kids to sleep and you work till 3am. And so to Gary V's credit and A host of other folks, we now know that if you if you have a sleep deficit, you can't work.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Right. And so you never hear anybody anymore talk about championing sleep deprivation. And I think you're going to see the same thing with leisure because as emerging evidence suggests, if you're not enjoying yourself a little bit, if you're not taking breaks, it's a direct path to burnout and you're not going to be productive anyways.

• 25:24Mike Carruthers?

  One thing I've always wondered is like, so if you're gonna go have, let's say you're gonna go have a fun ski weekend. And you go and it isn't the fun you expected, you know, it was, you know, too cold or it rained or the snow was crappy or, you know, the, in other words, the experience, the takeaway wasn't what you thought it was gonna be. Does it, does it still count? Is it still fun or it's just, just a waste of time?

• 25:58Speaker 01

  No, that's a great question. I think for, you know, one way to set you up for success is to try and not make the event outcome focused. So again, if you kind of stack the deck in your favor and you're with great people, when, you know, life kind of gives you lemons, you can still enjoy that time because you're with people that you really like. Right. So, you know, one of the best ways to mitigate that disappointment is to, you know, just kind of be open to whatever that event, you know, whatever that experience kind of throws your way and really try to enjoy the people and the time that you have. One example in my own life was my wife and I tried to do two New Years in one year.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  So we did an amazing night in Sydney with some friends. And then we tried to beeline to Hawaii so that we could say that we did, you know, two New Year's events in, in one year. And the plane broke, so we didn't make it to Hawaii on time. And my wife had an amazing time and I was just fixated on the fact like, oh my gosh, we spent all this money and it didn't happen. So she was an amazing teacher in that moment. I mean, you know, we could have just enjoyed ourselves the whole time. That the fact that we didn't make it to second. At New Year's was just consequential, right? And instead, I ruined that event because of my sour mood. So to the extent that you don't really focus on the outcome and you really just focus on the fact that, you know, you should be grateful that you're with these amazing people and you get to enjoy the time that you have.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  You know, it makes it easier when, again, you know, there's sort of curveballs thrown at you.

• 27:32Mike Carruthers?

  So when you do the types of things you're talking about, assuming you haven't been doing them, like I say to you, okay, Mike, I'm gonna go have more fun now and I do what you prescribe. What's gonna change? What specifically, what would I look forward to because I'm now having fun that I didn't have when I wasn't having fun?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great question. So again, going back to the hedonic flexibility principle, what we see is, you know, once you start to enjoy yourself, there's a few things. One, you show up as a better version of yourself, right? So you have more vitality and vigor for the things that you want to do. Oftentimes, to illustrate this simply, I just use a math equation, right? If kind of living in this low-level life of burnout, you're able to contribute, you know, 1X every hour that you work. You know, that's 40 hours of output a week, right? But if you start enjoying your life and you can show up to work, you know, with a better attitude and more energy, then you start to produce 2X, right? And so, you know, the person that's working 60 hours a week burnt out,

• 28:40Speaker 01

  you know, that's 60 units of output per week. The person that is showing up to work, you know, with that vigor and vitality and energy that's able to produce 2X in just 40 hours of week, excuse me, just 40 hours a week, they can produce 80 units of output. And so here's one person working a lot less, now has more time for fun and is producing more, or the person that's burnt out is working longer and producing less, right? And so that's just a simple way to highlight that, but that's been empirically validated. We know that people that are burnt out, you know, make themselves dizzy but don't really contribute to work. The second is through, you know, this idea of... Social contagion that once we are, you know, we feel more optimistic and we're just

• 29:25Speaker 01

  living life in a more positive way, a more joyful way, that stuff tends to kind of be infectious. And all the people around us, you know, start to see us happy and want to be happy too. You know, we start laughing more, we start smiling more and just generally clear the air. You especially see this within a family dynamic. So, you know, just integrating a little bit of this into your life creates this upward spiral, not just for yourself, but for those around you as well.

• 29:52Mike Carruthers?

  So it seems like one of the key messages here is to, rather than to ask yourself, am I happy? We ought to be asking ourselves, am I having fun? Am I having enough fun?

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I interviewed Jordan Ekinata Duke about this and I think she highlighted it perfectly. I mean, as soon as you take yourself out of the moment to ask yourself whether you're happy, you're now not having fun anymore, right? You're essentially, it's an exercise in retrospection. And so happiness is great and I think I value it highly and I want the world to flourish. But I think taking an action oriented approach and really being mindful of just enjoying the time that we have here tends to be a better approach than, you know, trying to architect sort of these interventions to try and make ourselves more happy. So

• 30:39Mike Carruthers?

  Because happiness is, happiness is really the, the result. It's the byproduct of, of the fun. It isn't the thing you do. It's the sensation you feel after the fact.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. Yep.

• 30:54Mike Carruthers?

  Well, great. This has been really thought provoking. I've been talking to Mike Rucker. He is an organizational psychologist and the name of his book is The Fun Habit. And you'll find the link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Mike. It's been fun.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Thanks, Mike. It's been a true pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

• 31:13Mike Carruthers?

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• 31:55Mike Carruthers?

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• 32:39Mike Carruthers?

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• 33:23Mike Carruthers?

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• 34:10Mike Carruthers?

  You probably don't think about it much, but when you walk into a room and flip on a switch and a light comes on reliably, pretty much every single time, that's actually rather amazing. You tend to appreciate it more when the power goes out in your house. Then you realize how much you rely on reliable electricity being delivered to your home. But think about it, how did we get from darkness to having electricity streaming through the walls of our homes and businesses? Well, here to tell that story and discuss the miracle of electricity is Kathy Joseph. Kathy has a YouTube channel called Kathy Loves Physics, and she holds multiple advanced degrees in physics and engineering.

• 34:55Mike Carruthers?

  She's author of a book called The Lightning Tamers: True Stories of the Dreamers and Schemers Who Harnessed Electricity and Transformed Our World. Hey Kathy, welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Hi, Mike. Thank you so much for inviting me on.

• 35:09Mike Carruthers?

  Sure. So here we have this force of nature, electricity, that somehow becomes domesticated and is now pretty much in everyone's home and business powering everything. Where did this story, where did the journey begin?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  This all began in 1831. There was a scientist named Michael Faraday, and he was working for a government job that he hated. So he quit his job. And he posted in his notebook that he wanted to make electricity from magnetism, from magnets. And his idea was, well, they knew that if you put electricity in a coil wrapped around an iron bar, it would act like a magnet when the electricity was in it. And it would stop acting like a magnet when the electricity was turned off. And this was called an electromagnet. And he was like, maybe the iron helps transfer the electricity.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  So he's like, maybe I can use one electromagnet connected to another electromagnet by an iron bar. So he had this iron ring, and he put one coil on one side and one coil on the other. And he says, maybe if I put a really strong current on the first one and make it a really strong magnet, I can make the other one get electricity. And he tried it, and it didn't work. And he was super depressed until he unplugged the battery. And then guess what happened? When he turned it off, the other one created a little burst of electricity. And then when he plugged it back in, the second one got another little burst of electricity.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  No matter how strong the magnet was, nothing happened unless it changed. That's what he discovered. He discovered that changing a magnet creates or induces electricity. And this is the basis of almost all the electricity that we get in our walls.

• 37:14Mike Carruthers?

  I imagine when a lot of people think of the start of harnessing electricity, they think of Benjamin Franklin and flying his kite and all that. Is he part of this, or is that more myth and fable? Or is that an important part of this story?

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Well, there's so many different starting points for electricity. And Benjamin Franklin, with the kite in the rain and with naming positive and negative electricity, was very important. But I would say that the start of generating electricity...

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Which is so vital for us using electricity starts with Faraday in 1831. Because he figured out how to use magnets to make electricity.

• 38:03Mike Carruthers?

  So when electricity is generated today, are magnets involved?

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, definitely. So what he figured right after he published his work. So he figured out changing one magnet created electricity or induced electricity in another coil. And he also found moving a magnet induced electricity. And like months later, this guy in France, who was working for Andre Marie Ampere, like amps, like current in the wall. This guy named Hippolyte Pixie, he built this machine and it was a bar magnet with two coils. And you spun the bar magnet and as the bar magnet went towards the coil, it made electricity go one way. And as it went away from the coil, it made electricity go the other way.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  And that's called alternating current or AC electricity. And we currently generate our electricity basically that same way, except we use electromagnets instead of permanent magnets. So like, let's see, coal power. You burn the coal, you make steam that spins turbines, which spins electromagnets near coils of wire. Or wind power, of course. Or nuclear, there's a nuclear reaction in make steam, which spins electromagnets near coils of wire. All of them, except for solar, use this basic principle.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  You spin electromagnets near coils of wire and that induces the electricity.

• 39:42Mike Carruthers?

  So at that time, when when they're figuring out how to create, how to generate electricity, was there an understanding that if we get this, you know, this'll power lights, this'll power things, this'll create a lot of power to do things? Or was there a big learning curve involved?

• 40:00Speaker 02

  There was a major learning curve. The problem was that they didn't have particularly good motors and they didn't have good light sources. So not only were the generators not very efficient, but also they didn't have good uses for them. And so Faraday made his discovery in 1831. Hippolyte Pixie made the first generator where you spun something and the magnets moved towards and away from the coils of wire. And it wasn't until the 1850s, that was 20 years later, 1860s,

• 40:42Speaker 02

  even 1870s, before they started to figure out how to use electromagnets instead of permanent magnets. And then at the same time, in the 1860s and 70s, they started working on different kinds of light bulbs and light sources. And so it took until the 1880s before people like Edison said, I think I have a good idea. We're going to use this kind of generator and we're going to have light bulbs that aren't very bright, but a whole bunch of them. That was actually Edison's discovery. It wasn't the light bulb. It was the idea that he could make a whole bunch of light bulbs,

• 41:25Speaker 02

  not super, super bright, and put them in homes and that it would come from a centralized location. So people were always arguing who invented the light bulb. But there was an electric light created by Isaac Newton's assistant in 1609. Like, these things were old. They just weren't industry ready until the 1880s. And even then, it was only very wealthy people would have it.

• 41:57Mike Carruthers?

  Edison wasn't big on alternating current. He liked direct current.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  That is correct. That is because when Edison heard about it, the most powerful generators out there were DC generators. And also, at the time when he first started, there was no advantage to AC electricity at the time. It was only after he got everything started that someone else said, oh, there's a trick with these two coils of wire, something called a transformer, where we can take alternating current, make it really high voltage and low current, and make it go long distances without losing power, and then use another transformer to make it safe again.

• 42:45Speaker 02

  And Edison was like, uh-uh, I have this whole system set up, I don't want to change everything, I don't think that's safe anyway, forget it. And then he starts, you know, doing some very unpleasant things to promote his idea that AC was unsafe. But none of that was really influential. Everyone at the time who was dealing with electricity thought that the real money was not in electrifying houses, but the real money was in providing electric buses, electric trains for public transportation, because only the very wealthy could afford light bulbs. But many people rode the bus.

• 43:30Speaker 02

  And it was only when there was this big world's fair in Chicago that he lit up with electricity that everyone said, oh, we have to have our houses electrified, we have to have our stores electrified. And then suddenly, America became the most electrified country in the world.

• 43:50Mike Carruthers?

  Was there resistance to it? I remember watching an episode of Downton Abbey when they brought electricity into the castle there, and people were like afraid that, you know, the walls would burst up on fire and that they didn't want, they didn't want it. Was there that kind of resistance to it, or it's just fiction?

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Oh, no, that's completely true, and not only true, legitimate. It was a legitimate fear to worry that the walls would light on fire, because they often did. I mean, Edison set up electricity in J. P. Morgan's house before he set it up in New York, and it did catch on fire multiple times. And it was loud. The initial ones have generators in the basement. So you can't, I mean, just like shoveling coal into this thing that's groaning and moaning and setting fire to things. I mean, people who let electricity

• 44:49Speaker 02

  into their homes at first were either brave or foolhardy. Like, this was dangerous stuff.

• 44:58Mike Carruthers?

  Isn't that interesting, that that that fear would be justified? But so so at how did they fix that? And when did they fix that? When it when did it? When was the public reassured that that your house isn't going to burn down?

• 45:15Speaker 02

  I don't think they were reassured. I think what happened was it became so cool that people didn't worry about its danger as compared to being fashionable. And I think a lot of that had to do with the World's Fair in Chicago. The I mean, people wrote poetry about the fair and specifically about the lighting at the fair. They and I think something like a third of the country visited the World's Fair. It was ridiculously popular. And so if you had a store and you knew that if you got it electrified, you would get

• 45:56Speaker 02

  five times the customer base, you were willing to risk a little fire damage.

• 46:03Mike Carruthers?

  But when you think about if you are to electrify a community, you think about how that has to has to be done with wires and poles and digging up walls and laying in wire that this is a huge deal.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  Yes, it's it's fascinating to me, especially reading Edison's old material because

• 46:29Speaker 02

  He kept everything, but it's fascinating to see him like complain about like how many details they had to deal with. And they formed like the first research institute because there were so many details to deal with. How do you deal with the wires? How do you deal with the manufacturer? How do you install things? How do you charge people? If you don't know how much electricity they're using. They had to make the first meters to figure out how much electricity people were using. Cause if you don't have a meter, you just charge a daily rate and people left their lights on all day and all night.

• 47:10Mike Carruthers?

  And but when it started to catch on, even given all of the logistics of meters and wires and poles and walls and all that, did it? Did it happen pretty quick or was there resistance every step of the way?

• 47:25Speaker 02

  I still contend that after that big fair in Chicago, that just sort of that sort of flipped the switch, if you pardon the pun. And suddenly Americans from every city were trying to build as many skyscrapers as they could to compete with Chicago. And then they need to electrify them. And they, every new business or every old business wanted electricity. And after that, we had just so many light bulbs that when they invented a light bulb in Europe that could deal with higher voltages. In Europe, they could just replace the old light bulbs because they didn't have that many.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  In America, they had way too many light bulbs to replace them.

• 48:14Mike Carruthers?

  So you mean that when these more powerful and brighter light bulbs came along, there were just too many of the lower dimmer light bulbs in existence. And the system would have to be completely reconfigured to handle these new light bulbs. So, so it was never reconfigured?

• 48:34Speaker 02

  If you've ever noticed, you go to Europe, you have like 220, 240 volts.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  And in the United States, you have like 110, 120? That's because we had so, we were so advanced that we couldn't make a change to the next advancement.

• 48:54Mike Carruthers?

  As I recall, one of the big problems with getting electricity to people's homes is getting it there. That you lose a lot from here to there.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Yes, that's true.

• 49:08Mike Carruthers?

  So what was that? What is that problem and how was it solved or has it ever been solved?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  Well, it's never been completely solved. Edison's solution was to just put coal plants everywhere.

• 49:23Speaker 02

  And that's not great for multiple reasons. One, you can't get electricity to the countryside. And two, you got coal plants in the middle of all your big cities.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  But the, the solution to that has been to do, transfer electricity at, like I said, high voltages, which is dangerous, but allows you to transform it long distances without losing a ton of power. So that you can, usually they say they step up the voltage to transform it and then to transmit it. And then they step down the voltage once they get near a home or near a city.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  So that's mostly been our solution so far. We just keep on going to higher and higher voltages for the long distances to the power plants that we try to keep far away from us. And then, once they're near us, we transform them down so that they're safe to deal with or safer to deal with.

• 50:32Mike Carruthers?

  One of the things that really struck me was that there was a movie, I think in like 2012 or something, Lincoln, and it was Daniel Day Lewis played Abraham Lincoln. And they, they tried to make it really realistic as to what it was like inside the White House when there was no electricity. And it was amazingly dark and, you know, at nighttime, there was just candles and, and it's hard to imagine living that way before the electric light.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  What's amazing to me is how many scientists became sort of philosophers about electricity. Now that we have electricity, people can work for 20 hours a day and only need four hours of sleep. And won't that be wonderful? I'm like, no, that sounds horrible. But they thought they could tell they were transforming their world. And sometimes they had weird flights of fancy about what that would mean. Meaning like their ideal world was something where people worked ridiculously long hours and had no sleep and no family life. Cause they're like, look, we can now work all the time. Isn't this wonderful?

• 51:45Speaker 02

  But it's fascinating to see how all these thousands and thousands and thousands of years of having it be dark at night was transformed into our modern world where it doesn't have to be.

• 52:01Mike Carruthers?

  One of the people whose names I hear in discussions about electricity that you haven't mentioned is Tesla.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:10Mike Carruthers?

  Was he not a big player in this or we just haven't gotten to him yet?

• 52:13Speaker 02

  It's a difficult thing with Tesla because it's, there's such a mix of myth when it comes to the person. There's this push that he invented everything. On the other hand, he was very inspirational because of two things, two major things. One, he invented a kind of motor that worked with AC electricity. And more importantly, he was the first to patent it. And once he got paid a lot of money for that patent, everyone got interested in AC electricity, into AC electricity motors and AC electricity transformers.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  That sort of broke the stagnation on that issue a little bit. And the second thing is he invented what's called the Tesla coil, which he thought would electrify the entire atmosphere or electrify the entire earth or communicate with Martians. He had a lot of thoughts, but it's still this, I don't know if you've ever seen it. It looks sort of like a mushroom and you can see these lightning bolts coming off of it. It's one of the most inspirational devices around. And so there's this weird mix of like, he was more influential than people know and simultaneously

• 53:43Speaker 02

  less, if that makes any sense.

• 53:45Mike Carruthers?

  So as revolutionary as electricity was in the 1800s, are we done? It is what it is. It's electricity. Is there anything new going on? Or electricity is electricity?

• 54:00Speaker 02

  I would never say we're done. I don't think science is ever done. There's a lot of interesting work now with actually going back to DC electricity. See, in the 1800s, you couldn't transform DC electricity very easily to high voltage to make it transform long distances. But now you can. So there is a big interest in going back to the old DC, but using our electronics to transform it.

• 54:34Mike Carruthers?

  Well, as I said in the beginning, you don't really realize how important and how much you rely on electricity until the power goes out. And then you realize you can't do anything. And it's really interesting to hear the stories of how we got to where we are with electricity. I've been speaking with Kathy Joseph. She has a YouTube channel called Kathy Loves Physics, and she is author of a book called The Lightning Tamers: True Stories of the Dreamers and Schemers Who Harnessed Electricity and Transformed Our World. And there's a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Kathy.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  Thanks, Mike. That was so much fun.

• 55:14Mike Carruthers?

  You know, people who get down and depressed have a tendency to do two things. This is according to Dr. Jeffrey Rossman, who wrote a book called The Mind Body Solution. The two things people do is they dwell on the past and they worry about the future. So if you find yourself feeling down and doing one or both of those things, Try a little mindfulness. That just means being present in the here and now. So instead of going for a walk and worrying about things, go for a walk and enjoy the walk. One way to do that is to focus on your breathing, because if you're thinking about your breathing,

• 55:58Mike Carruthers?

  you can't think about bad things. By bringing your mind into full attention to what's going on now, you can distance yourself from what has you down in the dumps. And you usually find with a little distance that things aren't as bad as you were thinking. And that is something you should know. And now that you've heard something you should know, here's something you could do. And that is to leave a rating and review wherever you listen to this podcast. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

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