November 14, 2019 • 32 mins
Why do short people dominate soccer? Is owning a library more important than actually reading the books? And is being handsome important to being taken seriously as a scientist? Will and Mango delve into some super weird ways people wield advantage.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
I guess what mego with that? Well, all right, so
I was reading up this week on strange advantages that
certain people have. You know, we're always trying to get
a leg up on people super competitive, as our listeners
may know. But it turns out that left handed people
(00:25):
have a pretty distinct advantage. Like when it comes to
one on one sports. Do you take boxing, tennis, fencing,
even pitching a baseball If it involves taking aim at
an opponent, lefties have a little bit of an edge.
And if you look at professional sports, the numbers actually
bear this out. For instance, back in two thousand seventeen,
one third of Major League baseball players were left handed.
(00:47):
That's kind of crazy, isn't it, as well as of
the top ranking boxers and of the top ranking fencers. Meanwhile,
it's a completely different story for the more team oriented
sports like basketball or football. So why do you think
that is? Well, it ultimately comes down to how rare
lefties are. It's estimated that only ten perent of the
people in the world are left handed. That means that
(01:08):
if you're a right handed tennis player, for example, you've
probably only ever gone up against other right handed players,
and the same is true for left handed players too.
Right like of the world is right handed, then left
handed players are also mostly squaring off with right e's.
This was something I really didn't think about. So the
result is that when a left handed player goes up
(01:29):
against the right handed one is just another day at
the office. Same but that's not the case for a
right handed player. The right handers don't really know what
to expect, and that makes it easier for them to
be caught off guard. It makes sense, like when you
think about it. Playing baseball as a kid, if you
saw a lefty throwing to you like it was, it
just looked so strangely. It's almost like when a boxer throws,
(01:50):
I mean left hook, you know that old south pas surprise.
I don't know if that's a real boxing well, just
like when you were a big boxer as a kid
and left but weirdly enough, some researchers think the main
reason why left handed trade is still around today is
because it's always granted this element of surprise and combat.
(02:11):
For example, there was a study in two thousand five
where researchers looked at the remains of primitive societies and
made a breakdown of how many people were left handed
and how many were right handed, And amazingly, they found
that about three percent of the population was left handed
in the more peaceful societies, but a whopping twenty seven
percent were left handed and the more warlike Yeah. So,
(02:31):
in other words, think twice if you've ever challenged the
left handed boxer, Historically speaking, it probably isn't gonna go
so well for you. Well, I'm not sure i'd fear
that much better against right handed boxes that. There's plenty
more where that came from, because today's show is all
about the unusual advantages that everyday people enjoy, from the
(02:52):
high social standing of tall people to the surprising success
rate behind your lucky rabbit's foot. There's all sorts of
ways to get the upper hand in life, even if
you aren't left handed. So let's dive in. H he
(03:25):
their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Man Guesh Ticketer and on the other side of that
soundproof glass working the soundboard with his left hand. Today
Impress that is our brilliant producer Lowell, and I should
say that law is not, in fact left handed, so
this is something at least somewhat notable. So anyway, Mango,
(03:47):
where do you want to start? Yeah, and we've never
faced a left handed producer before, so I um, I
actually do want to stick with actual sports and talking
about something I had always wondered about until this week,
and that's whether or not home field advantages a real thing,
Like does the location of a game factor into an
athlete's performance or do teams play the same whether they're
on their own turf or not? What? It's kind of
(04:07):
an age old question, and if I had to guess,
I'd say there's at least some truth to it. I mean,
I know some sports leagues have regulations to ensure that
playing fields are mostly the same from place to place,
but there's still the psychological element of it all, Like
you have to figure players would be more at ease
in the place that they're used to playing. Yeah, I mean,
in the world the bathrooms are the best places to
(04:29):
get nachos. The way team is not going to know
any of that, but it's very, very true. I love
that your conception of home field advantages. Knowing where to
find that the tastiest snacks. But you're right about home
field advantage being a real thing, and and a good
deal of why that is does have to do with psychology.
So first I want to give a little bit of background. Um,
there have been a bunch of studies into home field
(04:51):
advantage over the years, covering a wide variety of different sports,
and the results have been shockingly consistent, like the home
team wins more games away than away teams, and not
by small margin either. In two ten, as psychologist named
Jeremy Jamison put together a review of all the different
home field advantage studies out there, and based on the
combined data, it concluded that a home team will win
(05:12):
roughly six of all its games its place. That suks
a little bit higher than that I would have guessed.
So what's actually fueling that advantage, like you said, has
something to do with the psychology of the players, that's right.
So part of it goes back to what you allude
to earlier, like the players familiarity with where they're playing,
kind of feeling at ease in this environment. It tends
to contribute a lot to the home field advantage. In fact,
according to one study, if a team moves into a
(05:34):
new home stadium, it'll have a weaker home field advantage
until the players get acclimated to the new space. Oh
that's interesting. So so you're feeling at home in your
home field at some point. So what else is a factor?
The next one is something I know we can both
relate to, and and that's travel fatigue. Like, I don't
travel as much as you do, but it can get
pretty exhausting trying to adjust to new cities and time
(05:54):
zones and all the while taking meetings and missing home.
But you know, imagine all of that except in between flights,
you play hours and hours of tackle football in front
of like thousands of screaming fans. Like jet like suddenly
becomes like a million times more tiring. Yeah, yeah, I
do kind of want somebody to tackle you before our
next meete, just to see for ourselves, Like yeah, they
(06:16):
we gotta we gotta live by example here. But all right,
So you're saying there's a link between how far a
team travels and how well they play against the home
team competitors. Yeah, it seems like the further team has
to travel, the bigger the advantage for the home team,
and the last factor at play kind of goes along
with that travel component, because the other downside for the
way team is that it can't bring its fan base along.
(06:36):
Like a crowd's behavior has a major impact on how
well the players perform. You and I know this from
going to Duke and and having that whole advantage there.
But you know, at an away game, most of the
people in the crowd will be rooting for the home team.
Yeah yeah, And and that obviously gives the home team
a little morale boost, but imagine it also deflates the
away team, Like it can't be a great feeling to
hear a stadium full of people cheering for the other
(06:59):
guy or against to you. But you know, all the
stuff we've mentioned, the crowd, the field, the travel time,
all of that factors into the psychological state of the players,
and that positive mindset is really the biggest contributor to
home field advantage. If all the players are feeling motivated
and upbeat about the conditions of the game, that's likely
to show up in their performance. Yeah, I mean it
makes sense, but I'm still wondering, like if this advantage
(07:21):
is the same from sport to sport. Like I know
you said that studies have looked at a wide range
of different sports, but we're some sports better for the
home team than others Or was it always pretty much
the same degree of advantage? Yeah, so I wondered about
that too, and it seems like it really does very
depending on the sport. For example, there's a sports author
named John Bois who took three years worth of win
(07:41):
and lost data and he took it from four different
pro leagues, so hockey, baseball, football, and basketball. Then he
extrapolated how each of the different win counts would have
been affected if the teams had played all of their
games at home, so like no away games at all.
And what he found was that the NHL teams and
MLB teams would have experienced the smallest boost from the
home field advantage of all the leagues. They would have
(08:03):
won each a little shy of I guess five and
a half percent more games than they actually did, which
is still nothing is sneeze at, particularly if you've got
money riding on those games. But the NFL teams would
have seen the second biggest boost, about six point four percent,
and then NBA teams would have seen the biggest boost
by far if they had played all of their games
at home for a three year period, they would have
won ten percent more games than they actually do. You know,
(08:25):
I think about this in in football. I feel like
it makes sense because you think about the intensity of
the cheering when the offense is trying to call plays
or whatever like whatever they do in that scenario, right,
and it's hard for them to hear each other, and
it seems like you could get them rattled. But do
we know why the advantage would be so much greater
for NBA teams, Well, we don't, but I guess one
(08:47):
of the things that Bo has pointed out was that
the playing dimensions of a basketball court don't really very
like they do in other sports such as baseball, and
and on top of that, like NBA games are all
played inside, so weather is never a factor. So, in
other words, the hometown, crowd and trial factors are still
in play for NBA teams, but the environmental factor might
not play his large role in in the players mindsets
(09:07):
as as it does in baseball or even football. All right, Well,
believe it or not, home field advantage isn't the only
kind of location based benefit in the sports world. There's
also something I was reading about this week called small
town advantage, and the gist of this is that people
who grew up in a small town they like fifty
thou people or under, they will have a higher chance
(09:27):
of becoming a professional athlete than someone for a more
populated city or town. That's something I've not seen before,
and the numbers behind this are actually pretty remarkable. So
there was this two thousand seventeen article in Pacific Standard
that only about of the u S population lives in
a town with under fifty thou people. Yet despite that,
nearly half of all NFL and p g A players
(09:49):
are from towns that size, and the same trends present
to a slightly lesser degree in other sports too. That's
I think it's like NHL players somewhere around that same
staff or Major League Baseball players come from towns fewer
than fifty thousand, and for the NBA, I think it's
it's twenty eight percent, So pretty interesting. That's pretty crazy,
especially since you think the opposite would be true, right,
(10:11):
like the larger cities would have access to more equipment,
maybe more competition, and more opportunities for players to be discovered. Yeah,
I mean, the truth is it's tough to pinpoint why
small towns make such great incubators for pro athletes. I mean,
it could be there's something unique about the atmosphere of
small towns that make it particularly conducive to athletic development.
(10:31):
The close knit community spirit, or the level of importance
that rural areas tend to place on sports. Maybe, But
whatever first got the trend rolling, it's kind of become
a self perpetuating cycle at this point. What do you
mean by that, Well, small town residents tend to know
how many legends their areas have produced, like Bo Jacks.
I mean, how many times a day do I remind
(10:52):
you that Bo Jackson came from the Birmingham area, right,
you know, to Wayne Gretzky. And that makes the dream
of making it to the big league seem all the
more attainable for the next crop of players. And it
is something that makes sense. So if somebody grew up
in your neighborhood and you see them turn pro, then
it stands the reason that maybe you could too. Yeah,
you know, I used to live in Greenville and North
(11:13):
Carolina and and Kinston was right next door. And the
number of star basketball players and football players that will
come out of is pretty remarkable. Um, but not Jackson, No,
not win Gretzky. But you know, there's one more sports
advantage I wanted to talk about, and that's the fact
that being short can actually give players a big advantage
in soccer. It's it's funny, but one of our friends
(11:34):
kids learned from his doctor that he might be you know,
six foot or whatever like these projections, and he was
totally depressed because he would He was hoping he'd be
like five seven, like Messy or five eight, which is
just funny to think about, especially for someone like me.
But you know, it's kind of counterintuitive since bigger is
usually better when it comes to sports. But in the
case of soccer, being tall is only helpful if you're
(11:56):
a defender or a goalie. For the other positions like
forwards and fielders, the edge goes to the shorter players.
So why is that the main reason is that shorter
players tend to have better control of their limbs, which
allows them to change direction faster than a tall player could. Uh.
That kind of nimbleness really keeps defenders on their toes
and and makes it harder to box in a short
opponent or to anticipate their movements. But that's not the
(12:19):
only advantage, you know. According to The Atlantic, studies have
shown that tall players are called for fouls more frequently
than shorter players. That could just be that the referees
are associating height with aggression, or maybe the longer limbs
are more visible. But you know, I'm not sure exactly
what the reason is, but but tall folks definitely get
carded more. Yeah, and I know in other sports like basketball,
(12:39):
it's obviously an advantage overall to be tall. But it
is also interesting to watch, you know, when you used
to watch guys like Shack play and they could just
get hammered all day long and nobody would call them.
A lot of times Everson will pull someone down and
get called exactly exactly. It's so bizarre to to look
at these stats, but you know, it's interesting to see
how different levels of influence people can have over these advantages.
(13:01):
Like with home field advantage, it kind of comes down
to the player's mindset and how they respond to things
outside their control. And with the small town advantage, like
that's something people could actually seek out if they were
so inclined, Like if you had a young kid that
wants to be a pro football player, you could move
to a small town and theoretically they could reap the
advantage of that. But now we're getting into stuff like
(13:24):
height and the social stigma surrounding height, and those are
things that nobody really has much say in. You know, Yeah,
that seems like a good distinction to make, and why
don't we check out some of those advantages. Right after
this break, you're listening to part Time Genius and we're
(13:50):
talking about some of the lesser known advantages that certain
groups of people enjoy. And since we closed out the
last segment with a short person perk, I think it's
only fair we balance out and go for for one
for the tall people out there. So here we go.
Tall people make more money than short people. That's it,
end the story. So I hate this already, but I
feel like you need to explain a little bit. Well.
(14:11):
According to a two thousand fifteen study published in the
Journal of Human Capital, salary rates trend upward right along
with height in most Western countries, so much so that
if one employee is four or five inches taller than another,
the taller person would make anywhere between nine and fifteen
percent more than the short who imagine being a seventh
(14:31):
fetter would be so rich. But put another way, an
extra inch of height could be worth as much as
eight hundred dollars per year in additional earnings. Match that
to inflation rates, track it over thirty years, and you're
looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra income
just for being tall. So I guess, setting aside the
sheer injustice of this tall I'm curious to hear what's
(14:54):
driving this because I feel like this would have made
sense like centuries ago, right when most of the jobs
relied on size or strength or whatever. But it seems
strange that the trend would continue in an era of
like the desk job, right, like maybe someone who's taller
can reach the high shelf in the break room or
something that height doesn't really help with Excel sheets, well,
it doesn't make a lot of sense on paper. And
(15:16):
you know, one theory is that employers aren't paying strictly
based on height. Instead, it's that taller people are landing
higher paying jobs because their height lends them to more
self confidence or better social skills, which allows them to
climb the pay ladder faster. Anyway, if you're angling for
a raise at work, adding some lists to your shoes
might actually help. So think about that. I'm sure that's
(15:38):
how Tom Cruise got that big payday, right. So, sticking
with our theme of things that are beyond our control,
here's another bombshell. I bet you never would have guessed
their advantages to being attractive. What you don't say, mango?
Come on. So what's funny about this is that even
scientists benefit from this. So, according to new research from
(15:58):
the University of Essex and the Universe Said Cambridge, the
way that a scientist looks affects the level of interest
in their work and they're perceived credibility. As one of
the psychologists behind the study explained, this is true because
quote people partly treat science communication as a form of entertainment,
where emotional impact in the esthetic appeal are desirable qualities.
Like it's weird to think society might buy into an
(16:20):
argument that the world is flat or some other ridiculous
argument like if the scientist is is just attractive enough.
It sounds a little like that thirty Rock episode where
John Hamm becomes a doctor and a Tennyson starter and
like he's horrible at all. These things that people keep
getting in the past because he's so handsome. But uh,
I actually clarified this with GiB because I was thinking
the same thing you were, and the link here between
(16:41):
attractiveness and credibility isn't quite what you're thinking. So over
the course of six studies, researchers were able to show
that scientists who peer competent, moral, and attractive are more
likely to garner interest in their work, which isn't a surprise, right,
But then the researchers continued writing, quote, the scientists who
appear competent, in and moral, but who are relatively unattractive
(17:03):
create a stronger impression of doing high quality research. So
just to get this right, so the public is more
likely to pay attention to the research of an attractive scientist,
but less likely to believe what they're saying. Like, is
that right? Yeah, they're basically like cer no diverge racking.
But basically, the next time the public needs to be
informed about a scientific breakthrough, it's probably best to pair
(17:24):
scientists to give a presentation like an attractive one to
win the audience's approval, and you know, an ugly one
to give it credibility. The old Watson and Crick is
what they call it, I think, so I have no idea.
That's interesting though, Well, since we're on the subject of scientists,
have you ever noticed how we tend to refer to
the male ones by their surnames, but we call female
(17:44):
scientists by their full names, Like Darwin is just Darwin.
But have you ever heard anyone just say Cury like
it's always Marie Curry, Right, I know it's just making
a joke about Watson Crick, but like I know Rosalind
Franklin's full name, but I know one of them is James,
but I don't know which one. Yeah, I mean, there's
actually even a name for this bias. It's called surname bias.
(18:04):
So basically, when we hear someone called by their surname,
it tends to improve our perception of them. Maybe it
makes them seem more important or dignified in our minds,
maybe stronger or more imminent or something like that. But
the main problem with this is that we don't wield
that surname bias fairly so. According to a string of
recent studies, on average, and regardless of gender, people are
(18:26):
twice as likely to refer to men by their surnames
than they are women. And those findings hold true across
you know, a lot of different professions, whether it's politics, science, literature,
like the list goes on. So how exactly does this
advantage play in real life? Like what's the payoff for
being just being called by your last name? Alright, we're
just going back to the scientists for a minute. There
(18:48):
was a study back in two thousand and seventeen were
more than five hundred participants were asked to determine who
among a group of scientists should receive a half million
dollars science grant. Some of the scientists were referred to
by or full names and others by their surnames. And
as you can probably guess by what we've been saying,
the participants showed a clear preference for this surname only contenders.
(19:09):
In fact, those candidates were a full fourteen percent more
likely to be recommended for the award. So if that
same strange advantages cropping up across all these different fields,
it stands to reason that surname bias is a serious
contributor to the gender inequality in the workplace. And the
ironic part of this is that you know, the trend
of using women's full names actually may have started with
(19:31):
noble intentions as a way of drawing attention to the
presence and the contributions of women, especially in fields traditionally
associated with men. So the plan, though, it seems to
have backfired since so many of us have this surname
bias kind of baked into us. I mean, that's a
little depressing, but I'm glad we're more aware of it,
and I think I am only going to call Marie
(19:53):
Curry Cury from now on. But why don't we switch
gears and talk about a few of the more even
handed advantages there right after this break? Welcome back to
(20:15):
part time genius. Okay, well, so let's talk about advantages
that are a little easier to come by, ones that
aren't as dependent on chance or circumstances. Did you come
across anything like that. Yeah, I feel like I've got
just the thing for you, because all you really need
for this one is a library card. Now. Being able
to read and having access to books are obviously big
advantages in life, especially during childhood, and hopefully it's clear
(20:39):
by now that you and I are big proponents of reading.
But according to new research, simply being around books might
be a benefit in itself, even if you don't actually
read them. So my first question is, are you sure
we're supposed to be talking about this because my kids
listening to this program just just sitting near the books.
But what's advantage of having unread books around? There's something
(21:03):
in social science called radiation effect. I think this is
so interesting. So that's when children grow up with books
in the house, they don't read them very much, but
still somehow benefit later in life just from having grown
up around books. It's a really weird phenomenon, but there's
a study on it recently by a sociologist at the
Australian National University. Her name is Joanna Secora, and along
(21:26):
with her colleagues, she pieced together five years worth of
developmental data on more than a hundred and sixty thousand
adults from thirty one different societies. These surveys were aimed
at assessing things like literacy, competency with numbers, even technology,
and part of this was asking the question of how
large of a home library the participants had during their adolescence.
(21:46):
Some of the findings from this we were actually pretty surprising. So,
for instance, the participants who only had a high school education,
but who had grown up around books. They boasted better literacy, numeracy,
and digital problem solving as adults than the college grads
and the survey who had grown up in bookless homes.
That's interesting, and I'm guessing this all comes down to
(22:07):
someone in the house valuing knowledge or learning. Yeah, it
ultimately comes down to why the books are in the
house in the first place. So the lead researcher, Skora
sum this up well in a recent interview with Scientific American.
Here's what she said. If we grow up in a house,
in a home where parents enjoy books, where books are
given as birthday presents and cherished and valued, this is
(22:28):
something that becomes part of our identity and gives us
this lifelong incentive to be literacy oriented, to always kind
of steer towards books and read more than we would otherwise.
It's fascinating, and honestly, I have so many books in
our house that we haven't read. I'm wondering if it's
a good life hack for you know, not having to
pay for my kids college. So good strategy. On an
opposite note, Gabe was telling me about Lucky Charms this
(22:51):
week and it's pretty much the opposite case, right. The
advantage depends entirely on the charm holders participation in it.
But there are you saying there really is some advantage
to carrying a lucky charm. It sounds impossible, but there's
a social psychology study from about a decade ago where
participants all performed better in memory and dexterity tests when
they were allowed to keep their lucky charms with them,
(23:13):
and when the charms were taken away their scores plummeted,
and when the charms were returned, their scores increased again.
So then one it's like a placebo effect, but for
luckiness instead of health. Yes, sort of. I mean the
researchers theorized that the people would lucky charms perform better
because they stuck with the problems longer than those without charms.
Because they believed in the luckiness of their objects, they
(23:33):
felt more equipped and capable when faced with a tough challenge,
and that confidence ultimately boosted them over the top. You know,
it's funny because there's this urge to like look sideways
of people for putting so much faith and like a
rabbit's phone or whatever. The lucky charm is. But I
guess there must be some reason why they believe in
an object's luck in the first place, right, Like something
must have convinced them. It's just hard to imagine exactly
(23:55):
what that could be. Yeah, I mean, I think it
helps to remember that what we think of as luck
is really more about brain chemistry and worldviews than it
is about you know, chance or magic. Like our our
brains are hardwired to look for patterns, and we often
have good incentive to find them, like even if they
aren't really there. For example, I if I make a
conscious choice to wear I don't know, a shirt with
(24:16):
a bear on it, and then I end up having
a great day at work, there's a part of me
that will take notice of that and link the two
events wearing the bear shirt and then having a good
day at the office. And and then if I wear
the bear shirt a second time and have another great
day at work like that mental connection will become even stronger,
and and I might think there's something going on and
that shirt is lucky or whatever. You know. I know
we talked about a lot of business ideas, but like,
(24:38):
just hearing you talk about this, it kind of makes
me think we need to get in the bear st
I think it's gonna be our next thing. But as
bizarre as it all sounds, I have to admit, it's
sort of comforting to think that there could actually be
away for us to kind of make our own luck.
Like that. It reminds me of something I read in
The Atlantic this week about the social advantage that comes
with having pockets Mango like pant pockets. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(25:01):
It turns out the word pocket is an Anglo Norman
word meaning little bag, And when pockets first came on
the scene in the late seventeenth century, that's essentially what
they were, like, these small, detachable bags that were tied
around the waist with a draw string. And it wasn't
until the eighteen fifties, when clothes became more tightly fitted,
that pockets started to be sewn directly into the garments.
(25:25):
And this new kind of pocket was smaller than the
old draw string version, but it kind of made up
for that by being so much harder to steal. Honestly, though,
if you were a woman living during this time period,
you wouldn't really care which kind of pockets you had,
so long as you did have pockets. And that's because
pockets were a game changer for women. So it seems
like such a small thing, but being able to easily
(25:48):
and discreetly carry objects that, you know, it is an advantage.
But before pockets came along, that really wasn't much of
an option for women. Now remember this is all prior
to the rise of handbags and backpack and so suddenly
women were able to move outside the home because now
they had a private space to hold, you know, whatever
they needed throughout the day. That's funny. I never really
(26:08):
thought of pockets as a symbol of independence. But you know,
if you can't have your wallet or phone or keys
on you like, you can't really move through not like
public spaces. Yeah, it's right. And in fact, I don't
know if you remember this, but there's a great scene
about pockets and the wind and the willows. Do you
remember all the scenes from you say pockets this? Yeah,
it's when Mr Toad is trying to escape from jail
(26:31):
after being locked up, you know, for joy riding in
his motor car and he ends up disguising himself as
the prisons washer woman in order to slip past the guards.
But he finds out that the stolen clothes he's wearing
don't include pockets, and so listen to how he takes
the news to this horror. Toad recollected that he had
left both coat and waistcoat behind him and his cell.
(26:53):
All that makes life worth living, all that distinguishes the
many pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the feior
one pocketed or no pocketed productions that hop or trip
about permissively unequipped for the real contest. Pretty defenditive right there.
So even m your toad realized the freedom grunted by pockets,
and not just him. So back in the nineteenth century
(27:15):
you'd see posted advertisements for runaway slaves, and some of
the descriptions would warn that just because his clothes have pockets,
that doesn't mean he's a free man. So I guess
we should be grateful for pockets, is what I'm saying.
I'm just gonna keep saying pockets. But they give us
this agency in public that was denied to so many
people for a long long time. Plus where else are
(27:36):
you gonna keep your lucky charms? Right? So you know,
we started today's show talking about one on one competitions,
and now it's time to close it by holding one
of our own. It's time for the fact off. Yeah, okay,
So I came across a bunch of different advantages this
(27:57):
week that all center on the sound of your voice
and how it can fluence the way people perceive you. So,
for example, men are more likely to vote for men
who have deeper, more masculine voices, and and ceo s
with deeper voices tend to manage larger companies and earn
larger salaries. But there's at least one profession where it
pays for men to be a little more soft spoken.
According to a study outlined and New Scientists, lawyers with gentler,
(28:19):
less masculine voices are more likely to win in court
than their gruffer, sounder colleagues. And the researchers behind the
study aren't a hundred percent sure why that is, but
they say it could be that the lawyers with deeper
voices are perceived as being overcompensating or trying to sound masculine.
Well that's interesting, all right. So here's a weird one.
It turns out that die hard opera fans have a
(28:39):
slight edge when it comes to chemistry class. This is
my favorite. So back in two thousand thirteen, a team
of chemists study the librettos of twenty famous operas, and
they found that the effects of twenty five different natural
and synthetic chemical materials were accurately described in them, everything
from snake venom to deadly nightshade. According to the Smithsonian,
(29:00):
the researchers hope that teachers will use the poison based
plots to help the students better engage with chemistry, because
if there is one thing teams love more than chemistry,
it's gotta be opera. So we talked about left handed
advantages at the top of the show, but there's one
more that's too random not to mention. According to a
report commissioned by the A Driving School, left handed drivers
(29:22):
have a much easier time passing their driving test. In fact,
six out of ten or fifty seven percent actually, of
the left handers passed their driving test on the first try,
according to the findings, and that means south pause are
a full ten percent more likely than right handers to
pass on their first attempt. And as any Color points
out for ABC News, that puts left handed drivers in
good company with famous lefty drivers including buzz Aldren and
(29:46):
none other than Chewbacco himself. Who you know it was
also left handed. That's right, all right, Well, here's one
I was kind of surprised to learn. Actually, color blindness
can sometimes be an asset in combat situations. The ideas
that the condition forces a soldier to focus on patterns
instead of colors, which can be useful for spotting camouflaged
(30:06):
enemies in the field. So much so, in fact, that
color blind units were reportedly used during World War Two
to help identify snipers. That's fascinating. So here's a fun one.
It turns out that women are more attracted to men
if they're holding guitars, which is why someone taught the
house course in college called just Enough Guitar to Serenade
(30:28):
a Girl. That's right. I think the whole thing led
up to playing that song Tangerine by led zepplind That. Uh.
Let let me tell you about the study because it's interesting.
A team of researchers in France hired this beefcake guy
and over the course of a single afternoon, they had
him hit on three women between the ages of eighteen
and twenty two, and in each case, the guy followed
the same routine, right beat for beat, he introduced himself
(30:51):
and he told the woman like, I think you're really pretty,
and then he proceeded to ask each one for her
phone numbers, so you know they could get a drink together.
But here's the twist. For a third of these counters,
the guy was carrying a guitar case, for another third
he was carrying a gym bag, and for the remaining
third he wasn't carrying anything. And wouldn't you know it,
when when he was carrying the guitar case, a shocking
thirty of the women gave him their numbers, compared that
(31:14):
with nine percent who did when he was carrying the
gym bag and when he was carrying nothing. And it's
pretty clear that music is the language of love. That's
wild though, like thirty two percent to fourteen percent. It's
not just like a small advantage, it's a huge advantage.
And nine percent with the gym bag because I think
like they just think he's a meat head or something. Wow,
that's pretty well. Well, it may not be the most
(31:35):
surprising fact of the day, but you managed to breathe
a little romance into the show, and for that alone,
I think you got to take the show. Mango, well
played thanks so much, and I accept this on behalf
of everyone who's faked playing a musical instrument to get
a date. But that's going to do it. For today's
Part Time Genius from Will Gave Blowl and myself, thanks
so much for listening. We'll be back soon with another
(31:57):
new episode. Ye Part Time Genius is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(32:19):
you listen to your favorite show.
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
I guess what mego with that? Well, all right, so
I was reading up this week on strange advantages that
certain people have. You know, we're always trying to get
a leg up on people super competitive, as our listeners
may know. But it turns out that left handed people
(00:25):
have a pretty distinct advantage. Like when it comes to
one on one sports. Do you take boxing, tennis, fencing,
even pitching a baseball If it involves taking aim at
an opponent, lefties have a little bit of an edge.
And if you look at professional sports, the numbers actually
bear this out. For instance, back in two thousand seventeen,
one third of Major League baseball players were left handed.
(00:47):
That's kind of crazy, isn't it, as well as of
the top ranking boxers and of the top ranking fencers. Meanwhile,
it's a completely different story for the more team oriented
sports like basketball or football. So why do you think
that is? Well, it ultimately comes down to how rare
lefties are. It's estimated that only ten perent of the
people in the world are left handed. That means that
(01:08):
if you're a right handed tennis player, for example, you've
probably only ever gone up against other right handed players,
and the same is true for left handed players too.
Right like of the world is right handed, then left
handed players are also mostly squaring off with right e's.
This was something I really didn't think about. So the
result is that when a left handed player goes up
(01:29):
against the right handed one is just another day at
the office. Same but that's not the case for a
right handed player. The right handers don't really know what
to expect, and that makes it easier for them to
be caught off guard. It makes sense, like when you
think about it. Playing baseball as a kid, if you
saw a lefty throwing to you like it was, it
just looked so strangely. It's almost like when a boxer throws,
(01:50):
I mean left hook, you know that old south pas surprise.
I don't know if that's a real boxing well, just
like when you were a big boxer as a kid
and left but weirdly enough, some researchers think the main
reason why left handed trade is still around today is
because it's always granted this element of surprise and combat.
(02:11):
For example, there was a study in two thousand five
where researchers looked at the remains of primitive societies and
made a breakdown of how many people were left handed
and how many were right handed, And amazingly, they found
that about three percent of the population was left handed
in the more peaceful societies, but a whopping twenty seven
percent were left handed and the more warlike Yeah. So,
(02:31):
in other words, think twice if you've ever challenged the
left handed boxer, Historically speaking, it probably isn't gonna go
so well for you. Well, I'm not sure i'd fear
that much better against right handed boxes that. There's plenty
more where that came from, because today's show is all
about the unusual advantages that everyday people enjoy, from the
(02:52):
high social standing of tall people to the surprising success
rate behind your lucky rabbit's foot. There's all sorts of
ways to get the upper hand in life, even if
you aren't left handed. So let's dive in. H he
(03:25):
their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will
Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend
Man Guesh Ticketer and on the other side of that
soundproof glass working the soundboard with his left hand. Today
Impress that is our brilliant producer Lowell, and I should
say that law is not, in fact left handed, so
this is something at least somewhat notable. So anyway, Mango,
(03:47):
where do you want to start? Yeah, and we've never
faced a left handed producer before, so I um, I
actually do want to stick with actual sports and talking
about something I had always wondered about until this week,
and that's whether or not home field advantages a real thing,
Like does the location of a game factor into an
athlete's performance or do teams play the same whether they're
on their own turf or not? What? It's kind of
(04:07):
an age old question, and if I had to guess,
I'd say there's at least some truth to it. I mean,
I know some sports leagues have regulations to ensure that
playing fields are mostly the same from place to place,
but there's still the psychological element of it all, Like
you have to figure players would be more at ease
in the place that they're used to playing. Yeah, I mean,
in the world the bathrooms are the best places to
(04:29):
get nachos. The way team is not going to know
any of that, but it's very, very true. I love
that your conception of home field advantages. Knowing where to
find that the tastiest snacks. But you're right about home
field advantage being a real thing, and and a good
deal of why that is does have to do with psychology.
So first I want to give a little bit of background. Um,
there have been a bunch of studies into home field
(04:51):
advantage over the years, covering a wide variety of different sports,
and the results have been shockingly consistent, like the home
team wins more games away than away teams, and not
by small margin either. In two ten, as psychologist named
Jeremy Jamison put together a review of all the different
home field advantage studies out there, and based on the
combined data, it concluded that a home team will win
(05:12):
roughly six of all its games its place. That suks
a little bit higher than that I would have guessed.
So what's actually fueling that advantage, like you said, has
something to do with the psychology of the players, that's right.
So part of it goes back to what you allude
to earlier, like the players familiarity with where they're playing,
kind of feeling at ease in this environment. It tends
to contribute a lot to the home field advantage. In fact,
according to one study, if a team moves into a
(05:34):
new home stadium, it'll have a weaker home field advantage
until the players get acclimated to the new space. Oh
that's interesting. So so you're feeling at home in your
home field at some point. So what else is a factor?
The next one is something I know we can both
relate to, and and that's travel fatigue. Like, I don't
travel as much as you do, but it can get
pretty exhausting trying to adjust to new cities and time
(05:54):
zones and all the while taking meetings and missing home.
But you know, imagine all of that except in between flights,
you play hours and hours of tackle football in front
of like thousands of screaming fans. Like jet like suddenly
becomes like a million times more tiring. Yeah, yeah, I
do kind of want somebody to tackle you before our
next meete, just to see for ourselves, Like yeah, they
(06:16):
we gotta we gotta live by example here. But all right,
So you're saying there's a link between how far a
team travels and how well they play against the home
team competitors. Yeah, it seems like the further team has
to travel, the bigger the advantage for the home team,
and the last factor at play kind of goes along
with that travel component, because the other downside for the
way team is that it can't bring its fan base along.
(06:36):
Like a crowd's behavior has a major impact on how
well the players perform. You and I know this from
going to Duke and and having that whole advantage there.
But you know, at an away game, most of the
people in the crowd will be rooting for the home team.
Yeah yeah, And and that obviously gives the home team
a little morale boost, but imagine it also deflates the
away team, Like it can't be a great feeling to
hear a stadium full of people cheering for the other
(06:59):
guy or against to you. But you know, all the
stuff we've mentioned, the crowd, the field, the travel time,
all of that factors into the psychological state of the players,
and that positive mindset is really the biggest contributor to
home field advantage. If all the players are feeling motivated
and upbeat about the conditions of the game, that's likely
to show up in their performance. Yeah, I mean it
makes sense, but I'm still wondering, like if this advantage
(07:21):
is the same from sport to sport. Like I know
you said that studies have looked at a wide range
of different sports, but we're some sports better for the
home team than others Or was it always pretty much
the same degree of advantage? Yeah, so I wondered about
that too, and it seems like it really does very
depending on the sport. For example, there's a sports author
named John Bois who took three years worth of win
(07:41):
and lost data and he took it from four different
pro leagues, so hockey, baseball, football, and basketball. Then he
extrapolated how each of the different win counts would have
been affected if the teams had played all of their
games at home, so like no away games at all.
And what he found was that the NHL teams and
MLB teams would have experienced the smallest boost from the
home field advantage of all the leagues. They would have
(08:03):
won each a little shy of I guess five and
a half percent more games than they actually did, which
is still nothing is sneeze at, particularly if you've got
money riding on those games. But the NFL teams would
have seen the second biggest boost, about six point four percent,
and then NBA teams would have seen the biggest boost
by far if they had played all of their games
at home for a three year period, they would have
won ten percent more games than they actually do. You know,
(08:25):
I think about this in in football. I feel like
it makes sense because you think about the intensity of
the cheering when the offense is trying to call plays
or whatever like whatever they do in that scenario, right,
and it's hard for them to hear each other, and
it seems like you could get them rattled. But do
we know why the advantage would be so much greater
for NBA teams, Well, we don't, but I guess one
(08:47):
of the things that Bo has pointed out was that
the playing dimensions of a basketball court don't really very
like they do in other sports such as baseball, and
and on top of that, like NBA games are all
played inside, so weather is never a factor. So, in
other words, the hometown, crowd and trial factors are still
in play for NBA teams, but the environmental factor might
not play his large role in in the players mindsets
(09:07):
as as it does in baseball or even football. All right, Well,
believe it or not, home field advantage isn't the only
kind of location based benefit in the sports world. There's
also something I was reading about this week called small
town advantage, and the gist of this is that people
who grew up in a small town they like fifty
thou people or under, they will have a higher chance
(09:27):
of becoming a professional athlete than someone for a more
populated city or town. That's something I've not seen before,
and the numbers behind this are actually pretty remarkable. So
there was this two thousand seventeen article in Pacific Standard
that only about of the u S population lives in
a town with under fifty thou people. Yet despite that,
nearly half of all NFL and p g A players
(09:49):
are from towns that size, and the same trends present
to a slightly lesser degree in other sports too. That's
I think it's like NHL players somewhere around that same
staff or Major League Baseball players come from towns fewer
than fifty thousand, and for the NBA, I think it's
it's twenty eight percent, So pretty interesting. That's pretty crazy,
especially since you think the opposite would be true, right,
(10:11):
like the larger cities would have access to more equipment,
maybe more competition, and more opportunities for players to be discovered. Yeah,
I mean, the truth is it's tough to pinpoint why
small towns make such great incubators for pro athletes. I mean,
it could be there's something unique about the atmosphere of
small towns that make it particularly conducive to athletic development.
(10:31):
The close knit community spirit, or the level of importance
that rural areas tend to place on sports. Maybe, But
whatever first got the trend rolling, it's kind of become
a self perpetuating cycle at this point. What do you
mean by that, Well, small town residents tend to know
how many legends their areas have produced, like Bo Jacks.
I mean, how many times a day do I remind
(10:52):
you that Bo Jackson came from the Birmingham area, right,
you know, to Wayne Gretzky. And that makes the dream
of making it to the big league seem all the
more attainable for the next crop of players. And it
is something that makes sense. So if somebody grew up
in your neighborhood and you see them turn pro, then
it stands the reason that maybe you could too. Yeah,
you know, I used to live in Greenville and North
(11:13):
Carolina and and Kinston was right next door. And the
number of star basketball players and football players that will
come out of is pretty remarkable. Um, but not Jackson, No,
not win Gretzky. But you know, there's one more sports
advantage I wanted to talk about, and that's the fact
that being short can actually give players a big advantage
in soccer. It's it's funny, but one of our friends
(11:34):
kids learned from his doctor that he might be you know,
six foot or whatever like these projections, and he was
totally depressed because he would He was hoping he'd be
like five seven, like Messy or five eight, which is
just funny to think about, especially for someone like me.
But you know, it's kind of counterintuitive since bigger is
usually better when it comes to sports. But in the
case of soccer, being tall is only helpful if you're
(11:56):
a defender or a goalie. For the other positions like
forwards and fielders, the edge goes to the shorter players.
So why is that the main reason is that shorter
players tend to have better control of their limbs, which
allows them to change direction faster than a tall player could. Uh.
That kind of nimbleness really keeps defenders on their toes
and and makes it harder to box in a short
opponent or to anticipate their movements. But that's not the
(12:19):
only advantage, you know. According to The Atlantic, studies have
shown that tall players are called for fouls more frequently
than shorter players. That could just be that the referees
are associating height with aggression, or maybe the longer limbs
are more visible. But you know, I'm not sure exactly
what the reason is, but but tall folks definitely get
carded more. Yeah, and I know in other sports like basketball,
(12:39):
it's obviously an advantage overall to be tall. But it
is also interesting to watch, you know, when you used
to watch guys like Shack play and they could just
get hammered all day long and nobody would call them.
A lot of times Everson will pull someone down and
get called exactly exactly. It's so bizarre to to look
at these stats, but you know, it's interesting to see
how different levels of influence people can have over these advantages.
(13:01):
Like with home field advantage, it kind of comes down
to the player's mindset and how they respond to things
outside their control. And with the small town advantage, like
that's something people could actually seek out if they were
so inclined, Like if you had a young kid that
wants to be a pro football player, you could move
to a small town and theoretically they could reap the
advantage of that. But now we're getting into stuff like
(13:24):
height and the social stigma surrounding height, and those are
things that nobody really has much say in. You know, Yeah,
that seems like a good distinction to make, and why
don't we check out some of those advantages. Right after
this break, you're listening to part Time Genius and we're
(13:50):
talking about some of the lesser known advantages that certain
groups of people enjoy. And since we closed out the
last segment with a short person perk, I think it's
only fair we balance out and go for for one
for the tall people out there. So here we go.
Tall people make more money than short people. That's it,
end the story. So I hate this already, but I
feel like you need to explain a little bit. Well.
(14:11):
According to a two thousand fifteen study published in the
Journal of Human Capital, salary rates trend upward right along
with height in most Western countries, so much so that
if one employee is four or five inches taller than another,
the taller person would make anywhere between nine and fifteen
percent more than the short who imagine being a seventh
(14:31):
fetter would be so rich. But put another way, an
extra inch of height could be worth as much as
eight hundred dollars per year in additional earnings. Match that
to inflation rates, track it over thirty years, and you're
looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra income
just for being tall. So I guess, setting aside the
sheer injustice of this tall I'm curious to hear what's
(14:54):
driving this because I feel like this would have made
sense like centuries ago, right when most of the jobs
relied on size or strength or whatever. But it seems
strange that the trend would continue in an era of
like the desk job, right, like maybe someone who's taller
can reach the high shelf in the break room or
something that height doesn't really help with Excel sheets, well,
it doesn't make a lot of sense on paper. And
(15:16):
you know, one theory is that employers aren't paying strictly
based on height. Instead, it's that taller people are landing
higher paying jobs because their height lends them to more
self confidence or better social skills, which allows them to
climb the pay ladder faster. Anyway, if you're angling for
a raise at work, adding some lists to your shoes
might actually help. So think about that. I'm sure that's
(15:38):
how Tom Cruise got that big payday, right. So, sticking
with our theme of things that are beyond our control,
here's another bombshell. I bet you never would have guessed
their advantages to being attractive. What you don't say, mango?
Come on. So what's funny about this is that even
scientists benefit from this. So, according to new research from
(15:58):
the University of Essex and the Universe Said Cambridge, the
way that a scientist looks affects the level of interest
in their work and they're perceived credibility. As one of
the psychologists behind the study explained, this is true because
quote people partly treat science communication as a form of entertainment,
where emotional impact in the esthetic appeal are desirable qualities.
Like it's weird to think society might buy into an
(16:20):
argument that the world is flat or some other ridiculous
argument like if the scientist is is just attractive enough.
It sounds a little like that thirty Rock episode where
John Hamm becomes a doctor and a Tennyson starter and
like he's horrible at all. These things that people keep
getting in the past because he's so handsome. But uh,
I actually clarified this with GiB because I was thinking
the same thing you were, and the link here between
(16:41):
attractiveness and credibility isn't quite what you're thinking. So over
the course of six studies, researchers were able to show
that scientists who peer competent, moral, and attractive are more
likely to garner interest in their work, which isn't a surprise, right,
But then the researchers continued writing, quote, the scientists who
appear competent, in and moral, but who are relatively unattractive
(17:03):
create a stronger impression of doing high quality research. So
just to get this right, so the public is more
likely to pay attention to the research of an attractive scientist,
but less likely to believe what they're saying. Like, is
that right? Yeah, they're basically like cer no diverge racking.
But basically, the next time the public needs to be
informed about a scientific breakthrough, it's probably best to pair
(17:24):
scientists to give a presentation like an attractive one to
win the audience's approval, and you know, an ugly one
to give it credibility. The old Watson and Crick is
what they call it, I think, so I have no idea.
That's interesting though, Well, since we're on the subject of scientists,
have you ever noticed how we tend to refer to
the male ones by their surnames, but we call female
(17:44):
scientists by their full names, Like Darwin is just Darwin.
But have you ever heard anyone just say Cury like
it's always Marie Curry, Right, I know it's just making
a joke about Watson Crick, but like I know Rosalind
Franklin's full name, but I know one of them is James,
but I don't know which one. Yeah, I mean, there's
actually even a name for this bias. It's called surname bias.
(18:04):
So basically, when we hear someone called by their surname,
it tends to improve our perception of them. Maybe it
makes them seem more important or dignified in our minds,
maybe stronger or more imminent or something like that. But
the main problem with this is that we don't wield
that surname bias fairly so. According to a string of
recent studies, on average, and regardless of gender, people are
(18:26):
twice as likely to refer to men by their surnames
than they are women. And those findings hold true across
you know, a lot of different professions, whether it's politics, science, literature,
like the list goes on. So how exactly does this
advantage play in real life? Like what's the payoff for
being just being called by your last name? Alright, we're
just going back to the scientists for a minute. There
(18:48):
was a study back in two thousand and seventeen were
more than five hundred participants were asked to determine who
among a group of scientists should receive a half million
dollars science grant. Some of the scientists were referred to
by or full names and others by their surnames. And
as you can probably guess by what we've been saying,
the participants showed a clear preference for this surname only contenders.
(19:09):
In fact, those candidates were a full fourteen percent more
likely to be recommended for the award. So if that
same strange advantages cropping up across all these different fields,
it stands to reason that surname bias is a serious
contributor to the gender inequality in the workplace. And the
ironic part of this is that you know, the trend
of using women's full names actually may have started with
(19:31):
noble intentions as a way of drawing attention to the
presence and the contributions of women, especially in fields traditionally
associated with men. So the plan, though, it seems to
have backfired since so many of us have this surname
bias kind of baked into us. I mean, that's a
little depressing, but I'm glad we're more aware of it,
and I think I am only going to call Marie
(19:53):
Curry Cury from now on. But why don't we switch
gears and talk about a few of the more even
handed advantages there right after this break? Welcome back to
(20:15):
part time genius. Okay, well, so let's talk about advantages
that are a little easier to come by, ones that
aren't as dependent on chance or circumstances. Did you come
across anything like that. Yeah, I feel like I've got
just the thing for you, because all you really need
for this one is a library card. Now. Being able
to read and having access to books are obviously big
advantages in life, especially during childhood, and hopefully it's clear
(20:39):
by now that you and I are big proponents of reading.
But according to new research, simply being around books might
be a benefit in itself, even if you don't actually
read them. So my first question is, are you sure
we're supposed to be talking about this because my kids
listening to this program just just sitting near the books.
But what's advantage of having unread books around? There's something
(21:03):
in social science called radiation effect. I think this is
so interesting. So that's when children grow up with books
in the house, they don't read them very much, but
still somehow benefit later in life just from having grown
up around books. It's a really weird phenomenon, but there's
a study on it recently by a sociologist at the
Australian National University. Her name is Joanna Secora, and along
(21:26):
with her colleagues, she pieced together five years worth of
developmental data on more than a hundred and sixty thousand
adults from thirty one different societies. These surveys were aimed
at assessing things like literacy, competency with numbers, even technology,
and part of this was asking the question of how
large of a home library the participants had during their adolescence.
(21:46):
Some of the findings from this we were actually pretty surprising. So,
for instance, the participants who only had a high school education,
but who had grown up around books. They boasted better literacy, numeracy,
and digital problem solving as adults than the college grads
and the survey who had grown up in bookless homes.
That's interesting, and I'm guessing this all comes down to
(22:07):
someone in the house valuing knowledge or learning. Yeah, it
ultimately comes down to why the books are in the
house in the first place. So the lead researcher, Skora
sum this up well in a recent interview with Scientific American.
Here's what she said. If we grow up in a house,
in a home where parents enjoy books, where books are
given as birthday presents and cherished and valued, this is
(22:28):
something that becomes part of our identity and gives us
this lifelong incentive to be literacy oriented, to always kind
of steer towards books and read more than we would otherwise.
It's fascinating, and honestly, I have so many books in
our house that we haven't read. I'm wondering if it's
a good life hack for you know, not having to
pay for my kids college. So good strategy. On an
opposite note, Gabe was telling me about Lucky Charms this
(22:51):
week and it's pretty much the opposite case, right. The
advantage depends entirely on the charm holders participation in it.
But there are you saying there really is some advantage
to carrying a lucky charm. It sounds impossible, but there's
a social psychology study from about a decade ago where
participants all performed better in memory and dexterity tests when
they were allowed to keep their lucky charms with them,
(23:13):
and when the charms were taken away their scores plummeted,
and when the charms were returned, their scores increased again.
So then one it's like a placebo effect, but for
luckiness instead of health. Yes, sort of. I mean the
researchers theorized that the people would lucky charms perform better
because they stuck with the problems longer than those without charms.
Because they believed in the luckiness of their objects, they
(23:33):
felt more equipped and capable when faced with a tough challenge,
and that confidence ultimately boosted them over the top. You know,
it's funny because there's this urge to like look sideways
of people for putting so much faith and like a
rabbit's phone or whatever. The lucky charm is. But I
guess there must be some reason why they believe in
an object's luck in the first place, right, Like something
must have convinced them. It's just hard to imagine exactly
(23:55):
what that could be. Yeah, I mean, I think it
helps to remember that what we think of as luck
is really more about brain chemistry and worldviews than it
is about you know, chance or magic. Like our our
brains are hardwired to look for patterns, and we often
have good incentive to find them, like even if they
aren't really there. For example, I if I make a
conscious choice to wear I don't know, a shirt with
(24:16):
a bear on it, and then I end up having
a great day at work, there's a part of me
that will take notice of that and link the two
events wearing the bear shirt and then having a good
day at the office. And and then if I wear
the bear shirt a second time and have another great
day at work like that mental connection will become even stronger,
and and I might think there's something going on and
that shirt is lucky or whatever. You know. I know
we talked about a lot of business ideas, but like,
(24:38):
just hearing you talk about this, it kind of makes
me think we need to get in the bear st
I think it's gonna be our next thing. But as
bizarre as it all sounds, I have to admit, it's
sort of comforting to think that there could actually be
away for us to kind of make our own luck.
Like that. It reminds me of something I read in
The Atlantic this week about the social advantage that comes
with having pockets Mango like pant pockets. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(25:01):
It turns out the word pocket is an Anglo Norman
word meaning little bag, And when pockets first came on
the scene in the late seventeenth century, that's essentially what
they were, like, these small, detachable bags that were tied
around the waist with a draw string. And it wasn't
until the eighteen fifties, when clothes became more tightly fitted,
that pockets started to be sewn directly into the garments.
(25:25):
And this new kind of pocket was smaller than the
old draw string version, but it kind of made up
for that by being so much harder to steal. Honestly, though,
if you were a woman living during this time period,
you wouldn't really care which kind of pockets you had,
so long as you did have pockets. And that's because
pockets were a game changer for women. So it seems
like such a small thing, but being able to easily
(25:48):
and discreetly carry objects that, you know, it is an advantage.
But before pockets came along, that really wasn't much of
an option for women. Now remember this is all prior
to the rise of handbags and backpack and so suddenly
women were able to move outside the home because now
they had a private space to hold, you know, whatever
they needed throughout the day. That's funny. I never really
(26:08):
thought of pockets as a symbol of independence. But you know,
if you can't have your wallet or phone or keys
on you like, you can't really move through not like
public spaces. Yeah, it's right. And in fact, I don't
know if you remember this, but there's a great scene
about pockets and the wind and the willows. Do you
remember all the scenes from you say pockets this? Yeah,
it's when Mr Toad is trying to escape from jail
(26:31):
after being locked up, you know, for joy riding in
his motor car and he ends up disguising himself as
the prisons washer woman in order to slip past the guards.
But he finds out that the stolen clothes he's wearing
don't include pockets, and so listen to how he takes
the news to this horror. Toad recollected that he had
left both coat and waistcoat behind him and his cell.
(26:53):
All that makes life worth living, all that distinguishes the
many pocketed animal, the lord of creation, from the feior
one pocketed or no pocketed productions that hop or trip
about permissively unequipped for the real contest. Pretty defenditive right there.
So even m your toad realized the freedom grunted by pockets,
and not just him. So back in the nineteenth century
(27:15):
you'd see posted advertisements for runaway slaves, and some of
the descriptions would warn that just because his clothes have pockets,
that doesn't mean he's a free man. So I guess
we should be grateful for pockets, is what I'm saying.
I'm just gonna keep saying pockets. But they give us
this agency in public that was denied to so many
people for a long long time. Plus where else are
(27:36):
you gonna keep your lucky charms? Right? So you know,
we started today's show talking about one on one competitions,
and now it's time to close it by holding one
of our own. It's time for the fact off. Yeah, okay,
So I came across a bunch of different advantages this
(27:57):
week that all center on the sound of your voice
and how it can fluence the way people perceive you. So,
for example, men are more likely to vote for men
who have deeper, more masculine voices, and and ceo s
with deeper voices tend to manage larger companies and earn
larger salaries. But there's at least one profession where it
pays for men to be a little more soft spoken.
According to a study outlined and New Scientists, lawyers with gentler,
(28:19):
less masculine voices are more likely to win in court
than their gruffer, sounder colleagues. And the researchers behind the
study aren't a hundred percent sure why that is, but
they say it could be that the lawyers with deeper
voices are perceived as being overcompensating or trying to sound masculine.
Well that's interesting, all right. So here's a weird one.
It turns out that die hard opera fans have a
(28:39):
slight edge when it comes to chemistry class. This is
my favorite. So back in two thousand thirteen, a team
of chemists study the librettos of twenty famous operas, and
they found that the effects of twenty five different natural
and synthetic chemical materials were accurately described in them, everything
from snake venom to deadly nightshade. According to the Smithsonian,
(29:00):
the researchers hope that teachers will use the poison based
plots to help the students better engage with chemistry, because
if there is one thing teams love more than chemistry,
it's gotta be opera. So we talked about left handed
advantages at the top of the show, but there's one
more that's too random not to mention. According to a
report commissioned by the A Driving School, left handed drivers
(29:22):
have a much easier time passing their driving test. In fact,
six out of ten or fifty seven percent actually, of
the left handers passed their driving test on the first try,
according to the findings, and that means south pause are
a full ten percent more likely than right handers to
pass on their first attempt. And as any Color points
out for ABC News, that puts left handed drivers in
good company with famous lefty drivers including buzz Aldren and
(29:46):
none other than Chewbacco himself. Who you know it was
also left handed. That's right, all right, Well, here's one
I was kind of surprised to learn. Actually, color blindness
can sometimes be an asset in combat situations. The ideas
that the condition forces a soldier to focus on patterns
instead of colors, which can be useful for spotting camouflaged
(30:06):
enemies in the field. So much so, in fact, that
color blind units were reportedly used during World War Two
to help identify snipers. That's fascinating. So here's a fun one.
It turns out that women are more attracted to men
if they're holding guitars, which is why someone taught the
house course in college called just Enough Guitar to Serenade
(30:28):
a Girl. That's right. I think the whole thing led
up to playing that song Tangerine by led zepplind That. Uh.
Let let me tell you about the study because it's interesting.
A team of researchers in France hired this beefcake guy
and over the course of a single afternoon, they had
him hit on three women between the ages of eighteen
and twenty two, and in each case, the guy followed
the same routine, right beat for beat, he introduced himself
(30:51):
and he told the woman like, I think you're really pretty,
and then he proceeded to ask each one for her
phone numbers, so you know they could get a drink together.
But here's the twist. For a third of these counters,
the guy was carrying a guitar case, for another third
he was carrying a gym bag, and for the remaining
third he wasn't carrying anything. And wouldn't you know it,
when when he was carrying the guitar case, a shocking
thirty of the women gave him their numbers, compared that
(31:14):
with nine percent who did when he was carrying the
gym bag and when he was carrying nothing. And it's
pretty clear that music is the language of love. That's
wild though, like thirty two percent to fourteen percent. It's
not just like a small advantage, it's a huge advantage.
And nine percent with the gym bag because I think
like they just think he's a meat head or something. Wow,
that's pretty well. Well, it may not be the most
(31:35):
surprising fact of the day, but you managed to breathe
a little romance into the show, and for that alone,
I think you got to take the show. Mango, well
played thanks so much, and I accept this on behalf
of everyone who's faked playing a musical instrument to get
a date. But that's going to do it. For today's
Part Time Genius from Will Gave Blowl and myself, thanks
so much for listening. We'll be back soon with another
(31:57):
new episode. Ye Part Time Genius is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(32:19):
you listen to your favorite show.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.