The Stuff You Should Know Doin’ Science Playlist: How Occam's Razor Works

**Josh Clark** (0:01)
It's Josh coming back at you hot with our 2018 joint on Occam's Razor, one of the more semi-understood scientific principles. But it's also probably the most widely used of them all too, or misused, I guess I should say.
We have a medieval monk who became one of the early proto-scientists to thank for Occam's Razor, which makes him a hero to science. And here's our episode on that hero.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:30)
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from howstuffworks.com.

**Josh Clark** (0:40)
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's guest producer Tristan over there. So it's Stuff You Should Know.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:50)
I don't know how these are gonna release, but as you noticed, Tristan weirdly grew out his mustache in the last hour again.

**Josh Clark** (0:57)
He's quick.

**Chuck Bryant** (0:58)
He is very fast.

**Josh Clark** (0:59)
He can make it go in and out, in and out. Boop, boop, boop, boop.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:03)
What is that?

**Josh Clark** (1:06)
Like he's growing his mustache, and it's sucking it back in.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:08)
Oh, okay.

**Josh Clark** (1:09)
It's sucking it back in. You know, like reverse Play-Doh.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:13)
Right.

**Josh Clark** (1:14)
Do you remember that Play-Doh set with the-

**Chuck Bryant** (1:15)
Like the little meat grinder?

**Josh Clark** (1:17)
No, there was one where you could grow a mustache on a dude, if I remember correctly.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:22)
I think I remember that.

**Josh Clark** (1:23)
Yeah. But imagine if you could reverse it too.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:26)
It was called the Play-Doh nightmare set.

**Josh Clark** (1:30)
Yeah.
Is that your nightmare, growing a Play-Doh mustache, waking up like that? Yeah.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:36)
I've had that dream about once a week for about 35 years.

**Josh Clark** (1:40)
Like all the rest of you is Chuck, but just your mustache is Wallace and Gromit.

**Chuck Bryant** (1:45)
Yeah. Dude, yesterday, there was a bad smell. Emily and I were having a glass of wine at a wine bar. There was a bad smell nearby. I think it was a dumpster or something. And they were growing fresh herbs at this wine bar. And I rubbed a rosemary bush and then swiped it all over my mustache.
And Emily's mind was blown.
She was just like, Oh my God. Like, I can't believe that's an actual use for facial hair.

**Josh Clark** (2:19)
Yeah, I guess it is.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:20)
To hold in that smell. I was like, Well, you can wipe it on your upper lip. It's probably the same thing.

**Josh Clark** (2:24)
Sure.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:25)
Maybe the hair retains more-

**Josh Clark** (2:28)
Essential oils.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:29)
I don't know. Maybe.

**Josh Clark** (2:30)
Which essential oils, man, people are clamoring for that episode.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:34)
Yeah, we should do that.

**Josh Clark** (2:35)
We will eventually.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:36)
It's been a big part of my life for 10 or 12 years now.

**Josh Clark** (2:39)
Essential oils, we'll talk about it someday, but not today, no, no.

**Chuck Bryant** (2:43)
Because Chuck's going to stumble through a philosophy podcast.

**Josh Clark** (2:48)
I guess it is philosophy. It's the philosophy of knowledge. Epistemology is another way to put it. But specifically, Chuck, we're talking today about a little ditty you may have heard of before called Occam's razor.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:02)
Called The Gambler.

**Josh Clark** (3:05)
Have you ever, you've heard of Occam's razor before, right?

**Chuck Bryant** (3:08)
Well, so much so that I thought for sure we had covered this. But I realized that we just talked about it quite a bit in the Scientific Method episode.

**Josh Clark** (3:17)
I'm not at all surprised because a lot of people say that the basis of science, which is how humans approach nature in our universe and us and everything scientifically, the basis of that is Occam's razor. And if Occam's razor sounds familiar but you can't quite place it, you've probably heard it as something like, given two possible outcomes or explanations or whatever, the simplest version is probably the right one.

**Chuck Bryant** (3:48)
Yeah, it's a pretty, even that in its simplicity is beautiful. The mere statement itself is an example of its simplicity and how wonderful it can be just to think like, yeah, you know what, let's cut through all the gobbledygook. I think the easiest way to explain this, whether it's a, what do you call the orb in a photo.
Yeah, it's not your great-grandfather coming to visit you on a different plane. It's really just an error with your photograph.

**Josh Clark** (4:24)