Why Crowds Change Who You Are & The Mystery of How Life First Began- SYSK Choice

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Do you want to hear about visionaries creating a better world? People working in conservation, exploration, science, and tech, alongside storytellers imagining and creating a better future. I'm Alex Honnold, professional rock climber and founder of the Honnold Foundation, bringing you season six of Planet Visionaries. This season, I speak to guests like National Geographic photographer Tom Pechak and Anna Rathmann, executive director of the Jane Goodall Institute USA, in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. Watch Planet Visionaries on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

Mike Carruthers (0:31)

Today on Something You Should Know, the math behind how driving slower can save you real dollars, then the psychology of crowds. Much of what we think is true is not.

Dan Hancox (0:44)

Essentially, everything we've been told about crowd behavior is wrong. When you hear phrases like mob mentality is based on late 19th century crowd theorists who didn't actually do any serious empirical work studying how crowds behave at all.

Mike Carruthers (0:59)

Also, something you need to know if you're a Venmo user.

And the origins of life. We know life comes from other life, but how did it all begin? From nothing?

Mario Livio (1:11)

It's not from nothing. I mean, the universe as a whole may have started from nothing.

Life started from chemistry. So when we talk about origin of life is how does chemistry evolve into biology?

Mike Carruthers (1:26)

All this today on Something You Should Know.

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Something You Should Know. Fascinating Intel.

SPEAKER_5 (3:10)

The world's top experts.

Mike Carruthers (3:12)

And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers.

Hi. You know, I get those pictures that pop up on Facebook from some group that sends out pictures of the good old days, days gone by, and there was a picture of somebody standing in front of a gas station and the gas was like 49 cents a gallon. Well, it's not 49 cents a gallon anymore, is it? So by now, you've probably heard all the tips and tricks to improve gas mileage, and one of them is to slow down. And Consumer Reports did the math on some of this, and slowing down has a bigger impact than I think you probably would imagine. If you drive, and of course it depends on the type of car you drive, but if you drive, say, 65 miles an hour, you're getting about 8 miles less per gallon than if you drove at 55

At 75 miles an hour, you're losing about 14 miles per gallon. So that's about 250 miles you've lost on an 18-gallon tank of gas. And this is surprising, I think, to most people, that if you have a bike rack on your car, you really need to take it off when you're not using it. The rack alone, without a bicycle, the rack alone eats up about 5 miles a gallon. And if you add 2 bikes, you're losing up to 15 miles per gallon because it messes up the aerodynamics. And that is something you should know.

As you have no doubt noticed, people act differently in crowds versus when they're alone or in a one-on-one situation. Being in a crowd changes you. And I'm sure you've heard the term crowd mentality or mob mentality. There is no doubt that people change or at least some people change and do things when they're part of a crowd that they would never do alone. People at a concert or a sporting event, people at a party or a celebration or people in a mob. The crowd changes them.