Something You Should Know
Your Phone May Not Be the Problem & The Puzzles That Break Your Brain - SYSK Choice
13 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What happens when pets see themselves in a mirror?
Today on Something You Should Know, what happens when your dog or cat sees themselves in a mirror? Then there's a lot of concern over how much people use their cell phones. Should we be concerned?
So I've got some stats here for you. So the average person picks up their phone around 80 times per day. And the average screen time is around three to four hours. So that's around 25% of our waking time.
Also, the benefits of learning to juggle, and they're pretty impressive.
Chapter 2: How do smartphones impact our daily lives?
And understanding paradoxes. They are weird and confusing, and they make you think.
For example, the liar's paradox. If I tell you I'm a liar, I always tell lies. So when I tell you I always tell lies, I actually said the truth. And that's a paradox.
All this today on Something You Should Know.
Hey, it's Hillary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex ed, birth control, pregnancy, bodily autonomy, and of course, kids of all ages. But you don't have to be a parent to listen.
If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, The Longest Shortest Time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at LongestShortestTime.com.
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. Hello. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Here's something I think every pet owner has done at some point, and that is to put your pet in front of a mirror or hold a mirror up to their face and see what their reaction is.
And chances are the reaction is disappointing because it turns out that elephants, apes, dolphins, and of course humans are the only animals with the natural ability to recognize themselves in a mirror. Research scientist Diana Rees explains that it's a trait common to animals with large, complex brains and social lives.
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Chapter 3: What are the surprising benefits of learning to juggle?
Along with self-recognition, these animals are also capable of empathy and altruism. So what do other animals see? Well, birds and fish tend to think their reflection is another bird or fish. And the reason most cats and dogs usually don't react much is because their sense of smell is so keen that an odorless image just doesn't really interest them much. And that is something you should know.
If you're like most people, you're probably on your phone a lot, talking, texting, or doing something else. Drive down any street and you'll see a lot of other people on their phones a lot, especially young people.
And I know there's been this outcry of concern about how people are addicted to their phones, that we're isolating ourselves, that we should be more present and mindful and be in the moment. And if we always have our phones in front of our face, well, the whole world is passing you by. Well, maybe. But there is some research into this that I think you will find enlightening.
And here to share it is Faye Baggetti. She's a practicing neurology doctor and neuroscientist at Oxford University Hospitals and author of a book on this topic titled The Phone Fix. Hi, Faye. Thanks for being here today.
Thank you for having me.
So there does seem to be a lot of, I guess, judging going on, that people make judgments about people who are always on their phone. Oh, see, she's always on her phone. He's always on his phone. Can't they get off the phone? That there's something wrong with that. And I have to admit, I've made those judgments about some people myself.
And because it does seem to be concerning that if you're on your phone, you're not here in the moment with me.
I think it's important not to be too judgmental when you see somebody on their phone. And it all depends on what they're doing. We all lead increasingly busy lives. You know, we have blurred boundaries between work and rest. There are many working parents trying to pick up their kid up from school.
trying to do the online shop, answering an email, and they may not necessarily have a choice in that matter. I mean, ideally, we would all love to relax and be in the moment, but I think it's important to understand that it's not the phones themselves, and there may be forces beyond people's control.
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Chapter 4: How can we build healthier digital habits with smartphones?
you can use your phone as a form of digital distraction. This is actually termed, we all have sort of emotion regulation and using our phone is part of external emotion regulation when we use mechanisms outside our own brain to manage our emotions. And a lot of those people may well be texting a friend. I've actually talked in my book about a time when I was in a waiting room myself.
And as a doctor, I see all these people in the waiting rooms using their phones, wondering what they might be doing, but I was about to undergo a procedure. And I was waiting. And you know what? I texted a really good friend of mine because I was fearful. And it really helped. It really, really helped. So I think, again, it's just about
seeing past the little device that people have in their hands and just wondering what are they doing and why they're doing it.
I would have managed even if I didn't have the ability to text my friend, but I actually made the whole experience so, so, so much better to be able to distract myself and have a little messaging chat and some jokes really helped calm my brain and put me in a better position.
But there are times when, let's say you go out to dinner. You sit down at the restaurant and the person you're with whips out their phone and starts looking at it. Well, they wouldn't do that with a magazine. They wouldn't sit across the table from you and say, hang on a second and pull out a magazine and hold it up and start reading it. But they'll do it with their phone.
But there was a time before smartphones that you couldn't do that. And since you couldn't do that... I think people weren't as anxious about not having something to do because you didn't have it to do.
It's like when people can get a hold of you, you check to see if people are trying to get a hold of you, but there was a time when if you were away on vacation, nobody could get a hold of you, so there was no anxiety because there was no possibility of people getting a hold of you, and therefore you didn't worry about it.
That's a really good point. So before we had mobile phones, we would have either magazine or laptops and there was certainly, you know, taking them out in certain situations would constitute quite a big move or action. One of the things that makes phones so sticky and so habit forming is that they have checking them has become a really small action.
And our brain has an autopilot system where we encode habits, things that we do automatically. And those habits tend to be really, really small actions. Things like, you know, the way we talk, the way we use our hands, washing our hands, covering our mouth when we cough. These are all habits. And our phones have sort of been integrated in this sort of habitual mechanism. in the autopilot brain.
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Chapter 5: What are the different types of paradoxes?
And random means that there's no rhyme or reason to them. So let me first ask you, which sequence sounds more random? 3, 4, 8, 9 or 1, 1, 1, 1? So most people would say, OK, 3, 4, 8, 9. is more random than 1, 1, 1, 1? Well, they're both equally likely. If you do a lot of numbers with a random number generator, you get approximately as many sequences 3, 4, 8, 9 as you will get 1, 1, 1, 1.
But so how do you know when you see a sequence whether it's random? Well, if you can recognize it as a random sequence, then it can't be random because randomness means you can't recognize it. There's no pattern. There's no rhyme or reason to the sequence. So you can never actually recognize or decide whether a sequence of numbers is random or not.
The only thing you can do is investigate how the sequence was produced. If it was produced by a random process, let's say by throwing dice or flipping coins, then it's random. But actually to see a sequence and say this is random, that you cannot do.
So can a human being come up with a random sequence? Because we all have our biases and favorite numbers and things. So are our random number sequences really random or not?
No, because you'd never come up, if I'd ask you to produce random numbers, you'd never come up with 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. You'd never say that. And actually, in a really true random number generator, this sequence 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 should actually appear every once in a while. But a human being, we just wouldn't come up with such a number.
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Chapter 6: How do paradoxes challenge our thinking?
Or 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. That sounds totally unrandom. But in a random number generator, this sequence should actually appear every once in a while.
Talk about the, what is it, antinomy paradox.
Yes. Okay. So we talked about veridical and falsidical paradoxes. There's a third kind of paradox, which is called an antinomy. It's a statement. that seems absurd and the reasoning is correct, but there's something wrong with it that it just cannot be. Usually it's when two equally valid principles contradict each other. Let's say you have the right to privacy,
And you also have freedom of speech. And these two contradict each other. So you have an antinomy. It's not the paradox as such, but there are two things, two equally valid precepts, which contradict each other, the right to privacy, freedom of speech, or let's say, A medical doctor stands in front of a patient who is dying.
Now, the Ten Commandments, one of the commandments says, thou shalt not lie. You must not lie. The Hippocratic Oath says, do no harm. Now, the doctor... has a problem, let's call it a paradox, an antinomy. He should tell the truth, but he knows if he tells the truth, he will hurt the patient. So what does he do? I can't answer it. It's an antinomy.
They're equally valid principles which contradict each other. So you can't really answer that question.
Explain, I think, Jevon's paradox, because I think it says a lot about human nature.
That's something from economics. Let's say you have an electricity bill every month, let's say $100. And the electric company now decides to lower the price by 30%. So you'd assume that at the end of the month, your electricity bill will only be $70. What happens usually is that the electricity bill is higher. It's $120, let's say. So that's a paradox. The price per kilowatt hour
was reduced by 30% and your bill went up? Yes, because what happens when electricity prices go down, you leave the light on during the night, you don't turn off the air conditioner, you buy more electric appliances. So you use much, much more electricity and you end up paying more than you used to because the price went down.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of the Monty Hall problem?
Birth control, pregnancy, gender, bodily autonomy, menopause, consent, sperm, so many stories about sperm, and of course, the joys and absurdities of raising kids of all ages. If you're new to the show, check out an episode called The Staircase. It's a personal story of mine about trying to get my kids school to teach sex ed. Spoiler, I get it to happen, but not at all in the way that I wanted.
We also talked to plenty of non-parents. so you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships and, you know, periods, The Longest Shortest Time is for you. Find us in any podcast app or at LongestShortestTime.com.