Things I Mean To Know

The title of episode 630 of This American Life, “Things I Mean to Know”, comes from the prologue of the story. One of the show’s reporters, Diane Wu, tells a story about attending a talk from a Nobel Prize-winning chemist who asks the crowd “How many of you know the evidence that the earth revolves around the sun?” And, Wu says,

“I couldn’t put my hand up. And I looked around me, and very few people were able to raise their hands. Basically, none of us knew what the evidence was for that thing that we believed to be true.”
“Then he asked us, you– or he kind of chided us, you took that on faith. How much else have you accepted without evidence? Because that is one of the most serious problems facing our civilization today.”

So after that, Wu started a list of things called ‘Things I Mean to Know’:

The Shottky barrier

Yams versus sweet potatoes, what is the difference

Evidence for earth around sun

Difference between Sunni and Shia

Burgundy versus Bordeaux

Composition of how steel is made

Obamacare

I love this list because it reminds me of one I had when I was a university student. I would write down things I didn’t understand with the intention of learning them and they were, as I recall, roughly as diverse as Wu’s list.

In the end, Wu abandons her list after learning the difference between yams and sweet potatoes, and I completely relate. I’m sure I’ve looked up the difference between yams and sweet potatoes about six times, but somehow it never sticks. The only thing I remember from my own university-era list is the question “How do turtles breathe underwater,” and I don’t remember the answer to that one, either. As a kid I knew a ton about dinosaurs I no longer remember. I’m sure we have the capacity for this stuff, but there is clearly something about actually using it that we need for it to sink in. As it is, I don’t understand a lot of science, but I understand the scientific method and how to evaluate peer-reviewed journals, which I feel like gives me some help in navigating whether studies are worthwhile or not.

Still, maybe it’s not a bad idea to start the ‘Things I Mean to Know’ list up again. It is nice to think you will actually get smarter about the world around you.