Uncommon Sense: the This is True Podcast

Randy Cassingham
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Uncommon Sense: the This is True Podcast Podcast

Uncommon Sense is the podcast for This is True, the oldest Entertainment newsletter on the Internet, starting in early 1994 and running weekly since. TRUE features 'weird news' stories with a purpose: it's Thought-Provoking Entertainment. TRUE is news commentary using rewritten summaries of real news stories as its vehicle. The newsletter is text, but the podcast is decidedly not an audio version of the newsletter, so you may want to try a free subscription to the newsletter, too. Subscribe at https://thisistrue.com/podcast

  1. 01/01/2023

    094: Why You Don’t Need to Be Perfect

    In This Episode: Sure, it’s cool to hear stories of famous (and completely obscure) people who exhibit Uncommon Sense — the ones I talk about here. But there’s one other thing you need to know about every one of them: they’re definitely not perfect, and that’s important to know because neither are you, and I’ll tell you why that doesn’t matter. 094: Why You Don’t Need to Be Perfect Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * * Prior episodes mentioned: * Keeping Your Eyes on the Prize (#15). * Developing Uncommon Sense (#17). * How to be Happier (#19). * 7 Things to Stop Doing (& What to Do Instead) (#77). * And/or see the full list of episodes. Transcript Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. There are several common gut reactions that listeners have to the stories I tell on Uncommon Sense. First there’s the feeling that “I could never do that!” — because the person I talk about is so special, or so talented, or born at just the right moment and the right place, that they’re seemingly impossible to emulate. Or second, the “But what about…?” types, who are aware of something less than savory in the person’s background. To use a couple of examples from Uncommon Sense itself: Jeff Bezos may be looking way into the future, but didn’t he cheat on his wife of 25 years? Isn’t that pretty much the opposite of Uncommon Sense? I mean, not surprisingly his wife divorced him — and when she left she took 25 percent of his Amazon stock as a consolation prize. That was worth $36 billion at the time. She did allow her ex to retain voting rights in those shares, but bad move ethically, morally, and financially, Jeff. But good display of Uncommon Sense, MacKenzie: she has given away more than $14 billion of that, but she still has more than $25 billion, according to Forbes. At just 52, she probably has a lot of time to give the rest of it away to good causes, which should really be a guide to other billionaires. Speaking of which, what of Elon Musk? Sure he’s looking way into the future too, but doesn’t he do very stupid things on a pretty regular basis? Say, taking a big puff from a marijuana cigar — on camera — when his SpaceX company is in the middle of a make-or-break contract with the government? Or make stupid tweets that have gotten him in big trouble? And that’s not even counting his buying Twitter for far more than it was worth, and probably much more than it will ever be worth. Yep, bad moves plural, Elon: every one of the actions like this took time and focus away from his huge missions in life — and cost him plenty of money, too. They set him, and those profoundly important life missions, back — at least to some degree — time after time. Yet I held both of them up as great examples of Uncommon Sense. Isn’t there a disconnect here? No, and here’s why. As I’ve said repeatedly over the years in relation to This is True stories, which very often show people at their worst, we shouldn’t gloat that we are somehow better than they are because, as I say, “We’re all stupid sometimes.” The corollary,

    12 min

  2. 05/11/2022

    093: The Best Books were Never Written

    In This Episode: I still feel his pain, and I will until I die. But strangely, feeling that pain led me to resolve, not fear. That taught me that my pain could be a good teacher. 093: The Best Books were Never Written Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * * The video and photos mentioned are within the transcript. The video was released in April 2019. * The website for the One Voice Children’s Choir. Transcript Welcome back to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. The best songs were never sung. The greatest poems that pierced hearts were never published. The greatest artist ever didn’t capture what was in her mind. The best music was never played. The best performances were never acted. The best books were never written. And, yeah, the best podcasts were never made. Even if those works of art were created, most disappeared because their creators were afraid to submit them to public view, to offer them for publication, to let them out of the drawer where they were hidden away. They were trashed, burned, lost. Why? They say… “I’m not talented enough.” “It’s not good enough.” “I’m too old.” Or the classic, “It’s not ready yet.” It all comes down to fear. Where does fear come from? Pain. My favorite song about pain — an oxymoron I know, but there’s the human brain for you — is Believer. My favorite version of it is not from the band that had a huge hit with it, Imagine Dragons, but rather the version from a nonprofit children’s choir in Utah called the One Voice Children’s Choir that grew out of the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Children singing about pain? You bet, and when they belt out lyrics like “my life, my love, my drive, it came from pain,” yeah, they know what they’re singing, and they put feeling into it because they’ve felt the pain. Pain is fortunately part of the human condition. Because it’s the people who push through the pain, take chances at putting their thoughts, their feelings, their art, out into the world for others to measure against those same feelings in themselves because they’ve felt that pain — that’s what makes a mark on the human condition. That’s what art is: reflecting on the human condition whether it’s writing or paintings or songs or poems or even dance (dance is a very effective part of that choir performance). “Pain: you break me down you build me up … you make me a believer” the lyrics say. I’ll embed the video on the Show Page. It has nearly 200 million views, and only a half-million are mine. But watch it: you’ll know those kids, in age ranging from 4 to 18, have gone through pain; sure, most likely the older they are the more they’ve experienced. Yet in so many cases, it’s because of the pain we’ve all gone through that great art emerges.

    11 min

  3. 20/09/2021

    092: Leaving a Better World is More Complicated Than You Think

    In This Episode: It used to be that humans thought they were special because we can think. We might be a little special, but we’re not as far above other animals than what we want to believe. And the implications of that are profound. 092: Leaving a Better World is More Complicated Than You Think Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * * What is the Norden bombsight. * The book Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel by Carl Safina, came out in 2015. * Other books mentioned: Factfulness (2018) by Hans Rosling, and Enlightenment Now (2018) by Steven Pinker. * Infant Mortality: The U.S. is #47(!) in infant mortality, at 6.5 under-5 deaths per 1000 live births. San Marino is #1 with 1.7; Iceland 2.0. Also ahead of the U.S. in that list are (in order) Slovenia, Cyprus, Montenegro, Estonia, Finland, Norway, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Luxembourg, Andorra, Italy, Monaco, Spain, Belarus, Czech Republic, South Korea, Ireland, Belgium, Austria, Australia, Latvia, Hungary, Israel, Lithuania, Portugal, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Netherlands, Switzerland, U.K., Poland, France, New Zealand, Croatia, Canada, Cuba, Serbia, Russia, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, and Qatar. Politicians like to say the U.S. has the best healthcare in the world. It’s a lie: we’re not even close on many measures. * The index of articles/podcasts in this series is https://thisistrue.com/longevity/. Transcript Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. Episode 26 talked about the implications of Koko the gorilla, who proved she could think because …she could talk to humans. Not grunts, but American Sign Language, where she could form sentences, express likes and dislikes, and even plan for the future. Others might say that Koko was a one-off: a particularly smart gorilla, or maybe even that gorillas are particularly smart as far as animals go, not the bird-brains that, well, birds are. The thing is, animals other than gorillas use tools. Monkeys, for instance, find just the right stick to shove into a hole to rile up termites, which the monkeys eat when they come to the surface. So maybe it’s primates that are smart, leaving the bird-brains for, well, the birds! There’s a problem with that hypothesis: birds can think too. They even use tools. They’ll grab a rock, get above shellfish on the beach, and drop their rocks on the shellfish to crack them open so they (the birds) can eat the sea creatures. So, think about that: they not only figured out rocks can be tools so they can get some nice seafood, but as they’re flying with those rocks,

    9 min

  4. 03/09/2021

    091: Don’t Die in the Next Five Years

    In This Episode: The title — Don’t Die in the Next Five Years — is an unofficial motto of an organization my wife and I joined, and we went to our first conference with them as members last week. They say this because of coming advances in medicine in the next several years, and we got a glimpse into some of those advances, including some things that aren’t even published yet in medical journals, that were mind-blowing. This episode is my first report on what I learned. 091: Don’t Die in the Next Five Years Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * * My Google Scholar page. * Kit’s coaching site. * Cancer statistics mentioned are from the American Cancer Society. * Web site for Tzar Labs. Their HrC test — short for the Himanshu Roy Cancer test — is named after Ashish Tripathi’s brother-in-law, who wasn’t diagnosed with cancer until he was at Stage 4; he died despite trying to fight it off for two years. “His message was always that you live an impactful life and leave a legacy, Tripathi said. “I believe that this test is a legacy worthy of his name.” * Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos was later convicted of multiple counts of fraud, and was sentenced to serve 135 months (11-1/4 years) in prison. * The index of articles/podcasts in this series is https://thisistrue.com/longevity/. Transcript Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. Thanks for listening or reading, and yes, it’s been awhile! So the first thing is, I’ve definitely not abandoned the Uncommon Sense podcast. I’m just fitting it in where I can. But it is true I didn’t expect a four-month pause! In the 9 May newsletter earlier this year I included a brief discussion of “biohacking.” Don’t let that glaze your eyes over: I’m pretty sure you are going to be really interested in this, and don’t worry, I won’t get too deep into the biology where lay people very often get lost. It’s actually going to take me a few months to get my head around it all, delving into the biology enough that I can explain various things to lay people. That was my specialty that got me hired at NASA way back in the late 80s — explaining technical concepts in a way that regular people can understand — so I have a big head start. I’ll give you a preview in a few moments, but I expect by January I’ll be publishing updates frequently. Anyway, here’s what I wrote last May. I said I went to a (different) meeting where we learned some of the latest on biohacking, and that I’ll have more to say on the tech stuff I’ve learned after I ...

    14 min

  5. 27/04/2021

    090: Rescuing Uncommon Sense

    In This Episode: A story in This is True struck me as an astonishing example of Uncommon Sense, so I thought I’d tell you about it to see some really out-of-the-box thinking, and provide some practical advice that could save your life. Here’s a hint: no one thinks they’re going to get lost and need rescue. Yet there are tens of thousands of rescues every year in the U.S. alone. What will increase your odds of being safe? Uncommon Sense. 090: Rescuing Uncommon Sense Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * * See below for the True version of the story, and the several photos. My new site is what-its-like-to.com, and Submission Guidelines are here. You can also read the stories on Medium if you prefer. * Products I use/mention*: Pocket flashlight, about $30. The portable battery pack I have is discontinued, but if I was going to buy again I’d start with Anker, about $35. The GPS app I use on Android: GPS Status & Toolbox, which is available in free and paid (no ads) versions (I paid: $2.49). Mike’s Story about the Rescue: Picture Perfect Rene Compean, 45, texted to his friend: “SOS. My phone is going to die. I’m lost.” He also sent two photos to relay his location, but only one got through, showing his legs and some of the surrounding terrain in California’s Angeles National Forest, where he’d been hiking. The photo had little information, especially since the poor signal meant his friend received a low-resolution version. Worse, the phone’s location settings were disabled, so the photo didn’t include those details. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sent a Twitter call for help along with the photo: “Are You an Avid Hiker in the Mt. Waterman Area? #LASD SAR Teams need help locating a #missing hiker.” Ben Kuo, 47, saw the photo and thought, “I bet I could find that spot.” He has an unusual hobby: “I have always loved looking for where photos are taken.” He’s able to identify locations from photographs or movie scenes by cross-referencing them to satellite imagery. He quickly located and tweeted a screenshot of his findings on Twitter, then called the sheriff’s department. Compean was rescued. “I’m so lucky that Ben did what he did,” Compean said. “I’m thankful to be alive.” (MS/Washington Post) …Privacy settings: sharing what you want to keep private and keeping private what you want to share. Transcript Welcome to Uncommon Sense; I’m Randy Cassingham. Before I begin, yes: it’s been more than two months since I’ve released an episode, and without prior notice. Sorry: I’ve been working on a new project and I couldn’t do both at the same time.

    14 min

  6. 15/02/2021

    089: The Deserved Death of “Doctor Knows Best”

    In This Episode: “Doctor knows best,” the saying went. While delivered as reassurance, its real meaning was much more sinister, as I’ll explain. This is the story of the final nail in that idiom’s coffin because really, it was a lie all along. The crazy thing is, that didn’t happen all that long ago. 089: The Deserved Death of “Doctor Knows Best” Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * * Update: Robin Warren died 23 July 2024 at 87. Transcript “Doctor knows best,” the saying went. While delivered as reassurance, its real meaning was much more sinister, as I’ll explain. This is the story of the final nail in that idiom’s coffin because really, it was a lie all along. The crazy thing is, that didn’t happen all that long ago. Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. When I was a kid, it was common knowledge what caused stomach ulcers: spicy food; stress, especially from overwork; excess stomach acid. The first doctor to describe gastritis, the stomach condition that leads to ulcers, was the “Father of Medicine” himself: Hippocrates, in around 400 B.C. Yet it wasn’t until 1868 that German physician Adolph Kussmaul found a treatment that worked pretty well: compounds containing the element bismuth, which is still used today — it’s the active ingredient in Pepto Bismol, a trademark for bismuth subsalicylate. But even in the 19th and 20th centuries, doctors were still at a loss as to the cause of ulcers, which are found not just in the stomach, but also the duodenum, the upper part of the intestines that the stomach empties into. They suggested non-specific “chemical factors.” Russian doctors suggested infections. In 1881, microbiologist Theodor Klebs suggested bacteria was the cause, as might be expected from a microbiologist. But that was doubted by many doctors, and was finally fully shut down in 1954 by a large-scale study by a gastroenterologist, Dr. Ed Palmer, which he said proved there were no bacteria in the human stomach whether the person had gastritis or not. The idea: bacteria just couldn’t live in the acidic environment of the stomach. “These findings, supported by the efficacy of antacids,” said biologist Carl Bergstrom of the University of Washington, “supported the alternative ‘chemical theory of ulcer development,’ which was subsequently canonized.” So there you go: medical canon was “chemicals” caused ulcers, but of course we still knew spicy food and stress at least made them worse, right? In 1971 a new drug was introduced to combat ulcers: Tagamet. It’s actually an antihistamine (an “H2 receptor agonist”), which inhibits the production of stomach acid. Because as westerners moved into the industrial era, with increasing on-the-job stress, the incidence of ulcers skyrocketed. Pretty much proves the stress theory, right? Well, Tagamet to the rescue! It was approved in the U.K. in 1976, and in the U.S. in 1979. Even though its side effects included diarrhea, rashes, dizziness, fatigue, constipation, muscle pain, mental confusion in the elderly, and even rare cases of loss of libido, erectile dysfunction, and gynecomastia in men, it became the first-ever “blockbuster drug” — the first drug to break the billion-dollar-per-year revenue level for its manufacturer. My wife’s father struggled with an ulcer that bled so much that, in 1961, he needed 32 units of blood to keep him alive.

    14 min

  7. 07/02/2021

    088: The Fruits of Her Labor

    In This Episode: It’s said women and minorities have to work a lot harder to compete in business, and I believe it. But how might they actually do that? Well, they apply Uncommon Sense — and we can all learn from a good example. 088: The Fruits of Her Labor Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * * Photos are below, in the transcript. * Frieda’s web site. Transcript Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. Just a quick note before I tell the story: this is the first episode in awhile — the first one this year, even! — because I was working on a big project that I started in August. Sorry for the silence, and I’ll be revealing what the project is in upcoming newsletters. Frieda Rapoport Caplan was determined to break into a business that, especially at the time, was completely male dominated. Caplan didn’t think the way to break in was to try to be like the men. “I couldn’t compete with all the boys on the big items,” she told a reporter from the Pasadena, California, Star-News in 2003, “so I built the business selling things that were different.” What was she selling? Produce, to supermarkets. It’s a tough, cutthroat business. But let me tell you how she got there. Born in Los Angeles to Russian immigrants in 1923, Frieda Rapoport was raised in the same neighborhood my mother was, Highland Park. Mom was born just a short time later. In 1945, Frieda graduated from UCLA with an economics and political science degree. She got a job in a lawyer’s office; he represented the CIO — the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a federation of labor unions whose name lives on today in the union AFL-CIO. In 1951 she married the president of a longshoreman’s union, Alfred Caplan. A few years after that, they had their first child, a daughter, Karen, and a second daughter, Jackie, after that. Frieda wanted to go back to work, but she had to be selective in choosing a job: she wanted a flexible schedule so she could breast-feed Karen. Her husband’s uncle owned Giumarra Brothers, a seller at the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market. He hired Caplan as a bookkeeper, even though she didn’t know bookkeeping — or the produce business. She had to learn fast, because not long after the owner went on vacation, and Caplan had to work the sales floor. It’s the late 50s now, and produce markets looked a lot different than they do today. It was typical for them to have onions, apples, and lettuce, but they probably would only have one variety of each. It wasn’t “give me a case of Fuji apples and a case of Braeburns,” it was “give me two cases of apples” and they took what was available, and they probably had never heard of Fujis or Breaburns. They likely wouldn’t even know what “sweet onions” were — they were just onions: did you want some or not? Giumarra Brothers did have one thing that was a bit unusual: portabello mushroo...

    17 min

  8. 28/12/2020

    087: I Got the Moderna Vaccine

    My ‘Reaction’ So Far In This Episode: Two days before Christmas, I got a phone call: “Can you be here at 2:00?” asked Rebekah, our small county’s (only) Public Health nurse. Yes, I said, and by 2:30 Rebekah had injected my wife and me with the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine. 087: I Got the Moderna Vaccine Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * * This episode is a follow-on to last week’s Beating the Vaccine Scare-Mongers, recorded when I had no idea I’d be getting the vaccine this soon. The two episodes don’t need to be listened to in any particular order. * Some details are via “FDA to Require Covid-19 Vaccine to Prevent Disease in 50 Percent of Recipients to Win Approval”, Washington Post, 30 June 2020. * Another source: “A Side-by-Side Comparison of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna Vaccines”, Stat News, 19 December 2020. * There are a couple of photos in the transcript below. Transcript Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. Getting the Covid vaccine on Wednesday was quite a surprise. Public Health nurse Rebekah Stewart had given Ouray County Emergency Medical Services personnel a briefing on Zoom Tuesday evening. My wife and I are volunteer medics in our rural Colorado county. Our first Covid death was April 8, pretty early in the pandemic. Rebekah didn’t even have an estimate of when their vaccine supply was arriving, but she wanted us to know the science behind the vaccine’s development. Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid vaccines are extremely similar, but as a small, rural county that didn’t have a freezer cold enough to keep Pfizer’s vaccine, we would be getting Moderna’s. She also went over the expected side effects so, when it was offered to us, we’d have enough information to make an informed decision as to whether we would want it. I had decided long ago that I would take it as soon as it was offered to me. So it was quite the surprise to get Rebekah’s call the next morning asking if we could be there at 2:00: our county’s initial supply had arrived by FedEx shortly after the Zoom call. FedEx was already working pretty late with the Christmas rush and Ouray, our county seat, is at the end of the route. While the CDC provided suggested priority “phases” for vaccine rollout while production ramps up, states are allowed to adjust the priorities. The State of Colorado decided that “Phase 1A” would include the highest-risk healthcare workers — “People who have direct contact with Covid-19 patients for 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period,” plus long-term care facility staff and residents; “Phase 1B” would include, among others, “EMS, firefighters, police, correctional workers,

    16 min
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About

Uncommon Sense is the podcast for This is True, the oldest Entertainment newsletter on the Internet, starting in early 1994 and running weekly since. TRUE features 'weird news' stories with a purpose: it's Thought-Provoking Entertainment. TRUE is news commentary using rewritten summaries of real news stories as its vehicle. The newsletter is text, but the podcast is decidedly not an audio version of the newsletter, so you may want to try a free subscription to the newsletter, too. Subscribe at https://thisistrue.com/podcast

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