Uncommon Sense: the This is True Podcast

In This Episode: Some people — usually people with Uncommon Sense — aspire to something greater than the whims of the masses and can make a huge impact on the world. This episode looks at what we as a society pay a lot of attention to, at the detriment to the much more important things we pretty much ignore. The difference: mind-blowing. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * KUSA Denver’s report on the cheerleaders being forced to endure pain, despite their protestations. Note that the TV station has a warning at the top: “Editor’s note: the video included in this story is difficult to watch and may not be suitable for all viewers.” (Note this report isn’t the basis of True’s story: that was from reports by the Denver Post, here and here.) * The Honorary Unsubscribe of WWII spy Jeannie Rousseau. * The Washington Post’s 1998 interview of Rousseau is here (but note: as an older story, it’s behind a paywall.) * I mention that Rousseau was “humble.” Here’s an example quote from that Post interview: “What I did was so little,” Rousseau said. “Others did so much more. I was one small stone.” Transcript We get more of what we pay attention to. But some people — usually people with Uncommon Sense — aspire to something greater than the whims of the masses and can make a huge impact on the world. This episode looks at what we as a society pay a lot of attention to, at the detriment to the much more important things we pretty much ignore. I have a story about each, and the contrast is mind-blowing. Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. This is a redo of a first-season episode through the lens of the newer Uncommon Sense slant. It was triggered by a story from issue 1211 of the This is True newsletter, which will be included on the Show Page at thisistrue.com/podcast11. It’s called, “Save The Cheerleader, Save The World.” The title is a catchphrase from the TV series “Heroes” …which I actually didn’t watch except for the episodes featuring my friend David Lawrence, who played the Evil Puppet Master toward the end of the series. I’m not going to read the story to you — you can find it on the Show Page — but you’ll get the idea. Apparently, East High School in Denver, Colorado, is known for its cheerleading squad. KUSA TV news in Denver was given some videos taken at the school’s Cheer Camp in June 2017. The eight videos show multiple cheerleaders being pushed — verbally and physically forced — to do splits, and every one of them is screaming in pain and asking the coaches to stop. That sounds pretty horrible, and parents complained about this, putting the blame on coach Ozell Williams. And even though several parents complained, and showed school officials the video evidence, the school didn’t do a thing about it. They specifically complained,

In This Episode: “I just don’t have time” is the modern mantra. And I’m here to tell you why that’s total B.S. Because if you apply Uncommon Sense to the time problem, that turns out to not be the problem you think it is. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * My buddy Leo Notenboom and I both liked Ruth Knelman’s story: she is also featured on Leo’s Not All News is Bad today. * The story of blood and plasma donor James Harrison was told in Episode 8: The Man with the Golden Arm. * I tell some of my stories as a volunteer medic (in text) in my blog: they’re gathered in the category EMS Stories. * My meme site that I mentioned is Randy’s Random. * If you’re a volunteer or perform other service yourself, please briefly tell other listeners in the Comments below what you do, maybe to spark an idea for them. Transcript “I just don’t have time” is the modern mantra. And I’m here to tell you why that’s total B.S. Because if you apply Uncommon Sense to the time problem, that turns out to not be the problem you think it is. I’m going to tell you how to get more out of putting time in. I’m Randy Cassingham, welcome to Uncommon Sense. This week I want to tell you about Ruth Knelman — Knelman is spelled with a K, which I mention so maybe you can visualize her a little bit better. If that doesn’t work, I have a photo on the Show Page. Born in New York, and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Ruth, her husband Edward, and their young son moved back to the United States for his job, settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Edward was a traveling salesman, and Ruth found she had a lot of time on her hands. Rather than just sit around the house, she decided to become a volunteer, first at her son’s school. She has been doing it since, even though her son long ago grew up, and Edward has died. She has done many things over the years: she taught other women at her synagogue how to cook, and is known especially for her brisket and kugel. She volunteered at the old Mount Sinai Hospital for 32 years — until it closed in 1991. These days she mostly volunteers at pre-schools — eight of them — where she reads to the kids, and helps the teachers hand out snacks. The kids call her “Grandma Ruth”. “She’s not a pushover,” said kindergarten teacher Christine Sedesky. “When she passes out snacks, the kids must respond with ‘yes, please’ or ‘no, thank you.’” You know, the kinds of basics that children should learn at home, but very often don’t these days. “I wanted to do some good,” Ruth said. “People are so involved in their own lives. You can’t be all for yourself.” So the first step in Ruth’s story of Uncommon Sense is her attitude: she had a fundamental understanding that the world doesn’t revolve around her, and it’s incumbent on us all to do something to give back. Ruth has been giving back for quite some time now. “At her age, it’s incomprehensible that she can do everything that she does,” says her son Kip, who is now 69 years old himself. You may be counting on your fingers right now: Kip being 69 pretty much implies that Ruth is somewhere around 89. But no, she isn’t. She’s 108. That’s right,

In This Episode: There’s a lot of talk about accuracy in the media these days, up to and including frequent accusations that the mainstream press publishes “fake news.” The real “fake news” isn’t what you may think — and it starts even before you click. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * Like a game of telephone (aka Chinese Whispers), the New York Post attributed their marijuana overdose story to the Reno Gazette Journal, which itself was a copy of a report from KUSA Denver. * Newsweek gets it wrong too: the “FDA” report they touted actually links to a DEA Fact Sheet that’s no longer online, but admitted there haven’t been any marijuana overdose deaths. And that’s still true. * But the CDC’s report documents that alcohol causes 88,000 deaths per year, backed up by an NHTSA report showing that drunk drivers are much more likely to be in crashes than pot smokers. So the real problem is…? We’re fighting the wrong battle (as per usual). * And this from a guy who has no interest whatever in pot, and who does (occasionally) drink. Transcript There’s a lot of talk about accuracy in the media these days, up to and including frequent accusations that the mainstream press publishes “fake news.” For the most part, I don’t think that’s true, but that doesn’t mean people who watch TV or read news online don’t have to be intelligent consumers of news, especially when it comes to medical or scientific topics. Or, to put it another way, we need to exercise Uncommon Sense as a filter on the news, and this episode has an example of why. Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. This is a look back on a story from issue 1223 of the This is True newsletter from about a year ago, which will be included on the Show Page at thisistrue.com/podcast9. It’s called Second Hand Smokescreen, and it illustrates something that really drives me crazy about the news business. I’m going to read you the story, verbatim: One of the facts that marijuana legalization proponents like to point out is that even the federal Drug Enforcement Administration admits there’s never been a single documented death from a marijuana overdose. So when a medical case report published in the journal Clinical Practice and Cases in Emergency Medicine noted that a child had died in a case “associated” with cannabis in Colorado, where marijuana is legal, headlines blared that the “first marijuana overdose death” had been recorded. Nope. First, the boy was not any sort of pot “user” — he was just 11 months old, and lived in a hotel room with his parents, who admitted they had marijuana when a blood test on the boy...

In This Episode: I had heard about the man I’m going to tell you about several times over the past several years, but I didn’t know the whole story of “The Man with the Golden Arm”. It’s a bit of a medical mystery and, as I researched all of this to understand what the heck it was that he did, I discovered he started displaying Uncommon Sense even as a child. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * My main sources: Wikipedia on the ABO blood groupings, HDN, and on Rh factors and how they were discovered by Drs. Landsteiner and Wiener. London Daily Mail. and Sydney Morning Herald. * There are a couple of diagrams in the transcript below. Transcript I had heard about the man I’m going to tell you about several times over the past several years, but I didn’t know much about him. Odds are very high that you’ve at least heard about him — in part because he was in the news earlier this year. But even if you read those news stories, I’ll bet you don’t know the whole story of James Harrison, who has been called “The Man with the Golden Arm”. It’s a bit of a medical mystery and, as I researched all of this to understand what the heck it was that he did, I discovered Harrison started displaying Uncommon Sense even as a child. Welcome to Uncommon Sense, I’m Randy Cassingham. Do you know your blood type? There are four basic blood types, as discovered by Austrian physician, biologist, and immunologist Karl Landsteiner in 1900. The following is somewhat simplified, but you’ll get the idea. Type A blood has type A antigens surrounding its red blood cells. Antigens stimulate production of, or are recognized by, antibodies. So if you give someone with Type A blood a transfusion from a donor who is Type B, which has type B antigens, or vice versa, the two kinds of blood will essentially attack each other with antibodies carried in the plasma: Type B has anti-A antibodies, and Type A has anti-B antibodies. As you might guess, mixing the two is very bad: it causes a significant adverse reaction and, considering the person apparently needed blood in the first place, they’re probably quite injured or ill, so the reaction could kill them. As you’ve already guessed, the next blood type is B, which is essentially the opposite of Type A. There’s also type AB. It has both A and B antigens, but doesn’t have any A or B antibodies in its plasma, so if a person with AB blood needs a transfusion, they can safely accept Type AB, Type A, Type B, or even the last type, Type O, because it doesn’t have type A or type B antigens either. My blood type is O-positive. So what the heck is the “positive” part? That’s called the Rh factor, which was originally short for rhesus — a kind of monkey that has long been used for medical...

In This Episode: A very different kind of episode: a story that’s not from the newsletter, but rather one that’s too long and complex to be shortened to 100ish words plus a pithy tagline. It’s an amazing story of despair, hope, and renewal, with a wild twist at the end. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * My Primary sources for the story discussed: * Woman Found Clinging to Life Ring, Hours after Jumping from Ferry * Woman Who Jumped from Ferry Savours New Lease on Life (5 December 2017) * Woman Who Jumped from Ferry Meets Her Rescuers (12 December 2017) * The story of our friend who used California’s “Death with Dignity” law is also in this blog: Tom Negrino. Transcript Sometimes, people think they’re thinking clearly, but they’re fooling themselves. This is a story about someone who wasn’t thinking very clearly, but I’m telling it because it has a great lesson at the end: how to make sure you’re achieving Uncommon Sense. I’m Randy Cassingham. Welcome to Uncommon Sense. I originally told this story in the first season, Episode 24, and I realized it still fits in the show’s new slant, so I’m telling it again. The story was not in the This is True newsletter: it’s too long and complicated to be distilled down to 100ish words plus a pithy tagline. Worse, it has a few words in it that would catch email spam filters, so it’s better suited to a different medium anyway. The story does still illustrate the importance of thinking things out before doing, and there’s a pretty wild twist at the end. The links to my sources are on the Show Page, at thisistrue.com/podcast7. My source is several articles in the Times Colonist, the newspaper serving Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. It started with a dramatic rescue story that happened in 2017 in the Strait of Georgia, on the Queen of Cowichan ferry from Horseshoe Bay in Vancouver, to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, an almost two-hour trip. The main character in the story: Mya DeRyan, a pretty 52-year-old from Ladysmith, on the east coast of Vancouver Island. Ladysmith is a small forestry, agriculture, and tourist town with a population of about 8,500. DeRyan had gotten some bad news from her doctor: she was suffering chronic headaches, abdominal pain and nausea, and in March, the doctor diagnosed her with a terminal illness, which was not specified in any of the news stories I saw. DeRyan, who says she’s skeptical of Western medicine, decided not to get treated for that illness. She took several weeks off to visit her adult son in Vancouver, wanting to spend time with him before she died. On October 30th, 2017, DeRyan said her final goodbye, and boarded the ferry back toward her home on Vancouver island. She left her son a note reading: “My body hurts, my heart is full. It’s time. I love you.” She had also posted a video on Facebook that declared she intended to die by “skinny-dipping in the ocean.

In This Episode: How two men 70 years apart inspired others to change the world in a massive display of Uncommon Sense. It’s a story about how someone figured out a way to get people to push forward, to think hard, and to solve real problems. I call it: The X Factor. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * An article about the first X Prize. * The XPrize Foundation web site. * Recent article about the water machine (pictured below): Fast Company. * And: see below for a photo of Orteig and Lindbergh, and SpaceShipOne. Transcript The more common sense in the world, the more chances we have to see Uncommon Sense — which is to say, common sense taken to the next level. I’ll talk in later episodes how the common people (you know, like us!) can develop our own common sense, and maybe even achieve Uncommon Sense. This episode, meanwhile, is a story about how someone figured out a way to get people to push forward, to think hard, and to solve real problems. I call it: The X Factor. I’m Randy Cassingham, welcome to Uncommon Sense. Raymond Orteig was born in France, and in 1882, at age 12, he emigrated to the United States — alone! He had an uncle here, in New York City, and the boy, who arrived with his life savings of 13 Francs, went right to work, getting a job as a bar porter at a restaurant. He later moved up to waiter, and then maitre’d at a hotel. By the time Orteig was 22, he was well established as a hard-working immigrant versed in good customer service, and was saving much of his earnings. In fact by then he had saved so much that when the owner of the hotel told Orteig he was selling and moving on, Orteig bought the place. He renamed it the Hotel Lafayette — hey, I said he was French! — and, with a partner, even leased a second hotel to start building his business even faster. During World War I, the Lafayette was a favorite hangout for airmen — especially French officers who were stationed in the city to work with their American allies. As Orteig grew wealthy, his philanthropic activities in New York made him a leading citizen of the city. His home country even recognized his leadership by making him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. Shortly after the war, the Aero Club of America hosted American flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker for a speech in New York City. Orteig, having quite an interest in aeronautics from spending time with airmen in his hotel, attended. He was quite inspired by Rickenbacher’s speech, in part because he promoted friendship between America and France, and the Ace said he looked forward to something that seemed almost impossible at the time: the day when airplanes could link America and France. It was 1919, and the airplanes of the time couldn’t possibly cross the Atlantic and make it such a distance! And that’s what gave Orteig a great idea: a way to inspire progress in aeronautics. Orteig wrote to the Aero Club of America in May 1919 with a fabulous offer. He wrote: Gentlemen: As a stimulus to the courageous aviators, I desire to offer, through the auspices and regulations of the Aero Club of America, a prize of $25,

In This Episode: Feel-good stories can go viral online, but let’s apply the Uncommon Sense filter and see what we can take away long after the viral story is forgotten. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * The photo: click to see larger. * There’s a reference at the end to Episode 2, which is worth a listen if you didn’t catch that one. * Yes, someone set up a GoFundMe to supposedly aid the girl, but see the first comment below: I’m very suspicious of the motives. Transcript In these acrimonious times, a feel-good story can easily go viral online, getting shared on social media, then sometimes even picked up in the news media, which is then shared on social media again. I’m going to tell you one of those stories that you might have seen recently, but then I’m going to look at it from another angle, using the Uncommon Sense filter to see what we can take away for the longer term, after the viral story is forgotten. I’m Randy Cassingham, welcome to Uncommon Sense. If you frequent social media, you probably at least saw the tease for this story, and may well have clicked on it. I’ll start with the details of what happened, including some you may not have seen in whatever writeup you happened to read, and then delve a little into what makes this a story of Uncommon Sense. It happened in Akron, New York, a town of less than 3,000 people in the western part of the state between Rochester and Buffalo. There, Caleb and Olivia Spark had just gotten married, and they went to a park with a photographer for their wedding pictures. As the wedding party was posing for the various shots, someone else in the park noticed the commotion that Saturday afternoon: Layla Lester, a 5-year-old girl. Layla is autistic, and her mother says she often doesn’t know how to interact with people, especially strangers. But when Layla saw Olivia Spark in her wedding dress, she immediately knew who it was — definitely not a stranger. “She just goes running over, arms wide open,” said her mother, Jessica, yelling, “Cinderella! Cinderella!” Jessica said later that, “When she sees a princess, she’s going to love them because she loves princesses.” Mom says Layla knows of princesses from (where else?) Disney movies. Of course, the girl also saw the princess’s entourage — her wedding party — and figured one bridesmaid was Ariel, and another was Belle, her mother said. The man in the nice suit? Well obviously, that was Prince Charming! Olivia took time out from the photo session to talk to the little girl who thought she had to be a Disney princess. She engaged with the child. It isn’t clear whether she knew right away the 5-year-old was autistic or not, and it doesn’t really matter: it was clear the girl was having a magical moment, and Olivia thought quickly on her feet. “She was just so sweet with her,” said the mother, “and just kept talking to her and asking her questions. Layla loved her.” Of course the moment had to end — the couple had guests waiting. Even that part is sweet: Olivia told the girl that they had to get to the ball! The mother said, “She watched them drive away and just kept sayin...

In This Episode: When sizing up someone in a modest profession, don’t make the mistake of thinking the job title defines the person or their abilities. They might just surprise you with an overabundance of Uncommon Sense. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * A brief bio of Reynold Johnson published by the IEEE Computer Society, when he was given 1987’s Computer Pioneer Award for RAMAC. * See several more photos, below. Transcript Way back in 1998, when the Honorary Unsubscribe first got started, they were very brief writeups, capturing just a few well-known features of the honorees’ lives. Actor Jack Lord, for instance, the first Honorary Unsubscribe honoree — his writeup just mentions “various films” and then the role that made him a star: “Steve McGarrett” in 12 years of the TV series Hawaii Five-O. That took less that 50 words, including the date and cause of death! But there’s another guy that has always stuck in my mind, even though I summed up his life later that same year in just 118 words. You’ll soon understand why I’ve remembered him for 20 years now. As I thought about him recently, I wanted to know what brought him to the place where he was — a place that made him stand out even with the few details I knew that led to my answer anytime someone asked me which of more than one thousand Honorary Unsubscribe honorees stand out for me the most. And that would be Reynold Johnson, or Rey to his friends. Rather than read you that way-too-terse summary from 1998, I decided to research him more fully so I could understand how he got to where he was and, since I did that, take the opportunity to tell his story to the world more fully right here and now. Born in Minnesota to Swedish immigrants, Johnson went to a private Christian school, perhaps for his entire 12 years of basic schooling, and he seems to have liked it: he then went to the University of Minnesota for his bachelor’s degree in Educational Administration, and became a high school science and math teacher in Ironwood on the western tip of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, on the border with Wisconsin. Today, the town has about 5,000 residents. At that time, there was a great new innovation in teaching developed by Benjamin Wood of Columbia University, something that totally changed the teaching profession. Let’s see if you can guess what Wood invented. Was it a) the intelligence test, b) standardized textbooks, c) recess, or d) the multiple-choice test? It seems weird to us today, because it seems so obvious now, but it was the multiple-choice test: he invented it in about 1929. The problem Dr. Wood found, though, was it was time-consuming to score the tests. You’d think it would be easy compared to grading the hand-written answers to various questions, but remember we’re talking about mass education here: thousands of schools jumped on the multiple choice bandwagon, and something easier was needed for the scoring. Wood appealed to many office machine companies for help, and only one responded: International Business Machines. IBM president Thomas J. Watson Sr. authorized company engineers to design a machine, which takes us on another tangent. In the late 1800s, Herman Hollerith perfected something that was first invented in 1725 to record data by punching ...

In This Episode: From California, where I came to see and reflect on the End of Mission for the Cassini spacecraft — its so-called Grand Finale. This isn’t about the mission per se, but rather the thinking behind it, how that fits into True’s mission, and how that ties into this week’s Honorary Unsubscribe! In other words, The Bigger Picture. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * JPL’s Cassini mission site. * The Honorary Unsubscribe for polymath writer Jerry Pournelle. * Yeah, he’s real: the story of the Duct Tape Robber. * The several illustrations I mention are below, intermingled in the transcript. Transcript After being out of town all last week, I’m re-recording a fan favorite episode from the first season that helps show why I’m so enthusiastic about exploring space, whether we’re exploring via humans in space, or robots. Because either way, it takes a lot of Uncommon Sense to make the missions successful. I traveled to southern California for the End of Mission of the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004. Now, I’m not going to give you an exhaustive list of the Cassini mission’s accomplishments, as amazing as those are: if you want that, just about every science-related publication or TV program or web site can pile a ton of data and gorgeous photos on you. I’m not going to try to compete on their turf even if I did start my career as a science writer. Instead, I’m going to tell you some behind the scenes stuff in hopes that you’ll see a much bigger picture. Unless you’re driving or something as you listen to this, you might want to pull up the Show Page for this episode since I’ll refer to a few things there. That page is thisistrue.com/podcast3 When Cassini was being built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, every few weeks I’d use some of my lunch hour to walk down to the gallery overlooking the clean room to watch the techs working on integrating all the scientific instruments into Cassini before launch. It took years, since it was a big and very complex spacecraft: 6.8 meters high, 4 meters wide — or 22 by 13 feet. It held 12 science instruments. Not just the obvious cameras, but a magnetometer to measure magnetic fields; imaging radar; multiple kinds of spectrometers to learn the composition of things like plasma, Saturn’s rings, and ions; a cosmic dust analyzer; and more. The resulting package — the spacecraft — was huge! I took a lot of photos during my visits, which are in a box …somewhere. But the official photographers could be in the clean room once they dressed up in those bunny suits, so I’ll put a JPL photo on the Show Page so you can see just how big the thing was. All together, with fuel, it weighed 5,600 kg, or 12,300 lb. — more than six tons. So it’s pretty much bigger and heavier than a fully loaded commercial delivery van. And that loaded van was launched on October 15, 1997, about 15 months after I left JPL to work on This is True full time. Saturn, depending on where it is in its orbit, is about 1.2 to 1.7 billion kilometers away from Earth,

In This Episode: Three amazing stories of medical professionals going outside protocol to do the right thing: to be fully human in the face of death — all in just 9 minutes. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes Since this is mostly photos (which you can click to see larger), I’ll do it with paragraphs rather than bullet points. First up is the paramedic letting his dying patient have one last look at the beach: United is long gone (and they switched to a new patch during my tenure): Last is Carsten Flemming Hansen looking at his last sunset: Transcript If there’s any profession the public deals with on a regular basis that’s bound by rules and protocols it’s medicine. In life or death situations, scrutiny is high, and professionals — particularly in the United States — know that everything they do might be reviewed by lawyers looking to justify a lawsuit. But some do the human thing anyway, guided by their Uncommon Sense. This episode has several inspiring examples. I’m Randy Cassingham, welcome to Uncommon Sense. There was a story in issue 1226 of the newsletter about something rather unusual that paramedics in Australia did that wasn’t about dumb people doing stupid things. I’m going to read the story verbatim. It’s called Final Wish: Paramedics in Hervey Bay, Qld., Australia were taking a terminally ill woman to a hospital when she sighed, she wished she could “just be at the beach,” rather than go to the palliative care unit. “Above and beyond, the crew took a small diversion to the awesome beach at Hervey Bay to give the patient this opportunity,” says ambulance officer-in-charge Helen Donaldson. “Tears were shed and the patient felt very happy.” My tagline on the story is: “Life’s a beach, then you die.” Sadly, the story made it into a “weird news” newsletter because it’s so unusual. I think it’s a wonderful story and readers loved it, and the tagline. The reason we know about this event is Queensland’s Ambulance Service posted about it on Facebook, with a picture that is on the Show Page. I’m afraid that in the U.S., medics could be disciplined for doing something like this. But Down Under, the crew was praised. The service concluded their online post, “Great work Hervey Bay team Danielle & Graeme. The Service is very proud of you.” And as a volunteer medic in a rural area in the U.S., I’m proud of them too. In the photo, we can see they took the gurney out of the ambulance and rolled the patient out on a bluff overlooking the ocean so she could not only see the water one last time, but feel the breeze and taste the salt air. Graeme is standing there, back a little bit, waiting with her, watching over her to make sure she’s OK, but just giving his patient that last moment. This isn’t a drive-by “hey look out the window when we go by here and look at the beach.” No. They stopped, they took her out, and rolled her off the pavement so she could really experience the ocean one last time. In a field bound by protocol, medics do learn to think outside the box. Still, it’s unusual. Medics are usually in hurry-up mode, get things going and get back in service so they can take the next call. But instead these medics took a few minutes out to give their patient what she really needed. They exhibited Uncommon Sense. It reminds me of when I was a full-time medic in...

In This Episode: While the stories in This is True usually point out the pitfalls of not thinking, the Honorary Unsubscribe holds up the best of humanity, which often means someone who exhibited Uncommon Sense on a regular basis. This episode not only features a interesting example, but adds some extra details and commentary. Tweet Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * Jones’s Honorary Unsubscribe writeup in the Honorary Unsubscribe Archive. * Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl on Amazon (both for Kindle and in Paperback). * Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking on Amazon (both for Kindle and in Paperback). * Miep Gies’s Honorary Unsubscribe writeup in the Honorary Unsubscribe Archive will be there until the fifth book is published (soon!) — and then it will be in that book. * My True Stella Awards book is still available as an author-signed First Edition or on Amazon’s Kindle. * Details on the Honorary Unsubscribe book collections (there are currently four volumes). Transcript While the stories in This is True usually point out the pitfalls of not thinking (or “obliviots doing stupid things”), the publication’s nearly weekly side feature, the Honorary Unsubscribe, holds up the best of humanity. This episode not only features an interesting example, but adds some extra details and commentary. I’m Randy Cassingham, and welcome to Uncommon Sense. Some readers actually like the Honorary Unsubscribe more than the meat of every issue: the stories. While the stories point out the pitfalls of not thinking — or as I sometimes stay, are about obliviots doing stupid things — the Honorary Unsubscribe holds up the best of humanity, as a sort of antidote to the stories. The Honorary Unsubscribe is an obituary of someone who died, usually sometime in the previous week to ten days before the week’s stories were written, and is typically about someone who was incredibly cool. Or, as I put it on the Honorary Unsubscribe web site, “the people you will wish you had known.” I think society lionizes the wrong people: famous actors or athletes who, sure, do a great job of entertaining us — and collecting massive salaries before going to prison for being caught thinking they can do anything they want. But I think there are better heroes to look up to, and that’s what the Honorary Unsubscribe is about. I write about one such person pretty much every week. The Honorary Unsubscribe is the upturn, if you will, at the end of the newsletter. So I’m actually going to read you an installment to show how you might benefit from being in the right place at the right time, but that’s still not enough: you also have to have the guts to stand up for what you believe in, or maybe exhibit some Uncommon Sense — because if you do, you can utterly change the world.

In This Episode: Uncommon Sense relaunches this week with a slight change of focus. Jump to Transcript How to Subscribe and List of All Episodes Show Notes * A quick (four-minute) intro on how the Uncommon Sense podcast is changing. * If you already subscribe to the podcast with an app, you don’t have to do anything to continue to get it. The “feed” remains the same. * Yes, the No Longer Weird list will be maintained, and added to. But additions won’t be mentioned in the podcast episodes. * I will continue to have transcripts of each episode made for those who would rather read than listen (or want to know what that mumbled word was!) * I appreciate your listening. -rc Transcript Welcome to the relaunch of Uncommon Sense, the podcast of This is True. This “Episode Zero” is a brief introduction. I’m Randy Cassingham, founder of This is True, and like my newsletter, I mean for this podcast to provide thought-provoking entertainment, but they’re going to be doing that in slightly different ways. The This is True newsletter, available at thisistrue.com, is the oldest online entertainment feature, launched in June 1994 and written every week since. TRUE mostly tells stories of people who didn’t think, who couldn’t muster up an ounce of common sense when they needed it. While that’s certainly entertaining, simply laughing at what I call obliviots isn’t really the point. The idea is to also be thought-provoking by showing just how dumb we humans can be — all of us — and why taking just a little more time to think is such a good idea. They’re the kinds of stories that smart parents read to their kids, or, if they’re a bit older, they let them read the stories themselves. Many parents have told me they use This is True to teach their children the value of thinking — and the consequences of not thinking. Not by trying to scare them about unlikely scenarios, but story after story after story of real people who did truly dumb things, and either suffered the consequences or put a huge burden on others — and usually both! And best of all, the kids can draw those conclusions themselves, which really drives home the lessons. The first year of the podcast pretty much extended that theme, often retelling or getting deeper into the stories from the newsletters. But the episodes that I really liked the most, and were often the most popular, were actually a little bit different. Those were the episodes where I talked about people who did think, and therefore enriched our lives. They went above and beyond, and provided a positive example for kids, and adults, to follow. They are, as I’ve often said, the people who exhibit Uncommon Sense — which, after all, has been This is True’s tagline for a while now — it’s what I’m trying to encourage. Yet their stories are not often told very widely, and I aim to change that. So I’ve taken down that first year of the podcast. For this relaunch, I’ll be focusing more on the totally cool people who set good examples. Since some of the previous episodes did focus on that, at least in part, I’ll be re-recording and re-releasing them, so the best stuff won’t be lost, don’t worry! You can listen using your favorite podcast app, which automatically downloads episodes for you, or you can stream each episode from its Show Page on the This is True site. That page will have a transcript of its episode, and will include any links available for more information. Two of my favorite episodes are coming up soon: my impressions when I went to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to witness the destruction of the Cassini spacecraft, and the story of a woman who realized the best way to help her country was to beco...

In This Episode: Mind Over Matter, or how to defeat your rationalizations so you can make a needed change. Plus a segment of No Longer Weird that maybe hasn’t even appeared in This is True before. Jump To… * Show Notes * How to Subscribe * How to Comment * Episode Transcript * List of All Episodes Show Notes * No Longer Weird: Little boys getting stuck in a “claw machine.” Examples from Allentown, Florida, and ABC News. * Randy’s lawsuit book that he mentions: True Stella Awards. * The FastDiet book describes the benefits of intermittent fasting. * For the record, the calorie count for 1 cup of milk is Nonfat: 83, Low fat (1% milkfat): 103, Reduced fat (2%): 124, Whole (3.25%): 148. So really, not really a huge calorie difference, especially when you consider that the higher fat content creates better satiation. For coffee, 2 tbsp of half-and-half is 37 calories, and that amount of heavy cream is 101. * Kit mentioned Leo: that’s Leo Notenboom of askleo.com. * Kit talked about her Camino de Santiago walk in the previous episode. * And we talked about our ADD (we aren’t “hyperactive” so we prefer that term over ADHD) in episode 13. * That breakfast is the “most important meal that gets the day started” was first published in 1917, in Good Health magazine. And who edited that magazine? John Harvey Kellogg, the director of a Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, which was founded by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He and his brother invented corn flakes in 1894. (They’re terrible on purpose: his development of a bland diet was driven in part by the Adventist goal of reducing “sexual stimulation.”) * Randy misspoke on one thing about table sugar. It is sucrose, which is roughly 50-50 glucose and fructose. And indeed, high-fructose corn syrup is 45 percent glucose and 55 percent fructose. And, indeed, glucose is mostly metabolized in the mitochondria, while fructose is metabolized almost exclusively by the liver. How to Subscribe Search for Uncommon Sense in your podcast app or on iTunes, or manually enter this feed URL into your app: https://thisistrue.com/feed/podcast Also available via Google Play, PlayerFM, TuneIn, Podfanatic,

In This Episode: We’re Back! We talk about another pack of clueless, ridiculous school officials who run rampant over students — and a meek “anything goes” school board. Plus a segment of No Longer Weird. Jump To… * Show Notes * How to Subscribe * How to Comment * Episode Transcript * List of All Episodes Show Notes * No Longer Weird: People “hiding” their guns in an oven thinking it’s a safe place …until someone turns on the oven. Recent example: Warren Man Shot by Gun While it Was in His Oven from WFMJ Youngstown, Ohio. * Full list of No Longer Weird entries. * For more info on Kit’s adventure, see article on the Camino and/or the Knights Templar. * The photo of Kit at the Knights Templar castle is just below. * The official video for the musical piece is at the end of the transcript, below (currently at 583 million views!) How to Subscribe Search for Uncommon Sense in your podcast app or on iTunes, or manually enter this feed URL into your app: https://thisistrue.com/feed/podcast Also available via Google Play, PlayerFM, TuneIn, Podfanatic, ListenNotes, Overcast, Stitcher, Podbean, Listen Notes — and more to come? Comments and Questions? Your comments on this episode are welcome below. Questions can be added there, sent via this site’s Contact Page, or tweeted to @ThisIsTrue. Transcript Welcome to Uncommon Sense, the Podcast companion to the This is True newsletter, with the mission to promote more thinking in the world. I’m Randy Cassingham. Kit: I’m Kit Cassingham. This week we’re discussing a story from issue 1250 of the newsletter, which will be included on the Show Page at thisistrue.com/podcast38 Before we get to that story, it’s been awhile since we had a new entry on the No Longer Weird list. Kit: It’s been awhile since you had an entry. Randy: It’s been a while since we’ve done any of this!

In This Episode: Another No Longer Weird story for the list, why episodes will be a bit sporadic over the next six weeks, and the role model that is Homer Simpson. Jump To… * Show Notes * How to Subscribe * How to Comment * Episode Transcript * List of All Episodes Show Notes * No Longer Weird: arrestees who jump over into the driver’s seat and steal the police car they’re in. (Example: Tulsa World) * Wikipedia article on the Camino de Santiago, and the Martin Sheen film The Way. * Have questions about about This is True, stories in general, or the Thinking Toolbox series? Let me know via the Contact page, or tweet @ThisIsTrue, so I have something to talk about while Kit is gone! How to Subscribe Search for Uncommon Sense in your podcast app or on iTunes, or manually enter this feed URL into your app: https://thisistrue.com/feed/podcast Also available via Google Play, PlayerFM, TuneIn, Podfanatic, ListenNotes, Overcast, Stitcher, Podbean, Listen Notes — and more to come? Comments and Questions? Your comments on this episode are welcome below. Questions can be added there, sent via this site’s Contact Page, or tweeted to @ThisIsTrue. Transcript Randy: Welcome to Uncommon Sense, the Podcast companion to the ThisIsTrue.com newsletter with the mission to promote more thinking in the world. I’m Randy Cassingham. Kit: I’m Kit Cassingham. Randy: This week we’re discussing a story from issue 1243 of the newsletter, which will be included on the Show Page at thisistrue.com/podcast36. But before we get to that story, we’ve got two things to talk about, the first being another segment of No Longer Weird. In March, I passed on a story submitted by readers from Tulsa, Oklahoma: police there arrested Angie Lynn Frost, 36, after a traffic stop, and the officer handcuffed Frost and put her in the back of his patrol car. Then, the officer said, “I heard the sound of the electric door locks f...