What Happened When We Stopped Squatting?

0:00Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Science. I'm Michael Stevens. And I'm Hannah Fry. And this is an episode of Field Notes. It's a sort of grown-up game of show and tell between me and Michael. And delightfully, we get to do the show and tell in person. Yes. And before we started rolling, you said that this is going to involve physical activity. Well, actually, I think it's going to involve resting states. Oh, now you're speaking my language. Yes, resting states. But some of them are more physical than others. We've got right to the heart of it already. This is what I brought for you today. Oh. Do you know what that is? No, but I'm going to guess. I'm going to guess that it's a kind of chair.

0:41It is a kind of chair. Yeah. Okay, so I got this. I got to go and film near lake takana up in kenya really really really really really rural part of kenya and uh the people there are still largely nomadic they'll still move around and the men in particular they have goats that they will take to different pastures yeah and as they travel around, they have two things that they carry with them, for sure. One is a cane and one is this thing here. What do they call it? This thing here is called an ekihalon. I imagine I have not pronounced that correctly, but you know, you can tell me in the comments. Okay, it's a stool. I called it a kind of chair. Interestingly, what's the difference? Whether it has a back?

1:23Yes. Because it doesn't have a back. It doesn't have a back. It doesn't have a back. But it'll support a body. Yes. It could also be used as a headrest. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So if you want to lie on the ground, then you can use that instead. Right. Basically, I want to do the history of squats. The thing about these is they're like, it's one per person, right? Yeah, I figured. So it's like, it's molded over the years to your butt cheek, not my butt cheek. Whose butt cheeks? I don't know. Okay. I bought it off a tribesman. Mystery butt cheek shape. I think it's either somebody. So you're saying it's been used. Oh, yeah. Can you not see the black stripe in the middle? Well, I can now. Yeah.

1:59Oh, this has been used. This is perfectly crafted to it. How did you get it? You didn't take it from someone who has to sit on the ground. We went to go and visit the tribe. And as we were leaving, they were like, they have like lots of beads as well. Yeah. Yeah. And so they were like, you know, we were doing like some trading. It was awesome. That's cool. Okay. Would you like to sit on it? Yeah, I would love to. Wait, let me sit on it and just, I'm going to guess how it works. Okay, go on. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. All right, here's something really cool. The earliest written description of cancer that we've ever found is from an ancient Egyptian papyrus that was around before even Cleopatra was on the throne.

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3:31visit cancerresearchuk.org slash rest is science. Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goalhangers, the rest is football. This episode is brought to you by WISE. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee, and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies. Most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups

4:13or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, get wise, t's and c's apply observe the north american dad 50s great polo collection he enters his vehicle information on carvana an offer appears in minutes remarkable he squints reads it again smiles and says dang that's a good offer the The highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle. No one called him boss. He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply. What I will say is the thing that you didn't see is that we just moved the table. So I'm going to try it long ways.

5:14And I'm just going to bend my knees like this. Yes. I'm not doing like a squat or anything. No. How does it feel? This feels the best with this acute angle here. Right. So I'm putting a lot of weight on this. So the angle of your knees, your thighs to your knees, it's slightly unfortunately below the... We should just do the episode like this. So Michael, what do you think? If you were there. If I go back here. Yeah, go on. Then maybe you can see better that I've got. There we go. Now you can see it. Okay, so this is. Okay. This is how it's actually pretty comfortable. You look really comfortable. I'm putting a lot of weight on this and my legs are only here for the balance. Right. There's like almost no pressure on my feet.

6:02Exactly. Do you feel that sort of you could chill there all day can you i i could for a long time eventually i would switch it up but okay now i want you to try something else yeah can you do a resting squat oh you mean like the like the serbian squat like an old school how people used to get into a resting position can you do one of those so i want you to basically i want you to to feel this stool as an upgrade that's what i want you to okay i want you to do so like now should my feet be flat yes your heels should be on the ground not sure oh you know what that's pretty good i can into it, but I don't feel very balanced. I think I need to lean forward more. Do you think this is what school teachers feel like when they're like, now children?

6:52Hold on. That's pretty good, you know. I think that's better than I can do. Oh, yeah. When are you going to try? Off camera. That's what I'm going to try. Okay. How does that feel in comparison? Not as good. Right. Why? Can you tell me why? I am i am wondering why hold on let me think it through so my legs have to be a lot more crunched up correct when my butt is lower yes the angle of your of your knee yeah in this you can get to about let's say you know 40 or so it was less than 90 but it was uh way bigger than when i was squatting in which case they were basically closed at the knee as much as i could exactly and at which point you've got nerves really big nerves and you've got big uh arteries and veins that are

7:38running around the back of your knee right and they get kind of compressed really hard and that can end up giving you basically pins and needles in your legs. I think there's another reason why it feels horrible though, other than the fact your knees are really crunched. Why? I mean, there's a few. One of them is that when you're in the squat position, all of your weight is essentially going through your ankle. Yep. Whereas when you're on this, your weight is on your sit bones. Yeah. Like in your... Yeah, and my soft gluteus maximus and the fat and all that. Yeah. Exactly. So your legs are just carrying much less tension through them and are just able to, as you said, they're there to stabilize you rather than necessarily hold you in position.

8:17Yeah. But the other thing, the main thing about this is the angle that you are making with your foot and your shin is much greater it's much bigger because when you're in the squat position you are basically at a real you know this is extremely small this angle between the two yeah that angle by the way that is the reason why a lot of people cannot get down into that squat position that's got position by the way every toddler on earth can do it yeah can do it really easily. And there are places all around the world where actually adults, you know, even sort of grannies basically can very comfortably rest in that squat position. However, this is like a you use it or you lose it situation. And if you do not practice

9:05changing the angle between your foot and your shin to make it smaller and smaller and smaller, essentially what happens is your tendons on the back of your ankle, your Achilles and so on, they shorten, then they can't be lengthened into that position and you are locked. You can no longer get down. That's what I was feeling. That's why when I first squatted like that, I was on my tiptoes to keep the angle between the top of my foot and my shin big. If you're doing this all the time, it's extremely comfortable. There's been lots of studies looking at parts of the world where people are just squatting all the time. And actually people can spend as much time squatting as we spend sitting in a chair. Oh, interesting. Just not doing the same thing. Now let's say you are a squatter.

9:46Are chairs less comfortable? Well, no. Chairs are, in the same way as this is a luxurious upgrade. Yeah. You know, you get to switch off your, you get to switch off your shins. You get to relax your ankle joint. You're just basically going for gravity on your sit bones instead. You kind of, it's not like you're holding yourself in a position. It's really passive. A chair is even more passive still. Chairs is just like an absolute step up from anything you've had before. Let me come on to chairs in a second. Okay. Because the thing is, is that if you are a habitual squatter, right? Makes it sound like a bad thing somehow. There is a clue that gets left in your skeleton that you do this a lot.

10:27So we can look at historical bone records and tell how squatty people were. Yeah. Exactly. It is called a squatting facet. Right. And it's basically a shiny bit of bone that you get between sort of right at the base of your of your shin, just at the top of your foot. And essentially what's happening is this is really wish I'd worn better socks today. What's wrong with your socks? I mean, they're fine. They're just not my best pair. Oh, they're fun. What is that? Like coral? I'll be honest with you. They almost always have swear words on the micro because no. And they know that away from this podcast, I have the voice of a sailor. Okay. It says boobs. It says... I don't actually know what it says.

11:14It says corals. Oh, fine. Corals. It says corals. I could tell that they were little corals in the shape of letters. I'm the ultimate sock identifier. I can't squat for shoot, but I can read a sock yeah the ones I was wearing yesterday said I f***ing hate people so now is that you saying that or do your socks feel that way maybe it's both I mean mate a sock would definitely hate people if it was put in a squat position all the time I don't know they were born to be used in the way that they're used right but if you put in a squat position all the time i don't know they were born to be used in the way that they're used right but if you were in a squat position then you're like rubbing this bit all the time okay i mean you basically you want to think of this as a as a child as a triangle

11:55yeah or like you're thinking very much about the angle of your foot and your shin and the more and more and more you close this angle right the more that your shin is rubbing on your ankle bone. And this is where you get bones rubbed together. Exactly. Ah, exactly. And this is where you get this polished patch on the shins. Now, one thing that's worth saying is it doesn't necessarily mean you're definitely squatting because it can be that you're kneeling a lot so if you kneel you can make that if you're sort of on your knees you can make that um make that angle with your foot and your your shin or if you're climbing uphill a lot oh okay right so like i think you probably find them in for example yeah right because either way whether you're kneeling on your knees with your foot

12:40that's that's genuinely impressive is it that's genuinely impressive. Is it? That's genuinely impressive. Do you know what? The other thing is I actually worked on this a lot in Pilates for years and I really struggled with it. I really struggled getting a good angle. But yours is good. Yours is really good. I've also got pretty big feet for how short I am. Do you know what? You do? What size are your feet? Ten and a half. Hey, hey! I don't know. What's that in UK? I don't know. Two blobberborts or something? Exactly. Seven barleycorns. But sometimes I can wear elevens. When you've got thick socks on. Enough about me. Okay. So here's the thing. What this means is that you can look back at skeletons of different types of people

13:22that lived across the centuries and millennia, and you can work out whether they were squatters. So there's one study from the 1970s by an academic called Eric Trinkaus, who was looking at the shins of Neanderthals and demonstrated that they have this same shiny little facet on their shin bones. So Neanderthals were squatters. Yeah, they were squatting because they probably weren't like walking uphill more than usual. Have we looked at other hominids of the time? Like, can we find contemporaneous Homo sapiens skeletons and see if they squatted more or less? Yes. We also know Homo sapiens, absolute squatters. Love a good squat. Yeah. All the way through history, all the way through sort of the ancient world,

14:13all the way up until the medieval period, at which point squatting started to decline, which just so happened to coincide with the proliferation of the chair. Don't always think about chairs as inventions. Right. But they were and they proliferated. And there's a lot of natural chairs. You can find a tree, a rock formation, but one that you could bring into your home, expect to have. Yes. It's like not, we haven't always had them. You are sitting in a luxury right now, okay? This is, you do not know how lucky your body is to be in this particular position. I don't. I take it for granted. Yeah, I take it for granted too. So chairs, by the way, were invented as like an object that was created that you could sit in, were created a really long time ago.

15:08There's like evidence for them going back thousands of years. However, even up until like the 1600s in Europe, if you had a chair, it was only for the important person. Right. This is why you have a chairman. Yeah. Like the chairman would be the important person that would get to sit and luxuriate in the chair. And everyone else was on the floor. Wow. Maybe on a bench. This is making me appreciate in a whole deeper way that bit in I think it's the Borat movie where he goes into a hotel room and it has a bed and a chair. And he's like, I have a chair. And he sits in it and he goes, king in the castle, I have a chair. And it's like, it's so bizarre that he thinks a chair is neat. And yet, historically, yes, it was an important person's rare device.

15:57Yes, completely rare device. You were literally the king in the castle. Do we know why, though? Because obviously the idea of a chair is ancient. But what, people just, their bones and with chairs. But in China, actually from like the second century onwards, people were having chairs. By around about 1500, you know, when chairs were just beginning to be used more commonly in Europe, in China it was expected that if you were a posh person, right, you would be sitting at a table eating your dinner while sitting in a chair. And China sticks out, you know know around the rest of asia in particular because in japan i mean they were very late to adopt chairs you can still there are many restaurants you can go into japan where you

16:55are sitting you're sitting on a bench or sitting sort of really on the floor and that actually wasn't until after the end of the second world war that people like okay look guys we need to modernize we need to get american here we're gonna start with chairs we're gonna do this with chairs but what's interesting what i really like about this is that in europe uh we know that the chair started to become more and more commonplace in people's homes because when uh there were documents of people's wills when you were emptying people's houses when they died. Initially, no chairs anywhere. And then it started being like, this person died with a chair. King in the castle. Nice. And then more and more and more and more and more, there would be chairs all over the place. I just love these kinds of stories because it's like you take two different distinct historical records. You take the things that we are writing

17:48down and you take the marks on our bones and they line up. They match up with one another. I think that's so amazing. I want to go back to this stool though, right? And I want to do a trade off, a comparison, a direct chair versus stool situation. Okay. Because I'm not convinced that we've ended up with better instrument here. Okay, tell me why. Okay, so when you were sitting on the little stool, yeah, you could relax there, you can chill out. But your muscles are still actively working, right? You're still doing these adjustments. You're still holding yourself up. You're still supporting your torso with muscles. When you sit in a chair you're not doing any of that no which is part of the reason why if they can feel so comfortable yeah every single one of your

18:33muscles is just like i get to just completely switch i know something i think about a lot because you may have noticed when i sit in chairs i often really really you do don't i just i wish it was a bed and i'm like look it's a bed with a lot of pillows i want to do less and less this is how i normally am sitting because i find this and this worries me when i sit like this i'm like what is this exercise give me a break because i'm having to to use muscles more than when I'm just lying down. Have you watched the TV show Succession? Yes. Okay. So the Culkin guy, what's his name? Oh, Roman. In that show, he sits like I do. And I felt so seen by media. He's always like a liquid poured into a, not even a chair, but any kind of piece of furniture.

19:30He's just like no muscles being used at all. And I'm like, yes, there's at least two of us. Yes, I think in that show, I think there's many people, Michael, who would be like, I just really feel like I can identify with the most abhorrent character in the most abhorrent family. I'm only identifying with one feature of Roman. Okay, so here is the thing, right? Because you are switching off completely. Because, I mean, let's go with your extended version of just pouring yourself into it. But even when you're just using a chair that has a back to support you, you're no longer holding yourself up with muscles. You're just, you're basically like hanging off from your ligaments, your skeletal structure.

20:14Literally the poly exclusion principle is why I'm still above the ground. I can't go through this matter. And so I'm supported. And so therefore I'm supported. And so here's the thing, you know, within like a really really short space of time the twitches and your muscles just completely switch off your your muscles are completely sedentary but that then has this knock-on effect it changes the amount of fat and sugar that is in your bloodstream also your pelvis the way your pelvis is tilted when you're sitting right is different to how it would be when you're standing up right so if you kind of imagine i like to think of like your pelvis as though it's like a ball that can be like rotated up or rotated back when you're sitting you're tilting it in this way right

20:54right especially when you're kind of like a bit slumped yeah so you're you're you're like your buttocks right your your gluteus maximus are not switched on in the same way and then you're especially when you start slouching forwards as well so the top of your shoulders is going this way you're kind of curling your whole body in like this um it's just like not good basically all of your your muscles start shortening in the wrong places and this is the reason why people end up with so many back problems because they're, because the human body is not supposed to be in that position of rest. When you're on the stool, on the other hand, because you're making these micro adjustments all the time, like it does feel a tiny bit more effortful than just being like, pull me into a chair.

21:40But it's just for your body, it's just way, way better. I mean, I think sitting on like those exercise balls is a much more active kind of sitting. It's using and requiring a lot more muscle action. Right. So. But even on that, though, your thighs. They aren't getting much. They're pretty relaxed. Yeah. They're not getting much at all. Depends, I guess, on how you use it and how you balance. How bouncy you are. Yeah. How bouncy you are. Did you ever do that? Did you ever try and sit on one of them balls? Yeah, I did. Because we got one when my wife was due very soon, you know? And I was like, oh, I kind of like this. But after like five minutes, I'd be like, oh, cramping up the muscles. I'm not strong enough. Too much. Too much. Too much. Pour me into a chair bed.

22:25Right. Yeah. So anyway, that's what I've decided. I've decided we're getting rid of these. We're going to get two of the stools. We're going to get two of these and we're going to do the rest of our podcasting just sitting on one of these little stools. Sounds all right. I think that's fine. I mean, we could go further and each get a treadmill and we could be actually actively sprinting for the whole 40, 50 minutes. Full pelt. I mean, hey, look, why not? I think people would like to see it. Why not? Maybe for our 200th episode. Okay, deal. Deal, deal, deal. All right, should we go to a break? Yeah. Come back with your questions in a minute. Welcome to Sephora. I'm looking for a perfume that's not

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24:43All right, welcome back. We are now going to take a look at some questions that came from you guys. We are indeed. OK, this came in from Heavenality from Reddit, who asks, when driving on the road and I go around a curve, which spot on my car receives the most air pressure other than the front? I love this question because I know some pretty cool videos have been made about it, but I want to first give the, like, not the answer heavenality once. Deal. Which is that as you're turning in your car around a curve and you wonder where's the air pressure higher, on the inside of the curve or the outside? The answer is. We're talking about outside of the car here or the inside of the car? Inside the car.

25:29Right. Inside the car, you've got this air and it's sloshing around. As you turn, the greatest air pressure in the whole vehicle is in the pistons in the engine. Because, I mean, that's huge, right? I found this cool website called performancetrends.com and they analyze the pressure in your engine. It gets up to like 800 or more than a thousand PSI inside that cylinder when it explodes, when the spark plug like shoots off. And think about what PSI is. That is pounds per square inch. Yeah. So 800 PSI, wait, do a metric conversion for me, will you? It's like 2.2 pounds to a kilo. Is that right? Yeah. So 800 PSI is something like 362 kilos per square inch. Yeah. So that's like, imagine getting 362 kilos and putting it on a space that's like that big.

26:25Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. Wild. That's enough to turn a driveshaft and move your car. The next highest air pressure is going to be like in your tires. But I think what the question is asking about is inside the car where the people are, what's happening to the air? And the air really is sloshing around in there. So when you make a turn, all that air wants to continue on in a tangential direction. So straight ahead, tangent to that curve that you're taking, which means it all gets crushed up against the far side of the car, away from the turn. So the air pressure is greater there than it is on the other side of the car that's closer to the axis of your rotation. And you can see this by putting a helium balloon in a car because you get the opposite from the helium balloon that you get from the people in the car and let's say you take a right turn, the humans are all doing what the air does.

27:26They're all going. I'm going straight ahead. Now the car is moved and I appear. I feel this fictitious force pushing me this way. And we all move away from the center of the curve. But the air does that, too. A helium balloon floats because the air pressure below it is greater than the air pressure above it. That's why they float up. And because they're so darn light that the air can actually accomplish the movement of the balloon. But usually the air pressure is greater the lower down you go, because the air is all piled on top of itself under Earth's gravity. When you turn in the car, the air on the far side, let's say on the left side of the car gets denser. And so this has higher pressure.

28:07And that balloon is now being more pushed by air on the left than by air on the right. And it will move towards the center of the curve. So when you, you know, turn your car really fast, everyone inside goes like this. The helium balloon goes like this. That's amazing. It's really counterintuitive. And it's so funny to watch. Same goes for accelerating. Well, I mean, turning is also a kind of acceleration for all of you physics listeners out there. But if you if you accelerate forward or break, the balloon will also do what you don't expect. So if you break really fast, the humans all go forward. But the helium balloon flies to the back. That's amazing. Yeah, because the air all crowds up in the front.

28:48It has so much higher pressure up here. The balloon's like, whoa, I'm being pushed more by the stuff now in the front. And vice versa. You speed up in a car. People get thrown back. The helium balloon comes forward. Yeah, it comes forward. So it looks like it's alive. It's making these decisions that are counter to nature, but it's pretty neat. That is so fun. I absolutely want to do that. You got to do it. I really, I want to try and do that. Hopefully the balloon, you know, going forward to the wind speed, just careful acceleration, basically, so that it doesn't block your view. I think the same thing happens with anything that's floating in a liquid. Like if you tied a ping pong ball to the bottom of a jar

29:27and filled it with water, it would also have that kind of opposite of what you would expect motion. Yeah, that's amazing. I like that so much. Okay, next question. This is from Jacob Ewing from Reddit, who says, does the gas in my stomach affect the pitch of my burp? So the answer is sort of yes and sort of no there's more to it than that um but i but i believe i believe that when you're drinking soda you get lower deeper pitch burps because it's carbon dioxide as opposed to lighter gases so partly so for example when you helium's featured quite a lot in this episode, but when you take helium, that is what's happening. As you say, the helium gas is much lighter and so it changes the resonance that's going on inside of your throat. So your voice box is still working in exactly the same way. You're still like making the vibrations, the flaps are opening and closing in exactly the same way. But because it's filled with a gas of a different density the resonance is different right exactly it moves much faster higher pitch and then

30:30therefore you sound really squeaky so it is true if you had lots of carbon dioxide which is denser that you would get it lower pitch but actually i think what's really happening here is that when you drink a can of soda, the amount of gas that you're producing is so much greater than it does when you just swallow a little mouthful of air. And for that, it's a bit like if you imagine you're taking a balloon and you do like a really small little escape of gas, you get a really high pitch squeak. Whereas if you just let it go and it's like, blah, blah, blah, blah. Much lower. Right. So that's essentially, I think, what's happening here. You've got the soda in your stomach, which can produce, like a can of soda can produce as much as a liter of carbon

31:16dioxide. Oh, wow. Your stomach is not designed to hold a liter of gas. So when it comes out, it's like, blah. It really opens everything up. Yeah. It's exactly like the balloon. So what we've got to do is put a liter of helium in someone's gut and see what that burp sounds like. Yeah. I bet it would be a bit higher, but I think you're right. When it, when you're comparing swallowed air versus a soda burp. Yeah. Yeah. You're talking about a balloon going and a balloon going. Right. Totally. Totally. Exactly. All right. Last question. This is from quick. Hurry up. Slow down from Reddit, obviously, with that name. OK. It is what it is. Why do tautologies sound like wisdom? Are they hitting some sweet spot between ambiguity and relevance?

32:01Why do some like business is business? Boys will be, feel like a nefarious attempt to stop us thinking critically, whereas What Is Done Is Done, Wherever You Go, There You Are, feels like either acceptance or a platitude? of a thought terminating cliche where you're just supposed to stop thinking now because I've said something that is so fundamental that so it's not it's not it's not even like axiomatic. It's just straight up a tautology. I just said the same thing twice. There's nothing else to say. But why do we have to do this? it is the way it is there's no why there there's nothing else to describe right there's no more questions to be asked or thoughts to be have it's all terminated and why don't you get that with it is you do i mean it is is is like a very you know

33:00deep way of saying like but why why? Why is this here? Because it is. You're right. I know it's more poetic if I say it's here because it is. But either way, it is interesting that we don't always catch tautologies. We instead feel really comfortable with them. A tautology is like a redundant phrase. It's something that is just you're saying the same thing twice. You're saying the same thing twice. You already said that. So I don't know why psychologically we don't catch them better because I rarely catch them. And then I'll read, you know, the next sentence in the book and they're like, but that's a tautology. And I'm like, what was it? Oh, I just thought it was smart. I mean, not that tautologies can't be smart, but yeah, we feel very comforted by them.

33:51It's like, look, it's been put into words and it's done. That's not to say they're always satisfying. I think boys will be boys is a real like, yeah, you're right. But there are other things that can describe that need more said. Because in a way, boys will be boys is the same as it is what it is. It's just you're applying it to a specific circumstance, which comes with its own like heavy history and cultural and societal. I mean, yeah, yeah. It is what it is. Que sera, sera. That is telling us just chill out. You can't do anything about it. We're not going to do anything about it and just accept it. And when it comes to, oh, why must love be so difficult? Que sera, sera. You know, but sometimes we don't want to be told, look, that's just a thing that happens.

34:47We go, no, but it doesn't have to be. Right. Of course. So I guess tautologies don't always satisfy us. The problem with explanation in general is that it never ends. You can always ask why. You can say, well, they did that because of this psychological phenomenon known as blank. Yeah, but why? Well, because of the neurotransmitters in the brain that are a product of natural selection. But why? Well, because in this universe, you know, logical contradiction means an impossibility. But why? Well, I don't know if God comes first or logic, but it could be. Why? Whereas if I just say it is what it is, whatever will be will be. There literally isn't anything else. Yeah, you're right. It's the end of the discussion and we can move on i do also think though so sometimes i deliberately

35:31create tautologies especially when i'm writing not so much for like scripts or or whatever but when i'm writing i deliberately create them because i think sometimes um your brain just needs a moment to like settle on one particular idea before you're ready to move on right because i think that if you i don't know like it is doesn't feel as satisfying to me as it is what it is yeah and i i wonder whether there is part of that that's like actually i just need it said twice sometimes. Yep. Now, I bet you're right. As a rhetorical device, yeah, it's a great way to pause without pausing. Yeah. You've added more, but it's actually a reflection on the same thought. You can use it really well to highlight what the important thoughts are as well. Yes, you can. And sometimes what might be technically a tautology

36:27isn't because you've rephrased it and saying it and hearing it in two different ways can help a lot. And even if you're not rephrasing it, it is what it is. You're highlighting, you're emphasizing what you've said. It's like you yelled it or underlined it. You repeated it. Right. Sometimes you just need a bit of repetition. Well, it is what it is. And this is what this was. As ever, with Build Notes, you can send us in your questions. The rest is science at gohunga.com. Or leave them on our subreddit. The rest is science. Or leave it as a comment wherever you are watching slash listening to this. and i hope that you're already following us wherever it is that you are and if you're not ask yourself why not are you why not what i don't know is it is it a tautology to say either you are

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