The Brighter Side of Dying & Words We Use Interchangeably – But Shouldn’t
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Today on Something You Should Know, the odd things that affect how much you enjoy food that have nothing to do with the food itself. Then, a hospice nurse answers questions about death and dying you've always wondered about, because it's not like in the movies.

I've never seen one movie or television show that does death right. I've never seen anyone give like a big long monologue, close their eyes and just die. Never, never, never, never. Also, how eating first can help you make a better decision and subtle word differences you may not know, like the difference between convince and persuade, the deep web and the dark web, venom and poison.

Poison is when you bite it, and venom is when it bites you. So poison is when you eat, drink, touch, or inhale something. Venom is when an animal actively injects you with their toxins. All this today on Something You Should Know. As a podcast network, our focus is bringing you shows you love to listen to. But we also sell merch related to those shows. And partnering with Shopify has made that both possible and simple for us to do.

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Something You Should Know. Fascinating Intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi there. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

So, you would think, wouldn't you, that when you taste food, it is the taste of the food that determines if you like it, if you don't like it, how much you like it. And while that's certainly true, the taste of food can also be influenced by things that have nothing to do with the food. For example, if you would like yogurt to taste even creamier and more delicious, you would

Use a plastic spoon instead of a metal spoon. Because when they test this, when they have people eat with plastic spoons, people like yogurt better. If you'll be enjoying, say, some cheese, you're better off eating it from a knife. Cheese tasters rated samples as more aged, saltier, and more satisfying when they ate the cheese from a knife rather than a fork, spoon, or toothpick.

Color contrast matters too. Less contrast makes things taste sweeter. So white yogurt on a white spoon, for instance, tastes sweeter than pink yogurt on a white spoon. All kinds of things influence how you enjoy or don't enjoy the food you eat. And that is something you should know. Music

Something you and I and everyone else has in common is we're all going to die. Hopefully that's put off for as long as possible, but nevertheless, there will come a day when you no longer exist on this planet. It's not a topic that people like to talk about much, but it's something I think we all think about from time to time. We all have some curiosity about this subject. How can you not?

And so I want you to meet someone who knows quite a bit about the topic of death and dying up close and personal. Julie McFadden is a hospice and palliative care nurse with over 15 years experience. And she's on a bit of a mission to normalize death because really there's nothing more normal than death.

Julie has over 1 million followers on TikTok. She's been featured in Newsweek, USA Today, The Atlantic, Business Insider, The Daily Mail, and other media outlets. She's author of a best-selling and highly acclaimed book on the topic called Nothing to Fear, Demystifying Death to Live More Fully. And she's going to tell you a story at the end of this interview, especially if this is a topic that you think, I don't know, death,

She has a great story, a great experience that she had that you really need to hear. Hey Julie, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks for having me. So most of us don't spend a lot of time thinking about death. I don't think we want to. Maybe we like to just pretend it's not going to happen.

And there you are, someone who gets up every day to go to work and deal face-to-face with death and dying as a hospice nurse. So why do you do that? And what is it you want people to understand about this? What I want people to know is, unfortunately, it's inevitable. So having a view of it's not going to happen or living in denial,

Or we don't even have to have a positive view about it, really. It's just the fact that I want people to understand that they are going to die. And I feel like that sounds maybe scary to some people. But from what I've witnessed is the more people die,

realize that it seems to affect how they live in a positive way, at least from the patients that I've witnessed over and over again. People who can really come to grips with the fact that they aren't always going to be alive can help them live better, more fulfilled, I think, and then in turn, it helps them die better. So there's really two views of this in a very fundamental way, that people believe that

When you die, that's it. You're done. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And other people believe that something else happens. And I don't know what that is or whatever. Where do you, which camp are you in? Is this the end when you die or is there something else? Do you have any sense of that?

I have a belief, which I know is just a belief, that it is not just we die and that's it. So I have a belief that there is something, I don't know what it is, I think it's good and comforting after we die. However...

You know, I fully understand that. I don't know. I don't know. And I also think that if it is nothing right, if it is just we die and then we're dead, even though people think that's scary, I think we won't have the awareness of it being you have to have awareness for something to be scary. Right. So even if it is nothing, I don't think it'll be as scary as people think because the awareness won't be there.

I remember hearing somebody say, and it was kind of comforting, that if in fact you die and that's it, it's not sad for you in the same sense that before you were born it wasn't sad for you.

Yes, that's what I always say, too. I always go like I was born in 1982. And I always think think about 1972. Did I feel sad that I wasn't there that I wasn't that I didn't exist? No, I didn't know. I didn't know any better. Right. And I think even if even if there is nothing after we die, we're not we're not going to know just like we didn't know before we were born. You know, it's not sad or scary because we didn't exist.

Um, which that sentence alone feel, I think people could hear that and feel scared, but generally speaking, it's like, think about before you were born. How'd that feel? Like nothing. I would imagine. Well, you tell me, what is it that people talk about when they know that the end is near for them and you're in the room with them and they're talking, whatever they're saying, are there common things that come up?

Yeah, I think people have to understand too, as a nurse, most of my patients are talking to me about logistical things like, you know, what's it going to feel like? What symptoms am I going to have? So I am talking a lot about that to my patients and their families. So many people, people think that's depressing, but like to have to talk to people about what their death will be like. But what I find is most people, um,

get relief in kind of knowing what to expect. So I get a lot of questions about like, how long do I have? What's it going to be like? Is there is it going to be a lot of pain? And really, hospice workers are experts at death and dying, and we can kind of tell them what it's going to be like. And they seem to have a lot of relief from that. And then generally speaking about like what they think about about their life and death, most people

regret not appreciating their health. So that's a big thing I hear people saying, I wish I appreciated, you know, all the days I felt so good because now I don't always feel so good or it's not easy for me to get up out of bed and go for a walk. I wish I would have appreciated those little things when I, when I could do those things so easily.

Help me understand, because I think a lot of people can't relate or have trouble understanding. If you go into the world of health care, a lot of it is to help people get better. You know, there's hope there that and the kind of medicine that you practice helps

There is no hope that things will get better. It's basically resigning to an end. And it's hard, I think, for people, it's hard for me to understand. Like, if you're going to go into that line of work, why, and thank God, people like you do, but what's the, doesn't it just get so depressing? No, no. Because this is the part that I hope I can articulate well.

I was an ICU nurse for many years, eight or nine years before I was a hospice nurse. And the ICU, we're trying to preserve life at all costs for the most part. And the fact is people will die. There are certain diseases that you will die if you get this disease, right? And that can feel depressing. I'm not saying that's not sad, but there has to come a time where the hope is not

I have to be alive at all costs because that's never going to work because you are going to die from this disease. And knowing that, how do you want to live out the rest of your life? Because there isn't hope in you will live forever. You will not die from this disease. That's not reality. Does that make sense? So I feel like it's not depressing as a hospice nurse because I've seen the other side of what it means when people die

take hope and use it as this thing of like, I think it creates suffering because they think like hope means living forever and not dying from this disease. And if that, that can't be a reality one with certain diseases and two with life in general, because we're, we all have an end. And if we can really understand that,

And except that, I do feel like those last days, months can can be lived in a better way than trying to, like, quote unquote, fight death. As an ICU nurse, I saw it day in and day out. And that's what really killed me. Really being an ICU nurse is what shaped me to want to be a hospice nurse because I saw the other side of what it looked like to, quote unquote, continue to fight death.

And I thought we did people a really big disservice, almost in a dishonest way. It felt dishonest because we weren't being real with them about what was truly going to happen, which was you're going to die and you're going to die soon.

Do you ever though, and maybe this is more what I meant, when you're working with patients, especially in longer term hospice care, and then they die, don't you get sad that you bonded with this person, you've been seeing them every day, and now they're dead? So definitely, I'm not callous. It's still sad.

But again, I think because of my experiences as an ICU nurse and I'm just so happy that they had the death they did.

Like it feels really good to be able to help someone live out the rest of their life pain free, symptom free, and then have a peaceful, gradual death. It feels it feels good. There's still moments of sadness, of course. And sometimes when it doesn't go well or things aren't managed well, those are the really hard days. So the days I really have a hard time is when I feel like we didn't do a good job.

But most of the time, I feel sadness that they're gone, but I'm really proud of what our team did to help them, you know, to help them. And you can see the gratitude from the family and the patient over time. So it can feel sad, but it mostly feels like you're doing a good service to people. This is a really, probably a really stupid question, but I bet it's a question people want to know the answer to. And that is,

Does the fact that you are around death so much and you see people die, when someone close to you dies, does that experience of being around death make it easier for you to handle death in your own life? Or is it just two completely separate things?

So I do think it's, it's definitely different. I think if they're not super close to me, but I still know them, right. And because people, my, you know, my friend's circle will, will reach out to me if, if their loved ones are dying or, you know, it's someone that I know, but not very well, I still can feel somewhat removed and be like the nurse Julie part of me. Um,

I haven't actually had the experience yet where like my parents are on hospice. I've had sudden deaths in my life, several, where that's, I think, not a whole different story, but a different feeling where there's like shock and you're not prepared. But I haven't actually experienced like my own parents' death where I will be a daughter and not a hospice nurse. And I do feel like that's going to be different.

It's going to be different. I mean, I think I'll be able to put some things into practice, but the grief will still be there. So it's going to change things. We're talking about death and dying, which might sound unpleasant, but it's actually pretty fascinating. My guest is Julie McFadden. She is a hospice nurse and author of the book, Nothing to Fear, Demystifying Death to Live More Fully. No more.

What lies within nothing? No. Do you know where it... Do you want? Yes. Counterbalance, a high fantasy audio drama. Season 2, coming 15th of October 2023. Learn more on Trilunas.com. So Julie, what about...

What happens at the end do you think people don't understand, if anything, or that people find particularly upsetting or just something that's not maybe not so well known? Because, you know, most of our experience with death is what we see in the movies and on TV, which is probably not all that real. But, you know, a lot of us don't spend a lot of time around death. And so what is it we don't know?

what actively dying looks like. So actively dying, if you're dying on hospice in particular, or having some kind of like gradual death where you're naturally letting the dying process take over, which doesn't hurt by the way, uh,

dying itself does not hurt. Diseases you die from can cause symptoms and issues, but the actual process of your body dying doesn't hurt. And people don't know what that looks like. The actively dying process, the very last phase of life, looks a certain way almost always, where someone is fully unconscious, their mouth hangs open, their eyes are usually open because it takes muscles to close your mouth and your eyes.

And at the end of life, those muscles are relaxed and your brain is not controlling those muscles. So everything's loose and your mouth's open and you breathe different and you can have this gurgling noise. The colors can change. Your skin color can change.

And that can all look terrifying. One, because this is your loved one and they look so different. And two, you don't know what the heck is going on and no one told you it's going to look like this. So people automatically assume they're suffering, something is wrong, they can't breathe, they must be thirsty, all the things. And we don't do a good job, even as end of life people, at educating about what each thing is and why it's happening. Most of my videos...

and in my book are about that, about educating about what real end of life looks like and why you're seeing what you're seeing

and how it's all a biological response and the body is actually built to do it and purposely doing it to help the body die. To me, that was the most fascinating part of becoming a hospice nurse, really learning the biology of death and why it looks the way it looks. And the movies, like you said, I've never seen one movie or television show that does death right, which

Which again, it would be difficult. It'd be difficult to make an actor look truly like they were dying. But no one, I've never seen anyone give like a big long monologue, close their eyes and just die. Never, never, never, never. So yeah, I think we just don't know what it looks like and it scares us when we see it. Yeah, I remember when my mother died and she started exhibiting all those symptoms and she had a hospice care, but

It was Christmas Day, and the hospice nurse wasn't there. But we were prepared. And it was so weird, knowing what I was watching and knowing that this was the end, still felt like we've got to call somebody. We've got to call 911. And we were told, don't call 911, because there's really not much they can do. But it's that sense of helplessness, of wanting to...

fix something that can't be fixed. Yes, yes. And do something. You know, that's something I always, hospice is a lot of just being. Families always say like, what can we do? We need to do, do, do, do. I think particularly because grief is complicated and you can feel scared and those are great coping mechanisms to do something.

And it's just not what needs to be done at the time. I always say, is your loved one clean? Are they safe? Are they comfortable? And if you can say yes to all those things, you can kind of take a deep breath and just tell yourself, okay, I've done a good job and now I just have to be here.

But it's still, it doesn't, it's not easy. It's still sad and you're still losing someone. You know, this is your mother. That's hard. Yeah, but having someone like you there, I think makes all the difference in the world to the people who are witnessing this because it's like,

Watching a plane go down and or, you know, and there's no pilot like you're like the pilot that's everything's OK. I got this. Everything's fine. This is what's going to happen that that is so comforting to the people standing there watching this helpless. Yes, I hope so. I hope so. And I think as you it sounds like, you know, you know, hospice is helpful.

is not there 24-7, right? Like, even if it wasn't Christmas Day, we don't, Medicare tells us, because that's our boss, we don't need to be there when someone's actively dying as long as they're comfortable. So the family...

Is there being like, hello, someone needs to help us, right? We're supposed to just do this alone. And I feel like that's half the reason why I developed, you know, the Hospice Nurse Julie channel is because I knew families out there were like, what the heck? What am I supposed to do? How do I know this is normal when there's not someone that can be there 24 seven?

So I have to ask you, have you ever had any kind of after-death experience with someone that you worked with or knew that made you think, yeah, they're, I don't know, contacting me or there's a sign or something? Yeah.

I've only had one experience and they weren't really dead yet, which was kind of wild. So it's called, so generally speaking, no, none of my patients come to see me, thankfully, because I would be scared, I think. I think anyway. But I did have one patient I've learned afterwards since I've told the story, it's called a shared death experience.

where a patient of mine who I was particularly close with, just because he lived much longer than normal and just certain circumstances, our whole team was close with this man. He was actively dying, like I said. So he was in that stage where he was fully unconscious. We knew he would die that day. You could kind of tell. And I had a continuous care nurse, which means a nurse who was there with him 24-7 because he had some symptoms that needed managed.

And that day I went in to see him. I could tell he would die that day. He was fully unconscious, like I said. And I said my goodbyes to him in my head. And I told the continuous care nurse, you know, can you please...

text me when he dies. And she was like, of course. So I leave the house and I go to go to my next patient. But before I leave, you know, I'm still in my car. I kind of look at his apartment and again, say my final goodbyes. And suddenly, and this is not something that I would normally even feel comfortable talking about. But over the years, I've gotten used to describing this. But suddenly I could hear his voice in my head.

That's what it felt like. And it felt like he was making me feel what he was feeling. And he was saying, oh, my gosh, Julie. Oh, my gosh, Julie. I just remember him saying my name over and over again. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. And the sense he gave me was like, if I only would have known how good this is, I wouldn't have been so scared.

And I felt this feeling of like overall freedom and kind of like soaring almost through the air. And he was making me see him. And he just kept going, oh, my gosh, Julie. Oh, my gosh, Julie. And he felt so full of joy and peace. And I keep saying freedom because he was so not like that in his life and would always talk about that. Always talk about how he felt so tight and like anxious all the time.

And he was giving me this feeling of like opposite of that. And really, he didn't say much, Mike. He just kept going, oh, my gosh, Julie. Oh, my gosh, Julie. And this excited kind of little little boy way. And as quick as that started, it stopped. And of course, I'm in my car crying because it felt so like good, basically. And I was kind of confused. And then I heard my phone beep and my phone. It was the nurse inside. And she said, so-and-so just died.

And I thought, I know, because I feel like he showed me what it was like, like what that crossing over, whatever you want to call it, would be like. And I didn't tell anybody that for years, really, probably almost a decade before I told anyone that that actually happened. Well, that is such a great story. And, you know, everybody believes what they believe. And even if you believe that when you die, that's it, there's nothing more. Goodbye.

I think it's human nature to want to believe that maybe, possibly, there's something else. And it's a great note to end on. I've been speaking with Julie McFadden. She's a hospice care nurse.

And the author of a book, and this has been a really big bestseller on this topic, it's called Nothing to Fear, Demystifying Death to Live More Fully. And you will find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. I really appreciate this conversation. Thanks so much, Julie. All right. Thanks, Mike. Have a good one. In the English language, there are words that seem to sort of mean the same thing. As an example, persuade and convince.

If I persuade you of something, or if I convince you of something, seems like I've pretty much done the same thing. Venomous or poisonous? What's the difference there? In some cases, the differences are slight, and in some cases, there are substantial differences, in which case it really matters which words you use if you want to be correct.

It's also just interesting to see how these words fit into our language, where they came from, and why in fact we have different words that mean the same thing or almost the same thing.

Here to take you on a journey into this part of our language is Eli Bernstein. Eli is a humor writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, among other publications, and he is author of a book called Dictionary of Fine Distinctions, Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of Meaning.

Hi Eli, welcome to Something You Should Know. Hi, thanks for having me. So first explain what you did in this book and why you think we need to shine a light on these subtle differences in words and language. After all, they're subtle, so why bother? Sure, so why find distinctions? Well, I think the first reason is that it is an inherent pleasure to

think about these subtle differences that are absolutely everywhere in life. I think it's just a joy for the mind to kind of appreciate these granular distinctions that are all around us. I think it improves, for instance, the quality of debate. I think it makes you more sensitive to

abuses of language, rhetoric, for instance, because you, by appreciating subtle shades of meaning, you have a sharper grasp on what words mean. And conversely, I think it helps build a bridge back to a shared linguistic community. I think if we're all on the same page about what words mean, I think we can have better conversations and not talk past one another.

So let's dive into some of these and let's start with presume and assume because I don't know that I know the difference. I mean, I think I know the difference, but it's a pretty tiny difference and I probably use them interchangeably sometimes and maybe I shouldn't. So what's the difference?

Yes, the difference is minute. And it's a great example, in fact, of the kind of distinction where we may not know the difference at a conscious level, but subconsciously, we do observe it more than we realize. So to assume is to suppose without proof.

Whereas to presume is to do so with confidence or authority. So to give some sample sentences, one might say, I assumed you knew where you were going. But if you're a little more confident, you might say your daughter, I presume. And just to flesh that out a little bit. So assume and presume both mean to suppose, believe or take for granted that something is true despite a lack of hard proof.

Yet presuming is more confident because it suggests that there's at least some good evidence for the thing believed. For example, one might say when the boat washed up empty, he was presumed dead.

Assuming by contrast is based on weaker grounds for belief or none at all. So you might say you assume incorrectly I'm Belgian, right? So the idea is that assumptions don't really have as much to back them up as presumptions. So we have different kinds of roads, right? Every road has a name and it's either a road or a street or an avenue or a boulevard. And what's the difference? Can a road be any of those?

Yeah, so streets are urban, boulevards are urban and wide, avenue can mean a whole bunch of different things, which I can get to in a moment, and all of them are roads. So road is really the umbrella term. But let me get back to streets. So streets, as everyone knows, make up the bulk

of the urban landscape. So typically they're small to medium sized stretches. I like to think of them as the smaller veins and capillaries of the city. Boulevards, meanwhile, are the arteries. They're typically wider, longer, more consistently straight. They'll often have a tree lined median or flanks. So they're often a bit more extravagant.

Now, where things get complicated, as I mentioned earlier, is with avenues. So avenues tend to be pretty much identical to boulevards, which is to say they're nice and wide. On top of that, however, sometimes they'll end at a large monument or a park. And that makes sense because the word avenue comes from the French verb meaning to approach. So they will occasionally approach a landmark.

A second funny thing that avenues can do is that in some cities they run perpendicular to streets. That's the case in Manhattan, Chicago, Denver, Memphis, a few others. The streets all go east-west, for instance, and the avenues go north-south or vice versa. And that actually helps simplify navigation.

But what makes avenues a little confusing is that sometimes any old street will put on airs and call itself an avenue, probably because it's kind of a fancy sounding word when compared with street. So avenues are very much the chameleons of the road world. We hear the term dark web and deep web, and it all sounds very horrible and mysterious. But I have always assumed those two things are two terms for the same thing.

Yeah, so this is a commonly confused pair. So the deep web simply refers to web pages that don't show up in search results. So your emails, banking information, stuff you typically have to log into in order to access. The dark web, by contrast, as you mentioned, refers to something much more sinister. So specifically, it refers to web pages that are accessible only through special anonymizing software.

consists largely of illegal activity like drug or weapons trafficking. So the deep web is totally fine. You just need to punch in your username and password to access these pages. Sometimes you don't even need that. You just need the right URL because, like I say, it won't show up on Google. It's a bit like an unlisted phone number.

In fact, not only is the deep web mostly legitimate, but it is estimated to make up about 90 to 95% of the total content of the internet, which makes sense when you think about it, because for every front page of a bank's website that you can click on via Google, there are about 10,000 back pages that you need to be logged in for. That's the deep web.

And the same goes for all of your emails, medical records, private company pages, the list go on. Whereas the dark web is a smaller and more insidious corner of the internet. Well, here are two words that I use interchangeably. I really didn't know there was a difference, and that is typeface and font. But again, we have two different words, so they must have different meanings. And what is the difference?

Yes, this is a particular case where the error is one directional. So people often say font when they really mean typeface. It's rare that one will say typeface when they mean font. Font kind of is the all-purpose term that you tend to hear a lot. But they say font when they really mean typeface. Because when we talk about Times New Roman or Arial or Helvetica, strictly speaking, these aren't fonts but typefaces. They're different design systems of type.

each with their own unique look and feel. Now, Helvetica Bold or Helvetica Italics or Helvetica Light or even Helvetica Roman, which is the default version of a typeface, these are fonts. So fonts, strictly speaking, refer to a particular configuration of a typeface and not the typeface as a whole. And by configuration, I mean that we've determined the slope, the thickness, the spacing, even the size of the typeface. So font is something much more specific.

However, I do want to add a big asterisk here, which is that if you use the word font to refer to a typeface, which is what we all do pretty much all of the time, that's totally okay. Font, to be frank, is simply a lot easier to say. And I suspect that's why we all do it. And no one except a typographer is going to get upset about it. So I think font is here to stay. Yeah.

Shame and guilt is seemingly similar, but I can sense the difference. I know the difference, but they seem to be very parallel terms.

Yes, and where one exists, the other may not be far behind. So yeah, this one gets a little abstract, but ultimately it boils down to this: you feel shame about who you are, but you feel guilt about what you do. So shame tends to focus more on our qualities. Typically, one might feel ashamed of their looks or their intelligence. It's a sad feeling that we all get sometimes that this is who I am and that there's something wrong with that.

Guilt, by contrast, tends to focus not on your qualities but on your actions, which is to say on the things we have control over. So typically we might feel guilty for lying to a friend or for stealing something, something we shouldn't have done. So once again, shame is about who you are while guilt is about what you do. And that's reflected in our language. Consider phrases like "I'm ashamed of myself."

Ashamed of myself. You would never say I'm guilty about myself. And that's because shame and shame alone has to do with selfhood, with who you are as a person. So you might feel ashamed of your puny muscles, for instance, but guilty for not going to the gym. Sorbet and sherbet. I more or less assumed they were in the same thing, but obviously not.

That's right. Maybe not as high stakes as shame and guilt, but still very important. So sorbet is non-dairy and sherbet, according to the FDA, must contain between 1% and 2% milk fat. So both obviously are frozen desserts, typically made from fruit juice and sugar, but sherbet...

tends to be smoother and creamier than sorbet because it'll add dairy. Now, ice cream, to introduce a third category, must contain at least 10% milk fat, according to the FDA. But then that raises an interesting question, because if sherbet is between 1% and 2% milk fat and ice cream doesn't start until 10%,

What's in between the two? You've kind of got this uncanny valley of frozen dairy and the terms used for it range from low fat ice cream to frozen yogurt or even simply to frozen dairy dessert. And each of these terms has a slightly different definition and there's overlap. So it's a bit of a mess, but they are all bookended by sherbet at the low fat end and ice cream at the high fat end.

What's the difference between poisonous and venomous? Because you'll hear people say that a snake is a poisonous snake, but also a venomous snake. So are they the same thing?

The difference between poison and venom is poison is when you bite it and venom is when it bites you. So poison is when you eat, drink, touch or inhale something that was minding its own business and the results are unpleasant. It could be a poison berry or mushroom, a frog, maybe a chemical solution, but the idea is you went out and ingested it or touched it or so on.

Venom, by contrast, is when an animal actively injects you with their toxins. So a snake or spider bite, a scorpion or bee sting, or believe it or not, the platypus has little spurs on the back of its heels that are venomous. So don't get too close to them either. So yeah, in short, venom is actively delivered to you by an outside agent, whereas for poison, it's delivered to you passively.

I mentioned in my introduction, convince and persuade, because those two things really do seem, if I persuade you or I convince you, seems like I've done the same thing.

This one's extra subtle. So strictly speaking, you convince someone to believe something, but you persuade someone to do something. So one brings about a change in thought, while the other brings about a change in behavior. So you might convince someone of the existence of God, for instance, and then persuade them to go to church. Now, I should qualify that this distinction...

perhaps more than any other in the book, is observed only in the most careful of writing and that in most casual contexts, especially in speech, the two are pretty much interchangeable. But I do think our ears pick up the difference, even if only at a subconscious level. So if you want your writing to sound extra polished, it is a difference worth appreciating. You convince someone to change their mind, but you persuade them to follow a certain course of action.

So anybody who cooks, and I've recently wondered this, when you go to the store and you buy, you see stock, beef stock or beef broth and think, well, what's the difference? I mean, what is the difference?

So this is another kind of commonly confused one. So both stock and broth, as you say, are used to make soup. And for that purpose, they are more or less interchangeable. But stock and stock alone is also used as a thickening agent for stews, sauces, and gravies. And that's because stock is made by simmering not just meat, but bones, and doing so for long periods of time. And the collagen in those bones seeps out into the water and helps thicken whatever it is you're making.

Another difference you sometimes see is that store-bought stock tends not to have a lot of salt in it because it's really meant to be this neutral backdrop to whatever it is you're making because it might not be soup, right? So maybe you don't want so much salt. Store-bought broth, meanwhile, tends to be salty right out the gate because you're making soup and soup is almost always salty. Well, if stock is got bones in it, how does that explain vegetable stock?

That's where I think that we're basically using the terms interchangeably. So yeah, veggie stocks and veggie broths, because vegetables don't have any collagen or bones, the two really are virtually identical. Rational and reasonable. Again, pretty seemingly fairly interchangeable. But you know, they're clearly a difference. I mean, I can imagine using those two words differently in different sentences, but they're pretty similar.

That's right. Another, you know, I think it goes to the challenge of sometimes articulating differences that we know at an intuitive level. So, yeah, in short, to be rational is to be logical. It means your reasoning is coherent and consistent. So a classic phrase is rational explanation. To be reasonable, by contrast, is to be sensible. It means your attitude is fair minded or realistic, as in the phrase reasonable request.

So one is a very logical, analytical thing, and the other is about not exceeding the bounds of what's practical or fair. So think of the phrase reasonably priced. It doesn't mean the price is incoherent or irrational. It just means it's asking too much. It's excessive. The opposite of both of those words, irrational and unreasonable, seem further apart from each other than rational and reasonable do.

Yes, I think that in a way that's the best way to show the difference because it shows what's at stake irrational is chaotic or inconsistent and unreasonable feels like well you're asking too much or your your demand you're making demands that are excessive. So here's one. I think people really Confuse I confuse because I'm not really sure the difference ethics and morality. They seem like the same thing a lot of cases

Yeah, so this was a tough one to pin down, but essentially ethics refers to intelligible principles of right and wrong. Morality, by contrast, refers to right and wrong as a felt sense. So with ethics, you might talk about a code of ethics or workplace ethics.

With morality, however, you might hear phrases like moral compass or moral fiber. So ethics is really rational and explicit. The other is more a matter of feeling. It's not so spelled out. And a good example of this difference out in the wild is if you go to a university and look at the courses offered by the philosophy department, there's no morality class. There's an ethics class, but there's no morality class.

And that's because ethics is all about spelling out the principles of right and wrong. It's a bit more theoretical, a bit more cerebral. I like to say that ethics is morality with glasses on. Again, a caveat here is that in everyday speech, these words may be used more or less interchangeably. But if you want to take advantage of these

hyper subtle connotations in your writing, it is a good distinction to observe and your readers even at a subconscious level will feel that difference in connotation. What is the difference between a stadium and an arena? Because they seem, well, like all the other ones we've talked about, they seem very similar, but there's two different words. So what's the difference?

So stadiums are large open venues for field sports like football and baseball, whereas arenas are smaller closed venues for court and rink sports like basketball and hockey.

And it's funny. Yeah, you know, I myself didn't think much about these terms. I figured they were interchangeable. But if you really go out and look that that distinction is upheld pretty much wherever you go. The one big exception to this rule is stadiums with domes, because if they have domes, technically they're closed. Right. So you might think they'd be more accurately described as arenas. But a dome isn't just any old ordinary ceiling. It's really high up and it's arched.

Or what's called vaulted. And that's in order to provide clearance for fly balls and generally to keep an open aesthetic. So I still think it's very much in the spirit of a large open venue like open stadiums. So for an arena to be an arena, it has to have a roof on it.

I'd say so, or at the very least to be smaller. You know, as with any of these, I don't want to say 100% of the time because an astute listener will find a counter example. But there's always exceptions to everything, but especially in the English language, it seems. And lastly, the difference between a parable and a fable.

Yeah. So a parable is a brief tale with a moral lesson. A fable is a brief tale with a moral lesson plus animals. Uh,

So what I mean by that is fables are brief stories that try to teach a reader a lesson about human folly or human foibles, and their signature move is that they use animals to do so. And that keeps the material lighter and more child-friendly, I think. The most well-known fable is probably Aesop's Fable of the Tortoise and the Hare, in which the tortoise ends up beating the hare in a foot race because of the hare's arrogance or laziness. So fables tend to be quite simple kids' stuff.

at least by comparison, because parables, by contrast, feature humans, and they tend to convey a deeper or more complex message about the human condition. So Jesus is famously recorded to have delivered a number of parables, most famously the parable of the prodigal son in the Gospel of Luke. It's a short but philosophically rich story about human frailty and forgiveness and mercy and sin and

There's too much to unpack in it to be discussed here, but that's very much typical of parables as opposed to fables. They tend to be more complex. Well, I think it's fun to get an understanding of these subtle differences because it makes the language more fun. I've been talking to Eli Bernstein. His book is called Dictionary of Fine Distinctions, Nuances, Niceties, and Subtle Shades of Meaning.

And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Great, Eli, thank you for being here. My pleasure. This is a lot of fun and I'm delighted at the opportunity. When you have an important decision to make, it's common advice to sleep on it. But if you don't have time to sleep on it, you might try eating on it. A team of researchers at the University of South Dakota set out to determine what effect blood sugar levels had on decision making.

Their results show that eating or drinking something sweet prompts wiser decisions. It seems that when we're hungry or thirsty, our energy is low, and so is our patience, and important decisions require both of those things. Even a quick boost with a candy bar or a soda could enhance your thinking ability and result in a wiser decision.

And that is something you should know. If you're a regular listener, you know I frequently ask you to share this podcast with someone you know to help us grow our audience. But you can also share it on social media and share it with a lot of people. You can just grab the link. There's usually a share button on...

Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity.

The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law, her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. The Web Talk.

Those that both created and were created by the threads disentangled from the fringes, to feast on the very thing that spawned them. What's that Siri? This is how you deal with bears! No! Not my children!

Why didn't you help me?

Coward! I don't have a parachute! I don't like free- Counterbalance, a high fantasy audio drama. Season 2, coming 15th of October 2023. Learn more on Trilunas.com. On the platform that most people listen on, so there are plenty of ways to do it, and feel free to share this in social media as well. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.