What I Learned From Podcasts This Week: Carrots Not Orange?: Two Billion AC Units!...More

 Another week of podcast listening, and I continue to learn so much each week. At this rate of podcast listening, I may improve my ranking in the local sports bar's (Carolina Blue) trivia night competition. Currently, our team -- Boomer XM, sprinkled with Gen Xers, and a pair of millennials -- is in fifth place.

 Anyway, let's start with the Something You Should Know podcast with Mike Carruthers. Tom Standage, Deputy Editor of The Economist, was a guest on the August 13th episode and talked about "unusual facts." That term is chum for a trivia nut.

If you can manage to work carrots into your conversation, Standage explained on the podcast that centuries ago, carrots used to be white or purple. While Standage admits there is disagreement over the "orange-ization" of carrots, the prevailing story seems to be that the root vegetable was first bred to be yellow and then orange as a show of political support for the Netherlands' recognized founding father, William, Prince Of Orange.

In the world of geography, Standage notes that one day the Mediterranean Sea will disappear as the Africa land mass with merge with that of Europe. Before you cancel your Mediterranean cruise on Viking, Standage also notes that the sea will disappear in 50 million years. That's plenty of time to sell your villa in the south of France. 

In an unusual bit of good news, the suicide rate around the world has dropped by about 30 percent in the last 30 years. Standage attributes this positive number to three distinct trends. First, the suicide rate of older people has dropped dramatically as health care innovations has kept people healthier longer. Second, the suicide rate of Chinese and Indian women has also dropped significantly, largely due to more equitable treatment of women in those cultures. Finally, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the suicide rate among older Russian men skyrocketed when the Soviet Union dissolved. These disconsolate men, struggling with the new order, simply drank themselves to death. As conditions in post-Soviet Russia improved, the suicide rate decreased.

Thanks to the Podyssey mobile app, I began to listen to the Breaking Down: Collapse podcast.  Here are the liner notes for the podcast: Breaking Down: Collapse takes the complex concepts surrounding the ultimate collapse of modern industrial society and simplifies them so they’re easier to learn. The compelling evidence for our inevitable decline is introduced by collapse-aware Kory to his good friend, Kellan, who probably doesn’t realize what he signed up for! Skeptical? Gear up for a paradigm shift!"

The podcast just celebrated its 100th episode. It does have advertising sponsors and the two co-hosts have strong rapport that reminds me of the original Stuff You Should Know guys. 

Episode 100 happened to be about air-conditioning. After listening to the episode, I didn't turn off my AC, but I set the thermostat higher, somewhat guilty about my complicity in climate change and "the end of days."

First, I learned that there are two billion air-conditioning units in the world. At first, I thought that at least one billion were located in the Phoenix area, which is unusually close to the sun. But in actuality, China and the U.S. account for 50 percent of all AC units. In a country like India, only 12 percent of its population have access to air-conditioning, which seems like cruel and unusual punishment.

Finally, podcast hosts, Kory and Kellan, informs us that air-conditioning consumes 20 percent of all grid energy, and that air-conditioning in big cities raises the ambient temperature by about 1.8 percent, since AC units pump out hot air as part of their cycle. 

The good news is that there are efforts to make AC units much more energy efficient, although no breakthrough that can be manufactured and sold is close to being ready.