Productive procrastination, with Jorge Cham

Host of Science Stuff Jorge Cham busts some science myths, and shares how he gets things done

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
episode is going to be a longer one part of
the series where I interview fascinating people about how they
take their days from great to awesome and any advice.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
They have for the rest of us.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
So today I am delighted to welcome Jorge Cham to
the show. Jorge is the host of the podcast Science Stuff,
among many other things. So Orge, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hi, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Yeah, so, why don't you tell our listeners a little
bit about yourself?

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Yeah, so again, my name is Hoorge Cham and what
you might call a recovering academic. So I'm someone who
used to be on track to be a professor or
a researcher at a university. Somewhere during research on robotics.
So I with PhD in robotics, but somewhere along the
line I got a little bit sidetracked by a cartooning career.

(01:01):
Now you might be wondering what is having a PhD
in robotics and being a cartoonons have in common? And
I can tell you my parents are also very concerned
about that I can imagine.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
It's quite the pivot. Maybe you can talk a little
bit about what inspired that pivot. I mean, I find
cartoons cool, so I understand.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
But yeah, yeah, it's been super interesting. So while I
was getting my degree in robotics, I just happened to
have this hobby of drawing comics, and so I do
this comic strip for the Stanford Daily newspaper. They're like
the student newspaper, and it's called pal Tier and Deeper
or PhD Comics, and the best way to describe it,
it's kind of like Dilbert, but sat in a university's

(01:39):
spoken fun at professors, students, the administration, all that. And
then at some point I put it online and it
sort of went viral over the years to the point
where I realized that these comics were much more popular
than the research I was doing. So I decided to
kind of give it a go, and so I opted
for a kind of a creative career in stead of

(02:00):
an academic career, and it's been a wild ride. I
did those comics for about fifteen years, got to travel
the world, produced a couple of movies based on it,
and then that eventually led to books and a television
show for kids on PBS Kids, and now this amazing
and super fun podcast called Science Stuff for iHeart.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah, well you've been doing the podcasting for a couple
of years now in different iterations, right.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Yeah. I was one of the co hosts and co
creators of a podcast called Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe,
a very humbly called a titled podcast, but we're mostly
talked about physics and kind of the exploring the universe
and how things work. But after about five to six
years that podcasts ended, and now I'm doing this for

(02:46):
iHeart Science Stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Well, what's the goal that you have with Science Stuff?

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah, the goal is to make science fun and accessible
for an everyday person. So every episode we tackle a
really fun and fascinating question like dour pets lie to us,
what is inside of a black hole? Or could you
survive getting cryogenically frozen? Or something that's on the news, Lady,
what is a quantum computer? So we do you know,

(03:12):
quick thirty to forty minute breakdowns to what are the
main things, what are the main things to understand? We
talk to experts, We keep it sort of light and
fun and accessible to everyone.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Yeah, that sounds great.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
Well, and I want to talk about an episode that
you did not mention in your list there, but I'm
sure is one that people will reference frequently, including my
own children, which is the idea of whether you need
to wait thirty minutes after eating.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
In order to go back in the pool or ocean.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
So as we are coming up to swimming season, maybe
you can, maybe you can address that topic for us.
Is it yeah, do we need to wait thirty minutes?

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Well, you can't have to listen to the episode, but
I'll break down here.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Maybe just a hint for people listening to this.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
No, I'm happy to talk about it. So it's one
of our episodes that are out right now. It's people
can listen to them right now. And the question is
do you have really have to wait thirty minutes after
eating before you can go swimming? And this is really
kind of a personal question for me in the episode
because I grew up in Panama swimming a lot in
pools at the beach and my aunt, my mom's sister,
was a pediatrician. She was a doctor, and she would

(04:16):
always be the one saying, no, you get after eating,
you gotta stop wait and just sit there and be
totally bored for thirty minutes before you can go back
to swimming. And so I really wanted to know was
my aunt lying to me the whole time? And so
I go on this quest where I talk to a
doctor who used to be a competitivist competitive swimmer, and

(04:37):
I talked to a physiologist who specializes in exercise and
how it relates to heorty digestive system. And what's kind
of interesting is you find out that a couple of
the myth myth myths around this advice kind of turn
out to be not true. So a lot of people
think that if you eat too soon before you go eating,
you might get cramps. Well, actually turns out that scientists

(05:00):
don't really know what causes cramps. First of all, that's
a little bit mind blowing, but also it turns out
that they think that actually what causes cramps is not eating.
So if you don't have enough sugar or electrolytes in
your body, you might actually be the thing that causes cramps.
And the other thing that a lot of people say
is that why you shouldn't swim is that they think
that maybe your stomach sucks all the blood in your

(05:22):
body when it's trying to digest, and that's also turns
out to be not quite true. The physiologists said that actually,
your muscles are basically like huge hogs in your body.
If they need blood, they're going to take it from
anywhere they can, anywhere in your body. And so you
really don't have to need to worry because also your
heart is pumping faster, so you know your stomach is

(05:42):
getting enough blood. The problem is, though, that your body
doesn't kind of like having food in its stomach, you know,
when it's kind of how your body tells you that
you've eaten enough, and so it gives you this feeling
being full, and you feel a little bit uncomfortable. And
so actually doing high intensity activity like swimming or or

(06:04):
doing a lot of laps will actually cost it digestion
to slow down, and so that's why you might feel
uncomfortable if you swim too soon after eating.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
So, yeah, but it's not the cramps. You're not gonna
cramp up and immediately drowned.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
You're Yeah, you heard.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Different versions of it.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
I mean, there was your aunt had thirty minutes, but
I've I've heard people as much as an hour with
that saying that would be even worse, so you could. Yeah,
I know, but it's funny because you know, for other sports,
like we're sitting there giving our little soccer players like
orange slices and whatever, like we're giving them calories.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
While they're exercising.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
But but I mean, obviously you wouldn't want to eat
a huge meal and then immediately try to like run
a raise.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah, I think orange bananas some juice is probably great
for the sugar and the electrolytes. But you know, two
cheeseburgers before going on laps or swimming out until lake
is you don't have to wait the thirty minutes, but
you probably should write or.

Speaker 1 (07:02):
Maybe just not eat the two cheeseburgers another idea. Well,
we're going to take a quick ad break and then
I'll be back with more from Hoorge Cham. Well, I
am back with Hororge cham who is the host of
the new podcast Science Stuff. He's been telling us that

(07:23):
maybe we don't need to wait thirty minutes before going
in the water after swimming. But another thing, I'm sure
many people are wondering, can you survive being cryogenically frozen.
I don't know that I was planning on doing it,
but maybe some of my listeners.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Were, yeah, you might want to put those plans on ice,
okay literally as it were, yes, yeah, yeah. So there
is another episode that is currently out and people can
listen to it, but it's about asking the question, if
you know, if you have a certain illness that they
don't have a cure for right now, or if you
want to go to a distant star. You know, the

(08:00):
closest stars about forty trillion miles away, so it's going
to take a while to get there. So if we
over ever really want to explore the cosmos, we kind
of have to figure out how to pause life, you know.
Or you just want to kind of see what the
future is like. You might want to get frozen and
then you wake up when there's flying cars and jet
pegs and all that. So there's definitely a lot of
reasons to do it. And so in the episode, we

(08:23):
dive deep with biologist who studies frogs, these wood frogs
that apparently have adapted to survived these long winters out
there in the cold Arctic and the weather, and they're
able to survive having their whole body frozen basically because
they develop an adaptation to produce anti freeze in their body. Yeah,

(08:47):
they as they're freezing, their livers suddenly get super hyperactive
and they produce a lot of sugar and then that
sugar kind of acts and x as an anti freeze
to let them survive being frozen. But that wouldn't really
work for humans because basically we would die from the
diabetic shock.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Yeah, we don't have that adaptation yet. We're not evolved.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
To freeze like frogs in the Arctic winter.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
I think there's probably some interesting things with like freezing
individual organs, right, Like I think you guys explored this, Like,
I mean, you know, right now, our transplant system is
stuck by the fact that you have to get these
organs where they're going very quickly, and if you had
a match from say somebody in you know, Tokyo, when
you're in New York, like you're not getting that organ

(09:30):
for the most part.

Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah. Yeah, that's something we also take a deep dive in.
We actually talked to the CEO of one of these
companies that will freeze you, Like they'll freeze your organs,
but they also freeze your brain if you wanted to,
or they'll freeze your whole body if you think you're
not going to make it. So it's super fascinating. And
what they're able to do now is basically use the

(09:53):
same technique sas as a frog sort of. They use
a kind of anti freeze called glycole ethylene glycole or
some glycerine, some sort of sugar alcohol and replace all
the water in the cells of these organs, and then
you can freeze them because that that doesn't turn to ice,
it sort of turns into more of like a glass.
And so you're you're able to do things for simple

(10:14):
things like like sperm or embryos if you if you're
going through IVF or in viature fertilization uh those that works.
You can replace the water dipping in liquid nitigen and
then have it survived. It gets a lot trickier when
you get to more complicated organs, so like your liver,
even your liver or your muscles or and especially your brain.

(10:36):
It's just so complicated and so fragile that they haven't
quite figured out how to get those two sorts. So
you can freeze them, but you might not survive the.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Might survive the process.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
You just have a frozen thing and you know it
just can't unfreeze very well. Yeah, like like some of
the things I put in my freezer when they when
they come out.

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, I'm not sure that. Yeah, freezer burn, freaser burn
is a real thing, and you don't want them in
your brain.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Don't want that for sure.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
Well, on this podcast we talk a lot about time management, productivity.
You've done a lot of things in your life for hey,
I understand that your productivity secret, as it were, is
productive procrastination. Maybe you can enlighten us on what that is.

Speaker 3 (11:17):
Yeah, Yeah, I like to think of myself as a
professional procrastinator. I sort of cent her my whole life
and time management around this idea. And before I get
into trouble with any of your listeners and who procrastinate
and then they get into trouble, there's sort of two
things you have to really attach to this idea to
make it work. So these are very im poorinent things.
So the first one is my belief that procrastination is

(11:41):
not the same thing as laziness. So we often associate
it to but actually if you separate the two, you
will have a better go at it. So laziness that's
when you don't want to do anything procrastination just means
you don't want to do it now. So there are
two different things. And the idea is that if you

(12:02):
put off doing something and then you don't get it done,
then that's laziness. But if you just put something off
doing something, if you just put off doing something and
then you get it done, then that's just procrastination. So
it's kind of a way to hold yourself accountable. If
you don't get it done, you can procrastinate, but if
you don't get it done, then then you're just kind
of being lazy, Okay. And then the second thing that's

(12:24):
important is to think about this idea that I think
we do our best work when we're doing what we
want to be doing instead of when we're doing what
we think we should be doing. Okay, So if you
look at the definition of procrastination, it means to do

(12:44):
things that you want to do instead of doing the
things that you feel you should be doing. So I
sort of organize my life by I wake up every morning,
I make a list of the things that I need
to do, and I look at sort of the how
urgent some of them are, Whether this one's a pretty
late look of this one's do today, tomorrow, the next week.
And then instead of going down the list by what

(13:08):
is more urgent, I go down the list by what
I want to do. Like, I look at this list
and I think, well, I know I need to really
do this, and I know this is really important, but
right now, what I really feel like doing is doing this,
And so that's I'm sort of procrastinating by definition, but
I'm so motivated and I'm much more excited and enthusiastic

(13:29):
about doing it that I think in the end it
comes out to be better work.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
But do you ever get to the things that you
were supposed to do or do we just forget those?

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (13:38):
Why where does that happen in the course of tackling
this to do list?

Speaker 3 (13:42):
Yeah? Yeah, Well I can get a little bit tricky.
But basically, if you sort of do all the things
you want to do, once you get those done, then
you just left with the things that are urgent and
that you didn't want to do in the morning. But
at that point, you know, you know they're important for you,
so you're just going to get them done at the
end of the day.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
So I have found, you know, and maybe this is
a version of this. I sometimes get myself to do
all sorts of things that I wasn't sure I wanted
to do by putting something else on my list that.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
I truly do not want to do.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
So by once that thing is on the list and
I really don't want to do that, I'm like, well,
you know this other like I don't want to do
my taxes. But compared to that, like calling this person
and having this unpleasant conversation, Okay, Like that's not so bad.
I'm just having a conversation or editing this document. That's
a mess, but you know it's it's just editing. It's
all my taxes, right, Like is that something you ever.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
Find yourself doing?

Speaker 3 (14:34):
Sort of? Sometimes? You know, I find that the brain
is so clever and adaptable that any kind of trick,
any kind of scheme you try to implement to fool
your own brain or to get you to do things
you don't really want to do, ultimately your brain is
going to adapt to them, or it's going to find excuses,
or it's going to basically realize I don't really have

(14:54):
to do this. And so for me, at least, what's
worked is just to really think about I want to
motivated to do you know, what is it that I
really want to do, and focus on that. And you know,
once you get all the fun stuff done, at the
end of the day, you're like, oh, I have some time.
I really need to make that. Then disappointment. I really
want to have nice teeth. I don't want to have cavities.
All right, I'll make that call. And so that's kind

(15:18):
of how I organize my life.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Excellent.

Speaker 1 (15:20):
Well, you mentioned that you sit down in the morning
and do this. I'm wondering if you have any other
sort of routines you do during the day that have
been helpful in your life.

Speaker 3 (15:29):
Yeah, great question. I do that. I have a lot
of sticky notes around me.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
What do the sticky notes do for you?

Speaker 3 (15:37):
Well, they just let me write down those things that
I need to do. So I have a little notepad,
I'll write down little notes and I'll stick it on
my desk, and then at some point they accumulate and
grow to a huge pile, and then I really have
to you know, on a weekend afternoon, I'll just sit
down and try to get those done.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Excellent, everything, that's all the sticky notes. Well, we're going
to take one more quick ad break and then I'll
be back with more from Hordey Jam. Well, we are
back with Hoorgey Cham who is the host of the
Science Stuff podcast, along with many other things, including a
long career in the comic world. So I am very

(16:21):
curious about the creative process for doing a comic. I mean,
I can tell you about the creative process for writing
or coming up with podcast ideas, but when it's something visual,
like what, how are you playing around with ideas or
processing ideas before you have the finished artwork?

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, well, for me, it sort of starts way before
I even sit down to think about them. You know,
when you're a cartoonist and you know you have that
pressure of coming up with a comic strip every so often.
It is for some people it's every day, for some
people it's every other day. You sort of learned to
always have your antenna whenever you're talking to friends or family,

(16:58):
or whenever you're out in the world. You're always sitting
desperate for ideas, and you're always desperate for those little
nuggets of truth that are just floating out there that
make you go, oh that's funny or huh, I wonder
why people do that, And so you it's for me.
The process starts way before even sitting down, which is
I always have this antenna up, and then when I
sit down, I sit down with a notepad. In this case,

(17:21):
it's a digital notepad. It's a Samsung tablet. I love
that machine. I have this one that I've been using
for like five years. It's helped me write about five
books and about thirty television episodes that I've written, and
so it's just this really great way to brainstorm and
then just write things down. I think most people know

(17:43):
that when you write things down, it's basically like expanding
your memory or expanding your ram memory if you're sort
of a computer geek, where you can sort of lay
down ideas, spin them on papers and then they're floating
there and then you can access them and make connections
to it. And I especially like using a digital notebook
because it's sort of like an infinite canvas. So if

(18:05):
you use a notepad, at some point you're going to
hit the edge of the paper, But if you use
a digital notepad, you can you can just keep doodling
and making connections and following a path. So I am
very visual when I've brainstorm, and when I write, I
sort of doodle along and make little sketches and then
connect those two words and then write out a paragraph

(18:26):
by Longhand and yeah it's one of my favorite parts. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Well, I imagine like there are certain thoughts that make
a good comic. I mean, especially if you're thinking about
like a three panel comic, like what what you know,
the setup, the you know, teeing up the end and
the punchline in the last one, or.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
However it goes. I mean, I it must just.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Be a certain mental model that you then have of
the universe and putting everything in that order.

Speaker 3 (18:49):
Yeah. Yeah, there's always sort of like the setup, the development,
the punchline, and then the after punchline in a typical
comic strip. But again, it all starts with that nug
it of truth, you know, like why do we procrastinate,
for example, or what's the first thing would that we
do in the morning. Why isn't it usually the thing

(19:11):
that is maybe most pressing? Or you know, if you're
in a position where you're working with somebody, why detail
them certain things at certain times? So those little nuggets
are true, That's where it starts. And then and then
I try to build the sort of the setup and
the scene around it.

Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, excellent, excellent.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
So I'm curious then, what your daily schedule tends to
look like these days.

Speaker 2 (19:34):
I mean, we're.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Getting up, making the to do list, we're going through
some of it, and do you keep regular work hours
or what does that look.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
Like these days?

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Oh, I think my spouse would be laughing right now
she's hearing this. So part of this idea of a
procrastination is, you know, what I'm trying to do is
basically lead a lifestyle where it sort of seems like
I'm retired. You know, if you're retired, your goal is
to wake up every morning and just do what you
want to do. And so that's a little bit how

(20:05):
I structure my day. You know, I kind of go
with where my motivation is. So some days, especially Mondays,
I'm not super motivated, and so I just don't put
a lot of pressure on myself to be productive. But
then Tuesday, maybe I'm really motivated, and then I'll stay
up all night maybe or stay up really late, and
then the next morning I might not get as much sleep,

(20:26):
but then you catch up a little bit later. So
it's a very kind of fluid process for me, as
my family will probably complain about it.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
Well, if you found people who will put up with you,
then I guess good for you.

Speaker 3 (20:40):
Yeah, yeah, so far, so good, So far far, so good.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
Well that's awesome. So one thing I often ask people
is what have you done recently to take a day
from great to awesome? Oh?

Speaker 3 (20:52):
Great question? What have I done recently to take it
from great to awesome? So recently I have a series
of books for kids out called Oliver's Great Big Universe,

(21:13):
and it's sort of like a dire of a one
big kid, but with science. So it's educational but also
really fun with a lot of barf and fart jokes
for kids of course. So it's a great series. And
as part of that, I get invited to go to
schools and do school talks for kids, And recently I
was in this school in North Carolina, and I kind

(21:35):
of have a couple of options for presentations. I have
one that's sort of like here, I'm going to talk
about the universe and how amazing it is and how
big it is, and I have fun with that's a
little bit more chaotic, where I run this kind of
game show with the kids and I have to draw them,
but also answer their science questions at the same time.
Super fun and so you know, it was a very
kind of button up kind of school, buttoned down school,

(21:58):
very very nice school. And I was like, you know,
instead of doing the save science talk, I mean, let's
go with the chaotic fun one. And the librarians were
all into it, so like, yeah, let's do it. And
it turned to be this really incredible experience with the
kids where at the end they're like standing up, cheering,
hugging each other, high fiving each other. It was just

(22:20):
pure joy from beginning to and I think, you know,
it was one of those moments where you know, you
don't know what's going to happen in the future. You
don't know what's going to happen if I make this decision,
but let's just go at it, you know, let's go
with the option that seems more fun. And it turned
out to be more fun.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Yeah. No, I like that. It's this great approach to life,
like what will make more of a.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Memory, right, and eventually it will be on the other
side of anything, so least you should get a good
story out of it.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, So what are you looking forward to right now?

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Well, right, no, I'm pretty focused on this new podcast,
Sign Stuff, which folks can find anywhere they get podcasts,
and I'm super excited because it's an interesting deep dive
into a different topic every week. So one week, I'm,
you know, taking a deep dive into near death experiences
and are those real? And the next week I'm taking

(23:12):
a deep dive into well, what happens if you dig
a hole to the center of the earth? Is that
even possible? And then the next week I'm getting hypnotized
by a couple of hymnotism experts to see if hymnotism
really works.

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Well, I can't wait for that one. Will look forward
to listening to that. See see where you go with that? Yeah,
I guess I remember also while not swimming for an
hour after eating as a kid on the beach, you know,
wondering if I dug a sandhole to China. That might
have been something to occupy the time for the how
you could?

Speaker 2 (23:42):
Yeah, swim?

Speaker 3 (23:43):
These are deep questions.

Speaker 2 (23:44):
Answer are deep questions.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
These are horrhe I'm glad we're we're getting into the
getting to the bottom of this. So yeah, we can
check out the Science Stuff podcast or Hey, thank you
so much for joining me today.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
Awesome. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, thank you to everyone for listening. If you have
feedback on this or any other episode, you can always
reach me at Laura at Laura vandercam dot com and
in the meantime, this is Laura. Thanks for listening and
here's to making the most.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Of our time.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,
or feedback, you can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit the iHeartRadio app,

(24:40):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.