Winning Losers
Unexpected Elements
BBC
4.4 • 567 Ratings
🗓️ 17 May 2024
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a competitive world, is it always best to finish first? A tribute to second place, second thoughts, and second opinions.
You might assume that Olympic gold medallists have more successful lives than their silver-placed competitors. A study shows that on average winners die a year younger than the runners up, and earn less money.
In the invasive jelly-fish wars of the Black Sea of recent years, it seems the second-comers prevailed over the voracious first-timers.
And what about siblings? Does the first-born in a family really have any discernible advantage in life?
Also, the potential perils of cutting-edge wearable medi-tech, the value of second opinions, and the chemical benefits of silver itself.
Presented by Marnie Chesterton, with Godfred Boafo and Andrada Fiscutean Produced by Alex Mansfield, with Dan Welsh, Julia Ravey and Noa Dowling Sound by Gwynfor Jones
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, hello. You have chosen a BBC podcast, but before you listen to it, we thought you might |
| 0:04.7 | like our podcast too. You might. You might. It is called Sightracked with me, Nick Grimshaw. |
| 0:09.2 | And me, Annie Mack. And we talk about the week in music. All the news, all the cultural |
| 0:14.0 | happenings in the UK and beyond. And great guests. And it's on BBC Sounds. Yes, where you can |
| 0:19.7 | also enjoy lots of playlists, music mixes and |
| 0:22.6 | live radio, everything from my six music breakfast show to Radio 3 Unwind. But obviously start |
| 0:29.2 | with our podcast, sidetrack. Obviously. Obviously. So if you like music, listen on BBC |
| 0:33.7 | Sounds. So this weekend, I had to face the big bane of my life. |
| 0:42.0 | Procrastination. |
| 0:43.4 | It's that feeling of dread when you have something unpleasant or boring to do |
| 0:47.8 | and I had a tech issue I was confronting or to be more accurate, avoiding. |
| 0:53.8 | That uncomfortable feeling is supposed to be your motivation to do something with the problem |
| 0:59.2 | rather than just sit with it. |
| 1:01.5 | The silver lining is that sometimes the other things I'd been putting off suddenly |
| 1:05.6 | become desperately urgent. |
| 1:07.7 | So this week, I cleaned the freezer, did three loads of laundry, cleared |
| 1:12.0 | out my cupboards and moth sprayed my woolen clothes, before finally running out of plan A's and |
| 1:18.0 | settling down to do Plan B, my broken technology. I'm Marnie Chesterton from the BBC World |
| 1:24.6 | Service. This is unexpected elements. |
| 1:44.4 | And with me for the duration is my trusty global panel of journalists in Akra-Gana. |
| 1:47.0 | It's good to see you, Godfred Boafo. Hello. |
| 1:52.5 | Oh, it's always a pleasure to come your way on unexpected elements unexpectedly. |
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