Everybody Knows

There are lots of things out there that nobody knows the answer to, even though we now have the ability to find the answers to so many things so easily.

This got me thinking: are there things everybody knows? I’m not talking about things “everybody knows”, like whenever people have sex in a horror movie, someone is about to bite the dust; or the idea that "no good deed goes unpunished.

Instead, I mean things that literally every human knows.

For instance, everybody knows how to breathe for survival. This is like a program that’s encoded in our hardware, and we are all born knowing how to do this.

Newborn babies instinctively suck in air so that they can use the oxygen. Their brainstems monitor how much carbon dioxide is in their blood, and whenever that gets too high, signals go to their diaphragms to contract so they inhale.

Those intercostal muscles (between your ribs) work together with your diaphragm to expand your chest cavity, giving your lungs the space they need to fill up with…