In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: This Medical Breakthrough Might Be a Real-Life Hangover Cure People Have Been Seeing Strange Objects in the Sky for Millennia You Can Camp Where a Famous Hermit Lived for More Than 30 Years It’s your last chance to support us in the 2018 Podcast Awards!Please help our show by nominating Curiosity Daily in the categories of People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from each category’s drop-down menu. We really appreciate it!https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2018 Learn about these topics and more onCuriosity.com, and download our5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
It’s your last chance to support us in the 2018 Podcast Awards! Please help our show by nominating Curiosity Daily in the categories of People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from each category’s drop-down menu. We really appreciate it! https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2018
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/a-real-hangover-cure-ufos-from-ancient-history-and-a-hermits-cold-river-city-population-1
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you'll learn about a medical breakthrough that might lead us to a real-life cure for hangovers, the extensive history of people seeing strange objects in the sky, and an amazingly isolated campground you can visit, along with the story of the hermit who used to live there.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Today we have a story about a potential pharmaceutical solution that could reverse the effects of alcohol on the body. For any listener who is legally allowed to consume alcohol, we encourage you to always drink responsibly. But for those of us who sometimes forget to drink enough water, Ashley, can you give a quick refresher on what causes hangovers?
ASHLEY HAMER: Funny story about that. We don't actually know for sure what causes hangovers. It's probably a combination of different factors. Alcohol is a diuretic, which can leave you dehydrated. And it irritates your stomach lining, which can make you nauseous.
A lot of scientists blame acetaldehyde too. That's a toxic carcinogen that takes time to metabolize. As in drink too much too fast, and your body won't be able to catch up. But your body does eventually metabolize acetaldehyde. And most hangovers hit their peak after levels of that chemical have gone back down to a normal-ish range. So this study, we wrote about is more about getting rid of alcohol poisoning, not all the effects of alcohol.
CODY GOUGH: Right. In a new study, chemical engineer Yong Feng Liu led a team to come up with a pharmaceutical antidote to the toxic effects of alcohol. They ended up using three naturally occurring enzymes that are known to break down alcohol into harmless molecules. The hard part was getting those enzymes to the liver in a safe, effective way. And preliminary tests on mice were pretty successful.
The mice had been dosed with ethanol to get them so drunk that they passed out. After four hours, the ones that had been given the enzymes saw a 45% drop in blood alcohol content. They had less liver damage, and they woke up earlier than the others. It's not the end of hangovers quite yet, but this study just might be a good start. Can we rename our podcast metabolize acetaldehyde?
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES] Metabolize acetaldehyde. I can't believe I just got through that.
CODY GOUGH: You nailed it first take.
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES] Cody, do you believe in UFOs?
CODY GOUGH: You're asking me like you don't want to know the answer.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm afraid it'll change our relationship.
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES] Look, a lot of people have seen a lot of things. I believe there is a possibility that some kind of alien ship probably could have been spotted actually at some point in human history. I don't think that's totally unreasonable.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure. I'll give you that.
CODY GOUGH: I'm not saying I believe in it, but I'm just saying, hey, I could be wrong.
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, yeah. UFO stands for unidentified flying object. And there have been plenty of unidentified flying objects in human history. I will give you that.
CODY GOUGH: But you don't think there's any way any of them could have been aliens?
ASHLEY HAMER: There's always a way, but it's a very slight-- there are so many other explanations that are so much more likely.
CODY GOUGH: Sure.
ASHLEY HAMER: There are a lot of things that can be in the sky.
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES] That's very true.
ASHLEY HAMER: And when I say people have been seeing unidentified things in the sky, that goes way, way back. Curiosity looked into UFO history, and today we've got a story about how people have been seeing strange objects in the sky for millennia.
Think ancient Egypt. There's a piece of ancient papyrus that we think dates back to about 1480 BCE. 85 years ago, the Vatican Museums Egypt director at the time made a copy of that papyrus and discovered a story about a circle of fire in the sky measuring about 150 feet across. Days and weeks passed, and that circle was joined by others until, quote, "their splendor exceeded that of the sun and extended to the limits of the four angles of the sky," unquote. Finally, they ascended into the upper atmosphere and disappeared, at which point, the pharaoh had incense burned out of respect for the bizarre occurrence.
Now technically, this story might be a hoax. The original papyrus mysteriously disappeared, and even the Vatican lost the copy that their director had made. But there are plenty of legitimate records of sightings from the last millennium. In 1561, the whole city of Nuremberg, Germany, spotted two blood-red arcs appear in front of the sun. As the hours went by, they were joined by battling orbs in the sky, several spinning rods, and eventually, a massive black spear.
Less than a century later, in 1639, the first UFO sighting in North America was recorded by the governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. He wrote a witness's description of another fire in the sky. And in 1896, an assistant to California's secretary of state saw three lights in the sky above the Capitol, slowly approaching his position. You can read the full story of all of these sightings today on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS. But the takeaway is that if you love UFO sightings, then flip open a history book sometime. There's a lot out there.
CODY GOUGH: Look, I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens.
ASHLEY HAMER: You can totally say it's aliens.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS] Ashley, have you ever gone on a vacation just to get away from it all?
ASHLEY HAMER: I should have done that once. I never have. I don't know. Maybe I have.
CODY GOUGH: I mean, well, you just go out in nature, no cell phone reception, that kind of thing.
ASHLEY HAMER: Not since I was little. I mean, I grew up in the wilderness, and we would do that a lot. And that was like pre cell phones. But no. You know what? I need to. I want to.
CODY GOUGH: Well, today we wrote about a place where you might want to go, Ashley, to get away from it all.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm ready.
CODY GOUGH: And if you at home or someone you know is the outdoorsy type, then yeah, this is the perfect place, along with a pretty cool story, by the way. You can camp where a famous hermit lived for more than 30 years. It's in the Cold River area of New York's Adirondack Mountains. In the early 1900s, Noah John Rondeau lived in solitude for 36 years as mayor of Cold River City, population one.
We don't know a lot about Rondeau's early life. But in his 30s, he got fed up with daily life and the Depression era labor force. So he built a log cabin overlooking the water in 1914. And he was living there year round by the 30s. He actually built a few different buildings for his town, including a town hall, which is where he lived, a hall of records, and a number of tipi-like wigwams.
He used to give tours and violin performances to people passing by, so he wasn't your stereotypical antisocial hermit. In fact, in 1947, New York's conservation department dropped him a letter from the air asking if he would come to a sportsman show in New York to stand in as an example of the wilds of the Adirondacks. Rondeau accepted when officials came back to pick him up in a helicopter, and he brought along a buckskin suit, a muskrat hat, and snowshoes.
Rondeau moved back to civilized life after a storm wrecked his camp in 1950. And he passed away later in 1967. You can still visit the old site along the Northville Lake Placid Trail, and it's easy to see why somebody would want to live there. Let us know if you've ever been there. We're always down to retweet pictures from your last trip.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, upstate New York.
CODY GOUGH: A lot of nature.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Trees.
ASHLEY HAMER: Tree leaves.
CODY GOUGH: Mountains [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Any type of three-dimensional terrain is a little foreign to Midwesterners like me.
(TOGETHER) [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: My drive between Chicago in Des Moines, Iowa, to and from college left a bit to be desired in terms of landscape. But that's the cool thing about America. There's so many different terrains.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's true. OK. Today is the very last time we'll remind you about the 2018 Podcast Awards. We promise. That's because voting closes soon. If you haven't heard, Curiosity Daly has been nominated for recognition in the categories of People's Choice education and science and medicine.
CODY GOUGH: And we need your help to become a finalist. You can find a link with instructions in today's show notes, or just visit podcastawards.com to sign up and cast your vote. Just look for Curiosity Daily in the dropdown menus. And that's it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Every vote helps a lot, so tell your friends. It never hurts to share a link on Facebook or Twitter. You can even use the hashtag #PCA18.
CODY GOUGH: Thank you if you've already voted, and we really mean it when we say we appreciate that you took the time to do that. And we'll let you know if we win.
ASHLEY HAMER: Read about today's stories and more on curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
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