Learn about why wireless signals are completely banned from Green Bank, West Virginia; why fish stinks but chicken doesn’t; and how to find out if you have a healthy personality. 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: Wireless Signals Are Banned in This Small West Virginia Town — https://curiosity.im/2GvhnFf How Come Fish Stinks But Chicken Doesn't? — https://curiosity.im/2GxqJ3B Do You Have a "Healthy" Personality? Find Out With This Psychology Scale — https://curiosity.im/2GyLWdy If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about why wireless signals are completely banned from Green Bank, West Virginia; why fish stinks but chicken doesn’t; and how to find out if you have a healthy personality.
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:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/a-town-where-wireless-signals-are-banned-why-fish-stink-and-a-personality-health-test
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why wireless signals are completely banned from a small town in West Virginia; why fish stinks but chicken doesn’t; and how to find out if you have a healthy personality.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Wireless Signals Are Banned in This Small West Virginia Town — https://curiosity.im/2GvhnFf (Cody)
If you’ve ever just wanted to get away from it all, then have I got the place for you. There’s a town in the U.S. where wireless signals are banned completely. No internet. No cell phones. Talk about a place where you can log off for a while. [ad lib]
CODY: By the way, there’s a great profile on this town in a Werner Herzog film from 2016 called “lo and behold.” It’s a documentary about the past, present, and future of the internet and how it affects human interaction and modern society, and personally, I recommend it. But in case you didn’t catch that film, here’s the scoop on the town of Green Bank, West Virginia. It sits right in the middle of the National Radio Quiet zone, which is a region spanning 13-thousand square miles, or 34-thousand square kilometers. It’s an area where Earthly signals are muted so cosmic signals can be heard, and it’s been that way since 1958. These days, the tiny town is where you’ll find the largest steerable radio telescope in the world — “large” as in 2.3 acres, or about one hectare, and it’s taller than the Statue of Liberty. Green Bank is also where you’ll NOT find a long list of things that might interfere with the telescope, including a baby monitor, or an automatic garage door, or a microwave, or a wireless doorbell. After all, the telescope is sensitive to changes as small as a billionth of a billionth of a millionth of a watt — that's the energy of a single snowflake reaching the ground. Almost any kind of electrical device can overwhelm that system. It can be disrupted by a spark given off from a vacuum cleaner, or the spark plugs of gas-powered vehicles. But the telescope can track very small changes across the vastness of space, like in 2018 when it identified organic molecules permeating interstellar space. And there’s another big benefit: Green Bank has become something of a mecca for people suffering from symptoms of electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS. It’s a condition where wireless signals cause symptoms like skin rashes, upset stomachs, dizziness, and heart palpitations — although to be clear, doctors don’t all agree that it’s real. Some say it’s psychosomatic, or all in a patient’s head.” Whether it’s real or not, Green Bank is the perfect place to be if you think you have it — although I can’t promise you’ll be able to come across our podcast very easily.
How Come Fish Stinks But Chicken Doesn't? — https://curiosity.im/2GxqJ3B (Ashley)
Picture this: you’re at work walking by your kitchen, and it HITS YOU. It only takes a couple seconds: you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that one of your co-workers is using the microwave to heat up… FISH. Why couldn’t it be chicken?? Actually, here’s a better question: why does fish stink but chicken doesn’t? Here’s the science, along with how you can neutralize the smell the next time you bring last night’s leftover tilapia into work.
All living cells are full of different types of enzymes, which trigger the chemical reactions that keep the animal living. That includes the reactions that break down old cells to leave room for new ones. Animals of all types, including humans, are also full of bacteria, which help break down certain chemicals and produce others. While animals are alive, all of their biological processes keep these functions in a delicate balance. And those functions don't stop when an animal is killed. Enzymes keep on breaking down cells and bacteria go on reproducing, but now they don't have a living, breathing biological organism to keep things in check. Luckily, cold temperatures make chemical reactions slow down, which is why it's super important to keep meat and seafood in the fridge. The fridge slows down bacterial growth and enzyme activity, which is why we use refrigerators and freezers to keep our food fresh.
Now here’s where smells come in. Chickens and cows are warm-blooded creatures with bodies to match, so putting their meat in the fridge slows their biological processes considerably. Fish, on the other hand, are cold-blooded creatures that live in water temperatures that aren't much different than your refrigerator. So fish-related enzyme action will happen just as easily in your fridge or in the grocery store as it would in water. And those fish contain high levels of a chemical that the bacteria breaks down into trimethylamine, or TMA. TMA SMELLS. And that breakdown happens slowly at first, but it speeds up over the course of a few days, which is why you need to cook fish so soon after you buy it. The FDA recommends 2 days. As for the smell: if your fish is fresh enough to cook but you can’t get over that fishy odor, then try to soak the fish in milk for 20 minutes. The casein in the milk will blend with those fishy-smelling compounds and draw them out of the flesh. Or, for a quicker fix, just spritz some lemon juice over the filet. The acids will neutralize the smell, and you'll be left with a citrusy seafood dish. And hey: you can always bring lemon juice into work as a gift for your co-worker who seems to have seafood leftovers for lunch every day.
[FIRST ALERT]
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by First Alert.
CODY: There are three things every homeowner wants their home to be: smarter, safer, and more fun. What if I told you OneLink by First Alert can cover that whole trio?
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ASHLEY: One more time, that’s one-link-dot-first-alert-dot-com.
Do You Have a "Healthy" Personality? Find Out With This Psychology Scale — https://curiosity.im/2GyLWdy (Cody)
You know the “Big Five” personality traits we’ve talked about before? It’s also known as the Five Factor Model, and researchers mostly use the five traits to define personality disorders. Well in a recent study, a team of researchers set out to do the opposite, and define personality… ORDERS. Okay, so that’s not a real phrase. But they did set out to use the Big Five to define a psychologically healthy person. And they made a quiz you can take to figure out if you have a quote-unquote “healthy” personality. Here’s a little background. First off, to remember the Big Five personality traits, remember the acronym OCEAN. It stands for: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The researchers asked a hundred experts in Big Five research to outline a healthy Big Five personality, and then they compiled the estimates into what they call a consensus profile. The consensus profile ultimately involved high openness to feelings, which is a sub-trait of openness); high competence, which is a sub-trait of conscientiousness; and high warmth and positive emotions, which are sub-traits of extraversion. It also scored low on angry hostility, which is a sub-trait of neuroticism. The researchers tested their consensus profile on a group of roughly 3-thousand people, and they found it did correspond with other established measures of psychological health. So! Now’s your chance to see how healthy your personality is. There’s a quiz from psychology researcher Scott Barry Kaufman with 20 statements you rate on a five-item Likert scale, an in, responses ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.” And you can find a link to that quiz in our full write-up on this, which you can read for free on Curiosity-dot-com and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS. [ad lib]
CODY RESULTS: Your total score is 81. Overall, you are likely to have a very healthy personality. Congrats! Keep doing whatever you are doing, and you are likely to continue to live with an abundance of psychological health, healthy self-esteem, good self-regulatory skills, optimstic outlook on the world, and a clear and stable self-view.
ASHLEY RESULTS: Your total score is 84. Overall, you are likely to have a very healthy personality. Congrats! Keep doing whatever you are doing, and you are likely to continue to live with an abundance of psychological health, healthy self-esteem, good self-regulatory skills, optimstic outlook on the world, and a clear and stable self-view.
Read about today’s stories and more on curiosity-dot-com!
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