Learn about how researchers discovered that your lungs actually make blood; how you can tell the temperature from cricket chirps; and a strategy for maximizing your focus and achieving your goals that comes from billionaire business magnate Warren Buffett. 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: Lungs Actually Make Blood — https://curiosity.im/2Gr6lB4 You Can Tell The Temperature From Cricket Chirps, Thanks To Dolbear's Law — https://curiosity.im/2GgNIjj To Maximize Your Focus and Achieve Your Goals, Try Warren Buffett's 2-List Strategy — https://curiosity.im/2GgO3T7 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 how researchers discovered that your lungs actually make blood; how you can tell the temperature from cricket chirps; and a strategy for maximizing your focus and achieving your goals that comes from billionaire business magnate Warren Buffett.
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/achieve-goals-with-the-2-list-strategy-temperature-telling-crickets-and-lungs-make-blood
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 how researchers discovered that your lungs actually make blood; how you can tell the temperature from cricket chirps; and a strategy for maximizing your focus and achieving your goals that comes from billionaire business magnate Warren Buffett.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Lungs Actually Make Blood — https://curiosity.im/2Gr6lB4 (Cody)
When you think about lungs, you think about breathing. That's not wrong, but that's definitely not the whole story. Scientists discovered in March 2017 that lungs also play a huge role in — surprise! — making blood. And this new information could be hugely beneficial for the way we treat blood diseases. Researchers from UC San Francisco published findings in Nature that showed that your lungs play an important role in blood production. In studies, scientists saw the lungs of mice making a whole lot of blood platelets — as in, about 10 million per hour. Platelets are the cells that circulate within our blood and bind together to clot and stop bleeding when we get cut. That 10-million-per-hour number means the lungs make the majority of the platelets in the circulation in mice. This shatters our decades-long belief that bone marrow makes all of our blood components. One of the study’s researchers put it this way, quote: "What we've observed here in mice strongly suggests the lung may play a key role in blood formation in humans as well,” unquote. Real talk though: you’d think we would've figured this out by now, right? Well, this discovery was made possible by a new type of technology based on what’s called two-photon intravital imaging. That same technology was also recently used to discover an unidentified function of the cerebellum. Plus, there are still plenty of scientific anomalies that occur in our bodies — especially in the brain. Next up, scientists will begin looking at how the lungs and bone marrow work together as a blood factory. And like I mentioned earlier, all of this new information could be hugely beneficial for the way we treat blood diseases. [possible ad lib / One other takeaway: don’t ever feel like you shouldn’t pursue a career in science, because there’s always more for us to learn!]
You Can Tell The Temperature From Cricket Chirps, Thanks To Dolbear's Law — https://curiosity.im/2GgNIjj (Ashley)
If you want to know the temperature outside but you don’t have access to your phone or another way of getting a weather report, then here’s an interesting life hack: you can tell the temperature from cricket chirps. This is so reliable, it’s a LAW, known as Dolbear’s Law. And it comes from a report published in 1897 by a physicist named Amos Emerson Dolbear. Here’s how it works. All cold-blooded creatures, including crickets, follow the Arrhenius equation [Er-RAY-nee-us]. That says that the rate of a chemical reaction depends on the surrounding temperature. Chemical reactions like the ones that create muscle contractions — like ones that let a cricket chirp. So when it gets colder outside, the chemical reactions in a cricket's muscles slow down, and it chirps less frequently. When it's hotter outside, a cricket chirps more frequently. The thing is, crickets don’t have a way to control their internal body temperature like humans do. That means they’re not physically capable of changing the frequency of their chirps on their own. Dolbear even came up with a mathematical formula for calculating the temperature in Fahrenheit: count the number of chirps per minute, subtract forty, and divide the result by four. Then add the number 50 and you end up with the number of degrees Fahrenheit. And that’s it! Take this tip on your next camping trip and you will blow. Your. Friends. Away.
[NHTSA]
CODY: Today’s episode is paid for by NIT-suh.
ASHLEY: It can be a little frustrating, especially if you’re in a hurry or running late, to find yourself at a railway crossing, waiting for a train. And if the signals are going and the train’s not even there yet, you can feel a bit tempted to try and sneak across the tracks.
CODY: Well, don’t. Ever. Trains are often going a lot faster than you expect them to be. And they can’t stop. Even if the engineer hits the brakes right away, it can take a train over a mile to stop. By that time, what used to be your car is just a crushed hunk of metal and what used to be you… well, better not to think about that.
ASHLEY: The point is, you can’t know how quickly the train will arrive. The train can’t stop even if it sees you. The result is disaster. If the signals are on, the train is on its way. And you... just need to remember one thing… Stop. Trains can’t.
To Maximize Your Focus and Achieve Your Goals, Try Warren Buffett's 2-List Strategy — https://curiosity.im/2GgO3T7 (Cody)
If you’re looking for ways to be more productive and have a successful career, then someone you might want to listen to is business magnate Warren Buffett. As of the time of this recording, his net worth is around 87 BILLION dollars. Have I got your attention yet? Today you’ll learn Buffett’s simple strategy to help you maximize your focus and achieve your goals. It’s called the two-list strategy. It basically comes down to writing down your goals, circling some of them, and then prioritizing. Here are the details, and feel free to play along at home. First, write down your top 25 career goals. Or, for a more short-term version, jot down the 25 things you want to achieve this year, or even this week. Got it? Now, circle your five most important goals. The most urgent. The ones you REALLY want to accomplish. Now move those things you circled over to List A, and put everything else on List B. Not only should you focus on doing things to achieve the goals in List A, but you should IGNORE List B completely. That list is now your avoid-at-all-costs list. Do not give any of those things any attention until you’ve accomplished not one, not two, but all five of your goals in that priority list. It might sound savage, but that’s the whole point. As author and entrepreneur James Clear wrote in TIME, quote, “Spending time on secondary priorities is the reason you have 20 half-finished projects instead of five completed ones. Eliminate ruthlessly. Force yourself to focus. Complete a task or kill it. The most dangerous distractions are the ones you love, but that don't love you back,” unquote. So get to it! And come back when your net worth is tens of billions of dollars. We won’t be mad if you stop by our Patreon page to thank us for sharing the advice.
ASHLEY: You can read about today’s stories and more on curiosity-dot-com! And if you want to support this podcast, you can sign up to make a one-time or monthly contribution on our Patreon page. Special thanks to some of our existing Patrons: Lynn Smith, Walt DeGrange, Katrina Constantine, Jared BREE-land, Michael Kovitch, and Ben Urick.
CODY: Put the award-winning Curiosity Daily on your “List A” tomorrow and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!