Learn about why regular bedtimes aren’t just for kids; a toxin in the pong pong seeds of the Cerbera odollam tree that’s been called the perfect murder weapon; and the best word you can say to convince people you’re not a robot. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Regular Bedtimes Aren't Just For Kids The Toxin in "The Suicide Tree" Has Been Called the Perfect Murder Weapon The Best Word to Convince Other People You're Not a Robot Is ... Very Gross Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn about why regular bedtimes aren’t just for kids; a toxin in the pong pong seeds of the Cerbera odollam tree that’s been called the perfect murder weapon; and the best word you can say to convince people you’re not a robot.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
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/adult-bedtime-benefits-cerberin-toxin-and-a-word-to-convince-others-youre-not-a-robot
[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 why regular bedtimes aren't just for kids, a toxin in a tree that's been called the perfect murder weapon, and the best word you can say to convince people you're not a robot.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. You know how when you grow up and become an adult, you can basically do whatever you want? Like, have pizza for breakfast or ice cream any time. And then you learn it's actually really bad for you to eat pizza and ice cream every single day. Well, we've got some bad news for you. According to a recent study, adults should also have a regular bedtime. Irregular sleep might be bad for your health. This is a story that I am not happy about.
[LAUGHS]
I have some work to do on my schedule.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm good at waking up at the same time. But of course, going to bed at different times and waking up at the same time is not good for your overall sleep schedule, and that's what I do.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Well, take this as a cautionary tale. This study was led by Duke University researchers and published in Scientific Reports in September. Sleep research in the past has looked more at how deeply people sleep and how long they sleep each night. But this study focused on a thing called sleep regularity or sleep hygiene.
The researchers used a relatively new metric called the sleep regularity index to analyze the sleep cycles of almost 2,000 adults aged 54 to 93. Participants wore digital wrist devices to track the exact times they went to bed and woke up every day. They also kept track of how sleepy they felt during the day, and the researchers collected their biodata to monitor their cardiovascular and mental health. And they found that people with irregular bedtimes and wake up times weighed more, had higher blood pressure and blood sugar, and were more likely to suffer from depression.
The irregular sleep was also linked to the higher risk for heart attacks and strokes in the next 10 years, not to mention a correlation with sleepiness during the day and a more sedentary lifestyle. And this was all true, whether participants were night owls or early risers. A regular bedtime was just that important. But the correlation and causation aren't completely clear.
Researchers need to do more work to figure out what causes what. For example, the real health issue could be they already had a sedentary lifestyle or increased calorie intake. People do tend to eat more and metabolize more slowly when their circadian rhythms get disrupted. But this particular study's findings can still help doctors with trying to prevent heart disease and diabetes, which are leading causes of death in the US.
ASHLEY HAMER: You know nature's beauty can be deceptive, right? Every rose has its thorns, and every cerbera odollam has its perfect murder weapon. This is an infamous killer in India and Southeast Asia, and it's one that you absolutely need to stay away from.
CODY GOUGH: This one is honestly terrifying. I was reading up a little bit on it when I was writing this, and I was like, all right, I don't like this. I don't like that this is a thing.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. It's super deadly. The cerbera odollam is a medium-sized hardwood tree in India and Southeast Asia that can grow up to 32 feet tall. Seems harmless, but there's an excessively toxic chemical in its seeds, which are known around the world as pong-pong seeds. This chemical is called cerberin, and there's enough of it in one pong-pong seed to kill an adult human.
Cerberin is a cardiac glycosides, which is a class of organic compounds that slows your heart rate. These compounds are used in some medications, but too much can be a bad thing. The way it works to stop your heart is similar to that of the death penalty by lethal injection. Ingesting a seed will kill a person in just a few hours. But first, it'll cause crippling stomach pain, irregular heart rhythm, a headache, and other very painful effects.
The cerbera odollam is nicknamed the suicide tree in part because it seeds are so deadly. But sadly, the other reason is because toxicologists believe that it's used by more people to commit suicide than any other plant on Earth, especially in Indian communities. It gets darker, though. The seed is a weapon that can fly under the radar extremely easily even under the nose of medical professionals.
Testing for cerberin poisoning is pretty expensive and requires the use of high-performance liquid chromatography, coupled with mass spectrometry. That's not even a viable option in some locations. In fact, toxicologists won't perform the test unless there's already strong evidence that the victim consumed cerbera recently.
And that's assuming they've even heard of the toxin in the first place. Not only is it hard to detect after the fact, the stuff can easily be masked in spicy foods. That's why a 2004 study suggests that some cases put down to suicide may actually have been murders. Whatever you do if you ever hear the phrase pong-pong seed, just run.
CODY GOUGH: Before we get to our last story, I want to give a special shout-out to some of our patrons for supporting our show. Thank you Anthony Hyland, Ryan Day, and Paul Larson for contributing to our Patreon page. You are what is helping us keep the show going.
ASHLEY HAMER: If you're listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out. Even a couple of bucks a month would be a huge help. I know that that's less than the shipping that I got charged on the last impulse purchase that I made online. And our patrons get lots of cool bonus content, like exclusive episodes. Don't forget. We've also got a public poll on our Patreon page, so you can tell us how often you want us to talk about how award-winning we are. One more time, that's patreon.com/curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: You've probably seen movies where there's a robot pretending to be a person. And at some point, one of the heroes has to figure out whether they're a real human or not. Well, real-world research from MIT has found an easy shortcut that'll convince people you are in fact a human, and it's hilarious. I'm not going to say the word till the very end of the story.
ASHLEY HAMER: I just loved it. It's like a bunch of five-year-olds came up with this.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: This study was a proof of concept to see how humans fared against what researchers called a Minimal Turing Test. The original Turing test was designed by a computer scientist and artificial intelligence pioneer Alan Turing, and it's a test of whether a computer system can be described as intelligent in a way that's pretty much indistinguishable from that of a human. If a human is talking to another human and a computer but can't tell which is which, then the computer has passed the Turing test.
But this wasn't a real Turing test. It was a way for researchers to see what happened when human judges were asked to figure out what words were used by humans versus robots. MIT's John McCoy and Tomer Ullman asked about 1,000 participants to submit a single word for the Minimal Turing Test. They were told to take this very seriously, as in they were told to imagine that if a human submitted an answer and that was judged to have come from a robot, that human would be put to death. Yikes. High stakes.
The top word submitted had to do with emotions, religion, food, life, and death, and bodily functions, with the number one word being love because, of course, it was. But then the researchers took a selection of those words, paired them together and showed them to a new set of people. They said one had been computer-generated and one had been thought up by a human being.
Under this test, the word robot performed the worst, and the word love performed really well, placing a solid second as the word that came from a human most of the time. It won against the words human, alive, banana, empathy, compassion, mercy, and please. But one word beat it out. This word beat love 69% of the time it was paired with the word, and that word was poop. So there's your magic word if anyone accuses you of being a Cylon. You're welcome, Battlestar Galactica fans.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow. That show would be very different after this.
[LAUGHTER]
Read about today's stories and more on curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow with the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
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