Learn about why getting your wisdom teeth removed might be pointless; Lise Meitner, the forgotten female physicist who helped us figure out nuclear power; and the 4-7-8 breathing technique to help you fall asleep faster. 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: Getting Your Wisdom Teeth Removed Is Likely A Waste Of Time — https://curiosity.im/2tvT1Uz Lise Meitner Is the forgotten female physicist who deserved a Nobel Prize — https://curiosity.im/2GW1hVP The 4-7-8 Breathing Technique Will Help You Get to Sleep Faster — https://curiosity.im/2txnWAc 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 getting your wisdom teeth removed might be pointless; Lise Meitner, the forgotten female physicist who helped us figure out nuclear power; and the 4-7-8 breathing technique to help you fall asleep faster.
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/breathing-trick-to-fall-asleep-faster-wisdom-teeth-removal-revelations-and-lise-meitner
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 getting your wisdom teeth removed might be pointless; the forgotten female physicist who helped us figure out nuclear power; and a breathing technique to help you fall asleep faster.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Getting Your Wisdom Teeth Removed Is Likely A Waste Of Time — https://curiosity.im/2tvT1Uz (Cody)
There’s mounting evidence that getting your wisdom teeth removed… is actually not a thing you NEED to do. “Mounting evidence” as in, according to a 2007 study in the American Journal of Public Health, at least two-thirds of wisdom teeth extractions are unnecessary. Aside from the medical expenses, this is a problem because new research suggests that wisdom tooth removal may be linked to an increased risk of opioid abuse. So let’s dig into the root of the wisdom teeth problem. You can thank evolution for having wisdom teeth in the first place.
Back in the day, before humans discovered fire, we needed as many molars as we could get. Having a spare set of tough molars pop up in the back of the jaw gave us a competitive evolutionary advantage. In the meantime, we started eating softer foods and taking better care of our teeth, so we stopped needing the the extra help. But evolution doesn’t really care. Our jaws have shrunk in size over the years, but the genes that determine human jaw size are completely different from the ones that determine how many teeth humans get. What that means is that we end up with smaller jaws trying to fit the same amount of teeth, and wisdom teeth get the boot since they’re the last ones to show up. Wisdom teeth are actually one of the most interesting fields of genetic research today because they show up entirely after birth, and they don’t fully form in about 35 percent of the population. Now back to the original point about getting your wisdom teeth pulled, there are obviously medical cases where it’s necessary. But if they grow in place the way they’re supposed to, they generally don’t cause any problems for the rest of your life. So don’t just assume you have to get them out, but obviously always do what your doctor says. And maybe some day, researchers will truly be able to get to the root of this problem. [ad lib]
Lise Meitner Is the forgotten female physicist who deserved a Nobel Prize — https://curiosity.im/2GW1hVP (Republish) (Ashley)
History isn’t always fair. But there are little things we can do to make things right. That’s why today I’m gonna tell you about the forgotten physicist who deserved a Nobel Prize for her work on nuclear fission. That’s the reaction that makes nuclear power plants and nuclear bombs possible. She has a sad story, but we’ll help make sure her legacy lives on. As reported by The Conversation, physicists thought for a long time that it was impossble for atoms as large as uranium to be split in two. But on February 11, 1939, physicist Lise Meitner wrote a letter to the editor of Nature, a leading international scientific journal. And in that letter, she described exactly how that reaction could take place. She even named it fission. You can read the details of the chemistry in the full write-up on this story, which you can find on curiosity-dot-com and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS; but basically, chemists had mis-identified an element in the nuclear fission equation. They’d been looking at radium as an important part of the equation, but Meitner explained the element was probably barium. Meitner urged her chemist colleague Otto Hahn to perform some experiments to confirm this, and the results were just as she’d expected.
Unfortunately — and this is where the story gets rough — Meitner didn’t get the recognition she deserved. See, when she was on the faculty of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, she was the academic equal of her colleague Otto Hahn, and they were close colleagues and friends for many years. But since she was Jewish, the war forced her out of Germany when the Nazis took over, and Meitner had to take a position in Stockholm. She and Hahn kept collaborating long-distance, and that’s when they made the barium discovery. But when it came time to publish, Hahn had to publish without her. He just knew that including a Jewish woman on the paper would cost him his career in Germany. So he falsely claimed that he’d made the discovery on his own. The paper didn’t even explain the findings very well, and that’s why Meitner wrote that letter to Nature a few weeks later. Still, Hahn was given the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for, quote, “the discovery of the fission of heavy nuclei,” unquote. The word “fission” didn’t even appear in Hahn’s original publication: Meitner was the one who came up with the term in her letter. The Nobel committee never admitted their mistake, and the whole situation is controversial even today. This story has a silver lining, though: in 1966, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded Meitner and her colleagues the prestigious Enrico Fermi Award for pioneering research leading to the discovery of fission. She and Hahn passed away just two years later, both at the age of 89. It’s not the Nobel Prize she deserved, but it’s something. And thanks to today’s age of information, at least there are other ways we can help Lise Meitner’s legacy live on.
The 4-7-8 Breathing Technique Will Help You Get to Sleep Faster — https://curiosity.im/2txnWAc (from Saturday) (Cody)
CODY: We can sleep easy knowing that we helped you learn about Lise Meitner. And here’s something that might help YOU sleep easy: the 4-7-8 breathing technique. It’s a simple sleep trick you can use to get some quality shut-eye this weekend. It’s based on an ancient yogi technique called Pranayama, which helps practitioners gain control over their breathing. Remember the numbers 4-7-8, and follow these three steps:
Breathe in slowly through your nose for four seconds.
Hold your breath for seven seconds.
Exhale for eight seconds.
The whole time you’re doing this, relax your jaw muscles and keep your mouth closed while you inhale through your nose. While you exhale, practice releasing any tension from your body by pushing air through your lips so it sounds like a gust of wind. The tip of your tongue should rest on the roof of your mouth, directly behind your upper front teeth. This trick works because, long story short, it can slow down your stress reactions and prime your body for sleep. You don’t have to stick with 4-7-and-8 strictly; it’s more of a ratio you can speed up or slow down. Give it a shot this weekend and sleep tight!
ASHLEY: That’s all for today, but you can keep learning all weekend on curiosity-dot-com. This weekend, you’ll learn about how the Milky Way is actually warped;
The top 10 jobs for psychopaths;
A competition to make human flight a reality;
The best way to get over a breakup, according to research;
And more!
CODY: Join us again Sunday on the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. In the meantime, have a great weekend! I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!