Learn about how the Toxo parasite manipulates mice to get into cats; how the trial by fire was a surprisingly accurate test of guilt; and a trick for figuring out how to spend your money that’s easier than budgeting. 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 Parasite Manipulates Mice to Get Into Cats — And Now Scientists Know Why — https://curiosity.im/31XC3h1 How the Trial by Fire Was a Surprisingly Accurate Test of Guilt — https://curiosity.im/31GuZ8B If Budgeting Your Money Is Too Hard, Try This Instead — https://curiosity.im/2KmI3di 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 the Toxo parasite manipulates mice to get into cats; how the trial by fire was a surprisingly accurate test of guilt; and a trick for figuring out how to spend your money that’s easier than budgeting.
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:
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/control-your-spending-without-a-budget-how-toxo-controls-mice-and-trial-by-fire-brilliance
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 a parasite that manipulates mice to get into cats; how the trial by fire was a surprisingly accurate test of guilt; and a trick for figuring out how to spend your money that’s easier than budgeting.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
This Parasite Manipulates Mice to Get Into Cats — And Now Scientists Know Why — https://curiosity.im/31XC3h1 (Ashley)
A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison just made a breakthrough in researching one of the most infamous parasites out there. I’m talking about toxoplasma gondii [GONE-dee-eye], or Toxo for short. It infects as many as 4 in 10 people in the U.S. and U.K., and even more than that in some other parts of the world. And it can survive in a variety of animals, most importantly cats, rats, and mice. You may have heard about Toxo's “mind control abilities” in the context of humans — the parasite is rumored to cause impulsive behavior and has even been linked to schizophrenia and suicide. But a recent study found little evidence to suggest that toxoplasmosis has any effect on personality traits or rates of mental illness. This protozoan parasite definitely can alter the behavior of mice and rats, though. In fact, doing so is essential to its survival. Toxo can only reproduce in the intestines of cats, so its top priority is to guide its host into a feline trap. Toxo does this to mice by infecting the rodent's brain and altering normal activity in the limbic system. The limbic system is home to the amygdala, which is the part of your brain that controls fear and aggression, as well as other emotions. A rat’s limbic system also has different behavioral pathways to respond to different things. For example, that limbic system has a defensive behavioral pathway that handles potential threats, and a reproductive behavioral pathway that handles potential mates. But when it’s infected with T. gondii, rats respond to a threat — like the odor of cat urine — via the reproductive pathway. In other words,something that should be threatening instead becomes sexually arousing. Yes, that’s right: the scent of cat urine, which SHOULD be threatening, turns them on. You KNOW something’s gone wrong when you’re swiping right on cat urine. Once Toxo makes it into a cat via a fearless rat, it can successfully reproduce, and eventually reemerge in the cat's poop so it can infect a new host. That might sound gross, but it’s led to a question that has puzzled scientists for years: why are cat guts so hospitable to Toxo? That’s what the researchers from UW-Madison finally figured out. It turns out that cats have an abundance of linoleic acid in their bloodstreams. Most mammals convert linoleic acid to other substances for essential body functions, but cat intestines lack the enzyme that’s responsible for the transformation, called delta-6-desaturase, or D6D. So the researchers fed mice a drug that blocks D6D and put them on a diet rich in linoleic acid, along with a healthy dose of Toxo. And a week later, the mice were pooping out spore-like cells that indicate parasite reproduction. This study has huge implications for future Toxo research. Until now, the only way to collect T. gondii for research purposes was to infect cats and later euthanize them. Not the most popular thing for animal rights activists or for cat people like me. Studying the parasite in mice offers a more humane and familiar pathway for research.
How the Trial by Fire Was a Surprisingly Accurate Test of Guilt — https://curiosity.im/31GuZ8B (from Saturday 8/31) (Cody)
We tend to think of the Trial by Fire as pretty barbaric. That’s the medieval practice of determining a person’s guilt by having them put their hand in boiling water or similar. Yeah — pretty barbaric. And yet! In defense of this not-very-modern practice, it turns out that the trial by fire might have been an upsettingly accurate way to test guilt back in the day — and one that wasn’t as violent as you might think. Here’s why.
Say your neighbor accuses you of stealing his cow. You have the option to undergo the hot-water ordeal, OR just confess, skip the ordeal, and pay a reduced fine.
If you’re guilty and you’re expecting a terribly burnt arm, confessing was your best option. If you’re innocent and believe that God will save your arm from the boiling water, you’d be better off undergoing the ordeal.
Therefore, the ordeal itself didn’t really matter. It was set up so the guilty would confess and the innocent won't, thereby telling the court everything they needed to know. Get it? The idea wasn’t to necessarily even put the person through the trial by fire. It was to use the reaction of the accused to figure out whether they were guilty.
So how did priests deal with an innocent person who still needed to undergo the ordeal? Luckily there was an “instruction manual” with ways to leave the innocent unburned, like prepping the coal in a way that left the iron at a moderate temperature. And don’t worry about having to lie: the priests may have believed God was guiding them when they manipulated the ordeals. Everybody wins!
And as for the accused, the priests had safeguards in place to avoid any issues with religious skeptics — even if it wasn't exactly ethical. They simply made sure to keep an equal balance of guilty confessors and innocent people that underwent the ordeal. While this sounds like it might undercut the entire point of the ordeal, the way things were set up at the time was usually enough to turn most skeptics into full-on believers in the powers of God to judge the innocent and punish the guilty.
[NHTSA - DRIVE SOBER]
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
CODY: Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash. People could get hurt or killed. But let’s take a moment to look at some surprising statistics. As in, almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes. That’s one person every 50 minutes.
ASHLEY: Even though drunk-driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades, drunk driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives each year. And drunk driving can have a BIG impact your wallet. You could get arrested and incur huge legal expenses. You could possibly even lose your job. So, what can you do to prevent drunk driving?
CODY: Plan a safe ride home before you start drinking, designate a sober driver or call a taxi. If someone you know has been drinking, take their keys and arrange for them to get a sober ride home. We all know the consequences of driving drunk. But one thing’s for sure… You’re wrong if you think it’s no big deal. Drive sober or get pulled over.
If Budgeting Your Money Is Too Hard, Try This Instead — https://curiosity.im/2KmI3di (Ashley)
You know setting a budget is a good idea, but let’s face it: it can be hard to actually make or follow one. Fortunately, Duke University researchers have figured out an easy way to cut down on your spending — and it doesn’t even require a calculator. You just have to avoid certain situations.
At Duke’s Common Cents Lab, experts dig into human behavior and psychology to figure out the best ways to help people save money, get out of debt, and boost their earnings. In their 2017 annual report, they announced a few fascinating findings from their research. One of those findings? There are a lot of things people regret spending money on.
For one study, researchers presented millennials with their 40 most recent purchases and asked them to rate how happy they were with the decision to spend that money. The users gave a pretty high rating to expenses related to community, healthcare, rent and utilities, arts and entertainment, and education. The lowest ratings came from purchases made at convenience stores, bars, restaurants, and digital subscriptions. Other than the digital subscriptions, these lamentable expenses all have one thing in common: food.
Here’s where the solution comes in. The researchers then surveyed more than 1,300 people and asked them to rate some options for how to curb their food spending. Here are the 5 options — think about which one of these you think you could stick to the most easily. Ready?
1. Only spend a maximum of $[20] each time you eat out.
2. Only spend $[40] per week eating out.
3. Never eat out.
4. Only eat out [two] times per week.
5. Only eat out on the weekends.
So which do you think you could stick to the best? Well, the first couple options that set a spending limit are the most traditional — they're the rules you might use if you follow a budget. But it was the last two options, the "rules of thumb," that got the best response. People were the most confident that they could follow those rules and believed the rules would save them the most money.
The lesson is clear: If you want to save money, try limiting "spendy" activities instead of limiting the amount you spend. Figure out how many times you’ll eat out, not how much you’ll spend, and you’ll be on the road to more satisfying spending. [ad lib]
CODY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today. Today we learned that Toxo controls mice by turning threats into turn-ons, and you can blame linoleic acid
ASHLEY: And that the trial by fire was a surprisingly good way to figure out who was guilty back in the day — without even needing to use the actual fire!
CODY: And that you can manage your money better by budgeting how often you do something, not how much you spend when you do it
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!