Learn about why starting an exercise routine might give you healthier food cravings; math problems that you could get a million dollars for solving; and the story of what drove the growth of astronomy in the Middle Ages, with some help from Dr. David Warmflash. 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: Starting an Exercise Routine Might Give You Healthier Food Cravings — https://curiosity.im/2tA5KG4 The Millennium Problems Are Seven Math Problems Worth $1 Million Each — https://curiosity.im/2twso1Z Additional resources from Dr. David Warmflash: Pick up “Moon: An Illustrated History: From Ancient Myths to the Colonies of Tomorrow” on Amazon — https://amazon.com Follow @CosmicEvolution on Twitter — https://twitter.com/CosmicEvolution Moon Monday Episode 1: Saros Cycles — https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-podcast/saros-cycles-w-dr-david-warmflash-the-eiffel-tower Moon Monday Episode 2: The Eclipse War — https://omny.fm/shows/curiosity-podcast/narcissism-lessons-the-war-stopping-eclipse-w-dr-d 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 starting an exercise routine might give you healthier food cravings; math problems that you could get a million dollars for solving; and the story of what drove the growth of astronomy in the Middle Ages, with some help from Dr. David Warmflash.
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:
Additional resources from Dr. David Warmflash:
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/craving-healthy-foods-what-grew-astronomy-w-dr-david-warmflash-1-million-math-problems
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 starting an exercise routine might give you healthier food cravings; and a set of math problems that you could get a million dollars for solving.
CODY: Plus, you’ll learn the story of what drove the growth of astronomy in the Middle Ages, in the third installment of our MOON MONDAY mini-series. Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Starting an Exercise Routine Might Give You Healthier Food Cravings — https://curiosity.im/2tA5KG4 (Ashley)
Looking to cut down on food cravings? A new study says starting an exercise routine might give you healthier food cravings. As reported by Futurity, researchers looked at more than 2,600 young adults who had no regular exercise or diet routine. And after exercising for several weeks, participants were more likely to choose foods like fruits, vegetables and lean meats. AND their cravings for sodas, fried foods, and other unhealthy options decreased. The researchers in this study actually told participants to NOT change their diets in any major way, but they did anyway. This study didn’t look specifically at why this happened, but previous research has shown that moderate exercise can change dopamine levels — in a way that makes people crave high-fat foods less. There’s been other research showing a relationship between exercise intensity and the amount of appetite-regulating hormones in the body. This study included people between the ages of 18 and 35, which is a really important period for forming healthy habits. A lot of weight gain happens during early college years, and someone who’s mildly to moderately overweight in their early 20s has a bigger risk of obesity later in life. In terms of the amount of exercise in this study, participants at the beginning of the study said they exercised less than 30 minutes a week. And they were put on a routine where they did a 30-minute aerobic workout three times a week for 15 weeks. The exercise sessions included 30 minutes of aerobic exercise at about 65 to 85 percent of each person’s maximum heart rate, along with a 5-minute warmup and a 5-minute cool down. Participants could do this on whatever equipment they preferred, like treadmills, stationary bikes, or elliptical machines. Here’s how the researchers summed up the results: quote, “"One of the reasons that we need to promote exercise is for the healthy habits it can create in other areas. That combination is very powerful,” unquote. [ad lib]
Moon Monday #3 (Middle Ages edition) (Cody)
It’s time for the third installment in our “Moon Mondays” miniseries, where we’ll teach you how the history of the moon has affected the world in some way. This week we’re gonna fast-forward from ancient Greece to the Middle Ages. Around this time, astronomers started to study the stars pretty seriously. But what did they hope to accomplish? It turns out the answer lies in astrology. Here’s what Dr. David Warmflash told us about the surprising and kind of amusing origins of modern-day astronomy.
[CLIP 2:31]
So there ya go! When it came to astronomy back in the day, it was all about the Benjamins. It’s like they always say: the more things change, the more they stay the same. There are lots of other great stories in the upcoming book “Moon: An Illustrated History” by Dr. David Warmflash. INCLUDING stuff about the space race, which we’ll get into next week. In the meantime, you can follow him on Twitter at cosmic-evolution. We’ll post links to all that and more in today’s show notes.
The Millennium Problems Are Seven Math Problems Worth $1 Million Each — https://curiosity.im/2twso1Z (Ashley)
Do you want a million dollars? Well I hope you’re good at math. Because you’re guaranteed to earn a million bucks if you can solve any one of the Millenium Problems. Sounds easy, but honestly, it's probably one of the hardest possible options for making that kind of bank. These problems came from the Clay Mathematics Institute of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the year 2000, they laid out seven of the most challenging problems mathematicians were facing at the time. And yes, the million dollar reward is still available to anyone who could solve one. These problems represent the deepest mysteries in the field of mathematics. Some of them point to extremely useful practical applications, like engineering better spaceships, more effective drug treatments, and tougher cybersecurity encryption standards. Others seem to have no practical applications whatsoever, and simply offer the human race a more detailed look at how the universe works. As of 2019, only one has been solved, by a Russian geometer in 2002. It was called the Poincaré Conjecture, and in the simplest terms, it basically asks whether a fully closed shape is always considered a sphere, no matter how many dimensions you build it in. The solution showed that all simply-connected closed shapes share a nice, orderly set of properties that can be categorized, albeit in a very complicated way. Yeah, I told you these weren’t simple. One problem down, six to go. Here are a few examples: the P vs. NP Problem. It basically asks this: If it is easy to check that a solution to a problem is correct, is it also easy to solve that problem? In the P vs. NP problem, the P stands for polynomial and the NP stands for nondeterministic polynomial time. This problem is one of computer science’s greatest mysteries, and we could dedicate an entire episode to it… and you still wouldn’t even know the solution! You can find links to all the problems in our full write-up on curiosity-dot-com and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS, but one other Millennium Problem is called the Rieman Hypothesis. It has to do with prime numbers, and according to the Clay Mathematics Institute, it’s been checked for the first 10 TRILLION solutions. To solve this, you need a proof that it is true for every interesting solution, and the point of this problem is that the solution would shed light on many of the mysteries surrounding the distribution of prime numbers. Grab that graphing calculator, and good luck!
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