Learn why some scientists are comparing an ancient bacteria to the Fountain of Youth; how temperature might affect how you spend your money; and, a rule you can use to develop new skills in just a few hours a week. 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: A Russian Scientist Injected Himself With 3.5-Million-Year-Old Bacteria — https://curiosity.im/2tFWuAl When You're Cold, You Make Decisions in the Heat of the Moment — https://curiosity.im/2GXTg2F The 5-Hour Rule Is Used by the World's Most Successful People — https://curiosity.im/2twywap 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 why some scientists are comparing an ancient bacteria to the Fountain of Youth; how temperature might affect how you spend your money; and, a rule you can use to develop new skills in just a few hours a week.
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/fountain-of-youth-bacteria-temperatures-making-you-spend-money-and-new-skills-in-5-hours
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 why some scientists are comparing an ancient bacteria to the Fountain of Youth; how temperature might affect how you spend your money; and, a rule you can use to develop new skills in just a few hours a week.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
A Russian Scientist Injected Himself With 3.5-Million-Year-Old Bacteria — https://curiosity.im/2tFWuAl (Cody)
A Russian scientist thinks he’s found the fountain of youth — in bacteria from Siberia. Dr. Anatoli Brouchkov [BREWSH-kof] is a geocryologist, and in 2009 he discovered a bacteria that he says is about three and a half MILLION years old — and is still alive. It has some promising properties, and oh, by the way: Dr. Brewsh-kof injected himself with some of it. How’s that for a science experiment? I’m gonna tell you about this bacteria, and THEN, Ashley, you tell me if you’d do what he did.
This bacteria is called Bacillus F [buh-SILL-is], and Brewsh-kof found it frozen deep in the permafrost on a mountain in Siberia’s Yatutsk region. Like, even deeper in the permafrost than wooly mammoth remains. The bacteria was still alive, like I said, but Bacillus F seems to make everything AROUND IT live longer, too. Early studies have looked at how it affects mice, fruit flies, and crops. And the results have been so promising that one Russian epidemiologist called it an elixir of life. Mice exposed to it live longer, and they stay fertile even as “grannies,” as the researchers put it. Crops exposed to Bacillus F grow faster, and they’re more resistant to frost. And people in the Yakutia region live longer than average, possibly because you can find Bacillus F in their water supply. Now, before you go trying to get a Bacillus F prescription from your doctor, you need to keep in mind that it’s a relatively new discovery. Scientists haven’t figured out exactly what makes it so hardy. Dr. Brewsh-kof and his colleagues have sequenced the bacteria’s DNA, but they still need to figure out which of its genes make it so deathproof. This is a REALLY complicated thing to figure out, like, about as complicated as identifying the genes that cause cancer. But Brewsh-kof points out that hey, nobody really knows how aspirin works, either. So he did what any curious scientist would do: he injected himself with the bacteria. Hashtag YOLO. Fortunately, he’s still alive. And two years after he took the injection, he said he’s feeling better than ever. According to Brewsh-kof, he didn’t catch a cold or flu in that two years, and he said he had higher energy levels, too. Even he admits his little experiment isn’t “real science,” and you never know, this could just be the placebo effect. But if he lives past a thousand years old, then, you know… that could be a sign. [So would you do this? / ad lib]
When You're Cold, You Make Decisions in the Heat of the Moment — https://curiosity.im/2GXTg2F (Ashley)
Here’s one reason why Brewsh-kof might’ve injected himself: when you’re cold, it may change the way you make decisions. This is based on a study published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research last month. It found that when you’re COLD, you make decisions in the HEAT of the moment. And these findings could have implications for how you spend your money. This isn’t the first time researchers have noticed how temperatures can affect your thinking. Studies have found that people are more likely to rent romance movies and listen to nostalgic music when they're chilly, meaning that just being cold might be enough to make you seek out metaphorical warmth. And the experiments in this study showed a link between temperature and emotional versus logical thinking. One of the experiments had participants look at a series of advertisements and focus on either their feelings or pure reason, and the ones who focused on their feelings felt physically warmer than the ones focusing on hard logic. Another experiment showed a difference in how people react when you hand them a warm cup to hold, rather than a cold cup. Researchers had participants hold a cup while they read about an endangered-panda rescue effort in Asia. And the ones holding the cold cups were significantly more likely to donate money to the cause than the ones holding warm cups. That suggested the cold cup-holders were more moved by their emotional reaction to the animals. One other experiment had participants pretend they needed to insure an old clock they’d be moving across the country. They were told the clock was financially worthless but had a lot of sentimental value, and the people in a cold room insured the clock for much more money than the people in a warm room. The thing is, when researchers ran the same experiment and asked about insuring a clock with NO sentimental value, there ended being no significant difference between the people in warm and cold rooms. All in all, the study suggests that when you’re uncomfortably cold, you might make a purchase based on how happy a product makes you or the nostalgic memories it gives you, rather than cold, rational calculations like price, quality, and utility. If you ever notice yourself splurging on fun purchases in an ice-cold department store during the summer months, or ordering a bit more delivery food than usual in the middle of the winter, stop and ask yourself: are you spending that money because it's the right decision, or because it just feels good? There's nothing wrong with throwing around some fun money once in a while, as long as you're aware you're doing it.
The 5-Hour Rule Is Used by the World's Most Successful People — https://curiosity.im/2twywap (Cody)
We like to help you get smarter in less than 10 minutes every day. And according to some of the world’s most successful people, you can put yourself on the road to even more self-improvement by setting aside just an hour a day. Meet the five-hour rule. It’s used by people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Zuckerberg, and, once you’ve heard this story: you. This rule is simple: every day of the work week, Monday through Friday, devote one hour to deliberate practice and learning. This can be anything from reading to studying to practicing an instrument or motor skill, or really anything that gets you closer to the greater goal of advancing in your field. That’s it! The reason this is effective comes down to two things. First, working harder and longer is not the same as working smarter. Smart working includes taking a little time away to learn instead of do. This’ll help you focus on long-term self-improvement rather than just dealing with your current workload. I mean, do you really think Bill Gates reading 50 books a year is directly tied to his daily projects? And second: nothing beats an expert. Look at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The guy was running a pretty successful company in his 20s. He didn’t just intuit all those skills; he read books, he spent time learning the lay of the land. Billionaire entrepreneur Marc Andreessen says there’s a reason there are so many stories about Zuckerberg: there aren’t that many Mark Zuckerbergs.
If you’re looking for a place to start practicing the 5-hour rule, then here are three suggestions. First: read. Big-time bookworms include Zuckerberg, Oprah, Mark Cuban, and plenty of billionaires. Not a bad group to imitate. The second suggestion: think. Seriously. You might feel like you’re doing nothing for an hour, but taking time to reflect has been shown to improve job performance. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong makes his senior team spend four hours a week thinking. And the third suggestion: experiment. Don’t knock it til ya try it. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison were known to try risky experiments, and Google and Microsoft set aside time in the day for employees to try new ideas.
Whatever you do, just pick something you want to be better at, and you’re off to the races! [ad lib / CODY SSBU]
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