Learn about the surprising physics involved in hitting a baseball; a productivity hack to stop procrastination; and how viruses and medicines know where to go in your body. 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: What It Takes to Hit a Baseball Makes Baseball Players Look Like Superheroes — https://curiosity.im/2xCsNC2 The Pomodoro Technique Is the Productivity Hack Designed to Halt Procrastination — https://curiosity.im/2xzFa1P Additional resources discussed: How do medicines know where in the body to start working? — MIT School of Engineering — https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/how-do-medicines-know-where-in-the-body-to-start-working/ How does gene therapy work? | U.S. National Library of Medicine — https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/therapy/procedures Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing! Just click or tap “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about the surprising physics involved in hitting a baseball; a productivity hack to stop procrastination; and how viruses and medicines know where to go in your body.
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 discussed:
Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing! Just click or tap “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-the-medicine-you-take-knows-where-to-go-the-amazing-physics-of-baseball-and-boosting-productivity-with-the-pomodoro-technique
CODY GOUGH: Happy holidays. We're going to help you celebrate with some of our favorite stories from the past year.
ASHLEY HAMER: We hope you enjoy these Curiosity Daily classics ad-free. And stay subscribed to Curiosity Daily for brand new episodes starting January 1.
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CODY GOUGH: Hi we're here 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 the physics of hitting a baseball and a productivity hack to stop procrastination. We'll also answer a listener question about how viruses and medicines know where to go in your body.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Whether or not you actually watch the sport, you have to admit that it's pretty hard to actually hit a baseball. In fact, when you think about the physics behind what it takes to knock a ball out of the park, it makes baseball players look like actual superheroes. So let's talk about the mountain of research that goes into the science of this sport. Consider this. A pitch takes about 500 milliseconds to travel from the pitcher to the plate. Although a fastball can take as little as 375 milliseconds.
The moment the ball leaves the pitching mount, the batter is already at a disadvantage. That's because it takes his brain 75 to 100 milliseconds to even process the fact that the ball is coming toward him. It also takes time to swing. The fastest swings in baseball happen in 100 to 150 milliseconds. That leaves only about 150 milliseconds for the batter to actually make a decision about his swing.
For some context, it takes as much as 400 milliseconds to blink. That's right. You have to decide how to swing in less than half the time it takes to blink. And that's why researchers have poured countless hours and funding dollars into the study of that brief moment in time. One way they do that is by watching how players keep their eyes on the ball.
A 2014 study found that until very late in the pitch, players follow the ball with their head, not just their eyes. Their eyes only start moving when the ball gets really close. And where their gaze goes is slightly different depending on whether they plan on swinging or not. One other fun piece of research proved Baseball Legend Yogi Berra right. He once said, quote, "How can you think and hit at the same time?" Unquote.
And researchers from Columbia University confirmed that you can't. They hooked up players to EEG caps and rolled them into fMRI machines to analyze their brain signals as they watched a simulated baseball pitch on a computer screen. The researchers started seeing that when participants were getting the pitches wrong, they were using the frontal parts of their brain too much.
The frontal parts of the brain are mostly involved in deliberate decision making. When those parts get involved, they slow down the speed of your decisions. And when the difference between a hit and a strike is a matter of a few hundred milliseconds, you just can't afford to let your brain slow you down.
CODY GOUGH: Sounds like a touchdown for science.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. That's definitely a hole in one.
CODY GOUGH: Today in life hacks, we've got a time management method that a lot of people swear by, including me. And it could help you prevent procrastination and maximize productivity. It's called the Pomodoro Technique. Pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato. And it's a type of pasta sauce. And appropriately, this technique got its name from Author Francesco Carrillo's tomato-shaped kitchen timer. You don't need a kitchen timer to try it. So don't worry, any timer will do the trick.
Here's what you do. First, make sure you know what you need to work on-- whether it's a to-do list or writing part of a book or practicing an instrument. Whatever it is. Then, get to work. Set your timer for 25 minutes. Dedicate that time, uninterrupted, to working on something. Then take a five-minute break.
After four of those 25 minute cycles, take a 20-minute break. Rinse and repeat until your to-do list is empty. This works because being focused is good and breaks are also good. Research has shown that forcing yourself to stay sitting at your desk working all day, actually, reduces performance and productivity, while frequent short breaks keep your mind fresh and focused.
What's more, knowing that your pomodoro is only 25 minutes long may pressure you into being as productive as possible during that time period. It's essentially meant to make you feel more accountable for your time and your tasks. There are even pomodoro timer apps for iOS and Android if you don't have any other timer. Although, come on, if you've got a smartphone, then you probably have a timer.
Still, it's a nice easy way to stay on task and give yourself some well-deserved rest in between sessions. Give it a shot. This is literally how I write scripts.
ASHLEY HAMER: Really?
CODY GOUGH: It's the only way for me to do it. I have to just set the timer only right and not check emails, not open Twitter, nothing else.
ASHLEY HAMER: I should try this for editing articles. We got a listener question from Stefan who writes, "How do cells, medicines, viruses, et cetera, know where they have to go in the body, and how do they get there? I always hear, for example, that a specific pill you swallow acts in the thyroid or the kidneys or somewhere else. The same with genetic therapies with viruses that genetically modify DNA. How does it go where it's needed, and how does it know where it's needed" Great question, Stefan.
Let's start with medicines. When you have a headache and you take a painkiller, it might feel like that medicine is making a beeline for your aching head to stop the pain. But medications are actually way dumber than that. Once a pill dissolves in your stomach or an injection flows through your veins, it rides through your bloodstream to spread all over your body. Once it finds the specific receptors that match with its particular molecular structure, it fits into that receptor like a key into a lock and then it works its magic.
The problem is, that because a medicine travels throughout your body, it sometimes affects other stuff beyond its particular receptors, which is why medications often come with a list of possible side effects. Viruses are a little more complicated. Viruses can identify the cell they've evolved to infect because they have a special protein on their outside coat, they can recognize the correct target.
But again, they don't head directly there. They travel throughout the bloodstream until they encounter the right kind of cell to infect. Once they've found that type of cell, they inject it with genetic instructions that hijack the cell's own machinery to make more copies of the virus, which go on to infect other cells.
That gets us to your question about genetic therapy. Scientists have figured out a way to use that same process to inject patient cells with healthy DNA. They engineer a virus to target and inject a particular type of cell with a particular gene that integrates into a person's DNA without making them sick. Isn't that amazing? Thanks for targeting us with your question, Stefan. Now, let's recap what we learned today.
CODY GOUGH: Today, we learned that baseball players are, basically, superheroes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And that you can beat procrastination by working in 25-minute chunks of time.
CODY GOUGH: And the stuff you put in your body finds stuff that's already in your body and latches onto it like a lock and key.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes.
CODY GOUGH: And that when you visit our website, curiositydaily.com, and ask us a listener question, we answer it like a lock and key. Your questions are like the medicine that cures the virus of curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Curiosity is a lot nicer than that, I think.
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CODY GOUGH: Have a great weekend, and join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.
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