Learn about how to choose the best music for your workout playlist; why learning more about a new disease like coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) won’t comfort you; and how to clean your phone.
Learn about how to choose the best music for your workout playlist; why learning more about a new disease like coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) won’t comfort you; and how to clean your phone.
For the best workout playlist, go for deep bass and fast tempos by Mae Rice
More info about a disease won’t comfort you by Steffie Drucker
How to clean your phone by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Linda)
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-to-clean-your-phone-more-info-about-a-new-disease-wont-comfort-you-and-the-best-workout-music-according-to-research
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how to choose the best music for your workout playlist; and why learning more about a new disease won’t comfort you. We’ll also answer a listener question about how to clean your phone.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
What makes a great workout song, exactly? If I were to play a couple clips of music for you, which do you think would get you more pumped up? Would it be this one?
[stock workout-y music?] Hell Billy_Full Mix_DMS-0568_010.wav
Or this one?
[goofy sad stock music? maybe bluegrassy would be funny?] Queasy Stroll_Full Mix_DMS-0519_009.wav
Okay, so it’s probably pretty obvious which one of these you’d rather have in your ears when you’re going for a run or pumping iron. But why, exactly? Well, according to two recent studies, it’s because songs with higher tempos and heavy bass can actually make you feel more powerful and less fatigued.
One study focused on how a song’s tempo affected athletes’ heart rates and perceived exertion, or their sense of how hard they’d worked. Participants in this study did two different types of workouts — a brisk walk and a leg press — either in silence or with one of three different tempos of pop music. The faster the music, it turned out, the easier the workout felt. Their heart rates also rose as the music tempo did, which means that workouts to faster songs might actually be better for your health.
Of course, it depends a bit on the workout. The researchers found that uptempo music helped more with the walking, a low-intensity endurance exercise, than the leg press, a high-intensity resistance exercise. The researchers think this might be because endurance exercise is a sort of long-haul activity that requires you to distract yourself from discomfort and regulate your mood — two things that music does really well. High-intensity exercise like weightlifting, on the other hand, is more of a short, all-out activity that doesn’t require as much mental regulation.
Now, let’s look at the second study. This one looked at what kind of music could evoke a sense of power — a pretty helpful feeling when you’re pumping iron or pounding the pavement. The researchers found that people who had listened to songs with heavy basslines and a strong underlying beat reported feeling more powerful and filled in more power-related terms in a fill-in-the-blank exercise, compared to people who listened to songs with minimal bass.
The participants weren’t working out, sure, but the research is still important. Feeling powerful urges people to take on bigger challenges, which can translate into more vigorous workouts.
So overall, science confirms it: Your workout playlist is important. It can make you feel powerful and make your workout feel easier. This also means that if you always exercise to the same old playlist — or *gasp* in SILENCE — you might want to try changing it up. Your workout might be better for it.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QpxmRkmhQDBYMLsHtRhwoLUQLUn5Xzrawzp1EV9yKH8/edit
Tylenol won’t just ease your headache — it can also ease a more metaphorical kind of pain. New research says that a special blend of Tylenol and forgiveness can ease the pain of social rejection.
Surprising, right? How is it possible that the same Tylenol that treats back pain also treats that gnawing feeling you get when a date ghosts you? And yet! It is possible. And this isn’t even the first evidence for it. Research from a decade ago showed that people who took acetaminophen regularly tended to have fewer hurt feelings over that time than people who took a placebo. When the researchers looked at the Tylenol-takers’ brains in an fMRI, they saw less activity in regions associated with processing emotional pain than they did in the brains of people who took a placebo.
Scientists think this works because the brain uses some of the same pathways for signaling physical pain as it does social pain. Since acetaminophen eases physical pain by influencing those pathways, it makes sense that it can do the same for social pain.
A new study from researchers at UCLA and UC Davis adds another element to the mix: forgiveness. The team already knew that practicing forgiveness can help lower the stress and negative feelings that come from social exclusion, but they weren’t sure what would happen when they mixed this more psychological approach with Tylenol’s pharmacological fix.
So they had 45 people take either acetaminophen, a placebo, or nothing every day for 21 days. Every night, they took surveys that measured their levels of forgiveness, by asking how they felt about someone who wronged them in the past, and social pain, by asking how easily their feelings were hurt that day. After the study was over, the participants with the highest levels of forgiveness who took acetaminophen reported a reduction in social pain of nearly 20 percent.
Why is this combo so effective? The researchers say it’s because acetaminophen acts “synergistically” with a person’s ability to forgive.
This research promises to do more than ease the sting of being excluded. One of its most important applications might be helping teenagers who go through a socially painful life event, like a big breakup or their parents’ divorce. Experiencing that kind of intense social pain in adolescence strongly predicts developing depression in the future. It’s possible that this over-the-counter medication could ease that damage.
But before you head to the medicine cabinet, a word of warning: taking too much acetaminophen can cause liver damage. Stay on the safe side by consuming less than 3,000 mg per day — or better yet, check with your doctor first.
(And to be crystal clear on this: we are absolutely not telling you to just pop some pills to fix your problems. Please do not do that. Regardless of future medical applications, a major takeaway from this research is that it shows us how interconnected the mind and body really are.)
What we learned: Acetaminophen and forgiveness can help ease the pain of social exclusion. And this could have implications for future treatments of teenagers and adolescents, to prevent depression later in life
Story 2 by Grant Currin
Stop scrolling and listen up: learning more about a new disease like COVID-19 will not satisfy you. A new study in the journal Risk Analysis found that those who rated themselves as “very knowledgeable” about a new infectious disease were also more likely to believe they didn’t know enough. So consuming more and more information about a disease won’t comfort you!
This study didn’t focus on the virus behind COVID-19, but on Zika virus, which is a mosquito-borne disease whose most recent outbreak started in 2015. The World Health Organization declared it a global health threat in 2016. Although most infected people showed no symptoms, the virus increased the chances for those who were pregnant to have a child with severe birth defects.
The parallels between Zika and COVID-19 are striking. Health experts at the time didn’t know much about Zika — much like our situation with COVID-19 now. Zika virus also received lots of media coverage, just like COVID-19 is now.
In the study, researchers from The Ohio State University wanted to get a better understanding of how people seek and process information in times of great uncertainty. They surveyed about 500 people of childbearing age from Florida, which had the most locally transmitted cases in the country at the time. The survey included questions about whether they planned to seek information about Zika and where they’d go for it; how much they knew already and how much they still needed to learn; and how worried they were about being infected.
The biggest takeaway was that people who thought they knew more about this new, uncertain disease? Were also more likely to think that their level of knowledge wasn’t enough. They were also more likely to say they planned to look for more information; basically, feeding a hunger for knowledge that could never be satisfied.
Why do we do this to ourselves? It may be because our brains hate uncertainty. In studies, people who are told they’ll get an electric shock are actually calmer than people who are told they have a 50% chance of being shocked. Another study showed that people will actually pay for certainty, even if the answer doesn’t change their decisions afterward. Searching for COVID-19 information might just be a search for certainty — and I hate to break it to you, but there isn’t any to be found.
So stop. Think about what you know, and remember that you can’t know everything. These are uncertain times, and a lot is out of our control. But one thing we can control is how we react. If you find yourself stressing and obsessing, take a break, read a book, and calm your mind. The internet will always be there when you get back.
Great question Linda! I’ve definitely wondered this myself. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you that wiping your phone’s screen with a cloth is going to purify it of viruses or bacteria. As far as I can tell, using a cloth to clean your phone is just a compromise on the part of the phone manufacturers: it’ll wipe off as much of the nasty stuff as possible without damaging the marvel of materials science that is your screen.
And to be fair, most of the time, that’s all you really need. That’s because the microbes on your phone are usually the same ones that are already on you. A 2014 study found that 81 percent of the most common species of microbe on a given person’s mobile device was also found on their skin. But if scarier bugs do land on your smartphone, a damp cloth is better than nothing. A study in 2013 actually found that iPads wiped down with a moistened microfiber cloth harbored less C. difficile bacteria than iPads cleaned with alcohol wipes! If you want to clean your phone, a damp cloth does a pretty good job.
Of course, things are different right now, and “pretty good” may not be good enough. There’s a coronavirus pandemic racing across the world, and everyone is doing their best to wash their hands, sanitize surfaces, and avoid becoming a disease vector themselves. After all, a recent analysis found that other coronaviruses can survive on surfaces for up to nine days, but are easily inactivated with a solution of at least 62% alcohol. The problem is that your phone can easily be damaged by harsh or abrasive cleaners like alcohol. That’s especially true of the screen, which is made with an oleophobic, or oil-repellent coating that can wear off after a while. If you damage your phone with a cleaning product the manufacturer hasn’t deemed safe, you may void your warranty.
Luckily, the largest phone manufacturers have loosened their guidelines on what counts as safe to use. On March 9, Apple announced that it’s okay to use an alcohol wipe or a Clorox disinfecting wipe. Google says you can use ordinary household soap or cleaning wipes. Just be gentle — don’t scrub, avoid getting moisture in the ports, and don’t use any sprays. If you’re really worried, you can even shell out for a UV phone sanitizer.
But to get the best of both worlds — that is, keep your phone clean without damage — just use a case you can clean separately and a screen protector you can wipe down with bleach and change when you need to. Even if you’re constantly cleaning your phone, it’s important to keep it out of the bathroom and off of unknown surfaces, and avoid putting it up to your face whenever possible. Oh, and one more thing: Wash. Your. Hands! Thanks for your question, Linda! If you have a question, call us at 312-596-5208
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, what a roller coaster it was this week.
[Quick update on how we’re going to be your escape from COVID-19, but we do have a special page on curiositydaily.com, and it’s Ashley’s birthday]
ASHLEY: Next week, you’ll learn about World War I helmets, the first animal scientists have ever discovered that doesn’t breathe oxygen, mind hacks for your memory, and more! Okay, so now, let’s recap what we learned today.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Ashley Hamer, Steffie Drucker, and Mae Rice, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Have a great weekend, and join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!