Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you learn something new in just a few minutes: How to Develop a Better Sense of Direction The Pied Piper Isn't Just a Fairy Tale Pluto Was Named By An 11-Year-Old Girl
Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you learn something new in just a few minutes:
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-to-improve-your-sense-of-direction-pied-piper-mysteries-and-planet-name-origins
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi, I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. We're from curiosity.com, and we've got three stories to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.
CODY GOUGH: Today, we'll talk about how to improve your sense of direction, the surprising truth about the Pied Piper, and how we named our planets.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Cody, do you have a good sense of direction?
CODY GOUGH: It depends on who you ask.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, a lot of times, people think that your sense of direction is just innate. But we wanted to know if you can actually improve your sense of direction. What a sense of direction really is is just a relationship between lots of different factors, including spatial awareness, and accuracy of your mental map. And your ability to connect the things you see around you with their location in the world. And Curiosity found that according to spatial thinking experts, there are a few ways to improve your sense of direction.
First, try intentionally registering a visible landmark as an indication of direction. So, if you live in Santa Barbara, the mountains are always to the north, and the Pacific Ocean is always to the west. Just taking a minute to think about the landmarks that you can use to navigate, and then using them, will help a lot. But, if you can't see landmarks, then remember. The sun rises in the east, and sets in the west. So, depending on the time of day, you can look where the sun is. And you can know which direction that is. If it's cloudy, and you're out in nature, and you're lost in the woods, there's the old moss grows on the north side of the trees trick. You ever tried that, Cody?
CODY GOUGH: I didn't even know that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, the old Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts thing.
CODY GOUGH: Were you a Girl Scout?
ASHLEY HAMER: I was a Girl Scout.
CODY GOUGH: I didn't know that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. So, the only thing is that doesn't happen with all trees. Moss mostly grows on the north side. And if you're in the Southern Hemisphere, it's the other way around. Because the angle of the sun is different.
CODY GOUGH: It's a moss north in the Northern Hemisphere, or south in the Southern Hemisphere.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. Of course, most of us use a GPS or a smartphone to get where we're going. But those can actually help you work on your sense of direction too. Look up and pay close attention to landmarks when you're traveling, so you can find your way back without your device. Or, try taking different routes to places like work, or the grocery store. Places you go all the time. That will give you a better overall sense of where you're located in relation to the rest of the world.
CODY GOUGH: Cool. I'll give you an update if my sense of direction improves. And, by me, I mean my wife will tell you. She feels like it's improved.
ASHLEY HAMER: Please do. So Cody, you know about the Pied Piper, right?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, vaguely. It's a fairy tale.
ASHLEY HAMER: OK. Well, here's a quick refresher. So, there's this German town that's dealing with a terrible rat problem. Enter the Piper. He agrees to rid the town of rats in exchange for a large fee. And he does that by playing his little pipe until the rodents come out and follow him. Then he leads them away, and returns to collect his money. But the town decides not to pay. So, he takes out his pipe and he begins to play again. And this time, it's the children that begin to dance and follow him. He leads them to a crack in a mountain which swallows them up forever.
CODY GOUGH: Savage.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, it's pretty dark. Well, Curiosity looked into the origins of this story.
CODY GOUGH: And it's fake, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, first of all, what even is a Pied Piper? Pied is just an old-fashioned way of saying he was dressed in colorful scraps of cloth. And Piper, obviously, refers to the fact that he plays a pipe. You might think it was made up, especially since rats weren't really a problem until the 16th century. And this story was supposed to have taken place in the year 1284. And the mountain is actually a river in some versions of the story. So, if it was based in fact, you'd think that they'd just keep that one way or the other.
CODY GOUGH: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: But something happened in 1284 because a stained glass window depicting a magical figure in colorful clothing was commissioned just about 15 years later. And in the town chronicle of Hamelin, where this story is supposed to have taken place, there's an entry in the year 1384 that says, "It is 100 years since our children left." And some recorded laws from medieval times outlaw music, in some parts of town, in honor of the victims.
CODY GOUGH: What?
ASHLEY HAMER: It's freaky, right?
CODY GOUGH: So, what happened?
ASHLEY HAMER: So, some people think it might have been a dancing plague. That's not unheard of. There are many times in history where a lot of people just have started dancing inexplicably, and it's this psychosis that spreads through the town. And everyone's dancing. And some people dance so much that they drop dead.
CODY GOUGH: Wait. Seriously?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, seriously. We have some articles on it in curiosity.com. But another theory says the kids might have been recruited by a Children's Crusade. That was when huge groups of kids would be gathered up to defend Christianity, and usually weren't heard from again.
CODY GOUGH: Crusade with a capital C.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. The Crusades. Yes, that one. Other theories say the children were victims of a natural disaster, or maybe the plague, which might explain the rat motif that popped up later. Because rats and the Black Plague. Those are inextricably linked. But it remains one of history's unsolved mysteries with strange kernels of truth.
CODY GOUGH: So, beware the Pied Piper, I guess. That's the saying, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. Hide your kids. Hide your wife.
CODY GOUGH: Well, I've got something that's a little more out of this world for today. Do you remember when Pluto was a planet?
ASHLEY HAMER: I absolutely remember when Pluto was a planet. I remember those days fondly.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, good times. You ever wonder why it's called Pluto?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, it's like a Roman thing, right?
CODY GOUGH: Not quite. The English names for our five closest neighboring planets came from the Romans, who name them after our gods. But, what about Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto? Not so much because they weren't actually discovered until much later. They were discovered only in the last few 100 years.
So, Curiosity looked into where they got their names. And Pluto has our favorite story. You can learn about where Uranus and Neptune got their names, plus how planets are named these days, on curiosity.com.
The existence of Pluto was actually not confirmed until 1930 by astronomers at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. The first photographs of Pluto made headlines around the world, and hundreds of suggestions poured in for what to name it. They finally got the final list down to Minerva, Cronus, or Pluto. And Pluto came from an 11-year-old girl from Oxford, England, named Venetia Burney. And she had mentioned the name to her grandfather, who was a librarian, who passed on the suggestion to an astronomy professor he knew. And then the professor cabled this suggestion to his colleagues at Lowell Observatory.
ASHLEY HAMER: So, she was connected. Nice. Connected 11-year-old. All right.
CODY GOUGH: It's all about who you know. Not what you know. And she was inspired by the Roman god. And the name Pluto was voted on unanimously. Also partially popular because the founder of the observatory was Percival Lowell. His initials are PL.
ASHLEY HAMER: That makes sense.
CODY GOUGH: And, after they chose the name, Venetia's grandfather gave her 5 pounds. British pounds, which is about $450 today, as a reward.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: It's great for an 11-year-old girl. I'm not sure it's that great for naming a planet.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, she does get to have a planet forever. That is her-- the name she named will be there forever. That's exposure, right? That's great. Join us again tomorrow for The Curiosity Daily, and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER 1: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.