Learn how to make an excuse without ruining your friendships; why we’d all move a lot faster if nobody walked on the escalator; and why you might not really know whether you’re a morning or a night person, along with a questionnaire to help you figure it out. 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: Need to Make an Excuse? Don't Say "I Don't Have Time" — https://curiosity.im/2HTQZ9r We'd All Move a Lot Faster if Nobody Walked on the Escalator — https://curiosity.im/2HYCAbU Are You a Morning or a Night Person? Take This Questionnaire to Find Out — https://curiosity.im/2HZF8X9 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 how to make an excuse without ruining your friendships; why we’d all move a lot faster if nobody walked on the escalator; and why you might not really know whether you’re a morning or a night person, along with a questionnaire to help you figure it out.
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/how-to-make-excuses-and-keep-friends-early-risers-vs-night-people-and-escalator-science
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 how to make an excuse without ruining your friendships; why we’d all move a lot faster if nobody walked on the escalator; and why you might not really know whether a morning or a night person — and how to find out the truth.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Need to Make an Excuse? Don't Say "I Don't Have Time" — https://curiosity.im/2HTQZ9r (from Saturday) (Cody)
Before you blow off your next commitment, take this advice: don’t say the phrase “I don’t have time.” According to new research, using busyness as an excuse could seriously harm your relationships. Grant Donnelly is an assistant professor of marketing at Ohio State University, and he says that when you have to decline an engagement, you should blame a lack of money or even energy, but not time. His research team came to this conclusion by sifting through Twitter conversations, polling couples about their reactions to declined wedding invitations, and asking businesspeople to imagine a colleague turning down a dinner invite. No matter which way they looked at the question, the team got the same results. People seem to be more hurt by excuses centering on time, which can cause lasting damage to relationships. The basic idea behind why this is hinges on the idea of control. Essentially, people buy that you really don’t have the money and you just can’t come, so you’re not making a choice. But if you say you don’t have TIME, then people just see it as you saying that you can’t be bothered. And that’s a big no-no. Detailed surveys about how people use their time show that most Americans really aren't that busy, but beyond that, a lot of experts point out that the phrase "I'm too busy" really means "I don't value this enough to make time for it." If you want to really be honest about why you’re declining something, then do just that — be honest about it. Instead of saying “I don’t have time,” try saying “it’s not a priority.” Someone asked you to edit their resume? Tell them you’re sorry, but it’s not a priority right now. You can use this to persuade people, too: if someone says “I don’t have time to go to the doctor for a check-up,” then try reframing it and saying “ah, I see you don’t go to the doctor because it’s not a priority.” Changing your language reminds everyone that time is a choice. And maybe this story is a good excuse to re-examine your priorities.
We'd All Move a Lot Faster if Nobody Walked on the Escalator — https://curiosity.im/2HYCAbU (Ashley)
You probably know the rules of your local escalator: you stand on one side, and you walk on the other side. It’s different depending on where in the world you live, but it’s still a rule. Well, I hate to break it to you, but research shows that it’s actually faster if everyone just stands still on the escalator. University of Greenwich researchers have found that, on average, only 25 percent of people walk on escalators. The other 75 percent stand still. That's a problem: if you’re supposed to stand on one side and walk on the other side, then you’ve reserved 50 percent of the escalator for only 25 percent of its riders. And people tend to leave more space between each other on the walking side than the standing side. That means longer lines and a slower commute overall — right? That by itself doesn't mean standing is always faster. What if those walkers are going fast enough to make up for the extra space? You'd have to test it in the real world to find out, and no normal person would force grumpy commuters to stand two-by-two on an escalator in the name of science. Luckily, scientists aren't normal people. In 2015, a team of analysts spent three weeks looking at commuters at Holborn Station in central London. They urged commuters to stand still on BOTH sides of the escalator, sometimes even having uniformed guards stand so people couldn’t pass them. And the experiment beat the analysts’ models by a mile. Between 8:30 and 9:30 in the morning, one escalator that usually carried 12,745 passengers carried a whopping 16,220 passengers instead. A lot of those passengers were pretty unhappy about being forced to stand still, but on average, they all got to their destinations faster than they would have otherwise. This is a classic example of the conflict between "every man for himself" and "the greater good." Obviously if the escalator is totally empty, then walk to your heart’s content. But don’t be surprised if you see the “stand-only” rule show up in your city. Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Washington D.C. have flirted with no-walk campaigns. They’ve had mixed results, but who knows? We could be walking towards a walkless future. Oh, the irony.
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Are You a Morning or a Night Person? Take This Questionnaire to Find Out — https://curiosity.im/2HZF8X9 (Cody)
You'd think it would be obvious if you were a morning or a night person. Do you get up early, or stay up late? But regardless of your actual sleep schedule, your body has its own ideal schedule. Whether those two schedules line up can mean the difference between starting your day energetic and chipper or smashing the snooze button a few dozen times. So let’s talk about how you can know if you’re a morning person or a night person. Generally, morning people, or “larks,” are people who ideally wake up before eight, even on weekends. Night owls are people who prefer to stay up past 11 and wake up after eight whenever they can. Which one you are isn't just a matter of taste. It's actually a matter of your chronotype: that is, your internal clock settings, which are at least partially genetic. A lot of the time, when we talk about internal clocks, we talk about circadian rhythms: the wide variety of biological processes that keep the body on a roughly 24-hour sleep cycle. For instance, in the morning, the body releases cortisol, an alertness hormone that helps you wake up; at night, when you're winding down, your system releases melatonin, which helps you sleep. Even skin has circadian rhythms — it heals faster during the day when we're most active. We don't all have identical circadian rhythms, though. The timing of our cortisol and melatonin releases depends on pacemaker cells in our brains, whose oscillations keep time for us. Pacemaker cells are complex, and although they respond to external cues like sunlight and alarm clocks, they’re only adaptable to a certain point, thanks to genetics. That’s why understanding your chronotype can help you take care of yourself. Fortunately, there’s a questionnaire called the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire, which is commonly used for sleep studies. You can find a link in our full write-up on this, which is available on curiosity-dot-com and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS. All you have to do is fill out 20 multiple-choice questions, and the results will help you figure out what kind of habits sleep schedule might be best for you.
[ad lib CODY: Score is 43 / intermediate; melatonin around 10:30pm, “natural” bedtime around 12:15am; recommended light therapy]
ASHLEY: Read about today’s stories and more on curiosity-dot-com!
CODY: Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!