Learn what the way you draw a circle says about you; how to stay warm, according to a physiologist; and a simple trick to keep you from choking under pressure. 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: The Way You Draw a Circle Says a Lot About You — https://curiosity.im/2DiWOJu A Physiologist Explains How to Stay Warm in Winter — https://curiosity.im/2Dk0JFU This Trick Will Keep You from Choking Under Pressure — https://curiosity.im/2DlIArh 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 what the way you draw a circle says about you; how to stay warm, according to a physiologist; and a simple trick to keep you from choking under pressure.
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-perform-under-pressure-physiology-of-staying-warm-and-psychology-of-circles
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 what the way you draw a circle says about you; how to stay warm, according to a physiologist; and a simple trick to keep you from choking under pressure.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
The Way You Draw a Circle Says a Lot About You — https://curiosity.im/2DiWOJu (Ashley)
You can play along at home with our first story. Just draw a circle. Simple as that. Grab a piece of paper and something to write with, and get to it. This might sound weird, but you can actually learn quite a bit about someone’s background from the way they draw a circle. There’s actual data and reasons behind this, so don’t worry, we’re not just talking about some pseudo-science handwriting analysis kind of thing. Okay, did you draw your circle? Well here are a couple fun facts. If you're American, there's an 86 percent chance that you draw your circles counterclockwise. But for people living in Japan, 80 percent of people draw their circles in the opposite direction. This data comes from November 2016, when Google released an AI game called "Quick, Draw!" It was kinda like the game Pictionary: you’d start to draw something, and then Google's algorithm would try to guess what you were drawing in 20 seconds or less. Quartz used data from the game to look at 119,000 unique circles to see how different people draw circles. They found that the direction you draw your circle is, quote, “linked to geography and cultural upbringing, deep-rooted in hundreds of years of written language, and significant in developmental psychology and trends in education today,” unquote. The clockwise and counterclockwise patterns probably come down to language. Japanese and Chinese writing follows a strict stroke order, with characters drawn from the top left in the direction of the bottom right. A 1985 study showed that most people living in China draw their circles clockwise, possibly because of the clockwise strokes in semi-cursive Chinese calligraphy. Stroke order is so important in these countries, it can even signal your level of education. On the flip side, Americans are taught to draw shapes counterclockwise to prep their motor movements for what’s called magic c letter formation. As in, the curve in the letters C, G, Q, and O. Test this out on your friends and see what happens! [ad lib / Cody does not do this]
A Physiologist Explains How to Stay Warm in Winter — https://curiosity.im/2Dk0JFU (Republished) (Cody)
If you dislike being cold as much as we do, then you’ve come to the right podcast. Because we have some tips from the world of physiology to help you understand how your body stays warm in the winter time… or, you know. Whenever it’s cold. As reported by Assistant Professor of Exercise Physiology JohnEric Smith for The Conversation, your blood does a lot of things while it’s coursing through your body. It’s carrying nutrients and oxygen and other important stuff, and it also brings heat produced in your muscles to your skin, where it gets released. When it gets cold around you, your body moves blood to your torso to keep your vital organs warm. At the same time, your body sends less blood flow to your skin. That means less heat makes it to your skin, so less gets lost to your environment. This helps you hang onto your internal heat longer. You know how you shiver and your teeth chatter when you get really cold? That’s because your body’s cranking up your muscle activity to help you stay warm. That movement actually helps you break down more nutrients to crank up your internal heat. People lose heat at different rates depending on their body size, body fat, and metabolic activity, too. Smaller people with less body fat lose more heat than larger people with more body fat. More muscle mass means more heat gets produced, and more body fat works as an insulator so there’s less heat loss. So, let’s get into how you can stay warm. Obviously, warm clothing is helpful, like a hat and coat and gloves. But believe it or not, it’s a myth that most of your heat escapes through your head. Remember how I said your blood rushes to your torso to keep your vital organs warm? Well that’s why a coat will do you a lot more good than a hat, if you had to pick one or the other. You’ll keep your limbs warmer if you keep your torso warm, since that’ll help you keep a steady blood flow. Something else that can help you stay warm is being physically active. Doing jumping jacks or running around makes your muscles contract, which breaks down more nutrients, which generates extra heat. BUT, layers of clothing and physical activity can tip the balance past what you need to offset heat loss. If that happens, you’ll get an increase in body temperature, and your body will start sweating to try to cool down. This is bad, because you’ll deal with more heat loss when your sweat evaporates. One more thing that can help you stay warm: eating! Your body temperature will go up when your body is busy breaking down food. That’s why if you go camping, you might want to have a snack before bed, so you stay warmer while you sleep. Hope that helps you stay warm this winter, or next winter, if it’s warm wherever you are right now.
This Trick Will Keep You from Choking Under Pressure — https://curiosity.im/2DlIArh (Ashley)
We’ll wrap up today with a trick to keep you from choking under pressure. “Choking” is a thing researchers have actually studied for years. They’ve found that we perform better the more we have to gain — but only up to a certain point. When we have too MUCH to gain, we tend to mess up, even if we’re doing something we do every day. In other words, we “choke.” You might get sweaty palms of even feel nauseous, but choking is mostly a mental affliction. The potential reward (or loss of reward) distracts you from the task at hand, and your performance level drops. Choking shows up on brain scans as heightened activity in the ventral striatum. That’s the part of your brain where you analyze risk and reward. So in November 2018, a team of researchers from the California Institute of Technology published a study on how to change your thinking to gain an advantage. They gave participants hand-eye coordination tests, which came with rewards ranging from zero to a hundred dollars for successfully completing the challenge. In some cases, researchers asked participants to reimagine their situation, or use what’s called a cognitive reappraisal strategy. The reward structure didn't change, but they were told to imagine the reward amount, in cash, already sitting in their pocket as they performed the task. Basically, they imagined they already had that reward. And participants choked sustantially less when they used the reappraisal trick than when they thought of themselves as striving for a prize. MRI scans also showed that reappraisal reduced the amount of activity in that risk-and-reward-focused ventral striatum. It's not a perfect fix; reappraisal didn't prevent all choking. But for an easy, purely mental shift, it was a surprisingly effective antidote. So the next time you're trying for a major reward — whether it's the World Series or a lifetime supply of chicken nuggets — just imagine it's already yours. You're not trying to prove you deserve something new; you're confirming you deserve what you have in the first place.
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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!