In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Why Aren't There Stars in the Moon Landing Photos? 6 Things You're Probably Cleaning Too Often Impostor Syndrome Affects Men and Women Differently 13 Ways to Fight Back Against Impostor Syndrome (via Inc.) Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/impostor-syndrome-moon-landing-photos-explained-and-things-youre-cleaning-too-often
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories 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 six things you're probably cleaning too often, why there are no stars in the moon landing photos, and the psychology behind that time you felt like a fraud.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. All right, Ashley. I heard Stanley Kubrick directed the moon landing.
ASHLEY HAMER: He did not.
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: The moon landing happened. Get out of here.
CODY GOUGH: Prove it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, we like science at Curiosity and facts and reality and things that are true. But since not everyone's convinced that the moon landing was real, today we thought we'd explain a big centerpiece of the moon landing hoax conspiracy. Why there aren't any stars in the moon landing photos? Literally, it's just because the camera's settings weren't adjusted to capture them.
OK. So let's say you're taking a picture of a friend in really bright sunlight. You'd probably adjust your camera settings in two ways. First, you'd narrow the aperture. That keeps the light-collecting area on the lens small to avoid letting in too much light. It's the same reason your pupils constrict in bright sunlight.
You'd also speed up the shutter speed so the camera sensor would only let in light for a brief moment. If you wanted to take a picture of the same friend at night, you'd probably slow down the shutter speed and widened the aperture so you could let in enough light for a good shot.
OK. So back to the moon landing, what if your friend was illuminated at nighttime? Then you'd have to make a choice. If you wanted to include the stars in the sky, your friend would have to stand really still so the shot wouldn't come out blurry because of the slow shutter and wide aperture to let in enough light.
If you kept the aperture small and the shutter speed fast, you'd capture a sharp, decently bright picture of your friend, but the sky would be dark because it wouldn't send enough light into the lens-- dark, as in no stars as in the moon landing. The sky on the moon is black as night not because it is night, but because there's no atmosphere to scatter the daylight the way ours does on Earth. There's actually just as much sunlight at midday on the moon as there is on our home planet, so the lunar surface is really bright.
But the scenery on the moon was the most important thing to capture in those Apollo photographs, of course. So the camera was adjusted to make the most of the scene. And that's why the relatively dim stars didn't register in any of the shots. Sorry, conspiracy theorists.
CODY GOUGH: Myth busted.
ASHLEY HAMER: Absolutely.
CODY GOUGH: All right, Ashley. How often do you wash your jeans?
ASHLEY HAMER: Hmm, weekly.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: Maybe every two weeks even.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: I don't wash them.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, see. I thought you were saying really because that was not very much.
CODY GOUGH: No.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: I will go more than a month.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm kind of a messy eater.
(TOGETHER) [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: I mean, me too, but yeah. I guess, I just took the advice of Levi's CEO Chip Bergh really seriously.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah?
CODY GOUGH: Because he said you never have to wash blue jeans ever. And today on curiosity.com, we wrote about a few things you're probably cleaning too often. And blue jeans is on the list because if you wash them too much, then the denim will lose its shape and color. So again, the head of Levi's says don't really do it. If your jeans start to smell really bad, of course, then give them a good rinse maybe.
But next on the list of things you probably are cleaning too often is sportswear. Synthetic fibers you find in running shorts and Spandex pants can be really sensitive to heat and oil, so they'll lose their structure if you put them in a hot dryer too often. I guess, women's swimsuits are especially vulnerable, although I don't have any personal experience with that.
ASHLEY HAMER: I never washed my swimsuit.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: I just rinse it.
CODY GOUGH: There you go. When in doubt, read the tag and do what it says. I'm a tag reader. I don't know about you.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. I mean, the instructions are all there. Why wouldn't you?
CODY GOUGH: One other tricky thing to clean is wood furniture. When you spray wood furniture with spray polish, that can actually make it dirtier. The wax-based sprays you buy to clean wood furniture can build up, attracting even more dirt and dust when you use it more than once or twice a month. Your furniture is probably covered in lacquer anyway, so any conditioning waxes aren't really getting past that to nourish the wood. We've got more details about what you shouldn't clean too often, including dishes, carpets, and sometimes even your hair today on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
ASHLEY HAMER: How often do you wash your hair?
CODY GOUGH: I shampoo every day.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, wow.
CODY GOUGH: But I also put a lot of gel in it every day.
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: So I feel like I have to.
ASHLEY HAMER: Maybe.
CODY GOUGH: Maybe I'll just not shampoo next week, and we'll see how it goes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: I'm not going to do that. [CHUCKLES] Old habits die hard.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, have you ever felt like you've had a job or been doing something, and you felt like you didn't belong there, like you're a fraud?
CODY GOUGH: Maybe once or twice.
ASHLEY HAMER: Fascinating.
CODY GOUGH: Why?
ASHLEY HAMER: Because I asked my boyfriend this too. And he's like, nope.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. And like every woman I know, every woman I know has this feeling all the time.
CODY GOUGH: Interesting.
ASHLEY HAMER: But that's why this new research that we've written about is so fascinating. It's called imposter syndrome. And there's new research on how it affects men and women differently, which we're seeing right now.
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: Imposter syndrome was discovered in the 1970s, and scientists used to think that women were more likely to worry about being unmasked as incompetent. But recent research says that men are actually hit hardest by its effects. And to be clear, basically everyone feels imposter syndrome, from celebrities like Meryl Streep to Albert Einstein.
CODY GOUGH: So if you're listening to this, you've probably at some point felt like you had a job or a gig or were in a position where you just look around and you're like, I don't belong here.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Like, oh, I don't deserve this. Everyone's going to find out that I'm really not as good as they think I am.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Men, women, actors, physicists, students, adults, people of every age, race, gender, every type of successful person you can think of, except apparently my boyfriend.
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: But just because everyone gets it, doesn't mean it affects everyone in the same way. A team of American and German researchers recruited hundreds of US undergrads and found that men with imposter syndrome tended to crumble under pressure much more than women who had the same feelings. The men reported higher anxiety, made less effort, and showed a trend toward poor performance. Female participants with high impostor feelings responded to harsh feedback by increasing their effort and showing superior performance.
But the researchers aren't sure why this is. They speculate that it might have something to do with cultural norms that put less pressure on women to perform. So how do you get over imposter syndrome? There are a few things you can do, and we'll post a link to an Inc. article in the show notes.
But some methods include focusing on the present instead of thinking about unknowns and what ifs. Just worry about what's in front of you right now. Make a list of things you don't know or things you think you don't know, and then you can work on learning them. Break down big problems into more manageable smaller pieces, except that nobody knows everything.
And really hear compliments. This is huge. Internalize positive feedback when you get it, and take it with you for when you need it. One thing that I think would be really helpful is keeping a list of your accomplishments just like in your phone-- like your degree, the things you've done, maybe just even-- we've talked about brag books before, keeping a list of your accomplishments for job interviews. And that might be good for imposter syndrome too.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. It's good to have just a notepad doc on your computer too even at work just to keep track of what you've been doing for when performance reviews crop up because psychology says you're only going to remember the last three cool things you did as opposed to that awesome thing you did four months ago.
ASHLEY HAMER: Exactly.
CODY GOUGH: Read about today's stories and more on curiosity.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
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