Learn how keeping secrets can literally weigh you down; how we knew the Earth rotates before we had space travel thanks to the Foucault pendulum; and how your emotions can alter your perception of time. Please support our sponsors! Visit movaglobes.com/curiosity and use coupon code CURIOSITY for 15% off your purchase. 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: How Did People Know the Earth Rotates Before Space Travel? — https://curiosity.im/2SbmTQu The Average Person Is Hiding 13 Secrets, According to a Study — https://curiosity.im/2DNtIou Emotions Can Change How You Perceive Time — https://curiosity.im/2DNpFbK Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey 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! Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn how keeping secrets can literally weigh you down; how we knew the Earth rotates before we had space travel thanks to the Foucault pendulum; and how your emotions can alter your perception of time.
Please support our sponsors! Visit movaglobes.com/curiosity and use coupon code CURIOSITY for 15% off your purchase.
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:
Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey
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!
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/keeping-secrets-makes-life-harder-emotions-change-your-perception-of-time-and-how-we-proved-the-earth-rotates
[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 how keeping secrets can literally weigh you down, how we knew the Earth rotates before we had space travel, and how your emotions can alter your perception of time.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Do you have a secret? Here's a fun fact. According to a 2017 study, the average person has around 13 secrets, and five of them will never come out to anyone. The researchers say that it isn't the number of secrets you keep that really matters, though. It's the burden of those secrets and the real effects they have on you. I'm glad I don't have to deal with this.
ASHLEY HAMER: You don't have any secrets?
CODY GOUGH: Or do I?
ASHLEY HAMER: Ooh.
CODY GOUGH: You'll never know. Do you?
ASHLEY HAMER: No, I feel like I need to have more secrets. I feel like that would be good for me, to just stop telling people everything.
CODY GOUGH: According to this research, that may not be the case. This study out of Columbia Business School showed that when a subject thought about their secrets, they actually acted as if they were burdened by physical weight. This happened even when the subject wasn't hiding a particular secret at that moment. There's more research to back this up. A 2012 study showed that, quote, "people who recalled or preoccupied with or suppressed an important secret estimated hills to be steeper, perceived distances to be farther, indicated that physical tasks would require more effort, and were less likely to help others with physical tasks," unquote.
So even if you're not actively hiding a secret, everything could be harder just by thinking about it. The recent paper notes that our minds are constantly trying to resolve issues or reach goals that we haven't achieved yet. But here's the thing. A secret is a goal that can never be accomplished. That leaves one solution. Just don't think about your secret. Hopefully someday in the near future, researchers will figure out the secret to doing just that.
ASHLEY HAMER: We know the Earth rotates. But have you ever wondered how we figured that out before space travel? You can thank a 32-year-old med school dropout from France.
CODY GOUGH: See? It turns out you can accomplish great things even if you're like Ashley and you can't handle the sight of blood.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. That's why he dropped out of medical school. And he didn't have any formal science training. He's basically my male French twin from a couple hundred years ago. I'm talking about Jean Bernard Leon Foucault. He was born in Paris in 1819. And after he left med school, he got a job as a lab assistant and did some pretty cool science stuff. But his biggest accomplishment might have been figuring out how to prove that the Earth rotates.
Now, rotation wasn't a brand new idea. Over the centuries, Galileo and a lot of other scientists had proposed the idea that the Earth was rotating, not the heavens. But they were typically put to death or imprisoned for their heretical views. Fortunately, most educated people sided with Galileo and his ilk by the time Foucault was around. And in January of 1851, Foucault figured out how to show the effects of the Earth's rotation-- the Foucault pendulum.
Here's how it works. Imagine you're standing on the North Pole and you have a super tall pendulum that's swinging from side to side, tracing its path in a pile of sand. As the Earth turns beneath the pendulum, the pendulum will keep swinging in its original direction, irrespective of the ground beneath it. That means that over the course of a 24-hour day, the path of the pendulum would look like it's shifting bit by bit until it had drawn a line at every degree of a 360 degree circle.
The pendulum is just swinging side to side-- it's the Earth that's moving beneath it. That proves that the Earth rotates. Foucault calculated the sine law to figure out how many degrees the pendulum would rotate in a 24-hour period in different places in the world, including Paris, where it would turn 270 degrees in one day. For his first demonstration to the public, he hung a 62-pound brass bob from a 220-foot long wire and let it swing through a thin layer of sand on the marble floor of the Paris Observatory.
Today, you can see full scale Foucault pendulums at museums and universities all over the world. They're a great reminder of how a little curiosity and confidence can lead to Earth-turning discoveries.
CODY GOUGH: Speaking of rotation, today's episode is sponsored by Mova Globes, spelled M-O-V-A. They're globes that rotate by themselves.
ASHLEY HAMER: Mova Globes rotate using a technology that's the first of its kind. No batteries, no cords, just rotating globes powered by ambient light. I have a Mova Globe of Mars on my desk at work, and it just fascinates everybody who walks by.
CODY GOUGH: It's definitely moving. I love looking in the corner of my eye at your desk and just seeing, oh, yes, there's a constantly rotating globe. You certainly don't need a Foucault pendulum to measure its rotation.
ASHLEY HAMER: I don't have to turn it on or off, it just does its thing. And the Outer Space Collection features graphics provided by NASA and JPL. You can get globes of planets, moons, asteroids, and even constellation designs.
CODY GOUGH: Elon Musk led tweeted a picture of his Mars Mova Globe. That's how accurate and how seriously cool they are. There are 40 different designs. And they're not all about space. You've got worlds maps and even famous artworks.
ASHLEY HAMER: We have an exciting offer for Curiosity Daily listeners. You can get 15% off of your purchase.
CODY GOUGH: Please visit movaglobes.com/curiosity and use coupon code curiosity for 15% off your purchase.
ASHLEY HAMER: To get 15% off of your purchase, visit movaglobes.com/curiosity and use coupon code curiosity.
CODY GOUGH: We got a question from one of our patrons, Manny Blaise. He asked, why does time seem to slow down during certain events? The clock always seems to run slower when I'm staring at it, and recently, we had a magnitude 4.4 earthquake that felt like it lasted forever. Great question, Manny.
Here's the short answer. MRI-based research suggests that time isn't tracked by just one part of our brain. Instead, the job is shared across a large network of neural areas. That might explain why so many different things can change how we experience time passing by. There are a few things that make time fly and a few things that make time crawl. So here are a few examples.
We all know the time flies when you're having fun. But time also flies when you're in the zone. There's a thing in positive psychology called flow state, which is when you're fully engaged in doing something with a complete focus and maximum energy. This could be if you're an artist, like a painter or a musician or a writer. But it can also apply to anything you're passionate about, whether it's coding, accounting, or cooking.
Hyperfocus is a more passive version of flow state, and that's when something has your attention, but it doesn't demand a lot of effort. Think zoning out in front of your TV. It doesn't feel as good, but time still flies. Now, a few things might make time stand still. One is when you're awestruck. A 2012 study showed that watching an awe-inspiring video made time feel like it was going slower than when people watched a happy video. And the awe-inspiring experience of being in nature can also slow time. Like walking in a forest versus walking in a major city.
One more thing that slows down time is fear. Participants in a 2011 study experienced time as slower even after they had finished watching a scene from The Shining with Jack Nicholson. Maybe take a horror flick on your next vacation and see what happens.
ASHLEY HAMER: Thanks again for your question, Manny. If there's something you're curious about, then email your question to podcast@curiosity.comm, and we might answer it on a future episode.
CODY GOUGH: That's podcast@curiosity.comm. And here's a sneak peek at what else you can learn on curiosity.com this weekend.
ASHLEY HAMER: This weekend, you'll learn about whether you really can feel a storm coming in your bones, the 12 elements of emotional intelligence, an 18th century woman who convinced doctors she was giving birth to rabbits, two main reasons why everything takes longer than you think it will, and more.
CODY GOUGH: And remember, today is your last chance to fill out our listener survey, which you can find in our show notes and pretty much everywhere else. Let's get together again Sunday for another edition of the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new with us in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Have a great weekend, and stay curious.
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SPEAKER 1: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.