Today, you’ll learn about some tantalizing molecules found on Mars, a new study that shows how cognitive flexibility can help teachers keep their cool, and how a new scientific method revealed an unexpected truth about women in the Copper Age.
Today, you’ll learn about some tantalizing molecules found on Mars, a new study that shows how cognitive flexibility can help teachers keep their cool, and how a new scientific method revealed an unexpected truth about women in the Copper Age.
Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/mars-organics-cognitive-flexibility-copper-age-leadership
Mars Organics
Cognitive Flexibility
Copper Age Leadership
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[SFX: INTRO MUSIC/WHOOSH]
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today, you’ll learn about some tantalizing molecules found on Mars, a new study that shows how cognitive flexibility can help teachers keep their cool, and how a new scientific method revealed an unexpected truth about women in the Copper Age.
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: NASA is reporting that their Perseverance rover has found a little something on Mars that just might be organic.
CALLI: Oh okay! So like the first thing I think of when I think of organic is, like, avocados, which is good for the future hipster Martians who like to survive on avocado toast.
NATE: Solid plan. And I love avocado toast…but that’s not exactly what I’m talking about. The Perseverance rover has been up on Mars since 2021, roving around, scanning this and that, just getting the lay of the land. But NASA packed it with an instrument they called SHERLOC that’s able to scan for organic matter.
CALLI: Okay I love Sherlock more than I love organic stuff. The game is afoot, dear Watson!
NATE: Right! Well, it actually stands for Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals.
CALLI: Yeah I prefer SHERLOC.
NATE: Me, too. So SHERLOC is onboard to see if there’s any kind of organic matter on the Red Planet. In case you were out the day they talked about organic matter in bio, it’s pretty simple. Organic molecules contain carbon - and often hydrogen. Carbohydrates. Proteins. Amino acids. And the thing is…organic material is associated with life.
CALLI: Okay back up a second. So you’re telling me that they found organic matter on Mars, which means…they found life?!
NATE: No. They found the stuff that life could be made out of. And that’s a very important distinction. It’s really a clue that could tell scientists whether or not life could have been supported on Mars in the past.
CALLI: So… there could have been life?
NATE: Absolutely. If these molecules are organic like they think, they would actually be consistent with earlier observations that lead scientists to believe that Mars was once rich in organic material.
CALLI: Okay. But…if this organic stuff didn’t come from life…where did it come from?
NATE: That’s the million-dollar question. It could have come from meteorites. It could have come from chemical reactions between water and rocks. But there’s another clue that has to do with the fact that it was found in a place called the Jezero Crater. About 3 and a half billion years ago, this 28-mile-wide scoop out of Mars held a lake that splashed over its rim and flooded into river channels. And water from other rivers would splash into the crater.
CALLI: That actually sounds really pretty, like a sweet spot for a weekend getaway.
NATE: That could be. And that’s the thing - this river delta was flowing for a good million years. And with organic matter along the shores, it would have made for a nice little spot for life to form and even thrive.
CALLI: So what more proof do they need? This – this kind of feels like a smoking gun.
NATE: Well scientists will probably never be able to know for sure whether life existed on Mars - and it’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever be able to understand what it might have looked like. They need loads more data and observations. And that’s why they plan on bringing some of those rocks they’ve gathered back to Earth early in the 2030s.
CALLI: So we have to wait that long to find out if this organic stuff is actually a sign that there was life on Mars?
NATE: Yep. But until then…we can always dream.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: Teachers really don’t have the easiest job in the world.
NATE: That’s a huge understatement for sure. When you think about it - their job is not just to educate but inspire a room full of wild kids just itching for freedom. I know I, for one, am grateful to all the teachers who had to deal with all my shenanigans.
CALLI: And it’s not just the challenge of inspiring young minds. They have to deal with fire drills and lock down drills and sickness. They have to care for their students when they’re anxious, or when they bring their family problems to the classroom. And not to mention the parents they have to deal with.
NATE: Oh yeah, definitely not for the faint of heart.
CALLI: So it turns out that a lot of teachers have been exposed to a level of trauma that is pretty extreme. They often face physical threats and intimidation, even. And those traumatic moments don’t just end - the stress and anxiety kind of just goes on and on.
NATE: I never thought of it that way.
CALLI: We all know teachers have tough jobs, but when it comes to studying stress levels at work, researchers tend to focus on firefighters and law enforcement officers, where the threats are obvious and can be life-threatening. But a new study by researchers at Bar Ilan University’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience in Israel decided to take a deeper look. But they didn’t just want to measure the stress levels of teachers, they wanted to look at how something called cognitive flexibility helped them cope.
NATE: Cognitive flexibility sounds like a way of saying mental gymnastics.
CALLI: It kind of is. There is no hard and fast definition of cognitive flexibility, but the gist is that someone who has more cognitive flexibility is better able to adapt to new situations. When an obstacle pops up in front of them, they can change their perspective on their behavior to overcome it more easily.
NATE: It’s like the opposite then of a fixed mindset.
CALLI: Exactly. Anyone who is unable to change their mind based on new information has a fixed mindset. But having cognitive flexibility means you’re able to be…well…flexible.
NATE: So what did the study find? Do all teachers just have tons of cognitive flexibility?
CALLI: Not exactly. But the ones who did were able to cope with daily trauma more effectively. The researchers evaluated 150 educators for the study. They looked at things like stress levels and their ability to cope. They looked for symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. And, of course, they evaluated each of their cognitive flexibilities.
NATE: I would bet they found a lot of stress.
CALLI: You would win that bet. Not only high levels of stress, but also the onset of PTSD symptoms. They weren’t all the same level, but let’s just say being a teacher is actually a lot. And an interesting finding was that for some teachers, the more traumatic events they experienced led to more intense symptoms of PTSD.
NATE: That seems obvious. More trauma equals more traumatic stress, right?
CALLI: You’d think…but it wasn’t that way in teachers who had improved cognitive flexibility. I mean were they stressed out? Yes. But each additional trauma or stressor didn’t just pile onto their stress.
NATE: Okay so they were kind of able to take each one as it came?
CALLI: Something like that.
NATE: I guess the next question is…how do we get more cognitive flexibility? Is that possible?
CALLI: There is some research out there that says we can, in fact, build up our cognitive flexibility muscles. These are things like altering our daily routines or being up for new experiences. Take a different route home from work. Meet new people.
NATE: So…giving our minds new things to have to deal with? I guess you get pretty stiff if you don’t stretch your muscles.
CALLI: Yeah, that’s right. And - according to this study - having that kind of cognitive flexibility can pay off when stress really starts to get you down.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Back in 2008, archeologists digging through a massive Copper Age burial site around Valencia, Spain, found the remains of a very important person. In fact, based on the artifacts found in his burial chamber, they say that he likely had the highest social status of anyone of that era in Iberia where he was found. Not only was his chamber filled with all sorts of Copper Age treasure, but he was the only individual in the region who had his own chamber.
CALLI: Whoa, okay. Soe must have been like a king or something?
NATE: Something like that. Or at least, that’s what they thought until they used a new scientific technique to analyze his tooth enamel and found that he couldn’t have been a king. He…was a she…
CALLI: So the most important person in all of Copper Age Spain was a woman?
NATE: Yup. They are calling her the Ivory Lady, and she puts researchers' entire understanding of their society on its head.
CALLI: That is so cool! So tell me about the Ivory Lady. What – what do they know about her?
NATE: This is where it gets even better. So these folks thrived in the area between 3200 and 2500 BC - so a long time ago, roughly around the age of the ancient Egyptians. And based on other gravesites and artifacts they’ve found, they believe their societies were not based on class hierarchies.
CALLI: So there were no classes?
NATE: Not exactly as we think about it. But the bigger point is that in a society like that, wealth and status aren’t really inherited.
CALLI: So whatever the Ivory Lady got, she earned.
NATE: Precisely. They think her influence and power came from her personal charisma and her achievements - not from her parents.
CALLI: She’s like the Beyonce of the Copper Age.
NATE: Right? And what’s more, the only other burial sites that even come close to the pomp and circumstance of the Ivory Lady’s also belonged to women.
CALLI: So this whole culture was ruled by women?
NATE: There are literally no known burials of men that could hold a candle to the graves of these women.
CALLI: Okay. That’s all really inspiring and everything, but shouldn’t this maybe force researchers to take another look at everything they thought they knew about ancient societies?
NATE: Ah, you, my friend, are the question queen. That’s exactly the bigger point here. The researchers behind this paper say that it’s been suggested for a couple hundred years that some ancient societies were led by women, but the data and the findings just didn’t support that, so most scholars just dismissed the idea outright. But findings like this call all of that into doubt. In fact, scientists need to consider the fact that gender biases in archaeologists from the 1800s could have kind of set the tone for how scientists since then thought about men and women in these prehistoric societies.
CALLI: Right. So scholars from the 1800s - who were mostly, if not all male - couldn’t imagine societies that were led by poor little women, so they decided they didn’t exist and everyone since then just kind of accepted that?
NATE: Changing those outdated notions of gender in society could be Lady Ivory’s greatest gift to the modern world.
CALLI: She’s my new hero.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up.
NATE: The Mars rover called Perseverance has found what appears to be organic matter in the Jezero crater on the surface of the Red Planet. The findings don’t prove that life existed on Mars, but they indicate that conditions for life could have been favorable in the past.
CALLI: A study of teachers has found that higher levels of cognitive flexibility are associated with the ability to handle the persistent stress and trauma of teaching. The study could help teachers deal with the pressures of teaching by strengthening their cognitive flexibility.
NATE: Archeologists in Spain have discovered that the most powerful man in Copper Age Iberia was actually a woman they call The Ivory Lady. The finding forces a reexamination of assumptions about gender and power in prehistoric societies everywhere.