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: There May Be a Massive Ocean Beneath the Earth's Surface Road Trip Games Have a History Older Than Road Trips This Simple Reading Technique Can Boost Your Memory and Learning Speed If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please considersupporting 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 onCuriosity.com, and download our5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
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!
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/massive-ocean-beneath-earths-surface-road-trip-game-history-and-memory-boosting-reading-technique
[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 a simple reading technique that can boost your memory and learning speed, a massive ocean that may be hidden underneath the Earth's surface, and why the history of road trip games is older than road trips.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, how many oceans have you been to?
CODY GOUGH: Just the two, the border of the US, the Atlantic, and the Pacific. I can name all five.
ASHLEY HAMER: There are five?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: I didn't even know that.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. The Arctic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and the Antarctic Ocean, also known as the Southern Ocean, which I just learned.
ASHLEY HAMER: Interesting.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: I just learned that too.
(TOGETHER) [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, there actually might be six oceans because there might be a secret ocean hidden beneath the Earth's surface.
CODY GOUGH: What?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Ready for some geology? The part of the planet we deal with most of the time is the crust. That's the uppermost layer, and it's up to about 30 miles thick. Beneath that is the mantle, which is itself made of three different sublayers-- the upper mantle, the transition zone, and the lower mantle.
Together, they are about 1,800 miles thick, and they make up about 84% of the planet's volume. Down beneath that is the core. But it's in the mantle where you'll find our secret sixth ocean. We think it might be there because of a brown diamond that formed around 400 miles beneath the crust and got pushed to the surface by volcanic forces at some point.
A team of researchers found this brown diamond in Brazil. And inside that diamond, they found another mineral called Ringwoodite, which is notable for its tendency to absorb surrounding water. This chunk of Ringwoodite was composed of about 1.5% water, which is a lot. That suggests that wherever it came from, there's a whole lot more water to be found.
It's widely accepted that the upper and lower mantles are bone-dry, but there's been some debate about how watery that transition zone is. There might not be an ocean sloshing around like the ones up on our surface, but scientists do think the transition zone could be pretty wet, even if a lot of the water is trapped in Ringwoodite, like the chunk the researchers found.
CODY GOUGH: It's not exactly an ocean.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: It's just kind of.
ASHLEY HAMER: I made it a little flashier than it was.
CODY GOUGH: Clickbait.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, audio version.
CODY GOUGH: Answer these 12 questions, which ocean are you?
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES] You'll never believe what this ocean did.
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES] Ashley, have you ever gone on a road trip?
ASHLEY HAMER: I have.
CODY GOUGH: Where did you go?
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, when I was going to school in Texas, I drove 2,000 miles to my hometown in Northern California.
CODY GOUGH: Nice.
ASHLEY HAMER: I had a friend that moved out to California to get a job, but he left his car here because he didn't know how long he'd be there. And then he got a job, but he couldn't take time off. So he asked me to deliver his car to him.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, cool.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. It was awesome. So I took the northern route. I went through Iowa and Colorado. I didn't do the Route 66 thing.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure.
CODY GOUGH: Did you play road trip games?
ASHLEY HAMER: Not by myself. That would have been a little weird.
CODY GOUGH: That'd be a little weird. Yeah, sure.
ASHLEY HAMER: I did play road trip games on my Texas to California trip. Yes.
CODY GOUGH: So we've played road trip games like the alphabet game or I Spy or 20 questions. Have you ever wondered where they came from? Or how old they are? Today we're going to take a scenic drive back in time and get into some road-trip-game origin stories. You might be surprised that some of these games are older than road trips themselves.
20 questions is a simple game, but it tells a lot about both the person guessing and the person with the answers. Its actual origins may be lost forever, but it goes at least as far back as 1882. That's when Mansfield Tracy Walworth published a book called Twenty Questions, A Short Treatise On the Game to Which are Added a Code of Rules and Specimen Games for the Use of Beginners.
That's quite a book title. [CHUCKLES] And yeah, that means there are actual rules. The rules are kind of long, but we've got a link to those in our full write-up today on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS, if you're interested.
Well, let's talk about some other games. There's I Spy, also known as I Spy with My Little Eye. That's a game where you spot small details in a large scene. And the earliest references to that go back to the late 1930s, right at the beginning of car culture. The BBC also attributes the popularity of Where's Waldo to this game.
One interesting thing to note about games that survived as roadtrip games is that car culture also killed some games. Blind Man's Bluff was a game where one player wandered around at a blindfold and look about had players find a hiding spot for a small item somewhere in the room. Not really great games for the car. As the car became more of a gathering place for families, word games thrived and survived into the next century, while other games took a backseat.
ASHLEY HAMER: I wouldn't recommend playing Blind Man's Bluff while you're driving.
CODY GOUGH: Nah. That's no good.
ASHLEY HAMER: No.
CODY GOUGH: It's funny how little things like games can tell us a lot about history.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. It's the day we've got a simple reading trick that can boost your memory and learning speed, just in time for school to start again. A recent study from the University of Waterloo discovered a mind-blowing technique that you-- yes, you-- can use starting the next time you read something.
Ready? Here it is. Read out loud. That's it. The researchers found that reading out loud helps to get it into your long-term memory. They say this works because of the production effect. Basically, the fact that you're using your voice to produce the words you're reading can have a big impact on your memory. Reading out loud lets you visually and audibly receive the information at the same time.
The study tested for methods of learning written information, including reading silently, hearing someone else read, listening to a recording of yourself reading, and reading aloud in real time. Reading out loud in real time gave participants a 5% to 15% boost in learning speed. While we're on the topic of study tips, here's one more. Be deliberate. Reading out loud is one thing, but be clear about what you're about to study and why. A Stanford study from last year found that focusing on how you plan to use your study time is what shows real results.
CODY GOUGH: That and enough sleep.
ASHLEY HAMER: Absolutely.
CODY GOUGH: Before we wrap up, we want to give you something fun for free. You may have noticed that Ashley and I have fun doing this show, but there's a lot of fun stuff I have to cut from our show to keep it short and sweet. But I took some clips, and I put together our first ever gag reel. It's just a few minutes long, but it's got a few outtakes from recent episodes that I think you'll find pretty amusing. And you can stream or download the gag reel right now, again, for free on our Patreon page. You do not have to be a Patreon supporter to access this.
ASHLEY HAMER: Of course, we appreciate our Patreon supporters. Patreon is a way for you to give back to your favorite creators online, like podcasters and YouTubers. You can find us at patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out. You might want to follow us there even if you're not contributing because we're going to be posting surveys and some other neat stuff there for everyone to enjoy.
CODY GOUGH: And if you do want to make a monthly donation to support us, then you will get lots of super cool, exclusive stuff-- not to mention our eternal gratitude.
ASHLEY HAMER: One more time, you can find our free gag reel and learn how you can support this show at patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out. You can also find a link to our Patreon on our podcast page and in the show notes of our newest episodes. Thanks again.
CODY GOUGH: That's all for today, but Curiosity has big plans for the weekend as always. What can you learn about this weekend, Ashley?
ASHLEY HAMER: This weekend, you'll learn about a museum on the moon, why you should think twice about putting lemons in your water, the mysterious Mima mounds in Washington that science can't explain, why you can never really touch anything because of your body's electromagnetic field, how your brain fights against weight loss, and more.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again Sunday to learn something new in just a few minutes. And if there's something you're curious about, then email us a question a podcast@curiosity.com. And we'll try to answer it in a future show.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's podcast@curiosity.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough. Have a great weekend.
ASHLEY HAMER: And stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
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