Learn about the story of a meteorite that crushed a 1980 Chevy Malibu; a few red flags for spotting psychopaths and narcissists; and how you can measure your level of passionate love. 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: In 1992, a Meteorite Crushed This Family's Car — https://curiosity.im/2D7LMcu 5 Ways to Spot Psychopaths and Narcissists — https://curiosity.im/2D7knHK How Passionate Is Your Relationship? This Research-Backed Quiz Will Tell You — https://curiosity.im/2D6GOMT 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 about the story of a meteorite that crushed a 1980 Chevy Malibu; a few red flags for spotting psychopaths and narcissists; and how you can measure your level of passionate love.
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/measure-your-passionate-relationships-how-to-spot-psychopaths-and-narcissists-and-the-car-crushing-meteorite
[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 car-crushing meteorite, a few red flags for spotting psychopaths and narcissists, and how you can measure your level of passionate love.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: What do a meteorite and a 1980s Chevy Malibu have in common? Well, if you were born in the mid 90s, then the answer is a thing that happened before you were born. Fortunately, we're here to give you a little history lesson. What's the difference between a meteorite and a 1980 Chevy Malibu? One killed the dinosaurs and the other one is a dinosaur. I don't know. That was a bad joke.
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: (LAUGHING) Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, this might surprise you, but our planet gets hit with a pretty healthy dose of meteoric materials pretty much all the time. As in, about 60 tons of it every day. Most of what we get is a light cosmic dusting or a baseball-sized missile at best. And when you think about it, our planet is covered with so much water, the actual odds of a meteorite hitting land, let alone a person, is actually pretty slim.
But a meteorite made a big impact in one person's driveway on October 9th, 1992. 18-year-old Michelle Knapp was just hanging out in her parent's living room watching TV, when suddenly, she heard an enormous crash from the driveway. She ran outside where she found her bright orange 1980 Chevy Malibu with a smoking hole punched all the way through the trunk. She found an actual crater in the ground under the car, too. And at the bottom of that crater, there was a bowling ball sized rock that weighed about 28 pounds and smelled like sulfur.
The next day, a curator from the American Museum of Natural History confirmed that the rock had fallen from outer space. Don't worry about the damages, though. The space rock was split into smaller chunks and purchased by several different fossil and meteorite collectors. And the car was sold for about $10,000. That's not too shabby considering the car ran for about $6,000 new. Now, the car is in the full time custody of the Macovich Collection of Meteorites.
It might not be roadworthy anymore, but it still traveled around the world. The meteorite car has been on display in museums from Tokyo to Paris. The moral of the story-- if a meteorite hits your car, don't call your insurance company. Call your nearest museum.
CODY GOUGH: Or get on eBay while it's hot.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's not hot. Meteorites aren't hot, that's a common myth.
CODY GOUGH: Fine. At some point, you've probably had to cut someone toxic out of your life. That is never fun. But you can stay away from the wrong people in the first place if you know some common red flags. So today, we've got some tell-tale signs that could help you spot psychopaths and narcissists. Have you ever had to cut a psychopath and narcissist out of your life?
ASHLEY HAMER: I can never tell what they are or what they aren't, but yeah, I've had to cut some people out of my life.
CODY GOUGH: No fun.
ASHLEY HAMER: No, definitely not.
CODY GOUGH: First, let's be clear. There are lots of differences between psychopaths and narcissists. Narcissists tend to overvalue themselves at the expense of others. Psychopaths habitually take advantage of others, whether it's physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, or financially-- without remorse, by the way. But there are also some overlaps.
One of the main ones is that people with psychopathic or narcissistic traits often create false personas and mannerisms when they interact with people. This is a type of showmanship that gives them the chance to test, manipulate, or even vilify other people. On the plus side, though, there are some dead giveaways once the method to their madness. Here's an obvious sign. They go from zero to TMI in 10 seconds.
Within just a few minutes of meeting someone for the first time, a psychopath or a narcissist might tell you about their smartest financial investments or worst family drama. They might even repeat the same stories like a script. Because they basically are scripts. They might even be total lies. Sharing these deep dark secrets can build intimacy and bonding. And the faster you bond, the sooner manipulation can begin.
And if you get a bunch of rapid fire personal questions, then the goal is to get you to overshare back. The ploy is to get you to reveal your biggest problems in life, and then once those are out there, the person can conveniently offer to help. Keep in mind, though, that they might go the other way and ask you zero questions. If you're in a conversation where the person is telling you a dramatic story about a dying family member and they don't even know your first name or why you're at the party or wherever you are, then the whole point of the conversation might be for you to get hooked on their, quote, unquote, "interesting life."
Whatever they do, once they've got you hooked, the next step might be to do you special favors. And the next step after that is for them to try to get favors from you. Only thing is there'll be bigger requests with greater demands. And that is a slippery slope. We've got a few more tell-tale signs than our full write-up on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity App for Android and iOS.
But the defining trait of a psychopath or narcissist is a lack of emotional empathy. People with these disorders can't completely fake empathy, and your subconscious will pick up on that. If you feel uncomfortable around someone, then trust your instincts and move on.
ASHLEY HAMER: Before we get to our last story, I want to give a special shout out to some of our patrons for supporting our show. Thank you to Steve Guy, Doug Hench, Jarice Dernott, and Dane Norris for contributing to our Patreon page. You are a vital part in helping us keep the show going. If you're listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out.
CODY GOUGH: Even a couple bucks a month would be a huge help. That's less than a psychopath will ask you to borrow. And we're producing exclusive longer episodes and interview clips as our way of thanking patrons. Although don't worry, we'll keep our daily shows like today's free for everyone to enjoy. For more info, go to patreon.com/curiosity.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's hard to define love. But how about passionate love? Believe it or not, researchers have actually come up with a definition. And there's a research-backed quiz to tell you how passionate your relationship is.
CODY GOUGH: Did you take the quiz, Ashley?
ASHLEY HAMER: I did. Did you?
CODY GOUGH: I did. How'd it go?
ASHLEY HAMER: Pretty well. How'd yours go?
CODY GOUGH: (LAUGHING)You don't want to go first?
[LAUGHS]
ASHLEY HAMER: You're the one who's married.
CODY GOUGH: I am married. So the rankings are frosty, cool, average, good, and extreme. And I'm extreme.
ASHLEY HAMER: Me, too.
CODY GOUGH: Nice.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Look how passionate we are about stuff.
ASHLEY HAMER: We're so passionate.
CODY GOUGH: Relationships.
ASHLEY HAMER: Nice.
CODY GOUGH: But Ashley, what defines a passionate relationship?
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, I'm glad you asked, Cody. See, in a 1986 study, researchers from Illinois State University defined passionate love more or less as puppy love, meaning the most common type of love among people from 13 to 22 years old. The researchers argued that it's all about high highs and low lows, along with a pretty much constant intensity.
A person in passionate love feels euphoria when they're with their beloved and despair when they can't be. Passionate love is so intense that it comes with physical symptoms. We're talking dizziness, butterflies in your stomach, weak knees, and rapid breathing. In other words, being in passionate love and having a panic attack aren't totally different. An unrequited love can be passionate, too. So you can feel passion that's never reciprocated, and some couples love each other without much passion.
This makes it unclear where the passion actually comes from. But we can at least identify passionate love when it's there. And that's where the researcher's Passionate Love Scale comes in. There's an abbreviated version of the Passionate Love Scale you can take online. It consists of 15 statements that, if true, mean you're in passionate love. To create the scale, the researchers drew from a mix of interviews, literature, and other psychologists' love-related scales.
You just need to pick a relationship to evaluate, and if you're single, you can just use your most recent one. From there, you'll rank how much you agree with 15 statements, such as, I want my partner physically, emotionally, and mentally, and, sometimes I feel I can't control my thoughts. They are obsessively on my partner. Hey, passionate love isn't always healthy.
Like we said, your result will put you on a passion scale that runs from frosty to extreme. Just keep in mind that passion is associated with adolescence, so having a relationship that isn't extreme might just be a sign of maturity and not a lack of love.
CODY GOUGH: Like Romeo and Juliet.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yep, they did not end up well.
CODY GOUGH: Read about today's stories and more on curiosity.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER 1: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.