Learn about the mysterious 4,000-year-old Phaistos disk; how the necrobiome is helping forensic scientists; and the 7 beliefs of emotionally healthy people. 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: The Phaistos Disk is a 4,000-Year-Old Mystery Code — https://curiosity.im/2CKLN5Z The Necrobiome Is for the Dead What the Microbiome Is for the Living — https://curiosity.im/2CJlsoN The 7 Beliefs of Emotionally Healthy People — https://curiosity.im/2CL4I0n 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! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom 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 mysterious 4,000-year-old Phaistos disk; how the necrobiome is helping forensic scientists; and the 7 beliefs of emotionally healthy people.
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! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
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/mystery-code-of-the-4-000-year-old-phaistos-disk-the-necrobiome-and-7-beliefs-of-emotionally-healthy-people
[THEME MUSIC] 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 4,000-year-old mystery code, how the necrobiome is helping forensic scientists, and the seven beliefs of emotionally healthy people.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily. We've solved a lot of ancient mysteries but one piece of work has been stumping archeologists and historians for a long time. It's called the Disc of Phaistos. It's a mysterious work of unknown origin purpose and meaning, and it was written about 4,000 years ago. Ready to bust out your decoder ring?
ASHLEY HAMER: I love this. I mean, we already figured out the Rosetta Stone. Now, this is a new mystery to solve.
CODY GOUGH: It's almost as mysterious as the da Vinci Code.
ASHLEY HAMER: Whew.
CODY GOUGH: Well, before the Greeks, there were the Minoans. They were incorrectly named after the legendary King Minos by 19th century archeologists, and they ruled the island of Crete for about 600 years, from around 2000 to 1400 BCE. And the Minoans were the first known civilization to create art depicting natural scenes without human figures. And their palace building prowess was way ahead of its time, or the aliens? I'll leave that up to you to decide.
In 1908, an expedition found a disk in the Minoan Palace of Phaistos. It's a single circular piece that's just over 6 inches in diameter and it's adorned on both sides with a spiral of symbols. Yes, a spiral. There are 241 total symbols made up of 45 distinct figures.
Here's where it gets out of control. They are not carved into the clay. Instead, they were imprinted using stamps. So every symbol appears the exact same way every time. It's unlike any other form of writing from the period. But more than that, the recurring symbols and the sequential structure strongly imply that this is some sort of readable message. But we have no idea what it says.
I mean, there's a whole Wikipedia entry of proposed solutions, including the idea that it might be a prayer to a Minoan mother goddess. But according to Elizabeth Barber, a professor of linguistics and archeology, we don't have enough statistical information to confirm or disprove any claim like that. I mean, we're talking about a script where only 241 instances of 45 distinct signs of non-alphabetic texts are known, like anywhere.
It'd be like trying to figure out a language from one page of one book in English. Not a lot of context there. But what it specifically says may not even be the point. In a very real sense, the Phaistos Disc is the earliest known example of movable type. It just never took off like the Gutenberg Press did, which happened about three millennia later. So the Minoans were perhaps a bit ahead of their time.
ASHLEY HAMER: You know how you've got millions of bacteria living inside your gut called your microbiome? Well, a corpse also has a colony of bacteria. And it's called the necrobiome. And forensic scientists can do a lot with it. Buckle up, CSI fans, we're about to go full Halloween season on you.
CODY GOUGH: I don't usually like talking about dead bodies and corpses and things.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, you really don't.
CODY GOUGH: But the science behind this is kind of cool.
ASHLEY HAMER: I think it's super cool. You know, I'm not like into horror movies or anything like that, but I really kind of like the dead stuff when it comes to science. It's neat. The area of microbial forensics is pretty new, and that means that a lot has been discovered in a short amount of time.
In 2013, researchers figured out that the necrobiome of decaying mice could tell them the animal's time of death to within three days over a nearly two-month period. In 2016, the same researchers figured out that the habitat didn't matter. The same type of microbes follow the same predictable processes whether they were in a desert, prairie, or forest. And that lets scientists use them to judge the time of death no matter the location.
This is a lot more accurate than measuring decomposition since a corpse rots a lot faster in the summer heat than it does in the winter snow. Not to mention the fact that insects species come and go with seasons, and they can change the rate of decay, too. Now you might wonder what good it is to just study mice, but don't worry, there are researchers working on real human cadavers, too.
Some people donate their bodies to decompose on body farms, where forensic scientists study what happens to corpses over time. Yes, this is actually a thing you can do. In 2016, researchers from the City University of New York took DNA from bacteria they found in some of these cadavers. Then they used machine learning to create a model that could predict the time of death to within roughly two days. There's still a lot to learn about how elements like weather, health, drugs, and other variables affect the way a body decomposes. But whatever the results, the necrobiome will surely play a big role.
CODY GOUGH: You probably know somebody who always seems to have a good attitude no matter what life throws at them. Well, it turns out that there are a few beliefs emotionally healthy people tend to hold. And taking them on could be the key to being happy yourself. I think both of us probably would say we believe some of these things.
ASHLEY HAMER: I think so, for sure.
CODY GOUGH: You seem like relatively happy people.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, you seem to always have a good attitude.
CODY GOUGH: Do I? Good. This list comes from Dr. Ellen Hendrickson, a psychologist who identified a pattern of beliefs she saw in people with stable and successful emotional health. Now, nobody carries all of these beliefs all the time, and it's definitely not healthy to beat yourself up if you have a hard time believing all of these things yourself, but they could be a good place to start.
So here are the things that you may want to start believing if you want to be a happier person. The first belief-- say it with me-- I can stay the course. After all, if you're confident, you can stick to a plan, then you're already on the way towards actually carrying it out.
The second belief, I can do things I don't feel like doing. The technical term for this is mood-independent behavior. It basically means that sometimes you want to do something but don't feel like it. So here's a piece of advice-- start by doing the thing. Either your mood will catch up and you'll be happy or the thing will be done and then you don't have to deal with it. Either way, you win.
The next belief, I can roll with the punches. This belief reinforces your ability to adapt to your plans.
Belief number four, everyone deserves to be treated with respect. Oh man, that one's tricky these days. But you really can't have a stable and healthy emotional life if you look down on people for their income, profession, race, class, gender, any of that stuff. To be healthy, it's important to recognize that we are all deserving of the same respect.
The fifth belief is, I can laugh at myself. Having a little perspective can make setbacks seem a lot funnier. I can definitely relate to this. I have had some bad days, and it just gets to the point where I'm just like, all right, whatever, I'll deal with it.
Next up is this belief, I am capable. Believing that you're resilient enough to accomplish what you set out to do is one of the surest ways to prevent anxiety.
And the final belief, I can love and I am capable of love. To back this up, just look at the study of adults development. That's a study out of Harvard that started in 1938 and is still going strong after 80 years. The current director of that study boils down what he learned to five words-- happiness is love, full stop. Practice these in the mirror or something, and who knows, maybe someday you'll have a better attitude about life.
ASHLEY HAMER: Before we go, I want to mention something super cool. We just hit a milestone with our Amazon Echo Flash Briefing listeners. More than 1,000 curious listeners have made our show part of their daily routine. We're thrilled at the chance to help you satisfy your curiosity.
CODY GOUGH: If you're enjoying our show on any device, you could actually do us a huge favor by leaving a five-star review on our Amazon Flash Briefing Skill. It's easy to find. Literally, just go to amazon.com and type in Curiosity Daily in the search box. We are the top results.
ASHLEY HAMER: You can leave a review, just like you do for any product on Amazon. It should only take a second.
CODY GOUGH: Almost everyone has given us five stars, and thank you so much if you have done that. But can I say something? Someone left us a three-star review, literally the first day our skill was added to the Flash Briefing directory. And it was because we had this back-end record like five episodes would play in a row instead of just one, so I noticed that problem and fixed it within 12 hours, and I replied to the reviewer with a comment saying, we fixed it. But though this completely anonymous, quote, unquote, "Amazon customer" won't update his review. Life is hard, Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: Please help Cody chill out a bit. You're really helping me so I don't have to deal with the drama by leaving us a five-star review. Just search for Curiosity Daily on amazon.com. We'll also put a direct link to our Flash Briefing Skill in today's show notes.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow with the award-winning but somehow not rated five stars on Amazon, Curiosity Daily to learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
[THEME MUSIC]
SPEAKER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.