Learn about how to solve a famous logic puzzle called the Candle Problem; Île Sainte-Marie, the only known pirate cemetery in the world; and why scientists are baffled by a narwhal that was adopted by a pod of belugas. 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 Candle Problem From 1945 Is a Logic Puzzle That Requires Creative Thinking — https://curiosity.im/2Ef0BdN The World's Only Known Pirate Cemetery Is in Madagascar — https://curiosity.im/2EerVbY This Narwhal Was Adopted by a Pod of Belugas — https://curiosity.im/2Ei8sXX 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 how to solve a famous logic puzzle called the Candle Problem; Île Sainte-Marie, the only known pirate cemetery in the world; and why scientists are baffled by a narwhal that was adopted by a pod of belugas.
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! 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/narwhal-adoption-mystery-ile-sainte-maries-pirate-cemetery-and-solving-the-candle-problem
[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 how to solve a famous logic puzzle called the candle problem, the only known pirate cemetery in the world, and why scientists are baffled by a narwhal that was adopted by a pod of belugas.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Ready to test your logic skills with a little out-of-the-box thinking? Today we're going to give you the candle problem, which was posthumously published by Karl Duncker in 1945. I'll tell you about the history of this famous problem after you see if you can solve it.
CODY GOUGH: OK. So here it is. You're in a room with a table pushed against a wall. On the table is a box of thumbtacks, matches, and a candle. You must attach the lit candle to the wall in a way that the wax won't drip onto the table or the floor. How do you complete this task?
ASHLEY HAMER: OK. So one more time. You're in a room with a table pushed against the wall. On it is a box of thumbtacks, matches, and a candle. You have to attach the lit candle to the wall in a way that the wax won't drip onto the table or the floor. How do you complete this task?
CODY GOUGH: There's the last chance to pause this podcast before we give you the solution. Ready? All right. Here's your answer. To complete this task, you can take the tacks out of the box. Tack the box onto the wall, and place the lit candle inside the box. Ta-dah. Did you solve it?
ASHLEY HAMER: Duncker noted that if you want to solve this problem, you have to overcome your tendency for functional fixedness. That's basically a mental block against using an object in a new way that's required to solve a problem. In this problem, the tack box is key.
Participants had a hard time seeing the box in any way other than a thing containing tacks. A variation of this problem had the tax presented to the participants outside the box, and the participants were way more likely to figure out the tack box to wall strategy. The moral of Duncker's research? Think outside the box, literally. And don't be too tied to the usual functions of familiar objects.
CODY GOUGH: In the 17th and 18th centuries, pirates were pretty bad dudes. But if you're captivated by tales of piracy on the high seas, then you should know about an island a lot of pirates called home for about 100 years. Welcome to Ile Sainte-Marie, a small island about 5 miles off the coast of Madagascar. This is where the who's who of the pirate world supposedly lived when they weren't sailing the high seas. And it's also where you can find the world's only known pirate cemetery.
ASHLEY HAMER: We should note that Francis Drake never lived there. Long-time listeners will know why. Another guy who never lived there, Frank Drake. Just to be crystal clear.
CODY GOUGH: Right. Ile Sainte-Marie was the perfect hiding place for pirates. It has rocky, secluded bays. And it was conveniently located along the East Indies trade route, which was full of treasure-filled ships, not to mention that there are worse places to live than a tropical island.
Some men went so far as to raise families on the island. And the freewheeling bachelors of the bunch were drawn by the island's beautiful local women. What more could they ask for?
The pirate cemetery I mentioned is on the top of a hill looking over the water. And there you can find a notorious marauders like Thomas [INAUDIBLE]. The graveyard is open to the public, but it's overgrown by tall grass. And there are only 30 headstones still intact. Some do, in fact, feature the iconic skull and crossbones pirate lovers know and love.
And archeologists think there are several shipwrecks off the coast of the island. So if you head to Ile Sainte-Marie for a dive, you just might go home with a buried treasure of your own. Who knows? Maybe you'll discover a long-lost candle, or a box of thumbtacks? Today's episode is sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
ASHLEY HAMER: Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash. People could get hurt or killed. But let's take a moment to look at some surprising statistics.
CODY GOUGH: Almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes. That's one person every 50 minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Even though drunk-driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades, drunk-driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives each year.
CODY GOUGH: Drunk driving can have a big impact on your wallet too. You could get arrested and incur huge legal expenses, for example. You could possibly even lose your job.
ASHLEY HAMER: So what can you do to prevent drunk driving? Plan a safe ride home before you start drinking. Designate a sober driver, or call a taxi. If someone you know has been drinking, take their keys and arrange for them to get a sober ride home.
CODY GOUGH: We all know the consequences of driving drunk. But one thing is for sure, you're wrong if you think it's no big deal.
ASHLEY HAMER: Drive sober, or get pulled over. Right now, researchers are scratching their heads over a story that's unfolding in Canada's St. Lawrence River. In July 2018, a group of scientists were there researching belugas when they captured drone footage that raised a lot of questions. They found a young narwhal more than 1,000 kilometers South of his Arctic home, and he's swimming with a pod of belugas.
The thing is, it seems like this narwhal was adopted by the belugas. And as reported by the conversation, this is a type of adoption researchers can't quite put their finger on.
CODY GOUGH: Right. So in the human realm, adoption is seen is like an act of benevolence or kindness. But in other animals, there's a bit of an evolutionary dilemma. The goal of every organism in the natural world is to reproduce and transfer its genes to future generations, right?
Well, with adoption, you're investing resources into someone else's offspring, but there's no guarantee that'll help you pass on your genetic material through that adoption, and yet adoption is still well-documented across the animal kingdom. So what's the deal?
ASHLEY HAMER: Scientists have figured out some reasons why animals adopt. One is through kin. Lots of different species have been known to care for or raise the offspring of a relative since relative-shared genes and helping family can help ensure their DNA gets passed on.
But how about interspecies adoption? One possibility is that adoption gives young females a chance to practice their mothering skills. Scientists believe that some of the skills it takes to be a good parent are learned, not innate.
CODY GOUGH: And another reason for interspecies adoption could be reproductive error. Breeding females that have recently lost their young are often still behaviorally and physiologically ready to provide maternal care. In those cases, her motherly instincts may be so strong that it leads her to mistakenly care for unrelated young.
ASHLEY HAMER: But the welcoming of a young narwhal into a pod of juvenile male belugas can't be explained by any of the options we just talked about. Maybe growing their pod by one narwhal adds protection from predators. Narwhals and belugas don't compete for food, so it could just come down to safety in numbers. For now, it's one of nature's many mysteries and one more thing to keep scientists busy.
CODY GOUGH: I want to quickly mention that next week, we're going to be rerunning the most popular stories from the past year on this podcast as a way of counting down to the New Year.
ASHLEY HAMER: Tomorrow will be a brand new episode. But we wanted to let you know that next week, you're going to hear some familiar stories. It never hurts to review what you've learned from the previous year, and we designed the whole week based on your feedback. It's our way of celebrating the end of the year with a look-back at our best and brightest stories, and we hope you stick around to hear it.
CODY GOUGH: And we'll throw in a little bit of bonus stuff as well just to make sure you keep hearing some stuff that's brand new. But in the meantime, you can join us again tomorrow for a completely brand new episode of the award-winning Curiosity Daily to learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
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