In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: NASA Is Working on Cryosleep Chambers for Astronauts "Getting" Puns Means Both Sides of Your Brain Are Working Together Why Red Delicious Are the Most Popular, Most Terrible Apple Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/nasas-cryosleep-chambers-your-brain-on-puns-and-why-red-delicious-apples-exist
[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 how your brain processes puns, why Red Delicious are the most popular, most terrible apple, and the latest updates on how close we are to inventing cryo sleep chambers for astronauts.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, have you ever seen 2001, A Space Odyssey?
CODY GOUGH: I've seen it three times.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: Have you?
ASHLEY HAMER: That's a lot of movie. I have. I have a really hard time staying awake during very long movies. And that is a very long movie.
CODY GOUGH: And there's no dialogue for more than the first 20 minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: So is there any way you lasted more than 10?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, no. It's so hard. I got to try again. It's a classic, I know.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Every time I've seen it, I've had a different reaction. I love it, and then the next time I see it, I'll really not like it. It's a strange film.
ASHLEY HAMER: Hmm. Well, that movie is one of lots of sci-fi stories with deep sleep chambers, which put astronauts to sleep for months at a time while their ships traveled to distant galaxies.
Well, guess what? A company called SpaceWorks Enterprises has actually been working on technology to help us do that. And you can find Curiosity's interview with SpaceWorks project manager today on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
Here are some of the things we learned. First off, you've got to realize that a one way ticket to Mars would take about six months. And setting up astronauts for six months of living conditions would take a lot. We're talking cooking supplies, exercise equipment, science stations, sleeping quarters, bathrooms, entertainment. And that's for half a year's worth of stuff.
This is why it would be really helpful if we had a way to make those astronauts hibernate. And SpaceWorks got a half a million dollar grant from NASA in 2016 to work on finding a way to do that using medically induced torpor. Torpor is a state of inactivity characterized by low body temperature, slow breathing, slow heart rate, and low metabolic rate but continued brain activity. It's like how bears hibernate through the winter.
Obviously, humans don't hibernate naturally. But hibernation has happened to humans in a medical environment before. In medically induced torpor, also known as therapeutic hypothermia, doctors lower a patient's body temperature. So tissues aren't as likely to be damaged when blood flow is low. This could be a good option for patients who have suffered cardiac arrest, stroke, trauma, and brain injuries among other things.
By lowering a patient's temperature by even a couple of degrees, the procedure makes it so cells need less oxygen. And that protects them from the damage that could otherwise occur. Right now, clinical protocols call for administering therapeutic hypothermia for 24 to 72 hours. And SpaceWorks is targeting periods of 7 to 14 days.
During a deep space mission, a crew might repeat torpor cycles with a couple of days of activity between hibernating while in transit. And some at SpaceWorks believe they might be able to achieve this capability for manned missions as soon as the 2030s. Not to mention it could be useful here on earth for medical devices and other ways of helping out the human race.
Right now SpaceWorks is working on getting private funding to help them with the next phase of R&D. Again, you can read the full write-up today on curiosity. com. And we'll include a link in the show notes. But this is exciting stuff.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Let's just make sure an AI isn't controlling how long they're asleep.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. I know that part, 2001.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: So the basic idea is keep them in torpor for, again, 7 to 14 days. But basically, they wake up for a couple of days to stretch after that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. Yeah, you wouldn't be asleep for the entire six months.
CODY GOUGH: That makes sense.
ASHLEY HAMER: But maybe someday.
CODY GOUGH: How much do you love puns?
ASHLEY HAMER: Working at Curiosity has really increased my love of puns. I did not use to like them, but they're really becoming a part of me.
CODY GOUGH: Well, a recent study found that both sides of your brain work together to help you understand puns. So I think that they are a genius device. But let's back up for a second.
The whole left brain versus right brain theory thing has been pretty much debunked. It's not like the left brain is the organized, logical side, and the right brain is the creative, emotional side. That's not science. But research has indicated that some skills may tend to live more in one side than the other. Like language sometimes prefers one side, for example. And a lot of people, it's the left brain. Although in many people, language is in the right brain.
ASHLEY HAMER: Actually, a lot of times, if your left-handed or right-handed, that can change what side of your brain certain things are on.
CODY GOUGH: Right, exactly. There you go. So there can be differences. And there can be preferences for one side or the other in certain skills. But researchers took some puns and showed them to participants in this study, in the visual field of only one eye. That's because, and I did not know this, if a joke lands in the right eye, it gets to the left brain first, and vise versa?
ASHLEY HAMER: That's wild.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. When the joke hit the left brain first, people reacted to the joke faster, which suggests that the left side of the brain is better at joke processing than the right side. But get this, the right side was the one that actually found the puns funny.
The idea here is that the left side has powerful language abilities. So it's better able to actually understand the joke. And the right side is the one that comes in with the alternative interpretation of the words that lends the joke it's laughs.
This research backed up previous studies that showed that people who have damage in their right brain can sometimes understand a joke's meaning but they don't think they're funny anymore. And hey, if comedy can't be found in the brain, then maybe it lives in the humerus.
[LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, that wasn't your joke. That was Reuben Wesmus's joke.
CODY GOUGH: That was Reuben's joke.
ASHLEY HAMER: You have to give credit where credit is due.
CODY GOUGH: Ripped that off blatantly. This is why I'm not in comedy.
ASHLEY HAMER: You are in comedy.
[LAUGHTER]
All right, Cody, what's your favorite apple?
CODY GOUGH: I never remember what they taste like.
ASHLEY HAMER: What apples taste like?
CODY GOUGH: No, I know what apples--
[LAUGHTER]
--taste like. OK. But my wife will go to the grocery store and bring back six different kinds of apples. And she'll be like, well, do you want this one or this one? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't remember what they taste like.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm a massive apple connoisseur. I love Jazz apples, Honeycrisp apples. Cripps Pink is really good. I like tart ones.
CODY GOUGH: Where do you get these?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, they're all at the grocery store.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, there are a lot of different types of apples. But that's not what we're talking about today. Today, we're talking about Red Delicious apples because they're really disgusting, and yet they're everywhere. Why?
CODY GOUGH: Really disgusting might be strong words but--
ASHLEY HAMER: No.
CODY GOUGH: I have noticed that people in this office tend to have a very strong bias against--
ASHLEY HAMER: They're so bad. They're mealy. They're bitter. Today, Curiosity looked into, at least, why they got so popular. Back in the day, Red Delicious apples could be picked earlier and stored longer because they turn red before they're ripe. They're fooling you. And they didn't bruise as much because of their thick skin, which is gross.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Not to mention, you couldn't really see the bruises anyway because of the dark red color. Again, it's fooling you.
CODY GOUGH: So they're liars.
ASHLEY HAMER: They're liars.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: These traits made them super popular with apple growers, who didn't really breed their apples for taste. Red Delicious was iconic and ad-friendly so it got popular even though it wasn't really that tasty. Think about it. When you draw a cartoon apple, you draw a Red Delicious.
CODY GOUGH: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: By the '80s, it was virtually the only apple available. Today, it's actually the fifth most popular apple in the country. Still, I don't know why. The most popular is the Gala Apple, then Honeycrisp, then Fuji, then the Granny Smith, all wonderful apples. And they got big because apples are marketed on their diversity, which is pretty unique. You don't really see growers selling different types of strawberries or blueberries or bananas.
CODY GOUGH: Sure, except for those weird little mini banana things.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, those are cool. Yeah. Well, anyway some apples were more expensive since Fuji apples came from Japan, and Gala apples came from New Zealand. And those came with import costs. But they're so tasty, consumers are happy to pay the price. Read more about all of today's stories, and more, on curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily, and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
ANNOUNCER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.