Learn about the difference between natural and artificial ingredients; why Africa is physically splitting into two continents; and why the return trip always feels shorter than the original trip. 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: What's the Difference Between Natural and Artificial Ingredients? — https://curiosity.im/2txAmI0 Africa Is Physically Splitting Into Two Continents — https://curiosity.im/2ttaMEe Why Does the Return Trip Always Feel Shorter? — https://curiosity.im/2SYRC8u 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 Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about the difference between natural and artificial ingredients; why Africa is physically splitting into two continents; and why the return trip always feels shorter than the original trip.
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
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/natural-vs-artificial-ingredients-why-the-return-trip-feels-shorter-and-africa-splitting-in-half
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about the difference between natural and artificial ingredients; why Africa is physically splitting into two continents; and why the return trip always feels shorter than the original trip.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
What's the Difference Between Natural and Artificial Ingredients? — https://curiosity.im/2txAmI0 (Ashley)
What’s the difference between natural and artificial ingredients? It turns out that from flavoring to preservatives, a lot of times there isn’t much of a difference at all. For example, the most popular form of artificial banana flavor is a molecule called isoamyl acetate. Natural banana flavor, on the other hand, is a molecule called — wait for it — isoamyl acetate. Chemically, they’re the exact same thing. The reason your banana-flavored Laffy Taffy doesn’t taste just like a banana is that it’s missing the many other flavor compounds that come with it, so it tastes one-dimensional. When it comes to flavor, the FDA defines "natural" as anything derived directly from a plant or animal, OR from the roasting, heating, or fermentation of that plant or animal. Artificial flavoring is anything that's, well, not that. But that's where it ends. As long as you don't synthesize the molecule, you can pretty much do whatever you want to natural flavors in order to get the end result you’re looking for.
Sometimes, natural flavors can actually be more harmful than artificial ones. That's because when you distill a compound from the real thing, you risk taking some toxins along for the ride. When you distill the almond flavor benzaldehyde from peach and apricot pits, it comes along with traces of the poison hydrogen cyanide. When you make the exact same compound by mixing amyl acetate and oil of clove, it's cyanide-free — but you still have to label it as an artificial flavor. Lately, there’s been a push for removing artificial colors and flavors because there’s more consumer demand for so-called “clean” labels. That gets tricky with preservatives, though, since we add those to food to increase their shelf life. They basically keep microorganisms like bacteria and yeast from growing to levels that make you sick. The trick is finding natural preservatives that work as well as the artificial ones, and that can cost a lot of time and money. In the meantime, just remember that swapping out artificial ingredients for natural ones doesn’t always solve the problem. In the end, the difference is more about language and marketing, and less about health and safety. Some juices are natural, but so is snake venom. Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s better.
Africa Is Physically Splitting Into Two Continents — https://curiosity.im/2ttaMEe (Cody)
We learned as kids that Earth has seven continents. But in the future, that may no longer be the case. Africa is on track to split into two continents. In March 2018, you might have seen photos of a huge crack cutting straight into Kenya, splitting the Nairobi-Narok highway. The crack was 50 feet deep and more than 50 feet wide! And that conversation brought up some conversation about how the continent of Africa is splitting in two. In northeastern Africa, the continent is slowly cracking, and eventually, it’ll become two separate land masses. Don’t panic if you’re living right on the line where it’s gonna split, though. Scientists have known for quite a while that Africa is splitting, thanks to tectonic plates. Those plates make up the Earth’s crust and upper mantle, and they slowly glide around. Sometimes they bump into each other, and other times they stretch apart until they tear. That’s what we’re seeing here. This process could be the underlying reason for the crack in Kenya, but it’s probably the heavy rainfall on that weakened crust that caused what happened last March, not necessarily full-fledged plate separation. One more thing: you don’t have to run out and buy a new map just yet. The plates are only moving a few millimeters per year, so it’ll take about 50 million more years for the continent to break off. That gives you several million years to visit, and in the meantime, scientists will get a pretty fascinating look at the different stages of rifting in real-time.
[MOVA GLOBES]
ASHLEY: Since you won’t have to get a new map for another 50 million years or so, you might as well take advantage of a special offer just for Curiosity Daily listeners. It comes from today’s sponsor, Mova Globes, spelled M-O-V-A.
CODY: Mova Globes are globes that rotate BY THEMSELVES. They rotate using a hidden magnets, so all it needs to move is light. There are no batteries or cords, which makes it a great conversation starter when you put one in your home or on your desk at work.
ASHLEY: There are 40 different designs of Mova Globes, like an antique terrestrial map. It’s a vintage map of Earth from 1790, and it shows the three voyages of Captain James Cook. Africa is still just one continent on that map, but there’s no Antarctica — because James Cook didn’t believe it existed!
CODY: There’s also a famous art collection that turns flat paintings by Van Gogh and Monet into a 3-dimensional piece of art. And we’ve talked a lot about their space collection, which includes planets, moons, and more.
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CODY: One more time, to get fifteen percent off your purchase, visit mova-globes-dot-com-slash-curiosity and use coupon code CURIOSITY.
Why Does the Return Trip Always Feel Shorter? — https://curiosity.im/2SYRC8u (Ashley)
Have you ever noticed that the trip back always feels shorter than the trip you took to get somewhere? Researchers have actually looked into this phenomenon. It’s called the “return trip effect,” and the explanation is a lot LESS straightforward as you might think. [ad lib]
ASHLEY: Scientists already know that your sense of time is really flexible. Sometimes it feels like time speeds up or slows down based on what you’re doing. But researchers can’t agree on what exactly a return trip does to your brain to make it feel so short. Here are a few hypotheses. The first explanation is that the return trip is just more familiar. A 2016 study published in the journal Hippocampus had participants sketch a map of their campus and write down travel time estimates between different places. The more familiar a student was with the area, the shorter the travel times they estimated.
The familiarity hypothesis makes sense, but the next idea kind of contradicts it. Explanation number two says that you overestimate how long the return trip will take. A 2011 study had participants watch videos of someone else traveling, and they said the return trip felt shorter — even when the return trip was on a completely different but equidistant route. The researchers thought this might be because you underestimate how long you think it’ll take to get to your destination, so when it takes longer than you thought, you end up being disappointed, and THAT makes you more likely to overestimate how long it’ll take to get back. When you overestimate the return trip timing, the trip back feels delightfully shorter.
But there’s still a third possibility out there. That says the anticipation of your destination affects how long the trip feels. A 2016 study put students in a room in a lab, then head to different rooms, where half of the students knew what they’d be doing there, and the other half didn’t. Then they went back to that first room. The participants who didn’t know what to expect when they left the first room judged the INITIAL trip to be longer than the trip back, which suggests the initial trip feels longer because you don’t know what to expect when you get to your destination. At the end of the day, all three of these hypotheses have one thing in common: whether it’s familiarity, overestimation, or anticipation, they all suggest that time seems to move more slowly the harder your brain is working. It’s clear in any case that your brain is playing with your perception of time. So in the end, maybe it’s just best to be happy you’re finally home.
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