Learn about how a 4-year-old can help you unblock your creativity; how we figured out what color dinosaurs were; and why you should never hit the snooze button. 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: One Unusual Way to Unblock Your Creativity: Borrow a 4-Year-Old — https://curiosity.im/2LsTIs3 How Do We Know What Color Dinosaurs Were? — https://curiosity.im/2XrvQLO Whatever You Do, Don't Hit the Snooze Button — https://curiosity.im/2Xl133r Want to support our show?Register for the 2019 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. After you register, simply select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2019 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 how a 4-year-old can help you unblock your creativity; how we figured out what color dinosaurs were; and why you should never hit the snooze button.
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:
Want to support our show? Register for the 2019 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. After you register, simply select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2019
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/never-hit-the-snooze-button-unblock-your-creativity-with-a-4-year-old-and-dinosaur-colors
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 how a 4-year-old can help you unblock your creativity; how we figured out what color dinosaurs were; and why you should never hit the snooze button.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
One Unusual Way to Unblock Your Creativity: Borrow a 4-Year-Old — https://curiosity.im/2LsTIs3 (Cody)
We’ve covered a lot of ways for being more productive or more creative on this podcast, but today’s tip might take the cake. If you want to kickstart your creativity, then try this: borrow a 4-year-old. [ad lib]
CODY: This idea comes from Austin Kleon [KLEE-on], who’s an artist, a prolific blogger, and the author of three books on creativity. He's also the father of two small boys. And he’s a father who is fighting back against the stereotype that caring for kids and being creative don't mix. In fact, on his blog, he insists children can be a magic elixir for unblocking creativity. Of course, time spent changing diapers and handing out yogurts is time not spent on your work. AND YET! what kids eat up in time, they can give back in inspiration. For example, after visiting a sculpture garden in Austin, Kleon wrote this in his blog. Quote, “Towards the end of our visit, I spent at least half an hour at the very edge of the garden with my back to the beautiful art and scenery, watching the cars whiz by on Robert E. Lee Road. Going to an art museum with a two-year-old will make you rethink what's interesting and what's art. After all, what are cars but fast, colorful, kinetic sculptures?” unquote. While some would say that Kleon's child pulled him away from art, Kleon sees it instead as a case of being inspired by his child to see the world with fresh eyes. And looking at the same old stuff in a new way is key to creativity. A cartoonist named Lynda Barry is one of many artists who’ve agreed with Kleon. She once shared a story about how when she was working as a university professor, she paired up her students with four-year-olds to try to get them to approach problems in a way that was less tight and focused. That’s because kids can remind us not to take things too seriously, to be adventurous, to really see our weird and gorgeous world — all important sources of inspiration. The takeaway is that sometimes the key to unblocking yourself is to break out of the received wisdom and self-consciousness that constrain how you think about the problems you're facing. Kids let their eyes and minds guide them, and to borrow a bit of that mentality, all you’ve gotta do is hang out with a kid, keep an open mind, and listen. [ad lib optional]
How Do We Know What Color Dinosaurs Were? — https://curiosity.im/2XrvQLO (Ashley) [FREELANCER]
ASHLEY: Have you ever wondered how we know what color dinosaurs were? Well, we have. And yes, it turns out we actually DO have ways of figuring this out.
For example, in 2010, researchers had a surprising revelation when they were doing a close examination of the feathers of a dinosaur called Sinosauropteryx. That was the first dinosaur we found with feathers, which we’d discovered back in 1996. When those feathers were examined under a microscope, they were found to have surviving melanosomes, which are the tiny, cellular organelles that generate melanin — and thus, pigment.
You'll find melanosomes in pretty much every animal, but it wasn't until a couple years earlier in 2008 that a team of researchers from Yale had even started looking for them in fossilized birds. They did so with an eye toward comparing them to modern birds, and what they found indicated the relationship between the physical shape of the melanosomes and the pigment that they would produce. That discovery made the color-producing process a lot less mysterious, which motivated the 2010 study of the Sinosauropteryx’s feathers.
So what color ARE dinosaurs? For now, we can't answer that question for every dino, but when it comes to Sinosauropteryx, the picture is nearly complete. These little beasts, which were only about a meter long, had a robber mask around their eyes, dark, reddish coloration on their backs, a pale belly, and long striped tails.
Sounds very racoon-like, right? It’s not too surprising that a dinosaur would bear a close resemblance to a non-related, living animal. Color patterns evolve because they work, and because they work, they evolve more than once. So, next time you think of dinosaurs, if you picture your raptors with leopard prints, your duckbills with zebra stripes, or your ornithomimuses with bright blue peacock plumage, you may not be too far off the mark. [ad lib CODY: I can’t believe we can figure out what dinosaurs look like, but we still can’t figure out what the fox say]
Whatever You Do, Don't Hit the Snooze Button — https://curiosity.im/2Xl133r (Cody) [FREELANCER]
CODY: Here’s a pro tip for your next wakeup call: whatever you do, do not hit the snooze button. Science suggests that it'll only make things worse.
One academic who agrees with this is Mary Carskadon [car-SK-AD-din] is a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University. She says that hitting the snooze button causes what's known as drockling. That’s the phenomenon of drifting in and out of sleep in the early morning. Drockling feels great, and there's a reason for this. Your body temperature naturally warms up a couple of hours before your body is ready to wake up. If your alarm clock wakes you up before you're ready, your body temperature is at its lowest, and braving your cold bedroom can be hard. But going back to sleep will make your morning a lot harder.
Waking up at different times each morning disrupts your internal alarm, which makes it harder for your body to know when to start getting sleepy. You're also giving yourself "sleep inertia," which is that groggy feeling you get after you abruptly wake up from a deep sleep cycle. The problem is that when you drift back off after hitting snooze, your body may enter a deeper sleep stage than it was in before, which would make the groggy feeling even worse. The result is that even if it might feel like you're getting more rest, you're actually making yourself more tired.
So, what’s the alternative? Research shows that you should set your alarm for the same time every day. Eventually, you'll retrain your body clock to get sleepy at the right time and feel awake when it's time to start your morning. Don't worry, coffee is always an option. And remember: if you really want a better night’s sleep, consider banishing your smartphone from the bedroom. [ad lib]
ASHLEY: Before we recap what we learned today, we want to thank we want to give a special shout-out to some of our supporters for today’s ad-free episode. Special thanks to Roger Wright, Jairus Durnett, Julian Gomez, Stay-FAN Crate, Mark McCullough, Michaela Mays, and Chase for supporting our show.
CODY: YOU can show our show some love by nominating Curiosity Daily to be a finalist in the 2019 Podcast Awards! Find a link in today’s show notes, or visit podcast-awards-dot-com, to register. Then find Curiosity Daily in the drop-down menus for the categories of People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. It’s free to vote and will really help us out. And now, let’s recap what we learned today.
ASHLEY: Today we learned that you can unblock your creativity by hanging out with kids.
CODY: And that we can actually figure out the color of certain dinosaurs by analyzing their melansomes, which generate pigment.
ASHLEY: And that you should NEVER hit the snooze button.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!