Learn about why you should never wash raw chicken; the story behind a place called The Island of the Colorblind; and the forgotten campaign to create a 13-month calendar. 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: Why You Should Never Wash Raw Chicken — https://curiosity.im/2Gi7KtP Pingelap Atoll Is Known as the Island of the Colorblind — https://curiosity.im/2GcQ6aw The Forgotten Campaign to Create a 13-Month Calendar — https://curiosity.im/2GdNoBQ 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 why you should never wash raw chicken; the story behind a place called The Island of the Colorblind; and the forgotten campaign to create a 13-month calendar.
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/never-wash-raw-chicken-campaign-for-a-13-month-calendar-and-the-island-of-the-colorblind
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 why you should never wash raw chicken; the story behind a place called The Island of the Colorblind; and the forgotten campaign to create a 13-month calendar.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Why You Should Never Wash Raw Chicken — https://curiosity.im/2Gi7KtP (Ashley)
You should never wash raw chicken. You heard that right: you are NOT supposed to wash raw chicken. And knowing why will help you protect yourself and your family and friends from potential food poisoning. Here’s the deal. One of the most common causes of food poisoning in the U.S. comes from bacteria you find in raw chicken. These nasty cells are called campylobacter [cam-PIE-low-BAC-ter], and they’re typically found on meat and poultry that’s been contaminated during processing. If your chicken has been contaminated and you splash water on it, bacteria will spread to everything the droplets touch — as in, your hands, cooking tools, kitchen counters, and clothing. YIKES. So don’t use water. Instead, here are a few pro tips from the NHS UK to avoid food poisoning from raw chicken. First, cover and chill raw chicken. Be sure to store your chicken at the bottom of the fridge to avoid dripping contaminated juices on other food. Also, remember to wash your hands and used utensils. Make sure everything that has come in contact with the raw chicken has been thoroughly scrubbed. And finally, remember to cook chicken thoroughly. Your chicken should be steaming hot all the way through, have clear juices, and no pink meat. Use a meat thermometer if you have one to ensure the chicken has reached at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit, or 74 degrees Celsius. Whatever you do, just say no to chicken baths. If you wash your chicken, it’s YOU that’ll end up in hot water.
Pingelap Atoll Is Known as the Island of the Colorblind — https://curiosity.im/2GcQ6aw (Cody)
You probably know that when someone says they’re colorblind, they probably mean that they have red-green blindness, not that they see everything in black and white, literally without other colors. What you might not know, though, is that there IS a place where colorblindness runs rampant, and on that island, the inhabitants do in fact see in almost entirely black and white. I’m talking about Pingelap Atoll [PINGLE-app], and it’s literally known as the Island of the Colorblind, since Oliver Sacks gave it that nickname in 1996. It has a fascinating back story that effectively comes from one person. In 1775, the atoll was devastated by a typhoon, and only a few survivors made it through the storm. According to the oral history of the island, one of the survivors was the king, who helped re-populate the island quite liberally by leaving a lot of descendants. And he had a rare condition known as achromatopsia [AY-chrome-ah-TOW-psia]. Fast forward a couple of centuries, and achromatopsia on Pingelap Atoll is about as common as left-handedness is on the mainland.
Now, for some perspective, red-green colorblindness isn’t particularly uncommon among certain people. About 8 percent of men have it, along with about one half of one percent of women. Achromatopsia, on the other hand, affects only about 1 in 30-thousand people. But on Pingelap Atoll, the condition affects about 1 in 10 people.
Now onto the science of how color vision actually works. You’ve got three types of cone cells in your eye — some are sensitive to red, some to green, and some to blue. Achromatopsia happens because none of the cones function properly, which leaves you with only the brightness-sensitive rod cells to do all the work. Rods only detect the intensity of light, so they can only perceive in grayscale. But there's another side effect: People with achromatopsia also tend to be very sensitive to bright light. That can make daily chores on a sunny island pretty unbearable. The upside is that achromatopsia comes with excellent dark vision, which is handy for another island tradition: catching flying fish by night using a bright fire suspended from a boat. If you’re having a hard time imaginging what it might be like to live with this condition, then I’ve got good news: A Belgian photographer named Sanne [SUN-neh] de Wilde put together a fantastic art installation, with pictures that used infrared settings and black and white filters and lots of other ways of playing with color. The result was an art project intended to make people reconsider their relationship with color, and to try to understand what a color actually is outside of how it’s experienced. Just like the Oliver Sacks nickname, she called the project “The Island of the Colorblind,” and you can find links to that in our full write-up on this on Curiosity-dot-com.
[NHTSA]
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is paid for by NIT-suh. It can be a little frustrating, especially if you’re in a hurry or running late, to find yourself at a railway crossing, waiting for a train. And if the signals are going and the train’s not even there yet, you can feel a bit tempted to try and sneak across the tracks. Well, don’t. Ever.
CODY: Seriously! Trains are often going a lot faster than you expect them to be. And they can’t stop. Even if the engineer hits the brakes right away, it can take a train over a mile to stop. By that time, what used to be your car is just a crushed hunk of metal and what used to be you… ASHLEY: You know what, it’s probably better not to think about that. The point is, you can’t know how quickly the train will arrive. The train can’t stop even if it sees you. The result is disaster. If the signals are on, the train is on its way.
CODY: And you... just need to remember one thing… Stop. Trains can’t.
The Forgotten Campaign to Create a 13-Month Calendar — https://curiosity.im/2GdNoBQ (Ashley)
Calendars can be confusing. I mean, some months have 30 days, some have 31 days… and let’s not even talk about February. Well once upon a time, an accountant for the British Railway reinvented the annual calendar to have 13 months. And today, we’ve got the story of why it didn’t catch on. The man I’m talking about is Moses B. Cotsworth [CODY: which, for some reason, sounds to me like the perfect name for a British accountant in the early 1900s]. Around the turn of the 20th century, Cotsworth was running into issues with the calendar. Long story short, he couldn’t compare the railway company's revenue from one month to the next and immediately recognize how things were going. It was hard to see if there was a change in actual customers from month to month, or if revenue changed because of other variables like differences in days from month to month. That’s why Cotsworth designed a new calendar with 13 months of exactly 28 days each. The day of every date was always the same, so the 1st would always be a Sunday, and the 13th would always be a Friday, et cetera. Cotsworth's 13th month was called Sol, for the summer solstice, right between June and July. The leap day was also moved from February to a place at the end of Sol. To round out 365 days, Cotsworth added “Year Day” after the 28th of December as a global holiday that belonged to no individual month. Sounds great, right? Well, it kinda was. In fact, it was wildly popular with businessmen at the time, including George Eastman, who was the founder of Kodak. In fact, Kodak implemented the 13-month calendar in 1924, and it stayed in place organizing the company’s finances and production all the way until 1989. But while businesses liked the predictability, everyday Americans did not. The biggest problem may have been the destruction of Independence Day, also known as the 4th of July. The calendar's approach to holidays was to place them on the Monday closest to their original date to allow for a three-day weekend. When it came to Independence Day, the adopters had two options: They could either keep it in July but place it on a Monday, which would make it the 2nd of July, or keep it where it is in the year, which would make it the 16th of Sol. And apparently, Americans were not cool with either option. So the idea eventually died out. But that doesn't make it a bad idea — it just seems that sometimes, the fix for a problem is more effort than it's worth.
CODY: You can read about today’s stories and more on curiosity-dot-com! And if you want to support this podcast, you can sign up to make a one-time or monthly contribution on our Patreon page. Special thanks to some of our existing Patrons: Mary Rose, Scott Gates, Hayden Fossey, Maksmillian DEE-ka-rev, Paul Larsen, and Emily.
ASHLEY: Join us again tomorrow for the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m [NAME] and I’m [NAME]. Stay curious!