Learn about some surprising overlaps in time that’ll make you question your history skills; why keeping your bedroom door closed could save your life; and why vacation time is good for a company’s bottom line. 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: Here's Why Keeping Your Bedroom Door Closed Could Save Your Life Vacation Time Isn't Just Good for Workers — It's Good for a Company's Bottom Line These Overlaps in Time Will Make You Question Your History Skills Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn about some surprising overlaps in time that’ll make you question your history skills; why keeping your bedroom door closed could save your life; and why vacation time is good for a company’s bottom line.
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:
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/odd-historical-overlaps-closed-doors-save-lives-and-vacation-time-helps-a-companys-bottom-line
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi we've got three stories from curiosity e-comm 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 some overlaps in time that'll make you question your history skills, why keeping your bedroom door closed could save your life, and why vacation time is good for a company's bottom line.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Recent research from UL's Firefighter Safety Research Institute shows that closed doors could save lives. And we're going to get into the science behind how big of an effect a closed door can have on your safety. This was something I totally didn't know.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. And honestly, I keep my door open when I sleep at night all the time.
CODY GOUGH: Are you going to now?
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, I have a cat.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS]
ASHLEY HAMER: And as all cat owners know, you can't have any closed doors in your home or apartment when you have cats because--
CODY GOUGH: Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: They'll just scratch at the door forever, and then I won't sleep.
CODY GOUGH: But this could save your life.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, just a risky individual, I guess.
CODY GOUGH: I guess you like to live on the edge. Well, I hope that some of our listeners take this advice to heart.
ASHLEY HAMER: I hope that you have a more well-behaved cat than I do. Well, this research is important because the average house is actually more flammable than it used to be. Four decades ago, the average time you had to escape a house fire from the moment your smoke alarm went off was 17 minutes. Today, it's 3 minutes or less. That's because houses with open floor plans are more popular these days.
Fewer walls means fewer obstacles to burn through as a fire moves from room to room. Fire is also more toxic and burns faster because of plastics and a lot of furnishings and household items. So since fire is more fast and furious than it used to be, every second counts. And that's where closed doors come in. In a fire, a room with an open door can broil at more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
If that door had stayed closed, the temperature in the room could bottom out at just 100 degrees Fahrenheit. There's also not as much oxygen flowing through a closed door, and oxygen is one of the fuels of fire needs to keep burning. Of course, heat and fire aren't the only dangers in a blaze. According to the National Fire Protection Association, most fire deaths are caused by smoke inhalation not actual burns.
A closed door keeps toxic smoke from coming into your room and into your lungs, which means you'll have more fresh air for your brain, so you can plan your escape. By closing your doors, maintaining interconnected smoke alarms, and having a fire escape plan for your entire family, you can boost your chances of getting out alive when disaster strikes.
CODY GOUGH: Vacation time is not just good for workers, it's good for a company's bottom line. Now, if you're a regular listener, then you probably know that I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of vacations. And I think everyone should take them. But today, we'll look at how it benefits employers and companies. So if you're a CEO or a manager, then you might want to listen up. Am I over the top with this, Ashley?
ASHLEY HAMER: No, I need to hear it.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: This is not a passive aggressive way of getting you out of the office, I promise. I absolutely promise. Well, according to Project Time Off, workers who take time off both perform better and stay at their jobs longer. And in Europe, more vacation time has been directly linked to increased productivity. What manager wouldn't like that?
But wait, there's more. Employees taking vacation days has a direct financial benefit for a company. When employees don't use up their time off, a lot of times, that means companies have to pay out those vacation days if and when those employees move on to their next opportunities. And we're talking a lot of money sometimes.
Take this story from the US Travel Association. In 2013, they discovered that ironically, only 19% of their employees were taking all the vacation time they had been given. So they settled on a surprising solution. Any employee who used every travel day available would receive a $500 bonus. Does that sound expensive? Well, the US Travel Association actually saved more than $36,000 in financial liability.
And on top of that, they raised the portion of employees taking all of their vacation time from 19% to 91%. And remember, workers who take time off are more productive, perform better, and stay at their jobs longer. So this company saved the equivalent of a whole person's salary and more than quadrupled their share of employees who are happier and healthier and better at their jobs. Not a bad trade off.
We've got more on the mental and physical health benefits of taking some time off and our full write up on curiosity.com and the Curiosity app for Android and iOS. But Ashley, you can hang out as long as you want.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, thanks, Cody.
CODY GOUGH: And you're still a great employee.
[LAUGHTER]
But you should take a day off.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
Today's podcast is sponsored by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning platform with more than 20,000 classes in business, marketing, design, technology, and more. You can take classes on everything you're curious about or want to get better at, like web design, photography, writing, arts and crafts, entrepreneurship. Basically, you name it, Skillshare has got it.
CODY GOUGH: And Skillshare's classes are all taught by real experts in their fields or public motivational speakers. This means you don't have to dig around looking for someone who actually knows what they're talking about. For me, this has been a huge time-saver. Ashley can attest to this because she's had to listen to me talk about it for the last month.
But I've been trying to get myself to the gym. And it just has not been happening because I don't know what routine I wanted to go with. I kept looking at random blogs and YouTube videos and not knowing where to start. And then finally, it hit me. I should go to Skillshare. So I went and took some classes with exercise routines and meal planning tips and diet plans.
One of my teachers is a fitness competitor, who just last year, was ranked one of the top five fitness model competitors in the world. And now, I'm back at the gym, seriously. I'm like super swole and stuff.
ASHLEY HAMER: [LAUGHS] Well, I'm always super interested to know which articles Curiosity readers like best. And the best way to do that is by using Google Analytics, which I only kind of know how to use. Luckily, Skillshare has a course all about it, taught by a Google Analytics strategist.
Now I can see which visitors are coming from where and even create my own custom dashboards. Is there such a thing as being Google Analytics swole?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, we can-- yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Make that happen?
CODY GOUGH: We can make that happen. Cool. And Skillshare offers more than 20,000 classes. Join the millions of students like us who are already learning on Skillshare with a special offer for the Curiosity Daily audience. Get two months of Skillshare for just $0.99. To sign up, visit skillshare.com/curious.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's skillshare.com/curious for two months of unlimited access to more than 20,000 classes for just $0.99.
CODY GOUGH: Start your two-month trial of Skillshare to learn even more starting today. One more time, that's skillshare.com/curious.
ASHLEY HAMER: Would it surprise you to know that Nintendo was founded just a year after Jack the Ripper's killing spree? What about the fact that Pablo Picasso died years after the release of the first Beatles album or that Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth were born just days apart? Well, buckle up, because today, we're going to get into some pretty unexpected overlaps from history.
CODY GOUGH: When I think about strange overlaps in history, I always think of my great grandmother. She didn't pass away until she was 107. So she was born in 1899--
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: --and passed away in 2006.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, my gosh.
CODY GOUGH: So can you imagine? She never had a driver's license because when she was 18, cars didn't exist.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's crazy.
CODY GOUGH: And she saw the moon landing, and Facebook was around.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS] Right? I can't-- you can't even comprehend. And our lives are probably going to be just as wild because technology is advancing so rapidly.
ASHLEY HAMER: If we're lucky, yeah.
CODY GOUGH: I mean, who knows?
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: So, yeah, that's what I always think of. But the ones that we wrote about are also pretty wild.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, yeah. Before we dive in, we should explain why these facts are so surprising. A lot of it has to do with how history is taught. When we learn about history, it's usually broken up into discrete chunks like the Renaissance in Europe, the colonizing of the Americas, and the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.
That makes it easy for us to digest and categorize a lot of history. But it can also sometimes make it hard to put certain events into context. So here are a few things you might have missed in history class. First, let's talk about the pyramids. The Great Pyramid of Giza was built on the West Bank of the Nile about 4,600 years ago in 2650 BCE.
That's when Egypt was one of the richest, most powerful civilizations in the world. Well, guess who else was around during that time. Woolly mammoths. They only went extinct about 4,000 years ago, which gave them roughly six centuries of overlap with the ancient Egyptians.
Here's another fun one-- the guillotine. In 1789, the French government adopted the guillotine as its official state method of capital punishment because ax beheadings were apparently too violent in comparison. Well, France kept that method until 1977. That's right. France's last execution by guillotine happened the same year that Star Wars came out in theaters.
We've got more fun overlaps in our full writeup. But it's a fun way to think about history.
CODY GOUGH: Two quick announcements before we go. First off, thank you so much to our Patreon supporters for helping us keep the show going. I want to give a special shout out today to Montecito1, Rebecca Broberg, and Stefan Crate. You rock. And you, listener, can join these awesome supporters by visiting our Patreon page at patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out.
ASHLEY HAMER: And we're still collecting survey responses, so please keep them coming. You can find a link to the listener survey for this podcast in today's show notes and on our podcast page on our website and on our Patreon page at patreon.com/curiosity.com and on your next vacation day because everyone deserves a little time off.
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.