Learn about macrophages and why your immune system tries to kill you sometimes (and why that might make you look at sickness in a new way); how and why you should teach your kids to apologize; and how to overcome learned helplessness to help you reach your goals. 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: Don't Look Now, But Your Immune System Kind of Wants to Kill You — https://curiosity.im/2Lp6SnQ Forcing Kids to Say "I'm Sorry" Doesn't Fool Anybody — https://curiosity.im/2LrLzlz Learned Helplessness Makes You Give Up In The Face Of Adversity. Good News: It Can Be Fixed. — https://curiosity.im/2LrjCdL 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 macrophages and why your immune system tries to kill you sometimes (and why that might make you look at sickness in a new way); how and why you should teach your kids to apologize; and how to overcome learned helplessness to help you reach your goals.
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/overcome-learned-helplessness-teach-your-kids-how-to-apologize-and-macrophage-attacks
CODY: Hi! We’ve got three stories 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 your immune system tries to kill you sometimes, and why that might make you look at sickness in a new way; how making kids apologize might backfire; and how to overcome learned helplessness to help you reach your goals.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Don't Look Now, But Your Immune System Kind of Wants to Kill You — https://curiosity.im/2Lp6SnQ (Ashley)
ASHLEY: Everyone wants a strong immune system, right? Not so fast. A robust immune system isn’t always good for you. And you can blame that on the subject of our first story today: a little thing called the macrophage.
CODY: Sounds like I just found the perfect villain for my next Dungeons and Dragons campaign! [ad lib]
ASHLEY: Your immune system has lots of moving parts, and the macrophage is one of them. It’s a type of white blood cell that’s produced in your bone marrow. And it gets rid of dead tissue and fights disease by attacking microbes. Macrophages have been called the garbage collector or the housekeeper of the human body. Like an all-purpose handyman. They can do a lot to protect you, and they have a surprising amount of autonomy. They pretty much act like lone amoebas: they can move around on their own, and they actually eat the dead cells they come across, so they have a food source independent from the bloodstream. But that autonomy isn’t always so great. Scientists have known for a long time that macrophages cluster around cancerous tumors. But around the turn of the 2000s, they realized that macrophages weren't fighting the cancer or even being neutral — they were making things worse. In fact, macrophages are central to the way breast cancer and lots of other types of cancer metastasize. Once they pair up with a helpful macrophage, cancer cells that couldn't migrate easily on their own get a free pass through the body. The problem is that a lot of cancerous cells sneak through the body without being noticed. That’s because they have a surface molecule called CD-47 that acts like a signal that basically says “I’m a healthy cell, don’t eat me!” And that tricks macrophages. When cancer cells don’t have that CD-47 molecule, then macrophages fly into action and totally obliterate them. And that’s why one topic of current cancer research is how to keep cancer cells from producing CD47. Other researchers are working on what’s called macrophage re-education. That’s focused on figuring out how to teach the cells not to kill us through assorted stimulations and therapies. In the meantime, maybe the lesson you should take away from microphages is that your body isn’t just one harmonious whole. Sickness isn't necessarily a sign that something is "wrong" — it can be seen simply as a symptom of the constant, microscopic turmoils within us.
Forcing Kids to Say "I'm Sorry" Doesn't Fool Anybody — https://curiosity.im/2LrLzlz (Cody)
New research suggests that forcing kids to say “I’m sorry” doesn’t fool anybody. I’m sorry in advance if this story blows your mind. [ad lib]
CODY: The point of an apology is to express remorse and repair relationships. And that point gets lost if a kid is forced to apologize when they don’t feel remorse. A new study in Merrill-Palmer Quarterly looked at how children ages 4–9 viewed three types of apology scenarios among peers: unprompted apologies, prompted but willingly given apologies, and coerced apologies. They found that kids viewed willing apologies the same, whether they were prompted or unprompted by adults. But the coerced apologies weren't seen as effective, especially by the 7-to-9-year-olds. Even little kids can tell when an apology is B.S.! When kids thought the person saying sorry was basically being told to do so, they thought that person’s bad feelings were rooted in self-interest, rather than remorse. Essentially, they thought the person apologizing was worried about being punished more than they actually felt bad. The findings suggest that rather than forcing your kid to say they’re sorry, it’s more constructive to help your child learn to have empathy for the victim. That’ll ensure a sincere apology instead of a reluctant one. Study author Craig Smith said, quote, "Make sure the child understands why the other person feels bad, and make sure the child is really ready to say 'I'm sorry.' Then have them apologize," unquote. So parents. How can you help your young children respond with empathy and deliver a willing apology? Smith says, quote, “When your child is calm, help them see how the other person is feeling, and why. An apology is one way to do it, but there are lots of ways. Research shows that even preschoolers value it when a wrongdoer makes amends with action. Sometimes this is more powerful than words,” unquote. And yeah, I said PRESCHOOLERS. Remember: sometimes kids are smarter than you think!
[EMD SPOT]
ASHLEY: Mark your calendars, because we’ve got a cool announcement. This week, we’re going to be on the ground at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas. And you can watch us podcast from CES LIVE on Facebook!
CODY: That’s right! We’ll be talking to experts about the latest and greatest technology and learning about the technology that powers your favorite gadgets and devices. Keep an eye on our Facebook page Thursday, January 10, and Friday, January 11, and if you miss the video live, then don’t worry — you’ll be able to watch the replay on our page whenever you do make it back to your computer.
ASHLEY: We’re super excited to be at CES, in cooperation with EMD Performance Materials Corp., a business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. And if you’re not on Facebook, then just keep listening to our podcast, because we’ll be bringing you special Saturday editions of our show in a few weeks to share what we learned at CES.
CODY: To make sure you don’t miss out on the excitement, stay subscribed to Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app, or visit our Facebook page at facebook-dot-com-slash-curiosity-dot-com, all spelled out. Again, we’ll be live January 10 and 11. We hope to see you there!
Learned Helplessness Makes You Give Up In The Face Of Adversity. Good News: It Can Be Fixed. — https://curiosity.im/2LrjCdL (Ashley)
Think back to a time when you assumed you had no control over a situation, even though you really did. And because of that assumption, you just gave up. That’s a psychological phenomenon called learned helplessness. And here’s some good news: it can be fixed. You’ve come to the right place, because today, I’ll teach you how. [ad lib]
ASHLEY: You probably know how it feels to be hopeless if you've ever been unemployed, or you’ve been laid out with an injury, or you’ve voted for a losing candidate. Learned helplessness is a more extreme version of that feeling. It's when you stop looking for work after a handful of failed interviews. Or when give up on starting an exercise routine because you've hurt your back too many times. Or when you stay home on election day because past results have made you feel like your vote doesn't matter. In the extreme, it's why people don't leave their abusers and why prisoners don't try to escape. There IS a way to reverse this tendency though, and it comes from an experiment in the 60s by psychologist Martin Seligman. When he was a young graduate student, he worked on a study on Pavlovian responses in dogs. You know how you can teach dogs to drool when they hear the sound of a bell, because they associate the bell with food? Well this experiment was a bit… darker. This study looked to see if dogs would be trained to jump when they heard a certain tone, but in this case, it’s because they associated the tone with an electric shock. I told you it was dark, and highly unethical. Well it turned out that yes, they would jump out of the way. But Seligman noticed that SOME dogs just stood there when they heard the tone. They didn’t try to avoid the shock. It turned out that one small tweak could drastically change how subjects respond to a bad situation. If dogs had their first shocks in a situation where they could get away, even if they were trapped for future shocks, they put in a lot more effort to avoid them. Seligman found that this also applies to people: The way we interpret bad situations has a big impact on our depression risk. If you think that bad things will keep happening and you're always to blame, you're more prone to depression; but if you think your bad situation will go away soon and that it wasn't your fault, you tend to have a better outlook on life overall. In a 1995 study, Seligman and his team came up with an idea called learned optimism, which therapists use in cognitive behavioral therapy. The trick is to reframe your thoughts to be less pessimistic and self-blaming. So the next time you think you have no control, think about this: maybe that’s just the story you’re telling yourself. Maybe you really DO have control. The moment you give up, you’ve learned to be helpless. Try to un-learn that, and who knows what you might accomplish?
Read about today’s stories and more on curiosity-dot-com!
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