Learn about how a psychologist named B.F. Skinner proved that pigeons can be superstitious; the science of histamines and why allergy medications make us sleepy; and the 5 ages of the universe, including the Stelliferous era we’re in right now.
Learn about how a psychologist named B.F. Skinner proved that pigeons can be superstitious; the science of histamines and why allergy medications make us sleepy; and the 5 ages of the universe, including the Stelliferous Era we’re in right now.
Pigeons Can Be Superstitious — And a Psychologist Once Proved It by Ashley Hamer
Why do allergy medications make us sleepy? by Cameron Duke
There are 5 ages of the universe, and we're in the Stelliferous Era by Grant Currin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/pigeons-can-be-superstitious-why-allergy-drugs-make-you-sleepy-and-the-5-ages-of-the-universe
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about how a psychologist proved that pigeons can be superstitious; why allergy medications make us sleepy; and which one of the 5 ages of the universe we’re in right now.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Name a behavior unique to humans and I’ll name an animal that does it too. Humans aren’t the only ones who dream, or laugh, or even have self-awareness. And in the 1940s, psychologist B.F. Skinner added one to that list: he showed that pigeons can be superstitious.
Even if you don't consider yourself superstitious, you probably are on some level. Do you ever knock on wood or avoid walking under ladders? That’s all superstitious behavior. Researchers say superstitious behavior happens when an independent action (like opening an umbrella indoors) happens close in time with some reinforcement or punishment (like maybe a vase breaks across the room). And because they happen around the same time, you conclude that one caused the other.
B.F. Skinner was a behaviorist who was fascinated with stuff like this. Most of his strange experiments centered on what's known as a "Skinner box." That’s a sensory-deprivation vessel that limited an animal to one stimulus at a time. In one experiment, he demonstrated positive reinforcement by placing a rat in a Skinner box with a lever that produced a food pellet. The rat would first knock the lever accidentally, but as it learned how it worked, it began pushing the lever on purpose.
But what would an animal do if there was no lever at all? For one of his studies, Skinner put hungry pigeons in a box. But instead of giving them a lever to push, he just timed their food hopper to release food pellets at regular intervals. Of course, the pigeons didn't know that — and in trying to predict when the food would arrive, their behavior turned pretty strange. One pigeon started turning counter-clockwise between feedings. Others would bob their heads in the corner or make pecking motions toward the floor. Skinner concluded that the birds were demonstrating superstition. Just like opening an umbrella indoors and watching a vase crash to the floor, the birds were associating their independent actions with a reinforcement, and it seems like they believed repeating the action would lead to more reinforcement.
If pigeons will act superstitious, what does that say about human behavior? Maybe that the sense that we can control our destiny through quirks of behavior is nothing magical — it’s just a mistaken association in our brains.
It’s springtime for those of us here in the Northern Hemisphere, which means warm weather, blooming flowers, and pollen… EVERYWHERE. For a lot of people, that means one thing: seasonal allergies. When you’re dealing with puffy eyes and a runny nose, you might think to take an antihistamine like Benadryl. But those drugs often come with a strange side effect: sleepiness. And that begs the question: why do allergy meds make you so tired?
Well, the answer lies in the way the body uses histamines. That word might sound bad — like, if I’m taking antihistamines, histamines must be pretty harmful! But histamines are really there to help. They’re a compound released by the immune system to get the allergy response started. Some histamines are always circulating in your body, but when there’s an invader, certain white blood cells react by producing even more. Those histamines bind to a bunch of different types of cells, which makes them start secreting fluid and dilating blood vessels so oxygen, immune cells, and other things can react to the threat. Histamines basically act as an alarm for your immune system.
The problem is that your immune system isn’t perfect. Sometimes something totally harmless sets off its alarm, like pollen or pet dander. That might make your body respond as if it were fighting a cold-causing rhinovirus — by inflaming your sinuses and triggering mucus production.
Histamines work by binding to specialized histamine receptors on certain cells. Antihistamines like diphenhydramine [DYE-finn-HIGH-drah-meen] (which is the active ingredient in Benadryl) and doxylamine succinate [dock-SILL-ah-meen SUCKS-in-ate] (the active ingredient in NyQuil)? They both work by blocking these receptors. If the receptors can’t pick up histamines, the body can’t respond to them.
But histamines have more than one trick up their sleeve — they actually play a role in lots of bodily processes, from digestion to sleep. That’s where the sleepy side-effects of antihistamines come in. There’s a structure that starts in the brain and extends to basically all parts of the nervous system called the histaminergic system [HIST-ah-min-NER-jik]. As long as this system is constantly receiving histamines, the brain stays active. When histamine levels drop, this system triggers sleep. The problem is, antihistamines don’t stay in their lane — they’re able to cross the blood-brain barrier and block receptors there, too. The sleepy effect is so reliable that doctors often prescribe strong antihistamines as sleep aids. As a response to this, some newer classes of antihistamines are made to be more discriminatory so they can avoid those wakefulness histamine receptors. The good news is that these drowsy side effects aren’t harmful, so feel free to take an antihistamine. Just don’t go operate a crane right after.
You can tell time in a lot of different ways. I could say we’re recording this podcast at [TIME AND DATE]. Or I could say we’re recording in the 21st century. If we’re talking about the history of Earth, I could say we’re in the Holocene epoch — or the Anthropocene, depending on who you ask. But when it comes to the history of the universe, what would you say? Well here’s a fun fact: some scientists say there are 5 ages to the universe, and we are in the Stelliferous Era. If you’re listening to this, the odds are pretty good that you are, too.
In 1997, astrophysicists Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin came up with a timeline of the entire past and future of the universe. And they did it by combining cosmological observations with fundamental physics. Everything started with the Big Bang, but it took a while for all the energy and matter to get together and form stable structures. This period is what they’ve dubbed the Primordial Era, and it lasted for a blink of an eye on a cosmological scale. The formation of those structures marked the second time period, which we’re living in now: the Stelliferous era. It means “star-filled,” and it gets the name because stars are the dominant structure in space.
But it won’t always be that way.
When the universe turns one quintillion years old, the last bright, hydrogen-burning stars will have burned out. At that point, the universe will enter the Degenerate Era. That gets its name from the objects that will still be around, like white dwarfs, brown dwarfs, and neutron stars. They’re cooler and darker than the stars we can see in the night sky, and they’re sometimes called degenerate stellar remnants.
Black holes will thrive during the Degenerate Era. About one duodecillion years after the Big Bang — that’s 10 to the 39th power! — they’ll be the only thing left. When that happens, the universe will enter the long, dark Black Hole Era. It will last for a truly unimaginable amount of time, as black holes evaporate at an astonishingly slow rate.
The demise of the last black hole will usher in the final era: the Dark Era. According to Adams, in that distant future, the universe will be nothing but a smattering of radiation and subatomic particles. It will last for as long as physicists have so far dared to peer into the future.
So if you’re feeling down about the state of things right now, maybe look up at the stars and get some perspective. We’re living in the Stelliferous Era! It’s literally the best time in the universe to be alive.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Ashley Hamer, Cameron Duke, and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!