Learn about why pop songs are getting sadder; a mysterious radio signal coming from outer space every 16 days; and why it pays to be yourself when you’re in a high-stakes situation.
Learn about why pop songs are getting sadder; a mysterious radio signal coming from outer space every 16 days; and why it pays to be yourself when you’re in a high-stakes situation.
Pop songs are getting sadder by Kelsey Donk
A newly detected fast radio burst appears to be repeating in a 16-day cycle by Grant Currin
It pays to be yourself in job interviews by Kelsey Donk
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/pop-songs-are-getting-sadder-mysterious-radio-signals-from-outer-space-and-it-pays-to-just-be-yourself
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 why pop songs are getting sadder; a mysterious radio signal coming from outer space every 16 days; and why it pays to be yourself when you’re in a high-stakes situation.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jF7QUqo7aQxOvOnvtfsMR1CWvvuaVeQlSr4_pzSH2T8/edit?ts=5e4ea6a0
If you went out with friends over the weekend and found yourself at a bar singing along to your favorite Top 40 hits, then I’m sure you were So Happy Together. But you might have noticed you weren’t exactly singing about your Sugar Pie, or your Honey Bunch. Well there’s a reason for that: new research shows that pop songs are getting sadder as time goes on. Our favorite pop songs have actually become negative and less joyful in the last 50 years. And it’s not just that American musicians are having a sad moment. Researchers have seen the trend in English-language songs worldwide. So what’s going on? Don’t worry: We Can Work It Out.
First, to come to this conclusion, researchers analyzed more than a hundred-and-fifty-thousand songs released between 1965 and 2015. They scanned the lyrics for words related to positive and negative emotions. This kind of study is called ‘sentiment analysis,’ and it might sound overly simple, but it’s an established approach used by everyone from psychologists to marketing companies. For their analysis, the researchers simply counted the number of times the songs used words like ‘pain,’ or ‘hate,’ or ‘sorrow,’ then compared it to how often they had words like ‘love,’ or ‘joy,’ or ‘happy.’
Over the years, there was an increase in the use of negative words, and decrease in positive ones. The use of the word ‘love’ was cut in half over the 50-year period of the study. And the word ‘hate’ wasn’t even used in top-100 hits before the 1990s. But now it shows up in the charts between 20 and 30 times every year.
It’s not just about the words we’re singing, either. Researchers behind another study used algorithms to extract specific musical features from hit songs over the last 30 years. They found a decrease in songs with happy moods and bright timbres and an increase in sad songs.
So what happened to our Good Vibrations? Is this something we should be worried about?
The researchers say our growing musical sadness could be a result of “cultural evolution.” This basically says that the most successful cultural traits will spread through society. Since songs with negative emotion words tend to do better in the charts, songs that are written later copy that recipe for success by including more negative lyrics.
Another possible reason is that people remember and transmit negative information more easily than positive information. Breakup songs and diss tracks might just stick in our minds more easily, which could help them rise through the ranks. But the researchers think there’s probably some other cause that we still have to discover. Could it be that we feel more comfortable expressing sadness than we did in 1965? Or is Spotify’s algorithm making us sad? Hopefully future research can help us figure it out so we’ll know what we have to do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do. Wouldn’t It Be Nice?
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LYUbXz3T7YaJRzCnPKoQeJKappUDwOCuvitkZ5YaAEc/edit?pli=1
Have you heard about the mysterious radio signal coming from outer space every 16 days? Well astronomers sure have. And up in Canada, some recently found some clues that might explain what’s going on.
Let me back up: Every now and then, a mysterious wave of energy washes over Earth. Scientists call them fast radio bursts, and they know, well... pretty much nothing about what they are or where they come from. Fast radio bursts are just what they sound like: bursts of radio energy that are really fast — a few milliseconds at most — and really energetic, sometimes discharging as much energy as 500 million suns. The biggest reason we know so little about them is that they seem to happen randomly, so researchers don’t know where to look or when to be watching. Out of 150 fast radio bursts we’ve witnessed, only 11 have ever repeated.
Given these challenges, it’s no surprise that a recent discovery has astronomers really excited. A team of researchers has found the first-ever fast radio burst that repeats on a predictable cycle. Its name is...very long (FRB 180916.J0158+65, if you want to say it), but after carefully tracking it for around 400 days, the researchers have announced their exciting observations.
The fast radio burst is on a 16.35-day cycle. During the first four days, a burst comes once or twice every hour. And then, for the next 12 days, nothing. Then the bursts start coming again and the cycle starts over.
Weird, right?
Well, weird, yes, but also predictable. And that means we have more clues as to what causes this mysterious phenomenon. Like, what else has a 16.35-day cycle? According to the astronomers, it could be a binary system, where two objects are orbiting each other. Maybe those objects are stars or black holes, and the source of the burst only faces us at a certain point in its orbit.
The astronomers have also been able to figure that the fast radio burst is coming from the outskirts of a galaxy about half-a-billion light-years away. This means that if a black hole is involved, it’s probably not a supermassive one, since those are usually found at the centers of their galaxies, not the edges.
But what’s really exciting is that if this one repeats, others might too. It’s even possible that fast radio bursts we’ve already detected are currently repeating, just with too faint a signal for the equipment we were using. So while astronomers do more research on this discovery, others are taking a second look at the fast radio bursts we’ve already spotted. One day, we might just figure these things out.
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gWb2OSZzRTWT5MHxMEr3xDGnuAA270erIyS0f1KQtPs/edit?ts=5e4ea6c6
Let’s say you’re about to walk into a high-stakes meeting like a job interview or a first date. Should you try to talk and act in ways you think might impress the other person? Or should you “just be yourself”? Your instinct might tell you to change your usual approach to match the expectations of the person you’re meeting with. But according to new research from Harvard Business School, that’s not a winning strategy. The best approach is that familiar one: you really should “just be yourself.”
Specifically, this study analyzed the effectiveness of what the researchers call a “catering” strategy. That is, tailoring your approach to appeal to the person’s interests and expectations. And don’t feel bad if you’re the kind of person who might research the hiring manager before an interview so you can pretend to like their college sports team or favorite hobbies — because you’re certainly not alone. The researchers on this study found that a whopping 71 percent of people think a “catering” strategy is more effective than simply being themselves. In reality, though, a catering strategy is less effective.
In one experiment, entrepreneurs in a high-stakes pitch competition who were genuine in their pitches were more than three times as likely to advance to the next round than when they said what they thought the judges wanted to hear.
So, yes, your mom was right when she said you should always be yourself. And there are two reasons for this. One, no matter how much research you do on LinkedIn and Facebook before a meeting, you’ll always be guessing what your target audience is really like and what their expectations are. Two, pretending to be someone you’re not raises your anxiety, tires you out, and makes you look and feel like a phony. And how well do you think you’ll perform under that kind of pressure? Not well, that’s for sure.
And science backs that up. In a job application experiment, people who catered to what they thought an interviewer would want to hear ended up feeling more anxious than those who simply acted like themselves. And the candidates who were true to themselves were 26 percent more likely to be hired than the stressed-out fakers.
Job applications and big meetings with strangers are stressful no matter what. It makes sense that you’d want to give the people what you think they want to hear. But catering actually stresses you out more and hurts your performance. Just be yourself. It’s as simple as that.
Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. Starting with
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CODY: Today’s stories were written by Kelsey Donk and Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was 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!