Learn why watching TV together is good for your relationship; why you don’t hear your own footsteps; and how to schedule your day to be as productive as overachievers like Elon Musk and Bill Gates. 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: Watching TV Together Is Good for Your Relationship — https://curiosity.im/2Dfgb8I Why Don't You Hear Your Own Footsteps? Neuroscience Has an Answer — https://curiosity.im/2RVdrjZ Elon Musk and Bill Gates Schedule Their Days in 5-Minute Chunks — https://curiosity.im/2DclR3v Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey 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! Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn why watching TV together is good for your relationship; why you don’t hear your own footsteps; and how to schedule your day to be as productive as overachievers like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
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:
Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey
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!
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: 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/relationship-deepening-tv-elon-musk-and-bill-gates-productivity-hacks-and-why-you-dont-hear-your-own-footsteps
CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com 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 why watching TV together is good for your relationship, why you don't hear your own footsteps, and how to schedule your day to be as productive as overachievers, like Elon Musk and Bill Gates.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily. Planning on snuggling up for some Netflix this weekend? I've got some good news for you. Recent research suggests that watching TV with your partner could be good for your relationship. Ashley, what's the last show you watched with your BF?
ASHLEY HAMER: We're currently watching Man in the High Castle. It's a show about what would happen if the Nazis won the war.
CODY GOUGH: Oh.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. It's pretty wild. It's very dark.
CODY GOUGH: Wow. The last show I watched was Star Trek.
ASHLEY HAMER: Of course it was.
CODY GOUGH: Like the original Star Trek.
ASHLEY HAMER: Nice.
CODY GOUGH: It's hit or miss.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. I tried watching the entire season of Next Generation, and like the first episode is so bad. Like other ones are good, but man, it's like you cannot start that season from episode one.
CODY GOUGH: The first season of Next Generation is a little hairy, but it gets so good after that.
ASHLEY HAMER: I think maybe I need to just like start on season three or something.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. I recommend that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Well, this research should be good news for you no matter what you're watching with a significant other. In a recent study led by Dr. Sarah Gomillion, a team of researchers quizzed 259 college students on the details of their relationships. They'd all been dating for an extended period of time, about 16 months on average. The couples with the strongest relationships were the ones that had both a lot of friends in common and enjoyed a lot of the same media together. That part's not a big surprise.
What was interesting is that sharing media had a much larger effect on couples who did not share a lot of friends. In other words, if you and your bae don't have the same tastes in friends, you'll bond a lot more closely over Rick and Morty. And partners didn't even need to be watching those TV shows or reading those books together to get the benefits. This means you might be able to bond by watching the same stuff, even when you're in a long distance relationship.
Gomillion says that the reason is that media might actually be taking the place of a friendship with flesh and blood people. That makes a lot of sense to us here at Curiosity. We've written before how you can build parasocial relationships, which are real relationships with fictional characters. And when you get to the end of a show you've binge-watched, it can feel like an actual breakup. The good news here is that even once that TV friendship ends, your real relationship might be stronger than ever.
Today's episode is sponsored by Interior Define. Interior Define is an entirely new kind of furniture brand created specifically to make sofa shopping much more comfortable.
ASHLEY HAMER: Have you ever thought about how much time you actually spend on your sofa? All that time you spent watching, oh, I don't know, a TV show, for example? And what about everything else that happens on your sofa, like those important heartfelt conversations and even eating dinner together? It's a pretty personal piece of furniture really.
CODY GOUGH: Interior Define believes your sofa is the most important piece in your home. Doesn't it make sense that such a personal piece be personalized for you? Interior Define gets it. So they let you customize your perfect sofa, from size and shape, to fabrics, cushion type, and legs.
ASHLEY HAMER: Interior Define takes an inventory-free and online first approach to bring you a Design District shopping experience at a mass market price point. Plus every order gets free delivery and a 365-day return policy.
CODY GOUGH: Get started with free swatches. That's right. You can order free swatches to see and feel fabrics in your home. Just visit interiordefine.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: There's nothing like a new sofa to reignite your relationship while catching up on your favorite TV show. So what are you waiting for? Visit interiordefine.com.
CODY GOUGH: One more time. That's interiordefine.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: Have you ever wondered what you don't hear your own footsteps? A recent neuroscience study discovered that's by design. Forget noise-canceling headphones. You've got a noise-canceling brain.
CODY GOUGH: Is there a way to noise-cancel when someone else wears flip-flops?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, boy. I wish there was.
CODY GOUGH: I don't even like wearing them around the office because I feel self-conscious.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, at least you hear it too.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. That's true. No one's brain can cancel that out. And if it is canceling that out, then just stop it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Scientists have known for a while that the brain can ignore certain sounds in its environment. In fact, it's essential for normal hearing. Hearing aids actually have to use filters to dampen background noise, so people using them can better understand speech and distinguish other sounds.
Without those filters, they just hear an unintelligible cacophony. Your brain has more information than hearing aid though since it's also in charge of your body's own noise-making movements. That means it knows when to ignore footsteps, breathing sounds, and chewing noises just to name a few. As for the sounds your dinner companions make, you're not so lucky. Even more important, your brain can predict when those sounds might happen, so it can ignore them at the right moment.
In a new study, researchers from Duke University and NYU recorded brain activity in rodents that we're hooked up to an augmented reality system. The system played artificial footstep sounds while the mice ran on treadmills. After a few days of running and hearing the artificial footsteps, certain brain cells in each mouse's auditory cortex stopped responding to artificial tones from the augmented reality system, but only while they were running.
The auditory cortex is the brain's hearing center, and this experiment showed the researchers just how precise the brain's motor center is about turning on noise-canceling neurons. They found that once the mice had learned this running sound, they actually became better at detecting other sounds while they ran. This better explains what might be happening in the human brain when you stop hearing your footsteps in gravel or your keys jangling in your pocket.
But it also opens up a new avenue for exploring learning and memory. This research could help neuroscientists learn more about how memories are formed and even how they're used to predict the future. That's some noise I hope researchers don't cancel.
CODY GOUGH: Some of the most productive people on the planet, including Elon Musk and Bill Gates, use the same time management approach to take care of business. It's simple, but hard to pull off. You've just got to schedule your day in 5-minute chunks.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, is it that easy?
CODY GOUGH: It's just that easy. Like I mentioned, Elon Musk and Bill Gates do this, but former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan did something similar by scheduling his day into 15-minute chunks. A little less ambitious. On the flip side, entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk claims to plan his days down to the second. It's a popular approach clearly, but should you try it yourself? Would you get as much done as Gates or Musk if you were just as intense about finding a slot in your calendar for every task?
Author Peter Bregman says yes. He says you can make an infinite number of to do lists, but schedules are finite. You've got to get real about what you can actually accomplish in the 168 hours you get every week. Filling every moment of your calendar pushes you to make tough calls about prioritization. And it also leaves you feeling more in control of your time.
That being said, before you launch into a massive calendar overhaul, it's also important to understand the trade-offs of rigorous scheduling. The first danger is to your relationships. Elon Musk once told South by Southwest that he had to sacrifice a lot of family time with his kids with the rigorous scheduling. The second danger is that short term productivity can come at the cost of less big picture thinking. That's why Bill Gates famously needed to take what he called Think Weeks to get away from his manic schedule at Microsoft and consider long term trends.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, is that what normal people call vacations?
CODY GOUGH: That is. I know you wouldn't know because you don't take them.
ASHLEY HAMER: I wouldn't know.
CODY GOUGH: But here's the bottom line. Scheduling your days more rigorously will help you get more done, but the best approach is the one that best suits your particular needs. On the plus side, you'll never need more than a couple of 5-minute chunks to listen to the award-winning Curiosity Daily, and that is the best approach for anyone's needs if you ask me.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's all for today, but here's a preview of what you can learn about on curiosity.com this weekend.
CODY GOUGH: This weekend, you'll learn about a scientifically validated technique that can help you learn skills twice as fast, how to make a good first impression, where to find the most dangerous tea in the world, assuming you can survive the most dangerous hike, five unexpected things you didn't know climate change could do, why there are mirrors next to elevators, and more.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again Sunday on the award-winning Curiosity Daily, and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer. And I'm Cody Gough. Have a great weekend.
ASHLEY HAMER: And stay curious.
ANNOUNCER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.