Learn about a hexagon-shaped hurricane on Saturn; a Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement; and why products are only built to last for a few years. 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: Why Does Saturn Have a Hexagon-Shaped Hurricane? Kaizen Is the 5-Step Philosophy of Continuous Improvement Planned Obsolescence Is Why Some Products Aren't Built to Last 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 onCuriosity.com, and download our5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn about a hexagon-shaped hurricane on Saturn; a Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement; and why products are only built to last for a few years.
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/saturns-hexagon-hurricane-planned-obsolescence-and-kaizen-for-continuous-improvement
[MUSIC PLAYING ] 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 about a hexagon-shaped hurricane on Saturn, a Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement, and why some products are only built to last for a few years.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: This first story is about hurricanes in space. And because we're talking about hurricanes, I wanted to give a quick shout out to all of our listeners on the East Coast of the United States to say that we hope you stay safe during Hurricane Florence. We just hope that you're all OK.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. We hope that you stay safe, and we hope that this podcast keeps you a little bit entertained during a bit of a bad weather season.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Let's hope it all blows over quickly. But Earth isn't the only planet that has hurricanes. Probably, everybody knows about Jupiter's Great Red Spot, which is a storm that's been brewing for hundreds of years. But Saturn has a pretty weird hurricane too. It's hexagon-shaped. That's right. It's a storm with six equal sides.
And new data shows this is a bigger storm than we thought. It towers hundreds of miles in height. So we first discovered Saturn's hexagon in 1988 after reviewing old data from two spacecraft called Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 that did quick flybys of the planet in 1980 and 1981. In other words, this storm is at least 38 years old, which is weird in itself. Sending spacecraft to Saturn is a long and expensive process. So we couldn't confirm the hexagon really existed until the Cassini mission arrived there in 2004.
Cassini stuck around Saturn for 13 years and flew over the storm several times. So what did we learn? Well, the hexagon, which includes a storm at its center, is about 20,000 miles wide. That could fit two Earth-sized planets inside and still have plenty of width to spare. But for all the data we got, we still don't know much. Like, why does the storm have straight sides? Maybe it's the shape that resulted when two fluid bodies in the atmosphere spinning at different speeds met up with each other, or maybe it has to do with wind jet speed and direction. We need to get some new spacecraft on Saturn before we can figure that out.
Scientists originally thought the hexagon was buried down in the lower atmosphere, but the new study shows the storm actually extends 180 miles above the troposphere, reaching up into the stratosphere. Here's where things get interesting. The data is based on information that flowed from Cassini during its entire mission, but Cassini could only get a really good look at the hexagon in the stratosphere starting in 2014. That's because some of its infrared or heat-seeking instruments couldn't see the stratosphere during the northern winter when the temperatures were low.
As the north warmed up, the hexagon started to show up in infrared wavelengths, seeing the same shape at a higher altitude completely floored the scientists working on this project, and the great hexagon mystery continues. Of course, as soon as we get some new answers, we'll let you know. Keep an eye on Curiosity for all your mysterious hexagon-shaped storm science needs.
CODY GOUGH: We're all about self-improvement on this podcast, and today is no exception. Today, we've got a story on a philosophy that's helped the Japanese car industry stay on top. And you can use it too starting today. I feel like I saw something on Twitter from you that may or may not have been an indirect reference to this.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh. What?
CODY GOUGH: @smashleyhamer on Twitter said, quote "the key to so much in life is just doing the boring thing. Don't do that fad diet. Just eat less crap. Don't do an intense fitness regimen. Just exercise regularly. Don't buy expensive face serums. Just sleep more. Long-term boring changes are greater than short-term bursts of motivation." unquote.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow, that person sounds pretty smart.
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: Was that not in reference to this story?
ASHLEY HAMER: No. That was just something I thought of this morning.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: You are a philosopher.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, I guess I am.
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: Well, it reminded me of this story about the philosophy that is called Kaizen, which in Japanese literally translates to improvement. And it's used by the car company Toyota, which is legendary for getting rid of waste at every level. Now the story of the Toyota production system is that some American executives went to visit the Toyota line to figure out how they had such a high production rate and low rate of error. They learned that at the Toyota plant, any worker could stop production at any time in order to correct an error or suggest an improvement.
American companies, on the other hand, had stuck to a "never stop the line" philosophy that had to correct all errors later or just discard ruined cars, which is a huge waste when you have to discard a whole car. By letting employees catch errors and inefficiency, every worker played a role in improving the entire company. And that typifies the idea of Kaizen. It's an incremental self-improvement philosophy that makes you better bit by bit. It's very different from big picture changes that fix everything all at once. After all, the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.
So try making tiny improvements in how you go about your day and see if it helps. And of course, you can learn more about Kaizen in our full write-up on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. And maybe you shouldn't do a 30-day insanity workout or something.
CODY GOUGH: Maybe I shouldn't go on a crash diet that I keep talking about.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Maybe I should just not reach for that extra handful of M&Ms, that extra slice of pizza. Yeah, here we're coming from.
ASHLEY HAMER: Today's episode is sponsored by PBS. Do you love a good book, have a favorite novel-- Catcher in the Rye, 1984, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Gone With The Wind, The Color Purple?
CODY GOUGH: There's so many classic and beloved stories. It's hard to pick just one. But PBS needs your help doing just that. PBS has a list of America's 100 best-loved novels, and they need you to help pick number 1. The Great American Read returns Tuesdays this fall at 8:00/7:00 Central, starting September 11 on your PBS station.
ASHLEY HAMER: Host Meredith Vieira talks to some of your favorite authors, celebrities, and athletes about the subjects and stories found in our favorite books. They'll explore the many ways these novels affect, reflect, and connect us all. Go to pbs.org to see the entire list. Vote for your favorites and share with your friends. It all leads up to the grand finale on Tuesday, October 23, when all the votes are counted, and America's favorite novel is announced.
CODY GOUGH: Celebrate reading, books, and imagination. Join the conversation at #greatreadpbs. The Great American Read returns Tuesdays this fall at 8:00/7:00 Central, starting September 11-- hey, it's already started-- on your local PBS station.
ASHLEY HAMER: Do you ever feel like some products are literally built to fail after a few years? Well, it turns out that's a thing. And we're not talking about a conspiracy theory. In fact, there's a name for it. And we're going to tell you why it happens. I feel like the most common example of this is in smartphones.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. It's because of a conspiracy, right? Marketing departments just wanting to suck us dry.
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean a little bit. The term for this is planned obsolescence. And it's actually been around for a long time as in since the light bulb really took off. Around 1880, Thomas Edison used carbon wires for his light bulbs, and those lasted a really long time. The Centennial Bulb in Livermore, California is a carbon wire bulb that's been burning continuously for more than 115 years. Those early bulbs were great for power companies since they maintain the bulbs themselves. But once the model shifted to having consumers buy their own light bulbs, companies realized they could make a lot more money by shortening their lifespan.
In 1924, light bulb companies from around the world got together in Geneva at what was called the Phoebus cartel. Sounds totally ominous, right? And they did it just to come up with a light bulb that only lasted 1,000 hours. Yes, this actually happened. And yes, this was incredibly illegal. Many of those companies had to go to court over their violation of antitrust laws, but the damage was already done.
Planned obsolescence had been introduced to the world. Soon, it popped up everywhere from the clothing industry, using less durable materials, to the automotive industry, introducing model years. Now, there is a silver lining to all this, and that's that planned obsolescence, does make things less expensive for consumers. A car that lasts 50 years isn't worth much to you if you can't afford to buy it, after all. And some products really shouldn't last forever, like children's clothes.
There are also cases where industries advance at such a rapid pace that their products become obsolete on their own, especially computers and smartphones, like Cody and I were just talking about. There are some strategies companies use to make sure you buy a new, shiny gadget before you have to. But at the breakneck pace the technology is advancing, phones can't help but get old fast. Still, at least some smartphones are affordable enough for most of us to be able to buy them in the first place. And that's something we can't really complain about. Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
SPEAKER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.