Learn about 12 science-based tips for better meetings; common dinosaur myths you should stop believing; and what happened when 17-year-old Randy Gardner stayed awake for 11 days, for science. 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: 12 Science-Based Tips for Better Meetings — https://curiosity.im/2EaSXB2 Stop Believing These 6 Dinosaur Myths — https://curiosity.im/2Ebxybb This 17-Year-Old Boy Stayed Awake for 11 Days, for Science — https://curiosity.im/2EeOM7f 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 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 about 12 science-based tips for better meetings; common dinosaur myths you should stop believing; and what happened when 17-year-old Randy Gardner stayed awake for 11 days, for science.
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
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/science-based-tips-for-better-meetings-dinosaur-mythbusting-and-staying-awake-for-11-days
[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 12 science-based tips for better meetings, common dinosaur myths you should stop believing, and what happened when a 17-year-old boy stayed awake for 11 days for science.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Do you feel like meetings are almost always a complete waste of time and they get in the way of you actually getting work done? Well, you're not alone, and you're kind of right.
According to calculations by Lucid Meetings, organizations spend between $70 and $283 billion a year on ineffective meetings. That's why academics have started actually studying meetings. And the research has led to 12 science-based tips for a better meeting. Ready to work smarter, not harder?
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm really glad that we're a small but mighty company that doesn't have a lot of meetings.
CODY GOUGH: It's really great.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. It's like whenever I'm in a meeting, I feel like I'm there for a reason, and I'm just there for the amount of time that I need to get stuff done. And then I go back to work.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. It's good. I have worked in giant companies with lots of regular meetings, and I may have to pass these tips along to some of my old coworkers.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Good call.
CODY GOUGH: And the last place where I worked isn't the only company having a lot of meetings. Do you know how many meetings happen in the US every day? As many as 56 million. The typical worker spends six hours a week in meetings. That's almost a full workday. And managers, average 23 hours of meetings a week. That's more than half a week of work.
Thankfully, a team of researchers from the University of Nebraska Omaha and Clemson University looked through 200 studies of meetings to come up with some science-based tips for leading successful meetings. Let's start with the planning phase. Before you even schedule the meeting, set clear goals. Make sure this actually needs to be a meeting, and it's not something that will work just as well in a shared document or email chain.
Invite the key stakeholders so you don't come up with a great idea in a meeting that gets shot down by a manager who wasn't there. And write and circulate an agenda. This is the number one thing I learned in college about running meetings. An agenda will literally change your life, or your meeting life anyway.
So now come the tips for what to do during the meeting. First, reiterate and stick to that agenda. Trust me, this will make everyone's life easier, especially yours. Keep the meeting short and sweet and steer the conversation from fatalistic comments, like nothing can be done, or this situation is hopeless. And instead, move towards productive questions, like how can we improve X given that Y didn't work?
Encourage participation from everyone so you don't just get that random coworker who spends the whole meeting on his laptop. We have all been there. And treat everyone's comments with respect, but also joke around. An upbeat atmosphere is actually more conducive to collaboration.
After the meeting, send out meeting minutes promptly. And if you really want to crush your next meeting, send them a quick survey asking for feedback on the meeting. This can turn even the worst meetings into a learning opportunity.
ASHLEY HAMER: We haven't done any myth-busting stories in a while, so today we're going to tell you about some dinosaur misinformation. It's time to clear the air.
CODY GOUGH: If Jurassic Park taught you everything you know about dinosaurs, then you might want to brace yourself.
ASHLEY HAMER: Although that movie is still pretty great.
CODY GOUGH: It is so great. I had a friend wearing a Jurassic Park T-shirt, and some kid pointed and was like, that's not Jurassic World. And we felt old.
ASHLEY HAMER: What?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: That's awful. [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, I don't know if this first dinosaur myth will make you feel any better, but here it is. Dinosaurs are not extinct. Obviously, some of them are. But every living bird is actually a dinosaur. Mind blown.
CODY GOUGH: Here's another game changer. Dinosaurs were not necessarily cold blooded. It's a bit of a mystery exactly how they produced heat since there are a lot of different ways to be warm blooded. But we do know from microscopic examinations of their petrified bones that their metabolisms were simply too fast to have just relied on the sun for body heat.
ASHLEY HAMER: You might know about this next one, but not all dinosaurs are scaly. Lots of dinosaurs actually had feathers. And what's more, not all dinosaurs were green or brown. Some probably were, but we actually do know that some dinosaurs were red, black, white, and other colors. In fact, they weren't even necessarily the same color all over. We can even say with certainty that some dinosaurs had striped tails like a raccoon.
CODY GOUGH: Here's one more myth you should stop believing. Dinosaurs were all around at the same time. I'm really sorry to burst your dinosaur fan-fiction bubble, but the Tyrannosaurus rex and Stegosaurus never had a death match with each other.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. If the T. rex had built natural history museums, then they would have installed Stegosaurus fossils as the main exhibit. Dinosaurs were around for a long time. In fact, oh, yeah, didn't we just mention? They're still around today.
CODY GOUGH: Now that you know the truth about dinosaurs, I just have one question for you, Ashley. What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary?
ASHLEY HAMER: What?
CODY GOUGH: A thesaurus.
ASHLEY HAMER: Today's episode is sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
CODY GOUGH: Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash, and people could get hurt or killed. But let's take a moment to look at some surprising statistics.
ASHLEY HAMER: Almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes. That's one person every 50 minutes.
CODY GOUGH: Even though drunk-driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades, drunk-driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives each year.
ASHLEY HAMER: Many people are unaware that driving while high can be just as dangerous. In 2015, 42% of drivers killed in crashes tested positive for drugs. Not so harmless after all, is it?
CODY GOUGH: And get this. From 2007 to 2015, marijuana use among drivers killed in crashes doubled. The truth is driving while high is deadly.
ASHLEY HAMER: So stop kidding yourself. If you're impaired from alcohol or drugs, don't get behind the wheel.
CODY GOUGH: If you feel different, you drive different. Drive high, you'll get a DUI.
ASHLEY HAMER: Drive sober or get pulled over. What's the longest you've ever gone without sleeping on purpose? Was it 11 days? Because that's the world record for the longest amount of time staying awake. It's held by Randy Gardner who was 17 years old at the time, and his story is pretty wild.
CODY GOUGH: I lasted about 24 hours straight one time, and I decided that wasn't the life for me.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, same. I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before actually, but the only all-nighter I've ever done was in junior high, which seems like that English teacher probably shouldn't have been assigning assignments that required seventh-graders to do all-nighters. But who am I to judge?
CODY GOUGH: I've definitely done it more recently than that, but I had just as good of a reason. I had to play Smash Bros. [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, my gosh. [CHUCKLES] You have a problem, Cody.
CODY GOUGH: No, I don't. [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: I don't care about you.
CODY GOUGH: I don't go to meetings, so I don't have a problem.
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES] So this story started in late December 1963. There is literally a song by The Four Seasons called "December '63." Oh, I don't know. [WORDLESS SINGING] Randy Gardner had a theme song. [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: Awesome.
ASHLEY HAMER: So Randy Gardner wanted to beat the record for most days without sleep so that he could, get this, win his local science fair. Seriously. And this experiment became something of a national sensation. In fact, for a short time, it was the third most written about story in the American press after the assassination of President Kennedy and the Beatles' historic trip to the States.
That's why it's not too surprising that an actual sleep researcher named Dr. William Dement heard about the experiment and came to keep an eye on how things went. In the end, Gardner stayed awake for 264.4 hours, which is roughly 11 days and 25 minutes. And that whole time, Dement and a couple of Gardner's friends tracked exactly how his mind was doing with a series of cognitive and sensory tests.
After two days without sleeping, he started to have trouble repeating simple tongue twisters, and he stopped being able to identify objects by touch. His senses seemed to heighten, and he became sensitive to strong smells. By the fifth day, he was hallucinating. And soon after that, he started having trouble forming short-term memories.
He kept himself awake with the help of physical activities. And weirdly, his basketball game actually improved over the course of that sleepless week and a half. A few things happen after the experiment was over. First, the good news. Gardner and the other boys won first place in that science fair. He had his achievement immortalized in the Guinness Book of World Records. And of course, he finally got to get some shut eye, about 14 hours of it, as a matter of fact.
But the Guinness Book of World Records no longer accepts entries for longest period spent without sleeping because of, well, the bad news. In the late 2000s, Gardner started to experience insomnia on a nightly basis. There's no way to say for sure, but he's convinced the reason was his teenage stunt. He suffered from a recurring inability to sleep for several years until finally settling into a more reliable routine. But still, he only enjoys about 6 hours of sleep per night these days. Kids, don't try this at home.
CODY GOUGH: That's all for today. But here's a sneak peek at what you can learn about on curiosity.com this weekend.
ASHLEY HAMER: This weekend, you'll learn about why you should think twice before putting ice and lemon wedges in your drink, why a donut-shaped planet could theoretically exist, why fish never stop wiggling, why Albert Einstein worried that science could never explain the present moment, and more.
CODY GOUGH: If there's something else you're curious about, then email your question to podcast@curiosity.com, and we might answer it on a future episode.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's podcast@curiosity.com. Come hang out with us again Sunday on the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough. Have a great weekend.
ASHLEY HAMER: And stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
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