In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Your Brain Involuntarily Sees Opinions You Agree With as Facts The Stroop Effect Is A Window Into Perception The Pisonia Tree Lures and Murders Birds for No Good Reason The Tooth Fairy Pays a Lot More Than She Used To For a more adult perspective on dental health over time in the United States, check out "Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America" by health journalist Mary Otto. Curious for more of nature's killers? Check out "Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities." Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
For a more adult perspective on dental health over time in the United States, check out "Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America" by health journalist Mary Otto. Curious for more of nature's killers? Check out "Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities."
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/seeing-opinions-as-facts-bird-killing-pisonia-trees-and-how-much-the-tooth-fairy-pays
[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 tree that lures and murders birds for no good reason, why your brain sees opinions you agree with as facts, and how much the tooth fairy is paying these days.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. So Ashley, how much did the tooth fairy pay for your teeth?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, gosh, probably a quarter. You know what? My dad really liked rare coins, so probably like a $0.50 piece or $1 coin or something.
CODY GOUGH: Those are cool.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: For a $2 bill.
ASHLEY HAMER: I never had the $2 bill. He was more into coins. But yeah, that would be awesome to get under your pillow.
CODY GOUGH: Right. I do not remember how much the tooth fairy gave me, unfortunately. And in case you didn't grow up with a tooth fairy for some reason, or you haven't seen the Disney film of the same name starring The Rock, here's how the tooth fairy works. When your tooth falls out, you put it under your pillow before you go to bed. And when you wake up, there's money there.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. It's magic.
ASHLEY HAMER: It is literally magic.
CODY GOUGH: How much money, though? A new study says the tooth fairy is adjusting for inflation.
ASHLEY HAMER: Of course, she is.
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: A survey asked Baby Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, and Gen Z participants, how much money they've gotten from the tooth fairy over time? And they found it's gone up quite a bit. So people older than 53 made about $0.69 per tooth. I'm guessing this is an average.
ASHLEY HAMER: And this is when the people older than 53 were children.
CODY GOUGH: Sure.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes.
CODY GOUGH: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: Not 53-year-olds losing teeth and putting them under their pillows.
CODY GOUGH: Right, right, right. Again, I'm guessing they didn't put two quarters of diamond nickel in for pennies.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. I think it was an average.
CODY GOUGH: So average. So then those in the 39 to 53-year range got $1.39, almost exactly twice as much. It's twice as much, plus a penny. Then 24 to 38-year-olds, the next generation earned about $2.13, which is really close to the same increase seen between those previous two groups. And finally, the sixth and older set currently losing their teeth. They are raking in an average of $3.25 per tooth. That's the biggest increase between generations, and the increase is more than $1.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's sounds like gas prices. I feel like my parents pay the same amount per gallon that they got for their teeth.
CODY GOUGH: Exactly. Now, Delta Dental claims that they are the only organization that's been tracking the rate since 1998. And they say a tooth currently goes for a closer to $4.13, and that's actually not the highest point it's been at. The tooth fairy, at one point, was paying up to $4.50 in the past. They also say the rate of a tooth closely matches up with the S&P 500.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. So kids losing your teeth, check that S&P 500. Maybe you'll profit if we're in the middle of a rally. Oh, and where you live also matters. According to a 2015 survey by a different company, a missing molar in Manhattan could pull more than $13. You can read more numbers today. There's actually a bunch more figures we've got on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, how good are you do you think it's sniffing out false information?
CODY GOUGH: Well, I know that if I disagree with it, it's wrong.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure.
CODY GOUGH: So that's where I'm at.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. I think that's how we all work. Well, a new report says that you might have a hard time sorting out facts because of something called involuntary opinion conformation. So this basically says that when your brain is exposed to an opinion it agrees with, it automatically slips it into the facts folder of your mental filing cabinet. You have no control over this. It's scary.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, good.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. The researchers studied this by using something called the Stroop effect. You might have heard of this. Let's say you read the word green, but it's printed in a different color, like orange. When this happens, your brain will have a hard time naming the color of the ink because you've already processed the word green when you read it. So that makes it hard for your brain to shift gears and recategorized the word as orange or whatever color it's printed in.
Now, the Stroop effect has a corollary, known as the epistemic Stroop effect. Stay with me. That says that when you ask someone to check the spelling or the grammar of a written statement, they have a harder time finding mistakes when the statement is factual than when the statement is false. They're actually faster at finding mistakes in a false statement than they are in a true statement.
CODY GOUGH: We've talked about the Stroop effect on the show before, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, yeah, on Alex Hutchinson's episode.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes.
CODY GOUGH: Episode 32.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes, the one on human endurance. Well, according to this new study, that epistemic Stroop effect holds out when people read an opinion they agree with. So when you read an opinion you agree with, you don't find grammar and spelling mistakes as easily as an opinion that you don't agree with, which suggests that your brain just files it away as a real fact.
CODY GOUGH: And by the same token, if you read an opinion that you agree with, then you have a harder time finding factual errors in it, not just grammatical errors.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes, that is absolutely the case.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: So it's scary. It's also scary for editors like me. When you're reading an article and you're like, that's a true fact, then you don't find the spelling errors in it.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Not so good.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: So if you're a managing editor somewhere and you're having your writers write about politics and you want to have it fact checked, they maybe hire two different people that are really extreme on both ends of the political spectrum.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Than have them both proofread. It'd be really interesting to see--
ASHLEY HAMER: You'd have to hire copy editors based on their political views.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, that seems illegal.
ASHLEY HAMER: It seems illegal.
CODY GOUGH: Seems very illegal.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Don't do that, Ashley
ASHLEY HAMER: OK, let's not do that.
[LAUGHTER]
You can read the details of how they conducted the study today on curiosity.com. But a big takeaway is that psychologists can use this when they're on the lookout for biases. They can tell where there's a bias by looking at which questions the population is fastest at answering. Keep an eye on Curiosity, and we'll see where this research leads.
CODY GOUGH: Right, Ashley. What's the most brutal plant you can think of?
ASHLEY HAMER: Before I got this job, I probably would have said like a--
CODY GOUGH: Venus flytrap?
ASHLEY HAMER: I would have said a Venus flytrap, but we have written so much.
CODY GOUGH: Hold on for the listener, Ashley just made a mouth with her hand and just opened and closed it.
ASHLEY HAMER: And he knew what I was talking about.
CODY GOUGH: That was a great nonverbal. Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: But we have written about so many brutal plants. There's murder forests, and it's awful. What brutal plant are you going to tell me about today?
CODY GOUGH: Well, certainly not the Entwives.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, no, not the Entwives.
[LAUGHS]
I know that is no.
CODY GOUGH: Took you a second, but we got there. No. Today, we're going to cover the Pisonia tree because it's a brutal plant that kills birds. And as far as we know, for no good reason.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh my gosh.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. It's found in the tropical waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, so you don't have to worry about it here in America. But scientists haven't found any actual benefit that tree gets from killing birds. So here's how it works. The tree produces these sticky seed pods that trap insects.
So hungry birds see these trapped insects, and they get lured in because they want a free lunch. But the three seed pods are so sticky, they latch onto any bird that flies into them, which either traps it in the tree's branches or weighs it down so much that it can't fly anymore. So for a while, scientists thought the tree's roots might get some nutrients from the dead birds, or that seeds would attach themselves to the birds because they needed to use the corpse as fertilizer to grow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Lovely.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Well, in 2005, Ecologist Alan Berger from the University of Victoria concluded a 10-year study of the tree, and his research showed no obvious benefit to capturing the birds. Birds flying away from the tree with sticky seeds attached did help the tree species spread around a bit, so that's one evolutionary reason. But for the most part, this tree is just a jerk. Please tell your friends they can listen to this podcast as part of their Amazon Echo Flash Briefing.
ASHLEY HAMER: I do that every morning.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Our show is a fun source to mix in with your smart speakers Daily News updates if we do say so ourselves. So tell your friends.
ASHLEY HAMER: I do listen to us talk every morning, is that weird?
CODY GOUGH: No.
ASHLEY HAMER: All right. Join us again tomorrow at 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.
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