Learn about why backformation can make you invent new words without realizing it; how animals mourn their dead; and how you can get better sleep by walking more. 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: Backformation Can Make You Invent New Words Without Realizing It — https://curiosity.im/2pqsBor 3 Animals That Mourn Their Dead — https://curiosity.im/2MeWHnV To Get Better Sleep, Try Walking More — https://curiosity.im/2phjpTA Today is the LAST DAY to nominate Curiosity Daily for Best Technology & Science Podcast in the 2019 Discover Pods Awards! It's free and only takes a minute. Thanks so much! https://awards.discoverpods.com/nominations/
Learn about why backformation can make you invent new words without realizing it; how animals mourn their dead; and how you can get better sleep by walking more.
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:
Today is the LAST DAY to nominate Curiosity Daily for Best Technology & Science Podcast in the 2019 Discover Pods Awards! It's free and only takes a minute. Thanks so much! https://awards.discoverpods.com/nominations/
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/sleep-better-by-walking-more-how-animals-mourn-their-dead-and-words-from-backformation
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why sometimes you invent new words without realizing it; how animals mourn their dead; and how you can get better sleep by walking more.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Backformation Can Make You Invent New Words Without Realizing It — https://curiosity.im/2pqsBor (from Saturday 11/2) (Cody)
There are lots of ways new words come into the English language. You can put two words together to make a compound, like photobomb or humblebrag. You can add endings to existing words, like hotness. You can shorten longer words, like bro. But today we wanted to talk about one way you sometimes invent new words without even realizing it. It’s actually one of the most common ways for a new word to come into English, and it says a lot about our tendency to expand on the patterns that structure vocabulary. This process is called backformation, and it basically happens when you assume a word must already exist! Think about it: if you can compensate and speculate, then why can’t you conversate? If a baker bakes and an actor acts, then what does a burglar do? Well you might say he burgles, but that’s not really accepted as standard English — at least, not here in the U.S. It’s a different story across the pond in the U.K. Backformation is kinda strange, because there are words that ARE completely accepted here that were created in the exact same way: by stripping the end off a noun to show the verb behind the noun. Did you know that the word “escalate” was not a verb until after the invention of the escalator? And there was no verb “to curate” until centuries after the curator. Other backformed verbs include injure, from injury; and scavenge, from scavenger. You see backformation turning nouns into verbs most of the time, but sometimes adjectives lose their endings to form new nouns or verbs. Greed was formed from greedy, and ditz came from ditzy. Anyway, if you’re a vocabulary nerd, then you can read about even more backformations in our full write-up on this story, which you can find that on curiosity-dot-com. We’ll also put a link in today’s show notes.
3 Animals That Mourn Their Dead — https://curiosity.im/2MeWHnV (Ashley)
Today we want to highlight a new field of study that looks at a very specific aspect of life in the animal kingdom. Over the past few years, researchers have developed a new interdisciplinary field called comparative thanatology. It’s the scientific study of death and dying in other species, and it should bring deeper insights into how animals respond to death. I mean, it's hard to see the world through another animal's eyes. Human grieving customs like funerals are distinctive and unambiguous, but what does it look like for an animal to grieve? The answer depends on the animal. But animal grief is a specialty of anthropologist and science writer Barbara King, and she says that it’s defined by, quote, "some visible response to death that goes beyond curiosity or exploration to include altered daily routines, plus signs of emotional distress," unquote. Let’s talk about three well-known animals and what we know about how they handle death, starting with elephants. Scientists have known for a long time that when a living elephant comes across a dead elephant, it usually falls silent and usually spends several minutes investigating the body with its trunk and feet. A second animal we’ve studied is gorillas. This year, researchers in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo watched mountain gorillas spend a lot of time with recently deceased gorillas they’d shared social bonds with. They’ve observed gorillas sitting near a deceased body, looking at the body, and occasionally sniffing and poking it. Some mourners also groomed and licked it. The third animal we’ll mention is songbirds, which might be a more positive note to end on. Recent research suggests they use death as an opportunity to grow closer. In 2017, researchers from Oxford University followed a flock of 500 birds for the winter and occasionally removed randomly selected birds to see how the others would react. They found that the number and intensity of social relationships became stronger among "surviving" birds after researchers had temporarily removed one wild great tit from a group of their flockmates. Stronger and tighter connections are a silver lining, and it brings to mind the reassuring quote from Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter, which she said to mourning lovers after a character had died. She said that after his death, he, quote, “would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world,” unqoute.
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To Get Better Sleep, Try Walking More — https://curiosity.im/2phjpTA (Republish) (from Saturday 10/26) (Cody)
Here’s a pro tip if you want to get better sleep: try walking more! This might sound obvious or not that helpful, but as reported by Futurity, a new study says this could actually make a big difference — especially in older adults. And today’s technology makes it easier than ever to do it. Believe it or not, this study published in the journal Sleep Health is the one of the first studies to look at how daily walking relates to sleep in adults aged 30 to 60. Researchers looked at 59 people with an average age of 49, and asked them to take an extra 2-thousand steps every day for four weeks. That’s about a mile every day, tracked using a FitBit. And the study’s results showed that people who took more steps that month rated their sleep quality as better than less active people did. Women reported bigger improvements than men, but the researchers say they need to do more research to figure out why. Participants said they slept longer and better on the days when they walked more, than they did on the days when they walked less. This research matters because more than 9 MILLION adults over the age of 30 rely on drugs to fall asleep. That’s despite the fact that some of those medications have been linked to addiction, cancer, and other negative health effects. Some adults at this age can’t get involved in high-impact exercise, so this is an excellent solution for those who can lace up their tennis shoes and strap on their fitness watch. Happy trails!
ASHLEY: And now, let’s recap what we learned today. Today we learned that backformation makes you invent new words without even realizing it, because you thought those words already existed.
CODY: And that comparative thanatology is a new field of study into how animals mourn their dead.
ASHLEY: And that walking an extra 2-thousand steps a day could help adults over the age of 30 sleep longer and better than before.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Stay curious!