Learn which is more important, sleep or exercise; why you’ve never seen a picture of the whole Milky Way; a trick for falling asleep any time, anywhere, with a military-tested trick; and why your voice sounds different when you hear a recording of yourself. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com — and learn about the human voice from opera singer Matthan Ring Black — to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Sleep vs. Exercise: Which Is More Important? Fall Asleep Anytime, Anywhere with This Military-Tested Trick You've Never Seen a Picture of the Entire Milky Way The Science Of Singing [Curiosity Podcast episode with Matthan Ring Black] 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 which is more important, sleep or exercise; why you’ve never seen a picture of the whole Milky Way; a trick for falling asleep any time, anywhere, with a military-tested trick; and why your voice sounds different when you hear a recording of yourself.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com — and learn about the human voice from opera singer Matthan Ring Black — 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/sleep-vs-exercise-milky-way-pictures-military-method-for-sleeping-anywhere-and-voice-recording-science-w-matthan-ring-black
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got some sleep, space, and singing science from curiositydotcom 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, which is more important-- sleep or exercise, why you've never seen a picture of the whole Milky Way, a trick for falling asleep any time anywhere with a military-tested trick, and we'll answer a listener question about why your voice sounds different when you hear a recording of yourself.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: If you went to bed late and your alarm goes off to go to a gym class, then which is worse? Skipping your workout or losing an hour of sleep? There are pros and cons to both. So let's get into what scientific research has shown.
CODY GOUGH: I know what I would do, sleep.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I would probably work out.
[LAUGHTER]
But I think there are times when both of those are the right answer.
CODY GOUGH: Sure. Can't wait to find out.
ASHLEY HAMER: So first let's talk about the pros and cons of sleeping in. One perk is that you'll have a better workout next time. That's based on a 2013 study that found that people who slept longer each night ended up having longer, higher quality workouts. But a different 2013 study found a pretty major drawback.
It found that skipping 30 minutes of sleep in favor of 30 minutes of moderate to heavy physical activity can lead to improvements in cardiovascular health. But there are pros and cons to dragging yourself out of bed when you're short on sleep too. One perk is that you'll sleep better the following night. Studies show that even a little bit of exercise can have a big impact on sleep quality, especially, if you're dealing with insomnia or sleep apnea.
Waking up and working out can also be good for your mental health. After all exercise, has been shown to reduce depression and anxiety and just boost your mood overall. But there are a couple of drawbacks to cutting sleep to work out. First and foremost is that your workout could suffer. It's not just your brain that has circadian rhythms.
Research from 2016 says it's your muscles too. Muscle cells work better during their biological daytime than their biological night. So if you wake up when your muscles think you should be sleeping, they won't serve you quite as well. Studies have also shown that you might be hungrier if you're short on sleep, and that can make it harder to stick to your diet.
The takeaway from all this research is that the best thing to do depends on your history. If you tend to skip more workouts than shut eye, then forcing yourself to get up for a run before work might do you good. If you exercise regularly but don't get enough sleep, allow yourself to hit the snooze button and maybe find another exercise time that works better for you.
CODY GOUGH: All that sleep and exercise research doesn't do you a lot of good if you can't fall asleep in the first place, right? Our next subject isn't just about how to fall asleep, though, it's about how to fall asleep anywhere. And it comes from the military.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Bringing out the big guns for this one.
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, yeah. If you're surrounded by like guns and loud noises, it would be pretty hard to fall asleep.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Or in my case, I'm hopping on a plane to Philadelphia this weekend and it'd be nice if I could take a little nap.
ASHLEY HAMER: For sure.
CODY GOUGH: Well, this trick originally appeared in Lloyd Bud Winter's book titled Relax and Win from 1981. Winter was a noted track and field coach and he was an expert in athlete psychology and he worked with the US Navy in the early days of World War II to figure out a way to combat sleep deprivation.
After six weeks of practicing his method, recruits in pre-flight school were able to fall asleep in less than two minutes 96% of the time. Even when they were caffeinated or surrounded by recordings of cannons and machine guns. It's a simple two-part trick but it might take some practice. We've got a step-by-step guide in our full write up on curiositydotcom and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
But the first part involves physical relaxation. You practice slow regular breathing, then relax your muscles bit by bit starting in your face and working your way down your body. Then only focus on your breathing. After that first step of physical relaxation, the second part is, you guessed it. Mental relaxation.
This is the fun part. Winter recommended three specific suggestions to get into a restful bliss. In the first scenario, you put yourself in the bottom of a canoe on a warm spring day watching the clouds float by. And the second exercise, all the lights go out and you're lying in a cozy hammock made of black velvet. You're in a pitch black room with velvet-lined walls and everything is perfectly black.
And the final exercise is more of a mantra. When all else fails, just lie back and repeat the following phrase in your mind. Don't think, don't think, don't think, don't think, don't think, don't think. If we put you to sleep, then please don't be upset if we wake you up in a second.
ASHLEY HAMER: Speaking of sleep--
[LAUGHTER]
--we were going to cover the stories we just did today, anyway. But by sheer coincidence, today's episode is sponsored by Purple Mattress.
CODY GOUGH: Here's the question. How did you sleep last night? Did you spend the night tossing and turning? Do you ever wake up with a stiff neck or a messed up back? This happens to me, I don't know about you.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. For sure, a little aches and pains all the time.
CODY GOUGH: That's not fun.
ASHLEY HAMER: No.
CODY GOUGH: Well, if you're struggling to get a good night's sleep, you've got to try a Purple Mattress.
ASHLEY HAMER: The purple mattress will probably feel different than anything you've ever experienced because it uses this brand new material that was developed by an actual rocket scientist. The Purple Material feels unique because it's both firm and soft at the same time. So it keeps everything supported while still feeling really comfortable. Plus, it's breathable. So it sleeps cool.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. It ends up giving you this zero gravity-like feel so it works for any sleeping position.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right now with Purple Mattress, you can get a 100-night risk free trial. If you're not fully satisfied, you can return your mattress for a full refund.
CODY GOUGH: And if you keep it, your Purple Mattress is backed by a 10-year warranty. Not to mention free shipping and returns and free in-home set up and old mattress removal.
ASHLEY HAMER: You're going to love Purple. And right now, our listeners will get a free Purple Pillow with a purchase of a mattress. That's in addition to the great free gifts they're offering site-wide. Just go to purple.com and use our promo code "Curious" at checkout.
CODY GOUGH: That's purple.com, code "Curious." The only way to get this free pillow is to use our code, "Curious" at checkout.
ASHLEY HAMER: One more time, that's purple.com, code "Curious." If you're lying on your brand new Purple Mattress and scrolling through Facebook or Twitter and you think you come across a picture of the Milky Way galaxy, I've got some bad news. I hate to be a buzzkill but you're not really looking at a picture of the entire Milky Way.
CODY GOUGH: What?
ASHLEY HAMER: Right.
CODY GOUGH: No.
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, it's kind of obvious when you think about it because Earth is located in the Milky Way. So we don't have any actual pictures of the entire Milky Way. It's like you can't take a picture of your own camera with your camera.
CODY GOUGH: That's deep.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Decades of research has given us a pretty good idea of what the Milky Way probably looks like. But it's like pictures of dinosaurs. Nobody's ever seen an actual dinosaur, but we think we have a ballpark idea of what they look like. For some background, Earth is not at the edge of the Milky Way. But we're not at the center either. If the Milky Way were a vinyl record, we'd be in the groove halfway between the center and the edge.
And we're almost, definitely, not going to leave our galaxy in your lifetime. The spacecraft that's traveled the farthest from Earth is Voyager 1. As of 2017, Voyager was 13 billion miles away. To put that in perspective, one light year is more than 450 times longer than that at about 5.9 trillion miles.
And our region of the Milky Way is 1,000 light years thick. But we still have some awesome pictures of what we can see. And even some dependably accurate artist's renderings of what we can't. Astronomers pieced together images from powerful telescopes to see past the gas and dust as far into the center as possible. And those telescopes can also see other galaxies in their entirety, which artists can use to help estimate what our galaxy looks like.
Just remember that if anyone claims an image is a picture of the Milky Way, then they've got another thing coming.
CODY GOUGH: We got a question from a listener in India. Ankit asked, "Why does our own voice sound so different on recordings? Is the recorded one a real voice? Is that what other people hear?" Great question, Ankit. The answer is pretty straightforward and it comes from opera singer Matthan Ring Black. He was a guest on the Curiosity podcast last year and here's what he told us.
MATTHAN RING BLACK: So the reason that your voice sounds different to you than it sounds to somebody else or to a microphone is because of the way the sounds are conducted. I'm hearing my own voice, the vibrations. I'm hearing them conducted through the bones. You know how your eardrum is made up of a bunch of tiny bones that vibrate and then turn the vibrations into sounds that you can understand.
So rather than the sound leaving my mouth, bouncing around the room that we're in and then coming back purely in through the air, the bones of my jaw, the bones of my neck. All the bones are connected to the little bones in your ears. So you're hearing the vibrations from the inside and the outside.
So you're always going to sound different from someone else. It's important when you're practicing and you're evaluating your own sound, that you have people that you trust to help you out with. That's why we use really talented voice teachers and coaches. At a certain point, people ask me, well, you know, you've been singing for 20 years now. Why do you still have to go to a teacher?
And I always go to a voice teacher because I don't hear myself the same way that you hear me, and I need someone that I can trust to help me do those things. But at a real elite level, you find yourself singing more by the way that it feels than by the way that it sounds.
CODY GOUGH: Thanks for your question, Ankit. As a reminder, we're releasing brand new Curiosity podcast interviews to our Patreon supporters. Patreon is a website that lets you donate to your favorite creators like podcasters and YouTubers to help ensure they keep bringing shows you love like this podcast. As a way of thanking our supporters for supporting this show, we're producing full length podcasts and offering other cool bonus rewards.
You can sign up to help our show at Patreon.com/curiositydotcom all spelled out. We'll also put a link in the show notes. Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.