Today we discuss how only four minutes of small talk with a stranger can help you predict their personality traits, an exciting biodegradable battery option on the horizon, and a new discovery into the origins of dragons!
Today we discuss how only four minutes of small talk with a stranger can help you predict their personality traits, an exciting biodegradable battery option on the horizon, and a new discovery into the origins of dragons!
Small Talk
Crab Battery
Ancient Dragons
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Find episode transcripts here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/small-talk-crab-battery-ancient-dragons
NATE: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. Time flies when you’re learnin’ super cool stuff. I’m Nate.
CALLI: And I’m Calli. If you’re dropping in for the first time, welcome to Curiosity, where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you’re a loyal listener, welcome back!
NATE: Today you’ll learn about how only four minutes of small talk with a stranger can help you predict their personality traits, an exciting biodegradable battery option on the horizon, and a new discovery into the origins of dragons!
CALLI: Without further ado, let’s satisfy some curiosity!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: In what might be potentially sad news for introverts, a recent study has revealed that small talk has the power to make the world a better place.
CALLI: Ugh, I’m not really big on small talk, Nate, so consider me a skeptic. I’m not a fan of the, “How’s the weather, how was your day?” kind of stuff. But tell me how this works.
NATE: Well, it’s simple, Calli. After just four minutes of chit-chat, kinda like the talk we’re having now, an exchange of idle pleasantries, can help us better understand each other. For instance: we reveal if we’re extroverted or introverted. We help people not only figure out how WE interact as people, but how to finetune their own interactions in the future.
CALLI: Well… I’m gonna be honest, that seems really obvious. Talking to people equals getting to know people, right?
NATE: Exactly. But the key distinction here is, in a round of small talk, we’re not getting to know what a person LIKES… we’re learning what they’re LIKE. And by learning what people are like, it helps us figure out social cues, or how to communicate better with each other in general.
CALLI: Ahhhh. Okay. Okay! That makes a bit more sense, maybe I can get on board with this. So how did they figure this out?
NATE: As always, it started with a study. The researchers got together 338 participants, split them up into two groups, and had each one of them do a personality and IQ test. Then, they paired them up and had them engage in a four minute convo over text… or, they had them ignore their partner.
CALLI: I think I’m more used to the latter myself.
NATE: Well, yeah me too probably. Next up, the participants played a little game where they had to guess aspects of their partner’s personality. For instance, how extroverted are they? How generous? How positive?
CALLI: Or how sarcastic they are?
NATE: Yeah yeah, stuff like that. Then, they had to play a few strategy games based around money. Games like Monopoly. And they had to predict whether their partner would act in cooperation, or whether they would act more selfishly.
CALLI: But in a game setting aren’t you supposed to be a little selfish?
NATE: Well, what was measured was actually the level of socializing between partners. If teams chatted, they scored higher on predicting each other’s IQ and personality test answers.
CALLI: No surprise there.
NATE: Ah, but there’s a catch! They ALSO were more likely to project their own personality traits onto their partner.
CALLI: Got it. So it’s like, if I guess that you, as in you Nate, are a nice person, but you’re not actually, it’s because I’m a nice person and I just projected that onto you?
NATE: Well, first of all OUCH, rude. But second of all, exactly. And it only took four minutes on average for teams to figure these things out about each other.
CALLI: That short of a time, huh?
NATE: Yes. But that wasn’t the extent of the study. Next up, participants met up and played more games with their texting buddy. If they were part of the no-contact group, they were paired with a stranger. Each participant was given 20 bucks, and asked to pitch into a communal pot with their partner. They called this part of the experiment the “public goods game.” With all the pieces in place, it was here that scientists were able to truly measure how effective their past small talk was.
CALLI: Drumroll for the results, Nate. Buhbubhbubbubbub….. I cant do a drumroll.
NATE: Haha no kidding. And the result was… well, not very shocking. Those who chatted with their partners were able to predict how much money each partner would throw into the public good pot. In fact, on average, people who knew their partners contributed around 30% more than those who gamed it up with strangers.
CALLI: All of this because of small talk? Remind me again: how many participants took part in this?
NATE: 338! And for virtually everybody that paired up with someone else, we saw the same results. If you were more sociable, you were more generous and more open.
CALLI: Well, that’s promising. But what about those of us that absolutely cannot stand small talk?
NATE: I mean, the researchers themselves get it. People find small talk unbearable because sometimes it seems like the conversation will never end. Even the information revealed can seem pointless, awkward even. But instead of feeling trapped in the conversation, use it as an invitation. Ask follow-up questions. Expand the pleasantries. There’s a certain trait we could all use a little bit more of, Calli, and that trait is…
CALLI: Nate, don’t say it. Please don’t say it. PLEASE don’t say it.
NATE: Okay Calli, I won’t say the word… CURIOSITY.
CALLI: gaHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
[SFX: WHOOSH]
CALLI: If you’ve ever wondered why batteries aren’t as sustainable as they could be, then you’re in good company. Scientists agree, and recent exploration into the science of crab and lobster shells may have found a solution.
NATE: I mean, I know it’s not what you’re talking about, but you just gave me a mental image of the Energizer Bunny, but instead of a bunny, it’s just a lobster with a big battery for a shell. Just pinching and pinching…
CALLI: You might be surprised how close that actually is to reality. Crabs, shrimps, lobsters, and other crustaceans have exoskeletons made of cells containing chitin that make their shells harder. You can actually find chitin everywhere you look, like in fungi and insects, but nobody ever thought to use it for batteries - until now.
NATE: But you said it makes the shells HARD, right? So the batteries would be less likely to be disposable. Isn’t that the opposite of eco-friendly?
CALLI: So you’d think, but scientists chemically processed the chitin and added in something called “acetic acid aqueous solution,”
NATE: Vinegar, that’s vinegar isn’t it?
CALLI: Yeah, they synthesized it into something softer and more gel-based to use as an electrolyte for a battery. So, not the exterior like you were thinking, but the electrolyte, which is the liquid, paste, or gel inside a battery that helps ions travel between one end and the other of a battery, allowing it to store energy.
NATE: Okay. That makes a LOT more sense. This is pretty interesting, Calli, tell me more, tell me more.
CALLI: Slow down. The next thing they do is combine this electrolyte with zinc. And the results? A renewable battery that’s 99.7% energy efficient, even after 1,000 battery cycles.
NATE: Oooh, 1,000 huh? That’s good… right?
CALLI: 1,000 battery cycles is equal to 400 hours, Nate. And I don’t mean consecutive hours… that’s 400 hours of use, period, which depending on how you use the battery, could mean up to three years of use. And let me be clear… the battery only drops .3% in efficiency AFTER 400 hours.
NATE: Hot dog! That’s a long lasting battery! Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s bad for a battery to be consistently used, right? I ask only because a friend left old batteries in their remote for too long and they exploded.
CALLI: Yeah, your poor “friend.” That can happen because once a battery reaches high current density, which is what happens after anywhere from 500 to 1,200 battery cycles, it starts to break down. That doesn’t happen with the crab chitin infused batteries.
NATE: Right right right, you’re talking about how batteries will burst open after extended use, right?
CALLI: Exactly. Which leads me to another perk of this battery: normal batteries are flammable, and therefore dangerous when the breakdown happens. The crab batteries? Not flammable at all. On top of that, most of the battery can break down in the soil due to, hang on, microbial degradation in only five months, leaving behind the zinc… which is recyclable!
NATE: What! So I get a cool crab battery that lasts forever, and when I’m old and gray one day when it dies, I can even get a few bucks recycling what’s left?!
CALLI: I mean, zinc’s only worth 31 cents per scrap as of 2022, but go for it, Nate. So let me make this clear: the crab chitin batteries are respectful to the environment, cheap to make, last practically forever, and are mostly biodegradable.
NATE: Consider me sold, Calli. But out of curiosity… how does this compare on a biodegradable level to a normal battery you can buy right now?
CALLI: Well, the chemicals used in normal batteries, like lithium-ion, can take hundreds or thousands of years to break down. Like I mentioned before, they're also corrosive and flammable. There are countless stories you can find online about everyday batteries that burst into flames on airplanes, or started fires at recycling centers because they were laying around in the sun.
NATE: And the crab batteries don’t do any of that.
CALLI: The crab batteries don’t do any of that.
NATE: Well Calli, I think I’m going to crab walk my way to the store to get one of these now.
CALLI: Yeah, unfortunately, the study is still years away from being ready for mass distribution, Nate. The best you can do is crab walk to your desk and look up more details online about when the experiments progress to that point.
NATE: I’m gonna see if I can go patent a battery-powered lobster.
CALLI: You do that.
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: We’ve talked a lot about dragons on this show, Calli, and we’ve come to the conclusion before that fire breathing winged dragons are maybe possible, but not probable. But what if I told you that a recent discovery has revealed that aside from the fire breathing, it turns out that there were once dragons that could soar through the sky?
CALLI: I’d remind you that we discovered, together, that they’d have to be really tiny to pull off anything with wings. Gravity is still a major factor on this planet!
NATE: And so I’m pleased to inform you that the creatures are in fact tiny, and they for sure existed. But they didn’t fly - they glided. Say hello to the Coelurosauravus elivensis.
CALLI: What?
NATE: It’s a mouthful… they used thin membranes extended from its torso to its front limbs to create a winglike structure to glide from treetop to treetop like a flying squirrel!
CALLI: Aw, that sounds… cute? Like, in a weird way? How did they discover this guy? I feel like he sounds a little familiar…
NATE: Well, that’s the thing: the first fossils of this reptile were discovered way back in 1907, but paleontologists had no idea how the thing had evolved to glide from tree to tree. It was only four inches long, as big as a human hand. But recent research has allowed scientists to discover the truth of the world’s first gliding reptile.
CALLI: Let me guess - radioactive sludge, and ninja training from a wise old rat!
NATE: Unfortunately, these aren’t the Ninja Turtles, Calli. And anyway, ninja turtles can’t fly, they ride skateboards. The real answer is that there were forests where trees are so close together that the treetops overlap.
CALLI: Oh. That’s… much less interesting than the Ninja Turtles.
NATE: Especially if you’re like an eight year old. Okay, but get this: this actually created an environment where animals could move around from tree to tree without ever needing to come to the ground where the predators were. Through thousands of years of evolution, the dragons began to glide so they could get from point A to point B more efficiently. As the trees grew further apart, the dragons developed the ability to glide further and further.
CALLI: Like a little parkour dragon.
NATE: Yes. They were even good enough climbers that could move up and down tree trunks easily in case they had to get any food from the ground.
CALLI: Ok that is pretty cool. Now tell me the story of how they figured this out, oh parkour dragon expert.
NATE: Not the expert, just the messenger here. But what the researchers did was reconstruct our parkour dragon friend’s skeleton from three sets of fossils. One set, from Madagascar, made up about 90% of the skeleton, but was missing enough to require the other two. It was through this reconstruction that the researchers actually figured out, for the first time, WHERE the patagia, or wing-like structures, even went on the body.
CALLI: You mean, they weren’t behind the shoulders or arms?
NATE: Interestingly, they were much lower on the creature. Like somewhere between the sternum and pelvis. This is interesting because there are other gliding lizards still alive today, like the Draco lizards of Southeast Asia, whose gliding apparatus are much higher up near their ribs.
CALLI: Mmmm, so they evolved differently?
NATE: That's the fun part: they might not even be directly related. Obviously, both are gliding lizards, but evolution took its course by making otherwise similar creatures develop similar, yet fundamentally differently formed, traits. This is actually called “convergent evolution.”
CALLI: A good thing to know if it’s ever a Jeopardy question. But tell me, Nate: what’s the bigger picture here? Why should we care about our little parkour dragon?
NATE: Because it completely recontextualizes the history of what we know about dragons. Not only are these the earliest known gliding vertebrates, they also represent the only known vertebrates with a torso aligned with a gliding apparatus. I highly doubt this is the end of the line, either; we talk about new discoveries like this seemingly every day!
CALLI: Well, hopefully next time we talk about dragons, it breathes fire, it flies, and it was created by radioactive sludge.
NATE: You really just want a House of the Dragon and Ninja Turtles mash-up, don’t you?
CALLI: Science, make it happen, so we can talk about it!
[SFX: WHOOSH]
NATE: Let’s recap what we learned today to wrap up. If you want to understand the world a little better and maybe make a few friends in the process, new research suggests that you should embrace the art of small talk. On average, people participating in small talk were more sociable, more generous, and most of all, more CURIOUS.
CALLI: Who knew crab shells were the answer to creating a more ecologically friendly battery? With chitin, a substance found in most crustacean shells, researchers have discovered a way to make a battery that lasts longer, is cheaper to make, AND is two-thirds biodegradable, one-third recyclable!
NATE: A recent discovery of an ancient gliding dragon has called into question a lot of what we know about dragons on Earth. Unfortunately it didn’t breathe fire, but it did develop a gliding mechanism around its torso, making it a bit of an anomaly in an evolutionary sense!