Learn about how smartphones hurt your mental performance even when they’re off; how babies and adults laugh differently; and, a simple change you can make to your laundry routine to cut down on pollution. 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: Smartphones Dull Your Mental Performance — Even When They're Off — https://curiosity.im/2MLlvUQ Scientists Discovered a Simple Laundry Tweak That Can Cut Down on Ocean Pollution — https://curiosity.im/2Wg5lpu Additional sources: How do babies laugh? Like chimps! | EurekaAlert! — https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-11/asoa-hdb110118.php How do babies laugh? | The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America — https://asa.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1121/1.5068109 Only when I laugh: the science of laughter | The Guardian — https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2015/jul/06/only-when-i-laugh-science-laughter-sophie-scott-royal-physiological-society Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about how smartphones hurt your mental performance even when they’re off; how babies and adults laugh differently; and, a simple change you can make to your laundry routine to cut down on pollution.
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:
Additional sources:
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/smartphones-impair-you-even-when-theyre-off-eco-friendly-laundry-and-how-babies-laugh
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 how smartphones hurt your mental performance even when they’re off; how babies and adults laugh differently; and, a simple change you can make to your laundry routine to cut down on pollution.
CODY: Let’s save the environment! And also, let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Smartphones Dull Your Mental Performance — Even When They're Off — https://curiosity.im/2MLlvUQ (Ashley)
I’m about to give you a major reason to STOP keeping your phone around you all the time: smartphones dull your mental performance even when they’re off. I’ll say that again: your smartphone takes a cognitive toll just by being in the room with you. It doesn't even need to be powered on to do it. For a 2017 study, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin had more than 400 undergraduate students take a series of tests. The tests were designed to measure their cognitive capacity, and the students either kept their phones in their pocket, face-down on their desk, or in another room. And the students with their phones in another room performed significantly better than those with their phones near them. The researchers did the same experiment again, but this time half of the participants turned off their phones. But there was no difference in performance between having a phone turned on and turned off. Just the presence of it was enough to fog their brains. Okay, but we all know our smartphones are addictive, so it’s not like you can just stop keeping your phone on you, right? Well, experts recommend a few different ways to cut back and give yourself a little “digital detox.” First, set boundaries around when you use your phone. Make a rule that you don't check your phone when you're in bed, or you don't bring your phone to the dinner table. Second, shut off all your notification sounds. When you do that, you get to check your phone when YOU want to — not when your phone tells you to. And finally, test yourself. See how long you can go without your phone. Can you get through an hour-long TV show? A trip to the grocery store? A full day at work? The more you try, the more you may find that you're not as lost without it as you thought. [TONS OF AD LIBS]
Baby laughter script (from Mae) (Cody)
Baby laughter is obviously cuter than adult laughter, and it’s not just because babies are cuter to look at. New research shows that babies and adults actually laugh differently. Adults laugh mostly on the exhale, which is why when you laugh really hard, you might gasp for air. Babies laugh on the inhale and the exhale, which is more like how primates laugh. You could call it a less evolved approach.
These findings come from a research team based in the Netherlands that started by rounding up online footage of 44 laughing babies who were between 3 and 18 months. They had a group of more than 100 students evaluate each clip to determine how the laughter lined up with the babies’ breathing. The students found that the younger infants laughed on the inhale and exhale, but older and older kids laughed on the inhale less and less.
[Play clips from press release]
For us adults, it’s really hard to laugh on the inhale. Try it!
[Cohost attempts]
See?
There’s no clear reason why how we laugh changes with age. It could be, according to the researchers, that our laughter has something to do with what we’re laughing at — babies laugh more at physical humor like tickling and peek-a-boo, whereas adults laugh more about social norms and cultural taboos. It could also be that we gain more vocal control as we age. Next, the researchers plan to look into how babies breathe while they make other sounds to find out whether this phenomenon is specific to laughter.
For now, though, we should probably all stay humble — we used to laugh like monkeys.
[PAINT YOUR LIFE]
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by Paint Your Life.
[SEE AD COPY IN EMAIL / CODY AD LIB ABOUT WEDDING GIFT]
CODY: Message and data rates may apply.
Scientists Discovered a Simple Laundry Tweak That Can Cut Down on Ocean Pollution — https://curiosity.im/2Wg5lpu (freelancer 10/25) (Ashley)
When it comes to polluting our oceans, its plastics like straws and shopping bags that have captured headlines. But most of the plastic found in the ocean is so small, under 5 millimeters, that you can’t even see it with the naked eye. And a massive one third of that plastic comes from your laundry, thousands of tiny microplastics that get released from the fabric every time you wash a load.
Now, new research published in Environmental Science and Technology sheds light on how we can cut down on that laundry-day pollution.
While it was previously thought that the washing machine's agitation was the main cause of clothes shedding fiber, the new study found that the culprit actually comes down to the volume of water used during a wash cycle and, get this, delicate cycles do the most harm.
Of course, you’d hope the machines would filter the microplastics but most don’t have filters or the filters aren’t fine enough to catch plastic microfibers. Even treatment plants can’t catch them all, which is why they end up in the ocean.
So how about wearing only natural fabrics like cotton? After all, it’s only synthetic fabrics that are forms of plastic, right? Well they carry other environmental costs, like requiring large volumes of water to produce.
Materials company, PrimaLoft, is working on making biodegradable fabric by simply adding sugar to the fibers which encourages microbes in the ocean to feed on them.
But it's better to stop microplastics from reaching the ocean in the first place. A filter in development by a team at the University of Exeter traps about 75 percent of particles and breaks them down using genetically modified enzymes.
So hopefully we’ll have better solutions soon. Until that happens, try skipping the delicate cycle and using a high-efficiency washing machine. The oceans will thank you.
CODY: Okay, so why was today’s episode awesome?
how smartphones hurt your mental performance even when they’re off;
how babies and adults laugh differently; and,
a simple change you can make to your laundry routine to cut down on pollution.
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Ashley Hamer, Mae Rice, and Steffie Drucker, and edited by Ashley Hamer, our managing editor.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. This episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!