Learn about whether “text speak” harms your literacy skills; why the s’mores recipe isn’t as old as you think; and what lead does to the human body. 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: Does 'Text Speak' Harm Your Literacy Skills? — https://curiosity.im/2Jv4L2p The S'more Recipe Isn't as Old as You Think — https://curiosity.im/2xDnDpu This Is What Lead Does to the Human Body — https://curiosity.im/2xxVLD8 Want to support our show?Register for the 2019 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. After you register, simply select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (voting in other categories optional): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2019 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 whether “text speak” harms your literacy skills; why the s’mores recipe isn’t as old as you think; and what lead does to the human body.
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:
Want to support our show? Register for the 2019 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. After you register, simply select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (voting in other categories optional): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2019
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/smore-history-how-text-speak-affects-literacy-skills-and-what-lead-does-to-your-body
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 whether “text speak” harms your literacy skills; why the s’mores recipe isn’t as old as you think; and what lead does to the human body.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Does 'Text Speak' Harm Your Literacy Skills? — https://curiosity.im/2Jv4L2p (Cody)
These days, a lot of us spend our time texting and tweeting and posting things online. And that has some people starting to wonder: is all that “text speak” hurting our literacy skills? If you’re a parent, should you be worried that your kids will be putting emoticons in term papers instead of vocabulary words? Let’s look at some of the research into this. Back in 2009, renowned psychology researcher Dr. Michelle Drouin led a study on so-called "text speak" and literacy. 80 college students participated in the study, and more than half of them were worried that using text speak was hurting their ability to use and remember standard English. But their fears were unfounded: The study showed no significant differences in literacy scores or spelling ability between texters and non-texters. The texters also showed that they recognized the difference between occasions when text speak is appropriate, like in casual messages to friends, and when it's not, like in emails to their professors. Okay, but 2009 was an eternity ago, at least in internet terms. How about more recent research? In 2016, researchers from Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam reviewed previous work on texting (including Drouin's paper) and conducted their own study of grammar and texting, with Dutch 10- to 13-year-olds. They wanted to see how the use of what they called “text-ese” influenced children’s grammar, as well as their executive functions, like attention control, working memory, and planning. To do this, they collected data from 55 children and studied them for grammatical omissions. That basically refers to when words are missing. Instead of saying “I start to wonder whether I’m a really good friend,” you might say “Start to wonder whether am really good friend.” Thanks, Bridget Jones’s Diary. And the researchers found that the more grammatical omissions there were, the BETTER the children scored on a grammar test. They say this is because a texter needs to use their knowledge of grammar to know which words are okay to leave out. Basically, you’re playing around with the rules of language, and in order to do that, you need to have a firm grasp on the language you’re playing around with. You can think of text-speak as a separate register of English, one with its own set of rules. As a result, it's helping you think like a bilingual, and it stretches your understanding of grammar and vocabulary. And don’t worry: the team also found that using textese doesn't seem to impact executive functions at all, in either a positive or negative way. Texting doesn't make us dumber. If anything, it might even be making us smarter.
The S'more Recipe Isn't as Old as You Think — https://curiosity.im/2xDnDpu (from Wednesday) (Ashley) [FREELANCER]
Now that camping season is here in the U.S., let’s take a look at the surprising history of your favorite campfire treat: s’mores. Gooey roasted marshmallows and chocolate between two graham crackers… my mouth is practically watering just thinking about them. S’mores are short for “Some Mores,” and they’re such traditional, heavenly campfire treats, you might think they’ve been around forever. But they’re actually not that old — which is surprising, since their ingredients have been around for so much longer. It’s hard to understand why it took so long to figure out that these three ingredients are a match made in heaven.
The answer lies in how the ingredients themselves were transformed during the industrial revolution.
Believe it or not, marshmallows might be the oldest of all the ingredients. They were originally made by the Greeks from the sweet roots of the Marsh plant. In the 1850s, French chefs used the plant to create something closer to what we would recognize today. But it was only when companies began replacing the marshmallow plant with gelatin that puffy, white marshmallows were mass produced.
Chocolate has also been around for quite a while. Various Mesoamerican peoples cultivated and consumed cacao in a bitter beverage during divine rituals since at least 1400 BCE. Europeans couldn't really stomach it without added honey or cane sugar. Then in the 1800s, chocolatiers figured out how to reduce the fat content of the cocoa powder to allow it to congeal into a solid with incorporated milk and sugar.
Graham crackers came much later, in 1794. The eccentric Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham promoted a strict vegetarian diet with lots of fiber and unsifted wheat flower, because he said it would reduce lustful thoughts and sexual excess. Whether he actually invented the Graham cracker is a matter of debate, but recipes for the cracker appeared in cookbooks from 1882, 31 years after his death. Modern Graham crackers are nothing like Graham's original incarnation, though: They use bleached white flour, as well as plenty of sugar and honey.
Sweeter chocolate, gelatin marshmallows, and the invention of Graham crackers paved the way for the first appearance of the s’mores recipe, in a 1927 Girl Scouts Handbook. And we couldn’t be more thankful. Bon apetit!
This Is What Lead Does to the Human Body — https://curiosity.im/2xxVLD8 (from Wednesday) (Cody) (Republish - skip first-person anecdotes, esp. / also paragraphs 1 and 3, focusing on broader impacts and physiological effects)
CODY: You know what’s not as tasty as s’mores? Lead. In fact, don’t let lead in your body. EVER. In case you didn’t know, lead is toxic at any dose, and worse than that, your body has no ability to purge lead. Seriously. The body can expel most other toxins, but lead is just… there. And it serves no purpose. As reported by The Conversation, it mostly gets into our systems through ingestion or inhalation. That’s why getting rid of lead paint in children’s toys was such a huge deal. It can hit adults too, though, like the case of a hobbyist who made his own lead musket balls in his basement for Revolutionary War and Civil War re-enactments. Or, during a perhaps more common activity, one lead poisoning patient had been using a heat guy to strip lead paint in an old home. Check those levels before you start to remodel that new home! Once lead enters the body, it first flows through the bloodstream where it slowly crosses into various organs such as the kidneys, muscles, and brain. Lead is bad for humans because it interferes with enzymes inside the cells of these organs. This results in symptoms such as muscle and joint aches, as well as constipation and overall fatigue. And it damages our brains by interfering with how brain cells send messages and communicate. Honestly, the list of problems lead causes just goes on and on, so let’s focus on something more positive: treatments! There are actually multiple ways for us to get lead out of our systems. One treatment is called chelation [key-lation], which is when you’re given natural or approved pharmaceutical compounds that bind to toxic metals like lead. Just remember, though, that the first goal is to make sure you’re not exposed to toxins in the first place, and a key piece of that puzzle is lead. If you have questions about lead, you can read more in our full write-up on curiosity-dot-com and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS. Or make sure you get your information from reliable sites, such your state health department, the CDC, and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Stay happy and healthy!
ASHLEY: Before we recap what we learned today, we want to quickly remind you to please nominate Curiosity Daily to be a finalist in the 2019 Podcast Awards! Find a link in today’s show notes, or visit podcast-awards-dot-com, to register. Then find Curiosity Daily in the drop-down menus for the categories of People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. It’s free to vote and lead-free! And now, let’s recap what we learned today.
ASHLEY: Today we learned that “text speak” might actually improve your literacy skills.
CODY: And that the recipe for s’mores was several thousand years in the making.
ASHLEY: And that lead serves no purpose in your body, so you shouldn’t let it in there. Ever!
[ad lib]
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!