Learn about new research that shows why you might enjoy watching TV more if you put your phone away. Then, learn about space elevators with Zach Weinersmith, creator of the popular geek webcomic “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.” In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about why you should get off your phone while you watch TV: https://curiosity.im/2SG8ZqZ Additional resources from Zach Weinersmith: Pick up “Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything” on Amazon — https://amazon.com Geek webcomic “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal” — https://www.smbc-comics.com/ Follow @ZachWeiner on Twitter — https://twitter.com/ZachWeiner 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 new research that shows why you might enjoy watching TV more if you put your phone away. Then, learn about space elevators with Zach Weinersmith, creator of the popular geek webcomic “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.”
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com about why you should get off your phone while you watch TV: https://curiosity.im/2SG8ZqZ
Additional resources from Zach Weinersmith:
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/space-elevators-w-zach-weinersmith-and-why-get-off-your-phone-when-you-watch-tv
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 new research that shows why you might enjoy watching TV more if you put your phone away. You’ll also hear from Zach Weinersmith, the cartoonist behind the popular geek webcomic “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal,” who joins us to help you learn about space elevators.
CODY: Let’s elevate some curiosity.
This Study Shows Why You Should Get Off of Your Phone While You Watch TV — https://curiosity.im/2SG8ZqZ (Cody)
CODY: New research suggests that when you’re watching TV, you should get off your phone! Whether you’re watching the Oscars, The Bachelorette, or your favorite sporting event (which for me is WWE Monday Night Raw), pulling up social media and live-tweeting can be addictive and immersive. And according to this new study from University of Connecticut, live-tweeting might be a little TOO immersive. More than half of 18- to 24-year-olds engage in social media for discussion while they watch television, and this research shows they're probably having less fun than they would without their second screens. What you’re doing here is called media multitasking. That’s when you’re doing two things at the same time, and one involves media use. Lots of research has shown that when you multitask with multiple screens, you split your attention, so you can’t really focus on either one. That’s why texting in the classroom means less learning. But instead of focusing on how you concentrate while you’re media multitasking, this study looked at how it impacted how you enjoy your media content. Specifically, the study relied on a concept called transportation theory. Here, transportation is basically that feeling you get when you read a good book, or watch a particularly scary show, or work on a fascinating project, and it feels like time flies away. You're immersed in an activity so completely that you don't realize other things are happening around you. This study invited groups of 5-8 students to watch an episode of “Friends” together in a room, and some just watched while the others live-tweeted with others. And even though all of their tweets were about the show, participants who tweeted experienced lower transportation, fewer positive and social emotions, and lower levels of enjoyment than those who simply watched the show without Twitter. Now, researchers DO think it’s possible to experience more enjoyment for people who perceive advantages to live-tweeting — like connecting with others or just staving off boredom. They suggest performing future studies that get closer to mimicking everyday life rather than using a lab setting to delve deeper into this question. But why even try to multitask if it's less effective and less enjoyable? The next time you sit down to watch a favorite show, try putting your phone away. Let the show transport you, and you may find that you like it even better than you did before. What do you have to lose? [ad lib]
Zach Weinersmith 1 - Economics of space, space elevators [4:50 - 2 segments] (Ashley)
ASHLEY: When it comes to space exploration, the biggest challenge may not be technology — it may be economics. And that’s according to our guest today, Zach Weinersmith. He’s the cartoonist behind the popular geek webcomic “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal,” and co-author of the new book “Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything.” All super-funny stuff. So today we thought we’d let Zach share his take on what’s holding us back from exploring the stars.
[CLIP 1:44]
ASHLEY: One way we might be able to make it a little cheaper to get to space is by using space elevators. We’ve mentioned them on this podcast before, but we wanted to know what Zach thinks about the idea after working on this book. Here’s what he told us.
[CLIP 3:06]
ASHLEY: Zach also told us that carbon nanotubes are “just good enough” to work, and that usually for structural usage, engineers recommend that you want something that’s a little bit better than being exactly good enough to work. But you never know where the technology will take us in the future, right? Again, Zach Weinersmith is the man behind the popular geeky webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and you can dig into space elevators and more in his new book, “Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything.” Zach is going to join us again tomorrow when we get into the world of bioprinting, and in the meantime, you can find links to more from Zach in today’s show notes.
CODY: Let’s recap what we learned today.
ASHLEY: Today we learned that while live-tweeting is fun, you might enjoy watching something more if you just give it your full attention.
ASHLEY: And that one of the biggest challenges in space travel is efficiency — and fortunately, scientists are working on ways to make it more sustainable all the time. Even if we haven’t cracked the code for making space elevators.
CODY: YET!
[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!