Entrepreneur, physicist, and author Safi Bahcall shares a simple trick for staying motivated in the face of adversity. You’ll also learn about why things sound louder in the morning and the science of the winter solstice. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com about the science of the winter solstice: https://curiosity.im/35jNGRv Additional resources from Safi Bahcall: Pick up “Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries” on Amazon — https://amazon.com Follow @SafiBahcall on Twitter — https://twitter.com/safibahcall Official Website — https://www.bahcall.com/ Additional sources: Q & A: Why are sounds louder at night? Does light affect sound? | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Physics — https://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=23198&t=why-are-sounds-louder-at-night-does-light-affect-sound Here's Why Sound Carries Farther on Cold Days | Curiosity — https://curiosity.com/topics/heres-why-sound-carries-farther-on-cold-days-curiosity/ Adaptation: Why your brain loves to tune out | BBC Future — https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120508-why-your-brain-loves-to-tune-out Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing! Just click or tap “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Entrepreneur, physicist, and author Safi Bahcall shares a simple trick for staying motivated in the face of adversity. You’ll also learn about why things sound louder in the morning and the science of the winter solstice.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com about the science of the winter solstice: https://curiosity.im/35jNGRv
Additional resources from Safi Bahcall:
Additional sources:
Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing! Just click or tap “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/staying-motivated-in-the-face-of-adversity-w-safi-bahcall-why-things-sound-louder-in-the-morning-and-winter-solstice-science
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, we’ll answer a listener question about why things sound louder in the morning. Then, you’ll learn about a trick to stay motivated, from physicist and entrepreneur Safi Bahcall. You’ll also learn about the science of the winter solstice.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
Listener question — Why things sound louder in the morning (Ashley)
ASHLEY: We got a listener question from Kendra, who writes, "During the school year, I’m up before everyone else in the house to get ready. However, it seems like everything I do is super loud, compared to the day. Somehow every floorboard I step on creaks, every door I shut slams, and I trip over everything. During the day, when I do these things they seem to not be as loud. Why is this?”
Great question, Kendra! To answer it, we need to think about what’s different super early in the morning from the middle of the day. It’s darker, right? It’s also probably a little bit colder. And of course, it’s quieter. At least one of these elements must be the reason, so let’s take them one by one. First off, light waves don’t affect sound waves, so let’s cross light off the list!
What about temperature? This one is...possible. Sound does carry farther in cold weather: basically, when a sound wave in the cold hits a pocket of warm air higher in the atmosphere, it bends and comes back down to the ground, which carries it farther. I could see an argument for the same thing happening indoors when you’ve had the heater off all night, but the scale is so much smaller that it seems unlikely — especially considering the fact that you already have a ceiling to bounce sound off of during the day!
No, in this case, it’s not physics — it’s you. You know how a scented candle smells amazing when you first light it, and then you just stop smelling it after a while? But when you light it again a week later — bam! — it smells amazing again? That’s an example of your brain adapting to a stimulus. Just like your nose with that candle, your ears hear so many sounds throughout the day that they just start tuning a lot of it out. They have to! Otherwise the world would sound deafening. But when you get up in the morning and your whole house is super quiet, your ears are no longer adapted to loud sounds. They’re ready to hear the creak of the floorboards and the slam of a door at full volume. The sounds were always that loud, but in the morning, your ears are especially ready to hear them. Thanks for your question, Kendra! If you have a question, send it in to podcast at curiosity dot com.
Safi Bahcall 5 SRT - Spirit, Relationship, Time advice [2:23] (Cody)
Sometimes on our podcast, we like to share advice from really successful people. And today we have a guest with some great advice on how to stay motivated, even during tough times. Ready to get psyched up? Our guest is Safi Bahcall, and he has quite the list of accomplishments. He’s a physicist, but he’s also a successful biotech CEO who took his company public. Oh, and he also worked for President Obama’s council of science advisors. So yeah, we figure his advice might be worth listening to. Safi told us that in tough times, you can keep your chin up and weather the storm by focusing on three things.
[CLIP 2:23]
Did Safi’s advice resonate with you? Well if it did, then I have some great news: You’ll hear from Safi again in January on a few episodes of Curiosity Daily. In next month’s miniseries, he’ll be doing a deep dive into a new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior. That’s the main focus of his new book, titled “Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas that Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries.” And you can find links to learn more about Safi and Loonshots in today’s show notes.
[NHTSA]
ASHLEY: Today’s episode is sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. CODY: Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash. People could get hurt or killed. But let’s take a moment to look at some surprising statistics.
ASHLEY: Almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol-impaired vehicle crashes. That’s one person every 50 minutes.
CODY: Even though drunk-driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades, drunk driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives each year.
ASHLEY: Many people are unaware that driving while high can be just as dangerous. In 2015, 42% of drivers killed in crashes tested positive for drugs. Not so harmless after all, is it?
CODY: And get this, from 2007 to 2015, marijuana use among drivers killed in crashes doubled. The truth is driving while high is deadly. So, stop kidding yourself. If you’re impaired from alcohol or drugs, don’t get behind the wheel.
ASHLEY: If you feel different you drive different. Drive high get a DUI.
CODY: Drive sober or get pulled over.
What Is the Winter Solstice, Anyway? — https://curiosity.im/35jNGRv (Ashley)
Every year, generally on December 21, the Northern Hemisphere experiences the winter solstice — the longest night of the year. But why does it happen? How is it so predictable? And what does it mean? We’ve talked about solstices on this podcast before, but on the eve of the 2019 winter solstice, we thought we’d dive in specifically into the details of what’s happening this weekend. And lucky for you, it's actually pretty easy to envision exactly how the solstices come around each year. Imagine you’re standing 20 feet away from a flashlight that’s shining right at you. And now, you’re spinning a basketball on your finger. If the basketball is balanced perfectly in the middle of that flashlight beam, then the upper and lower halves of the ball will get the same amount of light while they spin. But if the basketball is slightly tilted so that it spins around an angled axis, then the ball won't get the same amount of light everywhere. Instead, either the very top of the ball or the very bottom will never be illuminated. You probably see where this is going: that tilted basketball is the Earth, and the flashlight is the sun. In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice happens on the day that the northern half is leaning furthest from the sun. That also means that when it's the winter solstice in one hemisphere, it's the summer solstice in the other. Because the Earth stays tilted in the same direction even as it orbits, the solstices are always six months away from each other, seeing as they come up at halfway points on the journey around the sun. These days, the winter solstice doesn't have a lot of impact on our lives — other than maybe driving up your electric bill. But it does let us know that days are about to start getting longer. I don’t know about you, but I won’t mind a little more sunshine starting — appropriately — this SUN-day.
CODY: We have exciting plans for this podcast that we’d like to share before we wrap up! Next week on Curiosity Daily, you’re gonna hear some of our favorite stories from 2019 in ad-free episodes.
ASHLEY: We’ll be back with brand-new episodes starting January FIRST. And in addition to our series with Safi Bahcall, we have some other really cool things coming to Curiosity Daily soon. Like, earlier this month, we interviewed one of the guys who invented GPS. Yes, INVENTED it.
CODY: We’re also producing interviews we’ve already conducted with a handful of other authors, including Jaron Lanier, who literally invented the term “virtual reality.” It’s… gonna be a fun month.
ASHLEY: Stay subscribed to Curiosity Daily, and please tell your friends and family about our show! That’s the best gift you can give us this holiday season.
CODY: As for us, let’s give the gift of recapping what we learned today!
[ad lib optional]
CODY: Today’s stories were written by Ashley Hamer and Reuben Westmas, with editing and scriptwriting by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity.com.
ASHLEY: Additional scriptwriting today by Cody Gough. Curiosity Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Have a great weekend, and join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: Until then, stay curious!