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: BACKBLAZE: Fully featured 15-day free trial of unlimited cloud backup for your Mac or PC, which you can get for just $5/month Stop Trying to Find Your Passion, Say Stanford Researchers — Do This Instead What's a Supermoon, Anyway? There Might Be a Universe Inside Every Black Hole To read more psychology research, check out her 2007 book "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success." For more on the beginnings of the universe, check out Stephen Hawking's classic "A Brief History of Time." The audiobooks are free with a 30-day trial of Audible. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase, Curiosity will get a share of the sale. Want to support our show? Register for the 2018 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2018 Learn more about these topics and more onCuriosity.com, and download our5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
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:
To read more psychology research, check out her 2007 book "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success." For more on the beginnings of the universe, check out Stephen Hawking's classic "A Brief History of Time." The audiobooks are free with a 30-day trial of Audible. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase, Curiosity will get a share of the sale.
Want to support our show? Register for the 2018 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2018
Learn more about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/supermoon-science-how-to-find-your-passion-and-universes-inside-black-holes
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three stories from curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you'll learn why you should care about the supermoon on July 13, how there could be a universe inside every black hole, and what Stanford researchers say you should do instead of trying to find your passion.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, would you say you've found your passion?
CODY GOUGH: Yes. No. I have no idea. How do you know when you've found your passion?
ASHLEY HAMER: Right.
CODY GOUGH: I'll stick with my question.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. According to these researchers actually and according to me-- I don't know. I don't really believe in there being one thing that your life is meant to do. You can be interested in a bunch of stuff and just follow those interests.
CODY GOUGH: Right. I like that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, a new Stanford University study says that actually finding your passion could be harmful. There are two schools of thought when it comes to passion for your interests. One is called fixed theory, and the other is called growth theory.
Fixed theory says that your passion is something that exists somewhere in the world, and you just have to find it. Growth theory says that you develop your passion and interests over time. Those terms might sound familiar because psychologist Carol Dweck came up with the growth mindset, and she conducted the series of experiments that led to this paper. You can read the full details of the experiments today on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
But the paper concluded that when you believe your passions and interests are fixed, you close yourself off from areas that might pique that interest. You might think you love chemistry, but never think about physics, for example. Or in my case, you might go to music school and never read a single science article and think that you're bad at science. But I didn't do that, right?
And even worse, if you think the day you find your passion is the day you stop having a hard time with things, then you're less likely to work harder to get through challenges, even if they're in your area of interest. Cody, that'd be like if you said you had a passion for podcasting and then thought producing a daily show would be a walk in the park.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. That's not how that works.
ASHLEY HAMER: Definitely. [CHUCKLES] So instead of trying to find that elusive passion, stay open to anything that might interest you.
CODY GOUGH: I have learned I really like educating. But when I was little, I wanted to be a teacher. But I am guessing a lot of people have learned a lot of stuff from this podcast.
ASHLEY HAMER: For sure.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm not a teacher. I don't go to school every morning and just have a classroom of a captive audience, but here we are.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. That's nice. Just to have a raison d'etre instead of like a single area of pursuit. Just have a theme for your life, but not individual activities that you go for.
CODY GOUGH: Exactly. There's one thing I never thought I would find a passion for educating people about. But guess what? I'm really into teaching people to do backing up the files on your hard drive because I got hacked, and I had to cough up a few hundred bucks to hackers to get my digital life back. So I'm happy to introduce today's sponsor, Backblaze, because they can help you stay safe.
ASHLEY HAMER: Backblaze offers cloud storage that's astonishingly easy, and it only costs $5 a month. That includes unlimited cloud backup for your research papers, documents, music, photos, and more.
CODY GOUGH: We use Backblaze to back up our podcast data. And I use it in case I lose my work laptop. And it only costs $5 a month.
ASHLEY HAMER: With Backblaze, you can access all your data anywhere in the world, even on your phone.
CODY GOUGH: Sign up today to get a fully featured 15-day free trial at backblaze.com/curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sign up, play around with the settings, and start protecting yourself from potential bad times.
CODY GOUGH: And seriously, stop putting it off. Backing up your data is so cheap and so easy and so just a few taps or clicks away. We've got a link in the show notes. Or one more time, that URL is backblaze.com/curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: There's no time like the present.
CODY GOUGH: Ashley, what do you know about supermoons?
ASHLEY HAMER: I know that a lot of people think that they do weird things to human bodies and behavior, and none of that's true.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, wow. That's more than I knew about supermoons.
ASHLEY HAMER: What did you know about supermoons?
CODY GOUGH: Nothing.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: Fortunately, we wrote about them because a supermoon is coming up on July 13, and there's another one coming up on August 11.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes. But there's a catch.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, what's the catch?
ASHLEY HAMER: They're new moon.
CODY GOUGH: What does that mean?
ASHLEY HAMER: That means that you won't be able to see them.
CODY GOUGH: Oh. When you say new moon, you mean dark?
ASHLEY HAMER: As in, yeah. So full moon, new moon, crescent moon-- you've got all the phases.
CODY GOUGH: Well, I'm really happy we wrote about supermoons and that you're an expert because now we can all learn together-- apparently especially me-- why we should care about them.
ASHLEY HAMER: Even when they're new moons.
CODY GOUGH: Yes. [CHUCKLES] So the moon orbits around the Earth, right? And it doesn't do that in a perfect circle. It moves around in the shape of an ellipse, so sometimes it's closer to us than other times.
Now when the moon or a satellite is in its orbit furthest away from us, it's at its apogee. Its closest point is called its perigee. That's why astronomers call these moons the perigean new moon or perigean full moon.
A supermoon traditionally is when the moon is at its perigee and it's a full moon at the same time. But these days, it's become known as a supermoon if it's at its perigee and it's a new moon. So full moon, new moon, doesn't matter as long as it's really close to us.
So what actually happens to Earth? How does this affect us? Why does this matter? Well, every time there's a full moon or a new moon, it means the Earth, moon, and sun are in a straight line.
Do you know how the moon affects how the ocean's tides move? Well, when we're all lined up with the sun, there's an even greater effect. And when the moon is closer to us, the moon's gravitational pull is stronger. So that makes the tides rise even more.
So when you get a full moon or a new moon with the perigee, or a supermoon, then you get perigean spring tides, which can seep 6 inches further up the shore than other times. That's a big change in tides. It's usually not dangerous for ships or anything, but it's still a cool reminder of all the cosmic forces that shape our world.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, have you ever wondered where the universe came from?
CODY GOUGH: Sometimes. And then I realize it's too big of a question, so I just watch TV or something.
ASHLEY HAMER: It is a big question. Well, we're going to tell you where some experts think the universe came from. Most experts agree that the universe started as an infinitely hot and dense point called a singularity. But that is also what people call black holes. So what gives?
Well, some physicists say the singularity in every black hole might give birth to a baby universe. Put another way, there might be a universe inside every black hole. See, black holes work in a similar way to how the Big Bang worked.
Stay with me here. Black holes form when a very massive star dies and its core collapses into a space so small that not even light can escape. This point of no return is called the event horizon, and it forms a sort of wrapping that doesn't let you see the actual singularity.
The event horizon gets bigger as matter falls into the black hole, rapidly at first then more slowly as matter falls in at a lower rate. Well, when the Big Bang happened, the universe expanded really rapidly. And then over time, the expansion slowed down. Sounds like a black hole's event horizon, doesn't it?
So the point of all of this is to say that our universe could be the event horizon in some other universe's black hole. And the math actually adds up. In fact, the black hole hypothesis is actually cleaner than the Big Bang hypothesis.
According to the Perimeter Institute, the Big Bang hypothesis, quote, "has a relatively comprehensible uniform and predictable universe arising from the physics destroying insanity of a singularity. It seems unlikely," unquote. The black hole hypothesis is a lot cleaner. Maybe we're just living in a universe within a black hole within a universe within a black hole within a universe. What's so complicated about that?
CODY GOUGH: That's so trippy.
ASHLEY HAMER: Very trippy.
CODY GOUGH: But now I'm more interested in black holes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Nice.
CODY GOUGH: This is pretty awesome.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. They're not just holes in the universe that just suck a bunch of stuff in. There's like a whole bunch of complex stuff that's happening in there. It's really cool.
CODY GOUGH: I will stop being so hard on black holes now.
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: To learn more about today's stories, you can check out curiosity.com, or sign up for our email list at curiosity.com/email to get all these stories delivered straight to your inbox, plus links to our podcast.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
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