Learn where you can catch the Taurids and Leonids meteor showers this month; how working out could boost your willpower; and where the world’s billionaires got their fortunes. 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: The Taurids and the Leonids Are Nature's Meteor Shower Double-Feature — https://curiosity.im/2DbZr2g Working Out Can Boost Your Willpower — https://curiosity.im/2Dc1ELd Marie Curie Got Her Education at the Flying University — https://curiosity.im/2Dh31be Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! Learn 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!
Learn where you can catch the Taurids and Leonids meteor showers this month; how working out could boost your willpower; and where the world’s billionaires got their fortunes.
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:
Please tell us about yourself and help us improve the show by taking our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron!
Learn 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/taurids-and-leonids-meteor-showers-willpower-boosting-workouts-and-marie-curies-secret-university
[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 about the Taurids and Leonids meteor showers happening later this month, how working out could boost your willpower, and the secret university where the Trailblazing Scientist Marie Curie got her education.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. November 2018 is an extra special month for meteor showers. Keep your eyes on the sky because the Taurids and the Leonids are here for a meteor shower double feature. I've never seen a meteor shower.
ASHLEY HAMER: I have. They're pretty great. They're hard to see here in Chicago when there's a ton of light pollution but yeah. If you just drive out into the country where the sky gets a little darker, you just see little streaks of light everywhere. It's beautiful.
CODY GOUGH: All right. Well, I would be jealous, but next month I'm going to be in Alaska.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, man.
CODY GOUGH: So I might see the northern lights.
ASHLEY HAMER: Heck, yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Wish me luck. Just need a clear day. But anyway, for the rest of us who are not going to Alaska in December, let's talk about what's happening this month, November 2018. Meteor shower month. It's great. We'll start with the Taurids. For this meteor shower, you can thank a giant ball of ice called Encke. That's not a comet that loops around the sun every 3.3 years, which is pretty often for a comet, hence why Encke is one of the comets we know the most about.
Encke isn't visiting us this year, but tiny chunks of it from previous years probably will. And that's what you can thank for the Taurids meteor shower. Most annual meteor showers come from the debris left in the wake of a comet that's traveling around the sun. And the Taurids are no exception.
Most of the meteors we see sparking across the sky will burn up by the time they hit our surface, but we think the ones left behind by Encke are big enough to survive. They won't be car crushingly huge, they'll be more like a couple of ounces. And still, it'll be worth it to keep your eyes peeled. None of these fragments have been discovered yet, but a NASA meteor expert told space.com that such a rock would be a Holy Grail of meteorites.
The Southern Taurids have already peaked, but you'll be able to see the peak of the Northern Taurids around Sunday, November 11. They'll be falling nearly all month long. So make sure you're keeping your eyes on the skies. At their peak, the Taurids come out at a pace of only about six per hour, but their size makes them bright enough to really stand out as long as your patience enough to wait.
The Leonids hit their peak about a week after the Taurids on November 17 and 18. When that happens, you can expect shooting stars at a rate of about 15 per hour. I know the peak is happening on a weekend, but if you want to get the best look, you want to wake up early and set your eyes on the sky about an hour before dawn. Otherwise, the waxing gibbous moon might get in the way. Whatever you do, don't forget to make a wish. That part's not science, but it's really fun. I promise.
ASHLEY HAMER: A recent study indicated that the more exercise you get, the more willpower you gain. Ready to get some sweet willpower gains?
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: Wow. Not the gains I expected this morning.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's gains with a Z. I just want to make sure everyone knows.
CODY GOUGH: I know, no. For sure, that yeah, no. I heard the Z right in there. Just so sick. The sickest gains. Do you find that you have more willpower you work out all the time?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Because I feel like anything you need willpower to do, once you start doing it enough, willpower starts to come as second nature and then you have more willpower across the board. That's what it feels like to me.
CODY GOUGH: And let's see if science agrees.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's see. So for a study published in the Journal, Behavior Modification, participants were asked to walk or run at a pace slightly above their comfort zone. They did this regularly over the course of seven weeks. Then, they were given a series of hypothetical choices. The choices were designed to test how willing the participants were to forgo instant gratification for a reward that would pay off in the long run.
Something like, would you rather have $10 today or $15 tomorrow? Across the board, the researchers found that the participants were more willing to take the delayed gratification option after being forced to push their limits. In fact, according to Corresponding Author Michael Sofis, quote, "Simply showing up to the workouts was strongly correlated with improvements in self control decision making." Unquote.
So if you're struggling to find the motivation to work out at the gym, the answer might be just to show up in your workout clothes until that motivation finds you. Although, this study does come with a few caveats. First, the study didn't use a control group. Second, almost all the participants were women. So a bigger version of this study would be good for getting a better idea of how this phenomenon works for everybody.
The other thing is that those delayed gratification choices were purely hypothetical and there's a big difference between making the right choices and just saying you'd make the right choices. Still, though, it's a promising result, and if it gets us to the gym, it's probably a good thing in the long run.
CODY GOUGH: I get it. The long run because you're a marathoner.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right.
CODY GOUGH: Before we get to our last story, I want to give a special shout out to some of our patrons for supporting our show. Thank you Maximilian [INAUDIBLE], Brianna Webster, Doug Hench, and Jeres [INAUDIBLE] for contributing to our Patreon page. You are a vital part in helping us keep the show going. If you're listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit Patreon.com/curiositydotcom, all spelled out.
ASHLEY HAMER: Even a couple of bucks a month would be a huge help. That's less than a visitor's pass to the gym. And our patrons get lots of exclusive stuff like bonus interviews and they get to hang out with us on Discord all day.
CODY GOUGH: It's super fun chatting with our curious listeners.
ASHLEY HAMER: One more time, that's Patreon.com/curiositydotcom.
CODY GOUGH: Marie Curie was a super accomplished scientist, but did you know that she got her education from a secret university? Today we've got the scoop on how she beat the odds to become one of history's most notable scientists.
ASHLEY HAMER: She's the one that everybody names when you ask someone to name a woman scientist. She's it. She's at the top of the list.
CODY GOUGH: Just to be clear, Marie Curie was a trailblazing scientist in more ways than one. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win more than one Nobel Prize, and the only person who has ever won a Nobel Prize in two different sciences. But she had a heck of a time getting an education in late 19th century Poland.
See, at the time, the country had been divvied up by its three big neighbors-- Russia, Prussia, and Austria. They set up a process called Germanization or Russification depending on which part of Poland you were in. Whatever you want to call it, it was a way to make it pretty much impossible to find an education that did not do its best to erase the Polish National identity.
Oh, and the program also said women were banned from going to college. Not so good. But in 1882, a secret conspiracy started to fight back. The Flying University. There was a group of professors, philosophers, and historians who traveled from private home to private home teaching the stories the government wouldn't let them teach. The resistance didn't just battle anti-Polish racism though, it also helped educate women like Marie Curie.
The early days were pretty disorganized, but in 1885, the university started to pay its instructors, build its own library, and even developed an actual codified curriculum that covered the sciences, history, math, and more. By the 1890s, the school had expanded to more than 1,000 students, including Curie and her sister. The school kept holding secret classes until about 1905, just ahead of World War I.
At that point, the Russian and Germanic ruling forces started to chill out a bit because they wanted to get on the good side of the population. So the university started to operate publicly as the society of science courses, which later became the Free Polish University until it disbanded in 1952. And of course, by that time, Marie Curie had become an accomplished scientist and the rest, as they say, is history.
ASHLEY HAMER: Read about today's stories and more on curiositydotcom.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow with the award-winning Curiosity Daily, and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
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