In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: The Butterfly Effect Is Why It's Impossible to Predict the Weather To dive deeper into chaos theory, check out "Chaos: Making a New Science" by Rob Shapiro and James Gleick: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/321477/chaos-by-james-gleick/ Here's How Scientists Are Using Machine Learning to Predict the Unpredictable "Eggcorns" Are Language Mistakes That Somehow Still Make Sense How to Handle It When You Get Emotional at Work, According to Science Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/the-butterfly-effect-is-why-we-cant-predict-weather-how-to-cry-at-work-and-eggcorns
CODY GOUGH: Hey, 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 Hammer. Today, you'll learn why it's impossible to predict the weather, what to do when you feel like you're going to cry at work, and why common language mistakes somehow still make sense.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, how about this weather, huh?
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: I will say I did not check the weather forecast and realized that it was going to be pouring rain this afternoon.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. And we happened to have a drainpipe going right through the room. But it's like a rain stick in here. It's weird. You just hear everything.
CODY GOUGH: Well, if the microphones pick it up, then listeners can just relax, like, it's one of those white noise machines--
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes, meditate.
CODY GOUGH: -that play in the rain forest.
ASHLEY HAMER: Mm-hm.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. No, I don't usually check the weather forecast, do you?
ASHLEY HAMER: I recently got an app that's making me a little bit more into it. It always gives me notifications when it's going to rain. But it's not always super accurate.
CODY GOUGH: I feel like meteorologists get a bad rap.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Well, they have a lot of challenges. If you've ever wondered why it's impossible to predict the weather, then you've come to the right place. A few months ago on our podcast, we talked about the butterfly effect. That's the idea that a butterfly can flap its wings in Brazil and set off a tornado in Texas.
The idea is that there are some things that even the most advanced science can never predict although scientists are trying to use machine learning to predict chaos. That's a different story, though, which you can find in a link in today's show notes.
So back to the butterfly effect. It came from meteorology Professor Edward Lawrence all the way back in the '60s. He was putting data into a computer program designed to simulate weather patterns. He'd already run this simulation. But this time, he rounded one of his 12 variables from .506127 to 0.506.
He went to get some coffee. And when he came back, he noticed that tiny change in data had led to a massive transformation, completely changing two months of simulated weather. This might sound like common knowledge today. But the discovery was huge. Scientists had thought that we could predict pretty much everything in nature as long as we had enough data as far back as the days of Isaac Newton.
This discovery showed that even the tiniest quirk could throw a whole system out of whack. The butterfly effect also gave rise to something called chaos theory, which you might remember from Jeff Goldblum's character in the movie Jurassic Park. It centers on hard to predict phenomena like animal populations, stock prices, and even human behavior.
Chaos always has its limits, so chaos is not randomness. But when it comes to chaos theory, even our best equations can't always nail 100% accuracy. And that's especially true of the weather. So don't be so hard on your local meteorologists. They're doing the best they can.
CODY GOUGH: Actually, has anybody ever summed up something for you by saying it's for all intensive purposes?
ASHLEY HAMER: I used to say that all the time.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: That was the way that I said it for many years.
CODY GOUGH: I think, maybe, I didn't notice it was wrong until I saw it in writing. And then I was like, that doesn't quite work because it's not what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be for all intents and purposes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right.
CODY GOUGH: Like, intent. So if you're chomping at the bit to learn more about phrases like this, then we've got some good news for you. You might be saying the wrong words. But people probably still understand what you're saying. And that's because you're using an egg corn.
Egg corn is a word or phrase that sounds like and is mistakenly used in a seemingly logical or plausible way for another word or phrase. You could also call it a slip of the ear. But the name comes from, you guessed it, linguists who are talking about a person who called acorns, egg corns. The thing is egg corns still makes logical sense, right? Acorns are shaped like eggs, and chickens lay eggs, and trees lay acorns. And that's how the term was born.
Again, all intensive purposes should be all intents and purposes. But here are some other common ones. You know how I said, chomping at the bit earlier? The phrase is actually champing at the bit. It comes from horse racing where a bit is part of the thing that goes in the horse's mouth and connects to the bridle and reins.
The horse doesn't chomp or bite the bit because the way it fits into its mouth, the horse can only grind teeth, which is what champing means, grinding teeth. You have to have something to bite if you want to chomp. But nobody uses champ, so here we are. You can find lots of other common egg corns in our full write up today on curiosity.com and on the curiosity app for Android and iOS.
But here are a few others. It takes two to tangle all should be, it takes two to tango. Neck in neck should be neck and neck. This day in age, should be this day and age. Real goal getter should be real go getter. And butt naked should be buck naked. And if you think you've got another thing coming, then well you've got another thing coming.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's the weirdest one to me.
CODY GOUGH: Because the song.
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, at this point, it is you've got another thing coming. If you said you've got another think coming to me, I would be like, what are you talking about.
CODY GOUGH: Well, I mean, sorry.
ASHLEY HAMER: Language changes. It's evolving.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: It's an egg corn.
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, have you ever cried at work?
CODY GOUGH: I don't think I've cried at work.
ASHLEY HAMER: I've totally cried at work.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: Actually, I've cried in this office.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, no.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Not because of the job. I had just gone through a really bad breakup. And something new just came up, as these things do, involving the breakup. And I was trying to keep it together. And my boss looks at me. And she goes, Ashley, are you OK? And, of course, whenever anyone says that to you when you're trying to keep it together, you lose it.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, no.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I burst into tears. And it was very embarrassing. And I walked out and just tried to get it together.
CODY GOUGH: I got a very distressing text once at work. And I just, noped right out of there.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, boy.
CODY GOUGH: I just left work. It was two in the afternoon. I don't even think I told anybody in my last job. It was a consulting firm. And I think I, literally, I closed my laptop, threw it on my bag, and just walked out because I was like, this is not going to happen.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. No, that's good.
CODY GOUGH: I'm going to have a meltdown. It's not going to be good. I just went home. And I think I sent an email later. But yeah, tricky situation.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's tricky. You don't want to cry. It's not professional to cry at work. Well, if you've ever felt the tears coming at work, and you didn't know what to do, science might have an answer. A team of business school professors from INSEAD, Cornell, Harvard, and University of Michigan ran a series of experiments that looked into the effects of reframing emotions at work.
They found that if you tell people you're crying out of passion, they'll see you as more competent than if you apologize or ignore the incident. Participants rated the passionate employee as 20% more competent than employees who had an outburst and didn't offer an excuse. The next best option was apologizing. This passion play isn't just for sensitive employees, by the way. Executives use it too. What kind of executives? Well, how about Elon Musk?
CODY GOUGH: Elon.
ASHLEY HAMER: He choked up at the start of an annual shareholder meeting when he thanked everyone for supporting Tesla and then added, quote, "this is going to sound a little cheesy, but at Tesla, we build our cars with love" unquote. So the next time you get emotional at work, don't ignore or just apologize for it. Say it's because you're feeling really passionate. You might still be embarrassed. But at least, your professional reputation won't take too much of a hit.
CODY GOUGH: Read about these stories and more today on curiosity.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow for the curiosity daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Ashley Hammer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
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