Learn how your voice changes when you talk to someone attractive; how the cinchona cure for malaria turned into a popular cocktail; and how to figure out whether your work is a job, a career, or a calling. 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: Your Voice Changes When You Talk to Someone Attractive — https://curiosity.im/2EekKk6 Here's How a Malaria Cure Turned Into Your Gin and Tonic — https://curiosity.im/2StDCPb Is Your Work a Job, Career, or Calling? — https://curiosity.im/2Eg6XJX 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! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom 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 how your voice changes when you talk to someone attractive; how the cinchona cure for malaria turned into a popular cocktail; and how to figure out whether your work is a job, a career, or a calling.
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:
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! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
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/voice-changes-when-youre-charmed-work-motivation-types-and-gin-and-tonic-curing-malaria
[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 how your voice changes when you talk to someone attractive, how a cure for malaria turned into a popular cocktail, and how to figure out whether your work is a job, a career, or a calling.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily. Did you know that your voice changes when you talk to someone you find attractive? If you're talking with a slightly lower than normal speaking pitch, it may mean you think the person you're talking to is a babe. Honestly, my favorite part about this story is knowing what to listen for in other people.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. But the problem is that when you meet someone for the first time, you don't know what their regular speaking voice is.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, very true.
ASHLEY HAMER: So if they always speak to you in a low voice and then you hear them speak to someone else, that's when you know.
CODY GOUGH: Yes. Anyway, [CHUCKLES] this idea comes from a couple of different studies. A 2010 study published in the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior found that people subconsciously tweak the pitch of their voice when they're chatting with someone they think is good-looking. Both heterosexual men and women tended to lower their voices if they found their opposite sex conversation partner attractive.
This surprised the researchers because they thought the men would lower their voices but women would raise theirs. Not the case. In a study from way back in 1979 bears this out. That study asked participants to simulate a, quote unquote, "sexy voice." And both of the men and women in the study greatly decreased the pitch of their voices, with females lowering the frequency of their voices even more than the men did. According to that study, quote, "This suggests that the motivation to display a sexy, seductive female voice may conflict with the motivation to sound more feminine and/or reproductively fit," unquote.
In terms of why we find attractive people, well, attractive in the first place, there's at least one scientific explanation. From a science standpoint, beauty is almost like a language that conveys information about health and fertility. From a survival standpoint, finding a healthy, fertile mate is your best chance at successfully spreading your genes. Producing offspring is the main evolutionary objective for living beings after all. But hey, like whenever you want to like. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and in the ear.
ASHLEY HAMER: There is a single plant that was at the center of multiple empires throughout human history. Meet the most important plant you've never heard of, the cinchona.
CODY GOUGH: Actually, you may have heard of it on a previous episode because we briefly mentioned it while talking about gin and tonic and seltzer water and other things. But we'll get back around to that.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure. Here's the story. In the 15th and 16th century, the Spanish began pouring into the Americas, and they brought malaria with them. There was no cure at the time either. Not good.
Before malaria started to spread in the Americas though, the Quechua peoples of the Andes were using a natural cure for fevers, the bark of the quina tree. Spanish colonizers saw that the bark helped to cure non-malarial fevers, so they tried it out. And from that moment up until the mid-20th century, quina became the only known cure for malaria.
The tree was named cinchona, but its ground bark was given the name quinine. Quinine made its way back to Europe. And as the Spanish continued to take over the Americas, they started to tightly regulate their control over quinine. After all, they'd have a distinct upper hand in international affairs if they were able to control the spread of malaria.
In fact, in 1778, Spain made it illegal to export quinine from its territories under penalty of death. Still, British and Dutch colonists were able to smuggle out plants. And they started growing their own forests of cinchona in places like India. Even as the Age of Exploration faded and the great multicontinental empires cracked and crumbled, revolutionary icons relied on the plant. Simon Bolivar even incorporated it into Peru's coat of arms.
Quinine was the only effective treatment for malaria for a few hundred years, but it tasted bitter and unpleasant. So people came up with ways to mask the taste. Most of those strategies involved alcohol.
In England, the most popular way to take the medicine was a carbonated mixture of quinine, sugar, and water-- today known as tonic. That's right. The same stuff that used to be a matter of life and death for colonizers around the world is now served with gin and lime in a highball glass. We have to admit, there are worse ways to keep yourself healthy. Just always drink responsibly.
CODY GOUGH: Today's episode is sponsored by Purple Mattress.
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ASHLEY HAMER: With Purple Mattress, you can get a 100-night risk-free trial. And if you're not fully satisfied, you can return your mattress for a full refund.
CODY GOUGH: It's backed by a 10-year warranty, and you'll also get free shipping in returns and free in-home setup and old mattress removal.
ASHLEY HAMER: You're going to love Purple. And right now, Curiosity Daily listeners will get a free Purple Pillow with a purchase of a mattress. That's in addition to the great free gifts they're offering sitewide. Just text "curious" to 474747.
CODY GOUGH: The only way to get this free pillow is to text "curious" to 474747.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's C-U-R-I-O-U-S to 474747. Message and data rates may apply.
CODY GOUGH: When you go to work, would you say it's a job, a career, or a calling? According to one study, the way you see your work can say a lot about how satisfied you are with it. And since work takes up about a third of our lives, that can have a pretty big impact on your overall happiness.
So let's get into a few different ways you can view your work and a way to change how you think about it, if you want to. These guidelines come from a study of about 200 workers in the late '90s. The researchers in that study came up with three primary ways a person can see their work-- a job, a career, or a calling.
A job means you see your work as a way to pay the bills and do the stuff you want, like pay for plane tickets, go to concerts, all that stuff. Basically, you're working for the weekend. A career means you're laser focused on advancement at work. You are focused on getting raises, getting promotions, and getting more power. Your current role is probably just a stepping stone to a better one. And finally, a calling means you focus on enjoyment or meaning, or both, that you draw from your work.
Now what's interesting is that in this study, participants' responses were split almost equally across job, career, and calling, even within a specific position. The authors of the study hypothesized that the way you see your work might depend more on your personality than on the type of work that you actually do. And you should be able to shift the way you see your work even just by reflecting on why your work matters to other people.
Now if you're not sure how you view your work, then you can take a quiz from the University of Pennsylvania that's similar to the one used in the study I've been talking about. There's a link to that in our full write-up on curiosity.com and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS. And you can find a link to that in today's show notes. As for us, I didn't take the quiz, but I'm pretty sure I'm working where I feel my calling. And correct me if I'm wrong, but, Ashley, perhaps you were in the same boat?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. For the calling part of the quiz, the score is between a zero and a 3, and I got a 3.
CODY GOUGH: There you go.
ASHLEY HAMER: I think that's pretty much right.
CODY GOUGH: Nice.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow with the award-winning 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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