In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com — and talk to astrophysicist Katie Mack about black holes — to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Performing Meaningless Rituals Can Improve Your Self-Control There Are at Least 4 Ways a Black Hole Could Kill You What's The Difference Between Ice Cream, Gelato, Frozen Custard, Frozen Yogurt, And Others? More from Dr. Katherine “Katie” Mack, theoretical astrophysicist and cosmologist: Katie Mack's official website Research website Blog: The Universe, in Theory YouTube series "Pint in the Sky" "Pint in the Sky" podcast If you like black holes, you'll love the story of how scientists first detected gravitational waves. That's beautifully told in "Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space" by Janna Levin, a theoretical astrophysicist and award-winning writer. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase, Curiosity will get a share of the sale. Learn 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 — and talk to astrophysicist Katie Mack about black holes — to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
More from Dr. Katherine “Katie” Mack, theoretical astrophysicist and cosmologist:
If you like black holes, you'll love the story of how scientists first detected gravitational waves. That's beautifully told in "Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space" by Janna Levin, a theoretical astrophysicist and award-winning writer. We handpick reading recommendations we think you may like. If you choose to make a purchase, Curiosity will get a share of the sale.
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/ways-black-holes-can-kill-you-w-katie-mack-rituals-to-improve-self-control-and-ice-cream-types
[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 performing meaningless rituals can improve your self-control, the difference between ice cream, gelato, frozen custard, frozen yogurt, and other delicious frozen foods, and you'll hear again from astrophysicist, Katie Mack, as we explore some distinctly different ways that a Black hole could kill you.
CODY GOUGH: Well, let's satisfies some morbid curiosity.
[SWOOSH]
Ashley, do you have any meaningless rituals, like before a race or anything?
ASHLEY HAMER: No, not really.
[LAUGHS]
I'm pretty-- I actually have before at race stuff. I actually don't have any rituals, which is weird. A lot of people have the dinner they always have before a race, or the lucky shirt they always wear, or something. But I don't really have anything like that. But I feel like you could probably have guessed that about me.
CODY GOUGH: You never know.
[LAUGHS]
I'm not generally a very superstitious person. So I don't really do a lot of meaningless rituals. But a new study says that performing meaningless rituals can actually improve our self-control. So maybe we should start thinking about doing meaningless rituals.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: And in this context, a ritual is defined as a fixed episodic sequence of actions characterized by rigidity and repetition. The study looked at the effects of rituals in five different situations. In one, for example, undergraduate women who are trying to lose weight performed a ritual before each meal. They would cut their food into small pieces, arrange it symmetrically on their plate, and then press each piece three times with a fork. And the people who perform the ritual ate way fewer calories on average than the other participants.
Other situations in the study had people perform meaningless rituals before picking a snack. And they would end up choosing a carrot instead of a chocolate truffle. And in a non-food related situation, when they perform a meaningless ritual before deciding whether to say go to a fundraiser or a friend's party, participants picked the fundraiser. The more responsible choice. In situations that had nothing to do with self-control, though, rituals didn't have any impact on the choices people made. So why is this?
We don't know for sure. But one theory is that performing a ritual puts us in a ritual stance where we're doing something for the sake of doing it correctly and precisely. Like if you follow a cooking recipe exactly as it's written. That's versus an instrumental stance where you're more focused on the outcome, not the process. You might play around with the recipe more based on what ingredients you have on hand in an instrumental stance.
Other studies have shown that spending time in a ritual stance can improve your focus, memory, and self-control. So if you've got a bad habit you're trying to kick, then try adding a ritual to your routine and see what happens.
[SWOOSH]
ASHLEY HAMER: I talked to theoretical astrophysicist, Katie Mack at a conference in New York a couple of weeks ago. And we had a really cool conversation about Black holes. It turns out there's not one, not two, but at least four different ways a Black hole could kill you. So let's talk Black holes.
Just for some background, Black holes form when a massive object like a star collapses and squeezes all of its mass into an impossibly small point with infinite density. And that's called a singularity. The closer you get to that singularity, the more likely it is that you won't be able to escape. Because you need to be faster than the speed of light to ever escape a singularity. The point that defines where you can and can't escape is called the event horizon. So got that?
The most famous way that you could die in a Black hole is called spaghettification. And that's when you fall into the Black hole and that gravity pulls so hard on you that you just get stretched and stretched and stretched basically, into a noodle. But of course, the human body isn't made of rubber. So you'd break in half. And then those pieces would stretch and stretch and stretch. And you just keep getting stretched for basically, all of eternity.
But there are actually a bunch of ways that you could die before you even get into the Black hole. Black holes are black, right? They're invisible. We've actually never seen a Black hole by itself.
The Black holes that we know exist have been observed, because they have this disk of material that has built up so much friction that it actually emits light. And that's called the accretion disk. And that has a ton of radiation in it. And that could kill you.
CODY GOUGH: Why is there so much radiation in it?
ASHLEY HAMER: It just radiates x-rays. That's just the flavor of radiation that it emits when it heats up.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, wonderful.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. But also, if it's a supermassive Black hole, like the one at the center of the Milky Way, then it will have this gigantic beam of plasma that is blasting from each end. That's because the accretion disk creates so much friction that it heats up into magnetized plasma that combines with the gravity to create this blinding pillar of death that just erupts.
[LAUGHS]
So that would be pretty dangerous. And that, you could be very far away from the Black hole and still get zapped by that.
CODY GOUGH: So it's like a plasma jet that comes out of the x-rays?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Finally, there's a theoretical quantum physics thing that could kill you called a firewall, which is basically something that some scientists came up with to fix some problems that we have with Black holes. But in essence, there's a theory that once you get past the event horizon, you just are incinerated and cease to exist.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, OK.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Having said all that, here's what Katie Mack said to wrap up our conversation.
[SWOOSH]
KATIE MACK: That said, we don't really understand at the moment how physics works in these regimes. And it's possible that there's some more complicated thing that happens once you're past the event horizon. People have talked about something called a fuzz ball, which is where you have some string theory effect going on inside the Black hole. We don't know what that would do to you. It's probably not a good thing. But we don't know what it is.
So once you get past the event horizon, you're going to die. We just don't know exactly what it looks like.
ASHLEY HAMER: And you can read more details about all of those ways to die today on curiosity.com, and on the curiosity app for Android and iOS.
[SWOOSH]
CODY GOUGH: Ashley, what's your favorite frozen treat?
ASHLEY HAMER: I like straight up ice cream. I think that's it's really good.
CODY GOUGH: I'm also an ice cream person.
ASHLEY HAMER: What's your favorite flavor?
CODY GOUGH: It's coffee ice cream.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, that's a good one. I really like coffee ice cream. That's good. Coffee Heath bar is really good. Really, I like an ice cream with a bunch of stuff in it. I really like Ben and Jerry's. They put all of those chocolate and pretzels and all sorts of things in it.
CODY GOUGH: Now, our listeners know all about our ice cream habits.
ASHLEY HAMER: They do. They can send us ice cream.
[LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: Well, everyone loves ice cream in the summer. But there is a difference between ice cream, gelato, frozen custard, frozen yogurt, the list goes on. There's just so many. Here's the scoop on the different types of frozen treats.
In the US, there's actually a legal definition of ice cream. It has to have at least 10% milk fat. It has to be churned. And it has to contain air. Then there's frozen custard. Also known to some as French ice cream.
The big difference here is that frozen custard is egg-based and doesn't have as much air in it, which is why it's thick, and it's more smooth than traditional American ice cream. Then there's gelato from Italy. Gelato is not technically ice cream. Because it contains very little air, which makes it more dense. And the milk fat is also a lot lower at around 3.8% versus the 10% in ice cream. Then we've got frozen yogurt, which is pretty popular these days.
And the major difference there is that that's based non-milk or cream, but on, you guessed it, yogurt. It's not the same kind of yogurt you have in your fridge, though. Frozen yogurt uses cultured milk and the probiotics don't survive the freezing process. So it's a little different than your old yogurt cups, you've got in your fridge.
Now, let's get into sherbet and sorbet whose names are annoyingly similar. And in fifth grade spelling bee, I lost because I misspelled sherbet. Because I thought the teacher was trying to trick me by saying sherbert. And I spelled it sherbet. It was embarrassing.
ASHLEY HAMER: By the way, it's officially pronounced sherbet. I know everyone says sherbert. But I grew up saying sherbet. And I feel like I've won something.
CODY GOUGH: I will never forget that spelling bee. I'm so mad. Well, sherbet and sorbet are different. Sherbet is sometimes labeled as sorbitol not to be confused with sorbet. The USDA says sherbet has to have at least 50% single strength fruit juice and a touch of dairy about 1% to 2% milk fat.
Sorbet is just slow churned fruit and sugar with no dairy. And is one of the earliest known desserts dating back to seventh century BCE in China. And then you've got Italian ice, which is very similar to sorbet, but it's icy and flaky. So it has a more flaky texture than ice cream. But what is the healthiest option?
Well, the bad news is that really none of them are super healthy for you. They all have sugar, which is par for the course when it comes to dessert, right? But that brings us back to the good news. It's dessert. So remember to enjoy in moderation. And no matter which one you pick, it's probably going to be delicious.
[SWOOSH]
ASHLEY HAMER: Read about these stories and more today on curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily. And learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
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