Learn what might happen if mosquitoes disappeared; why music played backward makes you hear hidden messages; and what people can tell about your relationships from your Facebook profile. 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: No One Knows What Would Happen If Mosquitoes Disappeared — https://curiosity.im/2CLHkA7 Here's Why Music Played Backward Makes You Hear Hidden Messages — https://curiosity.im/2CJk8Cl People Can Tell a Lot About Your Relationship from Your Facebook Profile — https://curiosity.im/2CJjIvL 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! 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 what might happen if mosquitoes disappeared; why music played backward makes you hear hidden messages; and what people can tell about your relationships from your Facebook profile.
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! 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/what-if-mosquitoes-disappeared-facebook-relationships-and-hidden-messages-in-backwards-music
[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: I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn what might happen if mosquitoes disappeared, why music played backward makes you hear hidden messages, and what people can tell about your relationships from your Facebook profile.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily. Some scientists think it would be totally fine if mosquitoes just disappeared, as in it would not totally disrupt our ecosystem. Have I got your attention? Are you a mosquito magnet, Ashley?
ASHLEY HAMER: No. Mosquitoes actually don't really like me, which I'm pretty happy about.
CODY GOUGH: All right, well, they bother some of the rest of us mortals.
[LAUGHTER]
So this is exciting news potentially for the rest of us.
ASHLEY HAMER: Great.
CODY GOUGH: The story is relevant too because of the very serious problem of malaria. Every year the disease infects about 200 million people and it kills a million people. Obviously, not every mosquito carries malaria, but the main way it's transmitted is through a particular mosquito species called Anopheles gambiae.
And many scientists think we should look into the idea of getting rid of these mosquitoes. Better yet, we wouldn't even need to release toxic chemicals in order to do it. The plan would involve releasing mosquitoes into the wild that were genetically modified with a gene for infertility. After a couple of generations, most of the population would just be rendered sterile.
And this could happen sooner than you'd expect. There's a Bill Gates-backed nonprofit called Target Malaria that's working on that very solution. And a new four-year study starting this month is looking into how removing mosquitoes might affect the food chain. Researchers are going to follow the life cycles of several generations of A. gambiae and track exactly how those life cycles intersect with those of local bats, fish, flowers, and other insects.
If a loss of mosquitoes has an impact on bat populations, which are already threatened, then that's a big deal, and the same goes for other links in the food chain. But if there's no impact, well, then maybe at some point in the next few decades you might have to deal with fewer pests. Who's ready for a camping trip?
ASHLEY HAMER: There's a reason why people hear hidden messages when they hear music played backward. And no, it's not because they're on drugs, at least not every time. Instead, it comes down to your brain's intense love of language.
CODY GOUGH: I do love language.
[LAUGHTER]
I use it all the time.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. I would not be able to express myself without language that's for sure. I mean, I guess part sound.
CODY GOUGH: Also slow claps.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, those two things.
CODY GOUGH: Slow claps.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, this whole trend started in 1969 when some fans of the Beatles thought Paul McCartney had died and his death was being covered up. They claimed they heard phrases like, turn me on dead man, coded into the song Revolution 9. But you could only hear it if you played the audio in reverse.
Later in the 1980s, some politicians practically tripped over themselves to find examples of secret satanic messages in pop songs. These supposed messages were called backmasking. But really you're only likely to hear speech in music played backwards if you're expecting to hear speech.
In a 1981 study, researchers had participants listen to sound clips of real speech that had been artificially degraded so that any evidence of a message was lost and only certain frequencies remained. One group of volunteers was asked to listen and described what they heard. Most of them said things like science fiction sounds or animal cries.
But another group was told they would hear a sentence produced by a computer and asked to write down the sentence as well as they could. 2/3 of listeners were able to write down at least a few words correctly, and about a third correctly transcribed the entire sentence.
A final group was told what the sentence was and just asked to say whether or not they could hear it and understand it. Almost all of the listeners were very confident that they could. This shows how robustly your brain is wired for language.
A similar study in 2006 agreed that your brain processes speech in a wholly unique way, which they referred to as top-down. You don't just hear speech as sound, instead, your brain first categorizes it as something special as in, this is speech, there's information here. And then your brain uses context clues and known information to decipher what that speech is saying. Who knew language was so important?
CODY GOUGH: Or put another way, [NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
ASHLEY HAMER: Nice.
CODY GOUGH: A new paper in personal relationships looked into how other people perceive your relationship via Facebook posts. Is your bae in your profile picture? Then listen up because we might know what your friends think about that. Have you ever had your bae in your profile picture?
ASHLEY HAMER: I have. Not often. It's usually just me. Right now, no.
CODY GOUGH: I think the only time I ever did it was after I got married.
ASHLEY HAMER: That makes sense. That's totally fair.
CODY GOUGH: I mean, I was pretty happy about it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]
Well, for the first part of this two-part study, researchers made fictional Facebook profiles for people in relationships. Some of them had solo profile pictures while the other profile pictures showed them with their significant other, which the researchers called "relfies." That's a portmanteau of the words relationship and selfie, and we do not necessarily endorse that term on this podcast.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's super gross.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: Some profiles listed themselves as in a relationship or Facebook official while others didn't. The researchers also played with status updates, sometimes making random posts like, I lost my phone, email me. Another times talking about their relationship saying stuff like, I'm pining away for Jordan. I just love you so much I can't stand it.
Then after they apparently had way too much fun messing around with fake Facebook profiles, the researchers had study participants browse the profiles and tell them how happy the fictional couple's relationship seemed. It turned out that the more signs of being a couple they saw on a person's Facebook profile, the happier people perceived the relationship to be. In other words, people do trust how other people present themselves on Facebook. And it turned out that this might be a pretty accurate gauge of relationship happiness.
In the second part of the study, researchers took 200 real couples and compared how happy they were with their relationships in real life with how they came across on Facebook. They found that people with relfie profile photos who listed themselves as in a relationship were indeed more satisfied with and committed to their partners.
Facebook faking is perhaps not as common as it seems. And people didn't just see the couples as happier with each other, onlookers actually liked those people more too. People really are happy to see other people happy.
Now, of course, there are limits. Study participants did give a lower likeability score to those insufferable couples who were constantly posting mushy-gushy relationship stuff. But don't overdo it and you can actually make other people happy while you're showing off how happy you are too. It's a win-win.
ASHLEY HAMER: Before we go, I want to give a shout-out to Paul in Michigan. Hi, Paul.
CODY GOUGH: We got a really thoughtful email from Paul who said he misses the long-form version of our podcast that we did in the past. If you're a new listener you might not know that when we launched our podcast last year our show's format was very different and we featured longer interviews with experts.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, we've got some good news, we are producing brand new full-length Curiosity podcast episodes. They're exclusive to our Patreon supporters. We're posting one fully-produced episode a month plus bonus uncut interviews with experts pretty regularly.
CODY GOUGH: You can support Curiosity Daily and hear these new episodes by visiting patreon.com/curiosity.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: We also post free stuff once in a while like videos, gag reels, relfies, and other fun stuff.
[LAUGHTER]
CODY GOUGH: Would it be "welfies," like work selfies?
[LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes. So even if you're not actively contributing, you should still follow us on Patreon. One more time, that's patreon.com/curiosity.com. There's also a link in the show notes of every episode of the show.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow for 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.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER 1: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.