Author Jen Sincero explains how changing your thoughts, beliefs, and words can help you stick to your goals and successfully form new habits. Plus, learn how ancient Puebloans survived in the desert badlands of New Mexico with help from secret underground ice reserves.
Author Jen Sincero explains how changing your thoughts, beliefs, and words can help you stick to your goals and successfully form new habits. Plus, learn how ancient Puebloans survived in the desert badlands of New Mexico with help from secret underground ice reserves.
How did ancestral Puebloans survive in the 'Badlands?' They had a secret ice reserve by Grant Currin
Additional resources from author Jen Sincero
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/what-most-people-miss-when-building-habits-w-jen-sincero
CODY: Hi! You’re about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiosity-dot-com. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about some great tips for sticking to goals and finding success, with help from author Jen Sincero. But first, you’ll learn about how an ancient society survived in the desert badlands of New Mexico with help from secret underground ice reserves.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
New Mexico is a pretty beautiful place. Especially these days, since we have, you know… air conditioning and technology to supply it with fresh water. And yet! People have been living there for more than 10,000 years. Well, researchers working in the state’s arid badlands have stumbled upon new evidence of at least one ingenious way some ancient people were able to do that: a secret water supply! They’ve found the first evidence that Ancestral Puebloans [PWEB-blow-in] harvested water from ice deposits located in lava tubes beneath their feet. And the way they found that evidence is pretty cool.
The fieldwork took place in El Malpais [MAHL-piez] National Monument in western New Mexico. It’s easy to see why it’s called the Badlands: it’s a barren expanse of jagged, hardened lava with little vegetation and plenty of travel hazards. To the naive eye, it doesn’t look like an easy place to live. But for indigenous societies, the Badlands weren’t “bad” at all. The Ancestral Puebloans who called it home lived in complex societies, built in a unique architectural style, and organized themselves in distinctive political-economic systems for thousands of years..
The researchers weren’t looking for evidence of the human past when they started the project. The original team of climate scientists were exploring the lava tubes in hopes of finding samples that would help them fill in gaps in their understanding of Earth’s climate in the past.
As the team ventured farther and farther into the cave, they noticed an unusual amount of charcoal and soot. Then they saw soot locked away in the ice itself — as if fires had been built specifically to melt the ice. That was when they decided to expand the project and learn about the ancient people who had ventured into the same cave in search of the same ice deposits.
The researchers used radio-carbon dating to estimate that the oldest ashes in the cave were created in small fires made between 1,000 and 1,800 years ago. Archaeological reconstructions of the site suggest that indigenous people burned the fires to turn ice into drinking water. They might also have used them in religious rituals.
This could explain a lot. Analysis of ice cores taken from the site suggest there were five periods of drought during the 800 years that water was being harvested from the cave. That, along with a changing climate, probably made sites like this one pretty valuable when it came to people settling and sustaining themselves when times were hard.
This is more than a history lesson. The ice stored away in these lava tubes helped sustain human civilizations when a changing climate made water a scarce resource. Now, climate change caused by our civilization is threatening the ice itself. Luckily, the team has received a grant from the National Science Foundation so they can collect evidence from the ice before it’s too late.
We're in the height of New Year's Resolution season. If you're having trouble sticking to the goal you set on January 1st, we've got a guest who can help. Jen Sincero is the author of the new book "Badass Habits: Cultivate the Awareness, Boundaries, and Daily Upgrades You Need to Make Them Stick." And today and tomorrow, she'll tell us some surprising methods you can use to really change your habits for the better and put those goals in reach. Now, if you're a long time listener, you've probably heard a LOT of tips from us on how to change your habits. So Cody asked her: What can you tell us that will surprise us?
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One thing Jen Sincero does in "Badass Habits" is lay out a 21-day step-by-step guide for breaking habits you don't want and building the habits you do. So we asked her to walk us through day one.
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Again, that was Jen Sincero, author of the new book "Badass Habits: Cultivate the Awareness, Boundaries, and Daily Upgrades You Need to Make Them Stick." You can find a link to pick it up in the show notes. Jen Sincero will be back tomorrow to talk about why you should build habits in the first place.
Let’s recap the main things we learned today
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CODY: Today’s first story was written by Grant Currin, and edited by Ashley Hamer, who’s the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Today’s episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!