Learn about why the one thing you probably know about Pavlov and his dogs is wrong; why the House on the Rock is the tourist trap to end all tourist traps; and why researchers think cats love boxes. 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 One Thing You Know About Pavlov and His Dogs Is Wrong The House on the Rock Is the Tourist Trap to End All Tourist Traps Why Do Cats Love Boxes? 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.
Learn about why the one thing you probably know about Pavlov and his dogs is wrong; why the House on the Rock is the tourist trap to end all tourist traps; and why researchers think cats love boxes.
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/what-pavlovian-really-means-wisconsins-ultimate-tourist-trap-and-why-cats-love-boxes
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. We've got three of your favorite stories from the past years 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 about why the one thing you probably know about Pavlov and his dogs is wrong, the tourist trap to end all tourist traps, and why researchers think cats love foxes.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Remember Pavlov's dogs from psychology class? Ivan Pavlov was the Russian physiologist best known for his work with the conditioned reflex, as in he trained his dogs to salivate when they heard the sound of a bell because they knew food was coming. Well, today in myth busting, we're going to take a second look at Pavlov's dogs because, it turns out, you may have been lied to.
CODY GOUGH: I use the term "Pavlovian response" all the time.
ASHLEY HAMER: Me too. Yeah. The generic term is conditioned response, which is not as cool at all.
CODY GOUGH: No, not nearly.
ASHLEY HAMER: No.
CODY GOUGH: After this story, are we going to have to rethink our use of the term?
ASHLEY HAMER: It depends. According to the biography Ivan Pavlov, A Russian Life in Science, Pavlov never actually used a bell with his dogs. According to his biographer, Professor Daniel P. Todes, it would have been a bad experimental practice to do that. He wrote, quote, "Indeed, the iconic bell would have proven totally useless to his real goal, which required precise control over the quality and duration of stimuli. He most frequently employed a metronome, a harmonium, a buzzer, and electric shock," unquote.
The bell idea probably came from a mistranslation of the Russian word for "buzzer." But wait, there's more. You know how you learn about Pavlov when you were learning about psychology? Well, really, you should have learned about it as a part of physiology.
Pavlov didn't just train his dogs to think about food when they saw a lab coat. He was able to actually trigger a physical reflex in the form of salivation. Pavlov was showing how a mental stimulus can cause a physical response, not just a mind association game where one thing makes us think of something else. In fact, Pavlov earned the 1904 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for his work. So the next time you throw out the phrase "Pavlovian response" when you're thinking about something, make sure there's a physical element if you want to be really scientific about it.
CODY GOUGH: So if there's a movie that makes you really sad, that's not a Pavlovian response. But if you have a movie when every time you think about it, you physically cry, that's Pavlovian.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right.
CODY GOUGH: Today we wrote about a place called the House on the Rock. It's a tourist spot about an hour west of Madison, Wisconsin, opened to the public in 1959. And Ashley and I have both been there separately. And just wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: I cannot explain it to anyone. And we're going to try.
CODY GOUGH: Do you like it?
ASHLEY HAMER: I love it. It takes like four hours to get through the whole thing. And when you exit, you feel like your brain has turned to mush. Did you have that experience?
CODY GOUGH: I came out an angry person. I hated every second that I was there. It is a nightmare.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, my god.
CODY GOUGH: I couldn't handle it. So you're going to get two very different, very different experiences from Ashley and me. Here's the history of the House on the Rock, or at least what we know about it.
It was built by a guy named Alex Jordan Jr., but his origins are a bit mysterious. In some versions of the story, he started his project as kind of a spite house after he had an unpleasant encounter with the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. And Frank Lloyd Wright had an iconic home about 10 minutes away from the House on the rock. In other versions of the story, Jordan had a more vague explanation for his creation, quote, "One thing just sort of led to another," unquote.
Either way, Alex Jordan lived there for about 50 years. The house sits on Deer Shelter Rock which is a massive stone column that rises up from the woodlands all around it. The mansion contains 14 rooms, and they get progressively weirder. And when we say room, we're not just talking about your living room. Some of these rooms are really very, very large.
You start out in large, comfortable rooms filled with massive fireplaces and chandeliers hanging over dimly lit chambers. Then the, quote unquote, "adventure" begins. The infinity room is next, and it sets the tone for the rest of the experience. This is the room I thought was kind of cool.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's super cool.
CODY GOUGH: It's 218-feet long. And it tapers to a single point, 156 feet above the forest floor. So it creates the illusion that the walls extend into eternity. Picture basically a long triangle jutting out from this house, and the point of the triangle is just hanging with no support, just in the middle of the air above a forest, which is kind of terrifying.
So then you go deeper into the house, and you find a massive indoor carousel aglow with 20,000 lights and 182 chandeliers. Then there's the antique gun collection, the music of yesterday room filled with old-fashioned instruments and automated musical devices, and the dollhouse room boasting literally thousands of miniature figures. Among the cannonball-powered clock and the two-story Rube Goldberg machine, you cannot tell what's real and what isn't.
Here's another fun fact. The house claims the indoor carousel is the largest carousel in the world. But the truth behind that is unclear at best. Some of the antique guns in the antique gun collection are real, but others are just guns Alex Jordan had made in an old-fashioned style. And I'm just going to put this out there, Ashley. Why is there a 200-foot-long sea monster hovering above a gigantic room among literally hundreds of model ships and looking glasses and other nautical-themed stuff?
ASHLEY HAMER: To break your brain, of course.
CODY GOUGH: It is brain breaking. So possibly the most bizarre place you'll ever see. Maybe you'll love it. Maybe it'll be a living nightmare.
ASHLEY HAMER: Please let us know.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS] I'm glad you enjoyed it.
ASHLEY HAMER: Have you ever wondered why cats love boxes so much? Well, lucky for you, science actually has some answers. Cody, have I told you my big pet peeve about articles talking about why your cat does weird things?
CODY GOUGH: No.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, because the answer is always nobody knows.
CODY GOUGH: Is it?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. It's always like, some veterinarians think this and some think that, but nobody really knows.
CODY GOUGH: So do we really know here?
ASHLEY HAMER: Why cats love boxes has about the most solid science you'll get on cat behavior.
CODY GOUGH: All right. So today we've collected some research and presented what a lot of scientists kind of figure.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: But it's not like, here for sure is why this thing is a thing.
ASHLEY HAMER: No cat has ever told us.
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES]
ASHLEY HAMER: But there's some pretty solid science behind this one.
CODY GOUGH: OK.
ASHLEY HAMER: So let's talk about how cats act and why, right? When mother cats are about to give birth, they make a nest in a small secluded area that's protected from predators. Wild and domesticated cats do this. And once the kittens are born, everyone snuggles together. The snuggling actually triggers endorphins in their brains, and the cozy confines of a nest or a box may provide that same endorphin-boosting effect to a cat.
Another thing to keep in mind is that cats are naturally ambush predators, and a box is a pretty solid hiding spot. There are worse places to hide if you want to get the jump on someone. Cats aren't exactly outgoing pets either. A 1999 study found that in households with two cats, half of the cat's time was spent out of each other's sight, even though they were usually within 10 feet of each other.
So it's no wonder that they love boxes so much. And giving your cat a box can do a lot for it too. In a small 2014 study published in Applied Animal Behavior Science, Dutch researchers showed that shelter cats who are given boxes to hide in adapted more quickly and were less stressed than cats who didn't have the boxes. So keep your empty Amazon Prime boxes. They're a lot cheaper than a laser pointer or a scratching tower.
CODY GOUGH: Read about today's stories and more on curiosity.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow for more of the best stories of the year on the award-winning Curiosity Daily. 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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