Learn about a massive Twitter analysis that shows where your favorite online lingo came from; how to reinforce good habits with temptation bundling; how gym class when you were a kid might affect your exercise habits today; and why glue doesn’t stick to the bottle. 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: This Massive Twitter Analysis Shows Where Your Favorite Online Lingo Came From Reinforce Good Habits With Temptation Bundling Your Exercise Habits Today Might Depend on Your Opinion of Gym Class as a Kid 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! 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 about a massive Twitter analysis that shows where your favorite online lingo came from; how to reinforce good habits with temptation bundling; how gym class when you were a kid might affect your exercise habits today; and why glue doesn’t stick to the bottle.
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!
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/where-online-lingo-comes-from-how-to-reinforce-good-habits-gym-class-fallout-and-why-glue-doesnt-stick-to-the-bottle
CODY GOUGH: Happy Sunday. It's time to have some fun and get smarter in just a few minutes. From the Editorial Team at curiositydotcom, I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you'll learn about a massive Twitter analysis that shows where your favorite online lingo came from, how to reinforce good habits with temptation bundling, and how gym class, when you were a kid, might affect your exercise habits today. We'll also answer a listener question about why glue doesn't stick to the bottle. Stay tuned for the answer.
CODY GOUGH: Let's set aside some curiosity on the award winning curiosity daily.
CODY GOUGH: OMG. IDK if you've heard, but Internet slang is totes lit these days. It's so big, phrases like TLDR and woot are showing up in dictionaries. If you've ever wondered WTF happened, to make these words show up in the first place. Three researchers have you covered. They just analyzed nearly a billion tweets to find out where your favorite online lingo came from. This study is big A F.
CODY GOUGH: And they didn't just do it for the LOLs, did they?
ASHLEY HAMER: No, they did not. So for this study, linguists collected 980 million tweets made up of $8.9 billion words that had been posted across the United States between 2013 and 2014. In order to find new and emerging words, they combed through the data to spot ones that were very uncommon at the start of 2013, and became more popular as the year went on. Leaving out proper nouns, like time hop, and dictionary words like feminists.
They ended up with 81 words. Then sort of them out for variant spellings of the same term, then ended up with a final total of 54 words. Then they mapped out how often each word was used in a variety of locations across the US. So they could figure out where they were first used, and how they spread to the rest of the country. They found that the West Coast was responsible for the most new words that year, at 16%. Followed by the Deep South, at 14%.
But more importantly, their results showed that previous theories of how words spread were incorrect. One idea was that words move out from their source unconstrained, or move between urban areas before hitting rural areas. But this study didn't find that. Instead, at least on Twitter, words tend to spread within cultural regions first, before reaching the rest of the country. It also found that a large number of new words are associated with African-American English, which, the authors said, wasn't too surprising when you think about the demographics of Twitter's user base.
You can find the complete list of words, and where they came from in our full write up on curiositydotcom, and on the curiosity app for Android and iOS. But you can thank the Deep South for the term on fleek which means on point.
CODY GOUGH: And the West Coast came up with the word amiriite. One word, spelt A-M-I-R-I-T-E, which is one of my favorite terms to use on social media.
ASHLEY HAMER: Me too.
CODY GOUGH: And IRL, am I right?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes. We're nerds. We all should have good habits. But we all want to do bad things. You should go to the gym, but you want to binge watch Game of Thrones. You should get your work done but you want to tweet a bunch of weird online acronyms at people. Well, there's a self control strategy called temptation bundling that can help you use those wants to accomplish the shoulds. This is the thing I do.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: What's an example?
CODY GOUGH: I will give you an example after I explain this concept.
ASHLEY HAMER: All right.
CODY GOUGH: Here's a tease for you. Everyone is now glued to their podcast app. What is it?
ASHLEY HAMER: I have a want. So now I have to do my should.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. You want to skip ahead-- but you should listen to explanation first. Well, in 2014, researcher Katherine Milkman designed a study to test this idea. And the study was amusingly titled Holding the Hunger Games Hostage at the Gym. She put 226 volunteers into three groups. One group, the control group, got a $25 gift card, and they were encouraged to visit the gym regularly over the 10 week study period. The second group was loaned four audio books of their choice, and encouraged to make a rule that they could only listen to the novels while exercising. And the third group was just like the second, except they could only access their iPod loaded with audio books at the gym itself.
Participants in the second group made 29% more visits to the gym than those in the control group. But the people in that third group made 51% more gym visits than people in the control group. So basically, they could only listen when they were working out, so they worked out more. You can try this at home pretty easily. Just make a list of things you love, and figure out which ones can complement the habits you're trying to start.
For example, maybe you can only watch your favorite show while you're doing the laundry. Or you can only get a pedicure while you're answering emails. Or you can only have dessert after you've watched the dishes from dinner. Give it a shot and see if it helps. And as for mine, I have done this with a video game a few times.
I play this game called Sid Meier's Civilization VI, or V or VI, whichever the newest one is. It's a turn-based strategy game. And once you progress further into the game the computer takes longer to take their turn. So sometimes what I'll do is, every few turns, I'll hit Enter or whatever to end my turn, and then I'll immediately either do a plank or a set of push ups. And that means I'm being a little more efficient with my time, and getting a little bit of movement in there. So I'm not just watching the computer, say, loading while it's taking its turn, I'm actually getting a little bit of activity in there, and it's spaced out naturally. Because it takes a few minutes to take a turn, then I get a little break in between.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: It's not a bad deal.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's pretty good. I pretty much only listen to podcasts when I'm working out. That's kind of my thing.
CODY GOUGH: You would work out anyway, though, wouldn't you?
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, at this point, I would. Yeah. But even I still need a little bit of motivation to get out of bed, put on my gym clothes. Like, there are steps involved that are kind of, like, oh, I just want to procrastinate.
CODY GOUGH: Even Ashley needs motivation sometimes. That is actually kind of surprising to me. I just thought you had infinite motivation.
ASHLEY HAMER: No.
CODY GOUGH: You're only human.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: It's good to know.
ASHLEY HAMER: We got a listener question from Nitin in India, who asks, "Why doesn't superglue stick to its plastic container. The same glue is used to paste stuff on plastic. Great question. This all comes down to chemistry. It might sound obvious, but glue is designed to work when it leaves the container, and not before. But how does that work? Well, most glues are made up of two basic things. Adhesives, which do the sticking, and solvents, which keep everything liquid.
If we're talking about your basic white craft glue, the solvent in question is water. When you squeeze white glue onto construction paper, the water in the glue starts to evaporate leaving behind the sticky polymer adhesives, and helping the glue dry and harden. But you asked about Superglue. Which is made of an adhesive called cyanoacrylate. Instead of a solvent to keep it liquid, cyanoacrylate only hardens when it comes in contact with water vapor in the air.
But whatever the glue, it's air that makes it sticky. That's why you want to keep the glue bottle sealed up tight. If you don't, you'll definitely see it stick to the container.
CODY GOUGH: And then you'll be in a sticky situation.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes. That was so tacky of you, Cody.
CODY GOUGH: Touche.
ASHLEY HAMER: Gym class is supposed to teach kids how to live healthy, active lives. But new research shows that for some people, gym class may have horribly backfired. I hated gym class.
CODY GOUGH: Well, but you hated gym class but you love exercising. I mean, everyone's a little different.
ASHLEY HAMER: I mean, I hate team sports. With a passion.
CODY GOUGH: Oh, I think that's from gym class.
ASHLEY HAMER: I think so, yeah. What about you? Did you enjoy gym class?
CODY GOUGH: For me, gym class was a social activity where I could be goofy and loud with my friends, and not get in trouble. And I didn't mind the physical part of it. I don't think I yearned for a ball in my hand to throw at a basket or to kick around. But it was there, so why not?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. So this study kind of backs up our experiences, I think. It's kind of a follow up to a 2013 study published in the Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance. That found, that people who remembered being picked last for sports teams in gym class, ended up exercising much less as adults. This doesn't necessarily mean that being picked last is what caused them to exercise less. Like, maybe they got picked last because they didn't like to exercise in the first place. But it does point to one possibility.
So for this new study published in the Translational Journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, a team at Iowa State University dug deeper. They had participants fill out a detailed online questionnaire to measure people's memories of gym class, feelings about exercise today, and current exercise habits. Including how much time they spend moving and sitting throughout the week.
The questionnaire also had open ended questions that had respondents describe their best or worst memory of gym class in as much detail as they wanted. The researchers ended up with more than 1,000 responses from people across a wide range of ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds. And overall, they found that how people felt about gym class as kids, was linked to how they feel about exercise today. Along with how physically active they are on the weekend.
They concluded that gym teachers might have more success if they focus more on teaching kids that exercise can be fun, rather than focusing on how many pull ups they can do or three pointers they can shoot. They also suggest offering students more options. Since some kids might love competitive team sports, while others might prefer non-competitive solo activities. Definitely me.
So if you're listening and you've got young kids, ask them how they like gym class. If they say they hate it then you might want to talk to their gym teacher or school administrators. Exercise is important.
CODY GOUGH: Before we wrap up, we want to give a special shout out to one of our patrons for supporting our show. Today's episode is brought to you by Dr. Mary Yancey who gets an executive producer credit today for her generous support on Patreon. Thank you so much. We hope that you're enjoying your Patreon exclusive rewards, and we'll do our best to keep bringing you a great show.
ASHLEY HAMER: If you're listening and, you want to support curiosity daily, then visit patreondotcom/curiositydotcom. All spelled out. Even a couple of bucks a month would be a huge help. That's less than a cup of coffee. And our patrons get lots of cool bonus content, like exclusive episodes. One more time, that's patreondotcom/curiositydotcom.
CODY GOUGH: Read about today's stories and more on curiositydotcom.
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.
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