Learn about what the “frenemy effect” can teach us about bullying; the surprising ability of marmosets to eavesdrop on each others’ conversations; and why April Fool’s Day may have originated from an out-of-date calendar.
Learn about what the “frenemy effect” can teach us about bullying; the surprising ability of marmosets to eavesdrop on each others’ conversations; and why April Fool’s Day may have originated from an out-of-date calendar.
The "frenemy effect" says bullying happens most between friends by Kelsey Donk
Marmosets eavesdrop on each other's conversations — and understand what's said by Steffie Drucker
April Fools' Day May Have Originated From an Out-of-Date Calendar by Reuben Westmaas
Podcasts referenced in this episode:
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-april-fools-day-exists
[TIM FERRISS SHOW PARODY INTRO]
CODY [in Tim Ferriss voice]: Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Cody Gough, and welcome to another episode of Curiosity Daily, where it is our job to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: CODY. This is Curiosity DAILY. Who do you think you are, Tim Ferriss?
CODY: Oh shoot, you’re right. Hang on, lemme find out actual intro music… here we go.
[CURIOSITY DAILY THEME]
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 the “frenemy effect” and what it can teach us about bullying; monkeys that actually eavesdrop on each others’ conversations; and why April Fool’s Day is a thing.
CODY: And we’ll try to remember what podcast we’re doing — to avoid any further confusion. SO! Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
[Over music, 0:10, on AirTable] CODY: “You’re listening to Curiosity Daily, where science journalists take apart research papers, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made.”
ASHLEY: CODY. I love Song Exploder just as much as you do. But we’re not that show.
CODY: Oops. Uh, anyway!
STORY:
CODY: In movies, bullies are almost always the popular jocks who have trouble at home, and the kids they bully are the shy, vulnerable nerds. This is such a popular stereotype that it’s what most anti-bullying campaigns are designed to avoid. But new research from the University of California, Davis suggests that most bullying doesn’t happen that way. Instead, it’s friends bullying other friends.
The team behind this research analyzed survey data from more than 3,000 North Carolina high schoolers over a single school year. What the researchers found was that kids who were friends in the fall semester were more than three times as likely to bully each other in the spring. And this bullying wasn’t just a result of friendships falling apart. On the contrary, teens who stayed friends were even more likely to bully each other.
Researchers call this the “frenemy effect.” And I mean, think about it: teens who are friends are likely to compete for the same positions in the high school hierarchy. They want to be presidents of the same clubs, and best friends with the same popular kids. Bullying each other is one way to get ahead. The researchers noticed that when two kids were at about the same popularity level with lots of friends in common, they were much more likely to bully each other.
Of course, that’s a problem because it’s extra painful to be bullied by someone you consider your friend. Being bullied by friends puts kids at risk for depression and anxiety symptoms. Research also shows that kids who are bullied by friends are also less attached to school as a whole.
But since most anti-bullying programs focus more on the “classic bully” character who just preys on socially awkward kids in the hallway, the “frenemy effect” isn’t addressed adequately in high schools.
So maybe instead of anti-bullying programs, it might be more useful to help teens strengthen and support their friendships instead. Think more supportive extra-curricular activities with a wider range of choices. Maybe more camps, trainings, and retreats could be useful to teens to reduce the importance of a singular type of popularity. With the right fixes, schools may be able to lessen the impact of the “frenemy effect.”
ASHLEY: “Oh, hey. It’s that one mask with the broken strap that just hangs by your door and gets passed up for the better masks every time you leave your house for groceries, Ashley Hamer.
CODY: Ashley, I know you interviewed Alie Ward when I was out on paternity leave. But last time I checked, you’re not Ashley, not Alie, and this is Curiosity Daily, not Ologies.
ASHLEY: Oh right. Oh well. Here’s the real story.
STORY:
People and primates share a lot of similarities. And scientists recently discovered one more quality we have in common: we’re super judgy.
The particular primates involved in this study were marmosets. These miniature monkeys only grow to be 8 inches or 20 centimeters long and make high-pitched chirps that sound like birds. They have super long tails and wild hair like Albert Einstein. Marmosets are cooperative breeders, meaning they live in groups and all pitch in on raising each other’s offspring.
We humans are cooperative too, and scientists know that one important ingredient in that cooperation is social evaluation: that is, the ability to judge whether another person is trustworthy, cooperative, and generally worth our time. It seems obvious that other cooperative species should be able to do this too, but research on this question has been lacking.
So, to find out, researchers made marmosets eavesdrop on each other’s conversations. The team tested 21 captive marmosets over the course of 90 sessions. In each trial, a single monkey was put into a box with a hidden compartment and speaker. They’d hear one of two types of conversations between a baby and an adult of the opposite sex. The baby would beg for food, and the adult would either respond nicely or snap aggressively at the hungry infant. The control recording just used sounds from one adult.
To get a read on how the monkeys felt about these conversations, researchers pointed a thermal camera at their faces while they listened to the recordings. Stress causes a marmoset’s body temperature to drop, so if the camera read a dip in temperature, it would suggest the monkey was having a strong emotional reaction to the conversation.
Their temperatures shifted more in response to the conversations than the single calls, which shows they knew the difference. Helper monkeys — who don’t have their own offspring but help raise others’ — showed stronger responses to the conversations than breeding monkeys did.
After listening to the recordings, the primates could either enter the secret compartment where the speaker was, or go back to their home enclosure. The researchers figured that if the monkeys judged the individual in the recording as cooperative, they’d want to approach the speaker compartment; if they didn’t, they’d retreat for home. Sure enough, the monkeys were more likely to approach the speaker playing a cooperative conversation.
This shows that humans aren’t the only judgy cooperators out there. Looks like that monkey who says to “hear no evil” must be a marmoset.
CODY: ALLLLRIGHT, let’s do this, how are ya, curious people, curiousters, curious cats, curiositeurs, curious… [ASHLEY HELP MAKE THIS GOOD]
ASHLEY: CODY. WTF.
CODY: Right, WTF. Isn’t that the name of our podcast? WTF? ...with… Marc Maron? ...OH.
ASHLEY: OH.
CODY: Yeah… my bad! It’s almost like we’ve been parodying popular podcasts as part of an April Fool’s joke. Which may lead you to ask: why do we have April Fools’ Day, anyway?
STORY:
As you’re painfully aware by now, today is April 1st — otherwise known as April Fools’ Day. But why? What awesome prank could have inspired an entire day to be named after it? The truth is, no one knows where or why the first day of April became a Fool’s Day — but the explanation may be as simple as an out-of-date calendar.
This story goes that back in the 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII decided it was time to fix the calendar that had been used since the days of Julius Caesar, since its leap-year calculation was all misaligned. This resulted in the Gregorian calendar we use today. But as you might expect of such a massive change, it took a little while for everyone to embrace the new calendar system. Many European countries had gotten used to celebrating New Year’s Day on March 25th, the Christian day of Annunciation — but the new Gregorian calendar put a stop to that. So when people who hadn't adopted the new calendar were still celebrating the New Year from the last week of March into April 1st, they earned themselves the unfortunate nickname "April Fool."
That explanation has its weaknesses. The weird thing is that jokes and pranks had already been associated with that time of year for much, much longer. While the Romans didn't celebrate April Fools' Day, they did celebrate Hilaria, a multi-week festival that culminated on March 25 in a joyous, prank-filled extravaganza — an extravaganza that sounds a lot like April Fools’ Day.
But that link is unlikely, because if there’s one thing we do know about the origin of April Fools’ Day, it’s that it got its start some time in the middle ages. The first reference to the holiday comes from 1561, in a Flemish poem where a nobleman sends his servant on a bunch of pointless errands — and the servant realizes that his boss is pranking him because it’s April 1st. Some things never change.
Bit where Ashley’s voice is “trapped” in voicemail mode until she finds the right chords
[ASHLEY sending sounder “first message” from voicemail thing]
ASHLEY: Let’s recap what we learned today.
CODY: Ashley, why… does your voice sound like that?
ASHLEY: Uh, well, I was trying to parody another podcast intro, but I can’t find the right chord to play on my piano.
CODY: Oh no, I’ve heard of this. It’s… PODCAST PARODY PARALYSIS. Your voice is gonna be stuck like that until you fix it.
ASHLEY: Oh no! Okay, let’s see… G minor… F diminished… ah there! I think this is it!
[Plays the chord 3 times]
CODY: Wait wait wait stop! You can’t play it more than 3 times in a row or we might get sued for copyright infringement.
ASHLEY: Okay! Oh, hey. My voice is back to normal now.
CODY: Sweet. I was gonna say, the only other option would be for you to drink a glass of milk.
ASHLEY: O-ho-hoooooo I get it… to wash down my Serial—
CODY: Dut dut dut dut! Lawsuit! Let’s just recap what we learned today.
[ad lib stuff]
ASHLEY: Let’s recap what we learned today
[ad lib optional]
CLOSING CREDITS:
CODY [in Michael Barbaro voice]: Today’s? Stories. Were written by Kelsey? Donk. Steffie? Drucker. And Reuben? Westmaas. And edited? By Ashley? Hamer. Who’s the managing? Editor. For Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Scriptwriting was by Cody Gough and Sonja Hodgen. CURIOSITY Daily is produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY: Oh right. ALSO, a very special thanks to some of our FAVORITE podcasts for letting us air our take on their intros. You can find links to listen to all of them in today’s show notes.
ASHLEY: None of the podcasts we referenced in today’s episode are endorsed by, directly affiliated with, maintained, authorized, or sponsored by Discovery or Curiosity Daily. But most of them did think our impressions were hilarious. Which we were really happy about.
CODY: Yes, special shout-out to the Tim Ferriss Show, Song Exploder, Ologies, and WTF with Marc Maron, and special thanks to various other podcasts that will not only remain nameless, but also would never ever consider suing us. Just sayin’. And thanks to our friends at the HiHo video app for helping us coordinate today’s episode. You can find a link to HiHo in today’s show notes, or visit hiho-dot-video. And… you’ll probably see me on there if you get it. It’s my latest obsession.
ASHLEY: And thank YOU, listener, for ONCE AGAIN putting up with the April Fool’s Day antics that Cody insists we present every year! ...although, I’ve gotta be honest. This year’s was pretty fun.
CODY: Join us again tomorrow for a regularly scheduled episode of Curiosity Daily — same bat time, same bat channel — to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: That’s… that’s not even a podcast. And until then, stay curious!