Learn about why successful people should reveal their failures; the extreme story of the death of planet WASP-12b; and why tulips used to cost more than houses during a period known as “tulip mania.”
Learn about why successful people should reveal their failures; the extreme story of the death of planet WASP-12b; and why tulips used to cost more than houses during a period known as “tulip mania.”
A Reason to Reveal Your Failures by Kelsey Donk
The Death of Planet WASP-12b by Grant Currin
Tulips Cost More Than Houses During Dutch "Tulip Mania" by Cody Gough
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/why-its-good-to-reveal-your-failures
ASHLEY HAMER: Season's greetings. We're wrapping up the year with a look back at your favorite episodes of 2020. Enjoy this Curiosity Daily classic and stay subscribed for brand-new episodes starting January 1.
CODY GOUGH: See you in 2021. Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn about why successful people should reveal their failures, the extreme story of the death of planet WASP-12b, and why tulips used to cost more than houses during a period known as tulip mania.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. Success is a double-edged sword. Hard work can come with amazing benefits, like more pay, more responsibility, and more stability. But it can also carry jealousy, competition, and resentment right along with it. So how do you keep the scales tipped toward the positive?
Well, according to new research from Harvard Business School, you can do it by talking more about your failures. This tip might sound counterintuitive. Isn't it important to talk up your achievements? Don't you want people to know you're successful? Why would you ever highlight your failures, right?
Well, the thing is when successful people only talk about their success, they come off as egotistical. And that can stir up what the Harvard Business School researchers call malicious envy. That's the kind of destructive envy that makes people wants to harm the successful person.
According to the researchers, if you are really successful, then it's likely that everybody already knows about your achievements. It's more interesting and inspiring for people to learn about your mistakes. And that makes sense, right?
I mean, when you reveal both your successes and your failures, the team says you're more likely to stir a benign kind of envy, the kind that drives people to be more like the successful person, instead of tearing them down. They found that people don't have less admiration for a leader when they know about that leader's failures. And they still respect his or her status.
The envy just becomes less harmful and more motivational. And as a bonus, revealing past failure tends to make people think you're more deserving of success, probably because that means you had to try harder to get there. Now you can still talk about your successes. That's especially true for people who are just starting out.
If you're a paper-shuffling intern, for example, your colleagues probably aren't envious of you in the first place. But as you climb the ladder, remember that it's good to talk about your failures too. You won't fall down, and you might even get to climb higher.
Having said that, we're an award-winning podcast, but we're also an award-losing podcast.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's true. We've gone for awards that we've definitely lost. And we didn't like make big announcements about it, but maybe we should have.
CODY GOUGH: And I know that's more about the organization of our podcast. But like, I submitted myself to get a producer award that I definitely didn't win.
ASHLEY HAMER: I actually really admire you for all the stuff you go out for. I feel like I don't really put myself out there for awards and stuff. And like seeing the way that you put both yourself and the podcast out for awards, I really admire that.
CODY GOUGH: Well, thank you. I would nominate you for more things. I just-- there's not that many prizes out there.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's true. It's true.
CODY GOUGH: And I mean, if I got to nominate one of us--
ASHLEY HAMER: No, understandable. Hey, this is my responsibility, man.
CODY GOUGH: Always be your own biggest advocate.
ASHLEY HAMER: Easier said than done.
CODY GOUGH: It is, it is. It can be.
ASHLEY HAMER: There's some extreme stuff in outer space. To prove it, look no further than the planet WASP-12b. The thing is super hot, super huge, super dark, and soon to be, super dead. Here is that planet story.
CODY GOUGH: Doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo.
ASHLEY HAMER: So WASP-12b is a gas giant, sort of like Jupiter. It's so close to its sun that a year lasts just 26 hours. One side of the planet is always facing its sun, seared by never ending daylight and broiling in temperatures of about 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit.
Those temps don't just keep clouds from ever forming and reflecting sunlight. They're so high that most molecules can't form at all. As a result, any light is absorbed by free hydrogen atoms, which converted into, wait for it, more heat. This process absorbs nearly all the light that hits the surface.
So this blast furnace of a planet isn't white hot. It's actually pitch black. Astronomers first spotted WASP-12b in 2008 orbiting a star in the constellation, Auriga. The last 12 years of research paints a convincing picture. This is one weird planet.
And now, new evidence suggests that WASP-12b is swiftly approaching certain death. Why do astronomers think the planet is doomed? The problem is gravity.
Both WASP-12b and its star are huge, and they're very close to each other. The gravity between them is so strong that the planet causes its sun to bulge, which creates tides that distort its shape and make it wobble. It's kind of like how the moon creates tides in Earth's oceans.
That tidal bulge in the star takes energy. And that energy is coming from somewhere very important to WASP-12b. It's coming from the energy it uses to orbit.
Here's how researchers think the story will end. WASP-12b will continue making waves on its sun for about 3 million more years. During that time, the planet's orbit will slowly decay, bringing it closer and closer to the sun.
After 3 million years of this, WASP-12b will lose its gravitational tug of war and plunge into its sun. It's already begun its downward spiral. Observations suggest that its orbit is already shortening by about 29 milliseconds per year. Farewell, WASP-12b. We hardly knew ye.
CODY GOUGH: If you thought there have been some extreme economic bubbles in the US in recent years, then here's something that might make you feel a little better or worse. Once upon a time, in the Netherlands, a tulip cost more than a house. Yes, back in the 1630s, a period called tulip mania caused tulip prices to soar 20-fold in just six months, before plunging in half that time.
Now at that time, tulips were a novelty. They had just been introduced to Western Europe from their native country of Turkey. And this happens during the Dutch Golden Age, when the Netherlands was one of the wealthiest countries in Europe.
Collectors assigned value to tulips based on their species and coloring. And at the heart of the mania were broken tulips, which looked super awesome. Instead of being just one color, broken tulips boasted vibrant lines and flame-like streaks. Ironically, they were colored that way, because of a tulip's specific mosaic virus, although that reason wasn't discovered until centuries later.
Anyway, by 1637, a single bulb of Semper Augustus cost enough to feed, clothe, and house a whole Dutch family for half a lifetime. Or if that's not your style, it could purchase one of the grandest homes on the most fashionable canal in Amsterdam for a cash complete with a coach house and an 80-foot garden. This whole situation is known as a speculative bubble, also known as a price bubble, assets bubble, or financial bubble. It happens when the price of something far exceeds its fundamental value.
Now historically, these bubbles burst, followed by a spectacular crash in that item's price. And that's exactly what happened here. Luckily, the economic repercussions were relatively minor, as there weren't that many people involved. And fortunately, nobody was recorded as going bankrupt. And yet, tulip mania is often referred to as history's biggest bubble, even though more recent bubbles have been way more devastating, like Japan's asset price bubble collapse in the 1990s and more recently, the dotcom and housing bubbles here in the US.
So why does tulip mania get such an extreme reputation? Well, historians believe the scale was blown out of proportion by Dutch Calvinists. They actually spread propaganda pamphlets, because they were worried that the tulip boom would lead to societal decay. Fortunately, it didn't. In fact, tulips are now an essential economic industry in the Netherlands, which exports 2/3 of the world's tulips and attracts thousands of tourists to its beautiful tulip fields.
So count yourself lucky that you get to see these beautiful fields and buy a bunch of beautiful tulips without having to trade your house for it.
ASHLEY HAMER: So what did we learn today? Well, I learned that if you're really successful, you should admit to your failures. Because you'll be seen as less egotistical and more deserving of your success. I'm just not sure what level of success you need to have to do this. Because I reveal my failures all the time on Twitter, so--
CODY GOUGH: I think it's all relative. I actually have a friend who was a performer on The Second City e.t.c. Stage. So if you don't know, Second City is like the capital of improv for the world. It's amazing reputation. A lot of very well-known comics have trained there, perform there, Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Steve Carell. I mean the list-- Bill Murray. The list goes on and on and on for decades.
So Tim was a performer on one of the casts, which is a big, big deal in Chicago, not that many opportunities for that caliber. And I remember specifically, he posted on Facebook, and his post read-- a lot of people only show the good stuff on Facebook, and I want to let you know I just got cut from the e.t.c. team.
And I just think that it's more honest and open to admit your failures. And you know, I'm going to move on, and things will be going great. And he's crushing it. Now, he actually ended up being a writer on Netflix's reboot of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, nice.
CODY GOUGH: So he's crushing it. He's doing awesome. But I've always remembered that he made that post seven or eight years ago, and I still remember it. It had an impact. So it can really mean a lot to people around you when you are willing to say, you know what, things aren't really always perfect. And sometimes, I struggle too.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, now that you say that, when I've seen really successful people post things like that, the thing
I always think is, well, the fact that they are sharing this means that they are at such a level that this isn't going to destroy them. And that's how they can share it. So it's like I almost see them as more successful when they do that.
CODY GOUGH: Ahh, there you go.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: There's a couple of pro tips for you.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: And I've got another pro tip. Do not visit planet WASP-12b, because it's so dark that 94% of light can't escape it. And it's so close to its home star that it flies around it in just 26 hours. And it's going to end up sinking into that star and being destroyed.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Not a great destination vacation.
ASHLEY HAMER: It is pretty extreme, though, like seven Xes.
CODY GOUGH: Wow. That is a lot of Xes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I learned that we've been experiencing speculative bubbles for hundreds of years, and one of them happened in the Netherlands in the 1600s. And that was when tulips were as valuable as a house. And then suddenly, they weren't. Done done. Today's stories were written by Kelsey Donk, Grant Currin and Cody Gough.
CODY GOUGH: And edited by Ashley Hamer, who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Today's episode was produced and edited by Cody Gough.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.