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: BACKBLAZE: Fully featured 15-day free trial of unlimited cloud backup for your Mac or PC, which you can get for just $5/month To Rekindle Your Romance, Science Says Look at Cute Animal Pictures Ashley’s cat’s Instagram account @agletistiny New Brain Research Shows Why You Should Face Your Fears Pluto Was Named by an 11-Year-Old Girl Email us at podcast@curiosity.com or tweet to us at @curiositydotcom If you struggle with phobias or anxiety but aren't quite ready to seek therapy, check out "No Bravery Required: A Clinically Proven Program for Fears, Phobias and Social Anxiety" by licensed marriage and family therapist Richard S. Gallagher. If you choose to make a purchase, Curiosity will get a share of the sale. Want to support our show? Register for the 2018 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2018 Learn more about these topics and more onCuriosity.com, and download our5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
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:
If you struggle with phobias or anxiety but aren't quite ready to seek therapy, check out "No Bravery Required: A Clinically Proven Program for Fears, Phobias and Social Anxiety" by licensed marriage and family therapist Richard S. Gallagher. If you choose to make a purchase, Curiosity will get a share of the sale.
Want to support our show? Register for the 2018 Podcast Awards and nominate Curiosity Daily to win for People’s Choice, Education, and Science & Medicine. Just register at the link and select Curiosity Daily from the drop-down menus (no need to pick nominees in every category): https://curiosity.im/podcast-awards-2018
Learn more 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/why-you-should-face-your-fears-rekindling-romance-with-cute-animals-and-naming-black-holes
CODY GOUGH: Hey, we've got three stories from curiosity.com 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 new brain research that shows why you should face your fears. We'll give you a reason to look at cute animal pictures, for science, and we'll answer a listener question about how black holes get their names.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
[SWOOSH]
Ashley, are you a sucker for cat videos?
ASHLEY HAMER: Always.
CODY GOUGH: Really?
ASHLEY HAMER: I take a few of my own too.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS] Oh, do you?
ASHLEY HAMER: My cat has an Instagram, actually.
CODY GOUGH: Your cat has an Instagram.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, yeah.
CODY GOUGH: That's impressive.
ASHLEY HAMER: Because she's the cutest cat in the world.
CODY GOUGH: What is your cat's Instagram?
ASHLEY HAMER: My cat's Instagram is agletistiny, all one word. A-G-L-E-T.
CODY GOUGH: We'll put a link in the show notes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Perfect.
CODY GOUGH: I'm not a big Instagrammer so I haven't experienced this, but I have seen cat videos.
ASHLEY HAMER: Mm-hmm.
CODY GOUGH: And new research says looking at cute pictures of animals could help you rekindle your romance. Researchers at Florida State University had 144 couples fill out marital satisfaction surveys. Over the next six weeks, they showed the couple's pictures of their partner smiling interspersed with other pictures.
Some of the pictures were neutral like a picture of a button, but other pictures were of adorable animals. The researchers actually didn't expect that this would make a difference at all. They had really low expectations. And yet, the study found over the course of those experiments, the couples who'd seen their spouses faces together with puppies, bunnies, sunsets, and other happy images, they'd all developed even more positive associations for their mates than they had when the study began.
And their levels of marital satisfaction went up. So the next time you hit a speed bump in your relationship, try just looking at cute animals. Maybe that's why the zoo is such a great date spot.
ASHLEY HAMER: I wonder if that works with delicious food. You put--
CODY GOUGH: Ooh.
ASHLEY HAMER: Look at your partner's face and then look at a big cheese steak, something.
CODY GOUGH: If you're in a cheesesteaks.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Which I totally am.
ASHLEY HAMER: Of course.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS]
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, I something that could quickly ruin a relationship.
CODY GOUGH: What is that?
ASHLEY HAMER: If your partner is the official photographer at your friend's wedding and then puts all of the files on your computer, and then you lose all of those files.
CODY GOUGH: What?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: Did this happen? That's oddly specific.
ASHLEY HAMER: Mm-hmm. This really happened.
CODY GOUGH: What?
ASHLEY HAMER: Mm-hmm. We found them again, but they were-- it was a scary year. There was like a year where we didn't-- it was completely-- I don't know, really, what happened. But if we had backed up those files, none of that would have ever been a problem.
CODY GOUGH: Wow.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: That's a pretty good case for backing up your files, like right now, like today.
ASHLEY HAMER: Definitely.
CODY GOUGH: And if you're not backing up your files, then now's your chance because this episode is brought to you by Backblaze, cloud storage that's astonishingly easy and just $5 a month. You get unlimited cloud backup for documents, music, photos, drawings, wedding pictures, and more.
ASHLEY HAMER: [LAUGHS] I use Backblaze to backup band recordings, full size uncompressed music files, past podcasts, and general disaster recovery. And it only costs $5 a month.
CODY GOUGH: With Backblaze, you can access all your data anywhere in the world, including your phone, in case you maxed out your storage.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sign up today to get a fully featured 15 day free trial at Backblaze.com/curiosity. Sign up, play around with the settings, and start protecting yourself from potential bad times. Not next week, not tomorrow, start today.
CODY GOUGH: That's Backblaze.com/curiosity. Take charge of your digital life right now with Backblaze.
[SWOOSH]
ASHLEY HAMER: Cody, when's the last time you faced a fear?
CODY GOUGH: Not quite recently enough. I do know that I'm terrified to ride a bike in the city on streets.
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, yeah. I got over that. That was a hard one, though.
CODY GOUGH: I know I just have to ride down some streets, but--
ASHLEY HAMER: It's good to have a buddy, like if someone else is with you who's like really confident.
CODY GOUGH: Oh yeah, no--
ASHLEY HAMER: That's how I did it.
CODY GOUGH: My wife is dying for me to do it, but I just-- I can't. I just haven't bitten the bullet yet, but I will. I give an update when I finally ride my bike down the streets, in the city of Chicago.
ASHLEY HAMER: So researchers in Switzerland wanted to figure out exactly how the brain gets rid of traumatic memories during exposure therapy. That's basically when you face your fears. And the Mayo Clinic says that's the best way to get rid of your fears and phobias.
If you're afraid of spiders, say, you might talk about spiders, then look at pictures of spiders, then sit-in a room with a spider. Then get closer until you can actually touch the spider, stuff like that.
So the science behind this has a lot to do with your memories, how they form, where they're stored, and how you recall them. And scientists are a little hazy on the specifics of all of those things. I mean, just last year at MIT scientists figured out that long term memories form in a totally different way than we originally thought.
So for this study, the researchers had a couple of theories as to how exposure therapy works in the brain, so they tagged the active brain cells of special mice with a specific molecule. They gave the mice a phobia by shocking them in this little box, and then gave them exposure therapy, where they put them in that box without any danger happening.
You can read the specific details of the study today on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS. But in the end, they showed that exposure therapy works by actually modifying the brain cells responsible for the original fear memory. Now, the memory tagging technique they used isn't failsafe, so the old memories might not technically be rewritten.
They could still be there somewhere, but it's still powerful evidence that, to get over your fears, you have to experience them again. It's easier to just avoid the things you're afraid of, but the American Psychological Association says that could just make your problem bigger. So face your fears, you'll be glad you did.
CODY GOUGH: I'll get on that bike.
[SWOOSH]
We'll wrap up today with a listener question that comes from Kim. Kim wrote in, "I'm just curious, do they name black holes the same way the name stars?" That is a very good question. We kind of touched on this when we talked about how Pluto got its name in an article we covered a couple of months ago, but I'll put a link to that in the show notes.
And here's what we wrote about where celestial bodies get their names, the International Astronomical Union was actually formed about a century ago to encourage international cooperation between astronomers all around the world. The IAU now regulates the naming of asteroids, planets, comets, moons, and even geographical features on extraterrestrial worlds. And that involves a very long carefully regulated process of proposals and committees to ensure that names aren't offensive or redundant or just too silly.
We're probably going to not name a black hole Black Hole McBlack Holey Face any time soon.
ASHLEY HAMER: Aw, it's too bad, though. But I feel like I should say that Kim asked that question because I tweeted that if anyone has questions about black holes or dark matter, I'm going to get an opportunity really soon to ask all the questions I want because I am attending NECSS this weekend. Right when you're listening, I will be there.
That's in New York Conference for Science and Skepticism, and I'm going to be interviewing all sorts of wonderful scientists who work on this kind of stuff, and I'm super excited.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, and if you have any questions that you wanted Ashley to ask any scientists--
ASHLEY HAMER: Astronomers, chemists, I believe there are some psychologists, some neurologists, there will be all sorts of people.
CODY GOUGH: If you have any questions, tweet at Ashley or tweet at curiosity.com. You can find links to our handles both in the show notes or you can email us at podcast at curiosity.com, and I'll make sure that Ashley sees those messages. Just one more opportunity to satisfy your curiosity.
And there are going to be lots of opportunities to satisfy your curiosity this weekend because we've got big plans for the site. What can you learn about this weekend, Ashley?
ASHLEY HAMER: This weekend you'll learn about Einstein's theory of happiness, the mental downside to Western yoga and meditation, how your phone makes you a worse driver even if you don't touch it, the story about a nuclear demon core, the alien faces illusion, and more.
CODY GOUGH: Can't wait to hear about that nuclear demon core.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's a wild story.
CODY GOUGH: Sounds like an awesome new villain for my next Rift's Quest.
ASHLEY HAMER: [LAUGHS]
CODY GOUGH: Don't even ask what that is. Join us again Sunday for a special, slightly longer Sunday edition of this podcast. If there's something you're curious about, again, email us at podcast at curiosity.com
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough. Have a great weekend.
ASHLEY HAMER: And stay curious.
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SPEAKER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.