Learn about how wildfires are powerful enough to create their own storms, how the invention of bags influenced human evolution, and how announcers with low voices can make products larger.
Learn about how wildfires are powerful enough to create their own storms, how the invention of bags influenced human evolution, and how announcers with low voices can make products larger.
Wildfires can create their own storms by Cameron Duke
How bags enabled human evolution by Cameron Duke
Deep Voices And Low Pitches Make Products Seem Larger by Stephanie Bucklin
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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/wildfires-can-create-their-own-storms
[MUSIC PLAYING] ASHLEY HAMER: Hi. You're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from curiositydotcom. I'm Ashley Hamer.
NATALIA REAGAN: And I'm Natalia Reagan. Today, you'll learn how wildfires are powerful enough to create their own storms, how the invention of bags influenced human evolution, and how announcers with really low voices can make products seem larger.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let's satisfy some curiosity. At the moment we're recording this, large swaths of California, Oregon, and Colorado are being consumed by wildfires. In fact, this year saw the largest wildfire in Colorado history and the second and third largest fires in California history.
The changing climate is driving these fires. And the fires that get big enough strike back. They create their own weather. That's right. Large wildfires have a tendency to create pyrocumulus clouds. See, as fires burn, they release moisture from plants and convert it to steam. That, on its own, doesn't form clouds.
But tons of steam combined with tiny solid ash particles does. The ash clings to the water particles, acting as condensation nuclei, otherwise known as cloud seeds. In fact, you need particles of dirt or dust to form any cloud, not just pyrocumulus clouds. Once these ingredients have combined, the heat of the fire creates a strong updraft that drags them into the sky to create towering puffy gray clouds.
And we're talking towering. These clouds can reach heights as tall as 8 kilometers or 5 miles. Like regular cumulus clouds, pyrocumulus clouds can create their own storms. Sometimes, that's a good thing. They might release precipitation. Meaning that the wildfire helps put itself out. Unfortunately, that only happens in very humid conditions. In drier places like Southern California, these clouds can develop into more sinister pyrocumulonimbus clouds.
These often don't produce rain because rain evaporates within the cloud and never reaches the ground. What can reach the ground though is lightning. That's a major problem for firefighting. Instead of helping put itself out, the fire creates a storm that sparks new fires. Even worse, pyrocumulonimbus clouds have another trick up their sleeves. The fires that make them produce such strong updrafts that they can, sometimes, spin off fire whirls.
Basically, these are fire tornadoes. Firenados. Scientists actually debate whether they should be called tornadoes, but they can be just as strong. In 2018, a fire in California spun off a fire whirl with a strength of an EF3 tornado. The wind gusts reached speeds of up to 143 miles or 230 kilometers per hour.
So when it comes to wildfires, it's not just the flames you have to worry about. Firestorms can be pretty scary. But at least there's no such thing as a fire hurricane yet.
NATALIA REAGAN: Oh, God.
ASHLEY HAMER: 2020. You can expect anything.
NATALIA REAGAN: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: It might happen.
NATALIA REAGAN: Oh, Ashley. When we think about important prehistoric human tools, fire and sharp rocks and sticks get a lot of credit. However, one tool you still use every day might have played an especially crucial role in human evolution. It's your bag. In 1991, a frozen ice mummy known as Otzi the Iceman was discovered in the Italian Alps. He met his end around 5500 BC. But his death wasn't in vain.
Archeologists have learned a lot from his untimely demise. When he died, he was carrying an axe, arrows, a knife, a fire-making kit, and medicinal fungi, among other things. Sounds like he was ready for a hell of a weekend getaway. Ashley, I would have partied with Otzi the Iceman. I'm telling you.
ASHLEY HAMER: Hey, yeah.
NATALIA REAGAN: Otzi the Iceman would have cleaned up at Burning Man.
ASHLEY HAMER: He was also covered in tattoos, so--
NATALIA REAGAN: I would have dated Otzi the Iceman.
[LAUGHTER]
Let it be known. Otzi the Iceman, if you come back in your next life, come find me. All of this was packed in little pouches made of birch bark. Dude was ready for anything. Well, except for being shot in the back with an arrow. Archaeologists argue that carrying devices like little bags and pouches have an important place in human evolution.
Before our ancestors settled down and began to farm, they were completely nomadic. This means that anything they may need had to be carried with them at all times. Though tools used to hunt and fish may have fed our ancient ancestors, bags, slings, and pouches may have enabled them to be ready to hunt fish and cook or build a shelter when and where they might need one.
Plus, it's hard to imagine prehistoric humans spreading all over the corners of the globe without being able to carry water. That's pretty necessary. Early evidence of mobile containers stretches much further back than Otzi's day. The first baskets and pots to appear in the archaeological record reach back 30,000 years. And containers made of wood and stone are even older.
Archaeologists think that the oldest containers used by humans were natural things like shells. There's evidence of modern humans storing die inside shells as far back as 100,000 years ago. The ability to use containers seems to be a uniquely human trait. Many nonhuman animals can make and use tools. But we've never seen them keep the tools for future use.
Much less stashed away in a tool bag. Scientists think this is more of a matter of mental ability than physical ability. We've seen some animals use human containers. It's just they don't tend to have the forethought to keep it around for the next time they need it. When it comes to what makes humans unique, tool use is no longer it. Maybe our real superpower is the ability to predict that we'll need those tools in the future and have the wherewithal to make a bag to stash them in. That makes me feel a little bit better about all the junk I have in my purse because oh, boy.
ASHLEY HAMER: Same. Have you ever noticed how the burger you get at the drive-through is never as big as it looks in the commercial? How do advertisers make their food look so massive? Sure, the images perspective and framing probably have a lot to do with it. But so does the audio. There's actually a huge association between the pitch you hear and your perception of size. For evidence, look no further than a 2017 study published in the Journal of Marketing Research.
For the study, participants listened to a radio advertisement for a new sandwich. Some heard a version where the announcer's voice was altered to sound higher than normal, and others heard a version that was lower than normal. Finally, they had to rate how large the sandwich was. Those who had heard the lower-pitched voice believed the sandwich was significantly larger than those who heard the higher-pitched voice.
Another experiment in the study showed the same association with music. Participants who heard lower-pitched music believed a laptop in an advertisement was larger than those who heard higher pitched music. This demonstrates that there's meaning in sound that transcends language. Things we don't always think about the pitch of the spokesperson's voice or the background music can subtly influence our perception.
Of course, this makes total sense when you think about it. We're used to bigger things, making bigger sounds because of the larger wavelengths they produce. Studies show that even small children have a good grasp of this. When preschoolers were asked which of two bouncy balls was making a high pitched noise, the toddlers tended to point to the smaller ball.
Of course, like many things, nature did it first. All sorts of animals are known to make their vocalizations sound lower to make rivals think they're bigger and more dominant than they really are. This may even explain why your parents spoke at a deeper voice when you were in trouble. And some even say, this explains the tendency for women to use vocal fry since it happens when we lower the pitch of our voices.
In the end, just remember that visual information isn't everything. Sound has its place too.
NATALIA REAGAN: Wow, Ashley. That was really good.
ASHLEY HAMER: Did that sound like an action movie? That was what I was going for.
NATALIA REAGAN: In a world-- in a world, in a place with dinosaurs-- I don't know. I'm a big fan of any sort of announcer voice. But even animals-- oh, a great example. I studied spider monkeys. That's what I studied in grad school, but the region that I worked in also had howler monkeys. And howler monkeys are not very big, but they are one of the loudest land mammals on the planet.
Gibbons being the loudest, but their sound is not as guttural and deep. So what happens is you wake up say, 5:00 AM because you wake up before dawn. You wake up when the monkeys get up and you'll hear this sound [VOCALIZING]. Excuse me. And if you're local to the region, you know exactly what it is. But if you're a tourist, you're like, what the heck is that? And I've heard so many tourists saying, I heard a jaguar this morning. Just a howler monkey. A small little howler monkey and, like the study says, it's so they seem bigger and it's a territorial like, hey, we're over here. You stay over there.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's amazing.
NATALIA REAGAN: And they also don't like to move very much. I play the game Termite Mound or Howler Monkey.
ASHLEY HAMER: Nice.
NATALIA REAGAN: So let's recap the main things we learned today. We learned that wildfires are far more dangerous because of the 5-mile tall pyrocumulus clouds that they can produce and these terrifying clouds can cause tremendous damage with lightning strikes, which really further exasperates fighting any sort of wildfires.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. Fires are terrifying enough. The idea that they can actually create their own weather and their own tornadoes and their own clouds and lightning, my God. As many things have been in 2020, it is almost too much for me to take in.
NATALIA REAGAN: This is one of the things that if people are on the fence about climate change or the science behind climate change, which the stats are there, the facts are there. And it's real whether, you want to believe it or not. But these wildfires are a proof that climate change is happening and not only that, but these wildfires cause more fires. Fire begets fire. And this is why we need to take climate change very seriously.
ASHLEY HAMER: We still have time to reverse it and fix some of these problems that we've caused. It's not hopeless.
NATALIA REAGAN: Listen to Ashley. She's right.
ASHLEY HAMER: And we learned that bags were actually really helpful when it comes to human evolution. A good shoulder bag, full of potential necessities maybe from a nice cave designer was just what the anatomical modern human on the go needed to excel in a n changing environment. Just a caveman on the go. You can have it all.
NATALIA REAGAN: [INAUDIBLE] Ashley, our new spokesperson for Louis [INAUDIBLE]. We have messenger bags, shoulder bags, handbags, clutches for your favorite oldwan tools or if it was a Neanderthal, some [INAUDIBLE] tools, some [INAUDIBLE] tools. Sorry, I'm throwing out some good old tool industry toolkits.
ASHLEY HAMER: Hey they sound very fancy.
NATALIA REAGAN: Oh, yeah. You know. This is for the archeologists out there. But yeah. Also as an anthropologist. One of the theories of why we went from walking on four legs to two legs our hominid ancestors was it freed up our hands to carry things because that gave us so much more freedom. We could carry our kids, but also still gather fruits and vegetables and nuts and berries and things and also hunt and all that kind of stuff. And carrying them in a bag just sweetens the deal.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
NATALIA REAGAN: Lastly, it turns out an ad man's voice could influence how we interpret what they're selling. The deeper the pitch, the bigger the product.
ASHLEY HAMER: That is what they say.
NATALIA REAGAN: There are a lot of jokes that I want to say that are probably not appropriate for this podcast because--
ASHLEY HAMER: Just channel Barry White.
NATALIA REAGAN: Just channel [INAUDIBLE] hey hey, ladies. You're looking for a good man with a strong 401(k). Though I feel like we'd have gone to a lot more monster truck rallies if that was the case.
[LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. Like, wow. Those monster trucks must be so big.
NATALIA REAGAN: Sunday. Sunday, Sunday. Today's stories were written by Stephanie Buckland and Cameron Duke and edited by Ashley Hamer who's the managing editor for Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY HAMER: Scriptwriting was by Natalia Reagan and Sonja Hodgen. Today's episode was edited by Natalia Reagan and our producer is Cody Gough.
NATALIA REAGAN: Join us again tomorrow to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY HAMER: And until then, stay curious.
[MUSIC PLAYING]