Learn the easiest way to forgive and forget; whether human fossils can produce oil; and what bees yell when surprised. The forgetting part of "forgive and forget" is easier when you forgive emotionally by Kelsey Donk Here’s The Best Way To Forgive And Forget. (2021, May 4). Research Digest. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2021/05/04/heres-the-best-way-to-forgive-and-forget/ Noreen, S., & MacLeod, M. D. (2021). Moving on or deciding to let go? A pathway exploring the relationship between emotional and decisional forgiveness and intentional forgetting. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 47(2), 295–315. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000948 If we get oil from dinosaur fossils, will future civilizations get oil from human fossils? by Steffie Drucker (Listener question from Hunter in Chicago) Hunter’s tweet: https://twitter.com/whuntah/status/1390766688354902019 Do Fossil Fuels Really Come from Fossils? | Britannica. (2021). In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/story/do-fossil-fuels-really-come-from-fossils Westreich, S. (2021, March 29). Does Gasoline Really Come From Dinosaurs? - Sharing Science - Medium. Medium; Sharing Science. https://medium.com/a-microbiome-scientist-at-large/does-gasoline-really-come-from-dinosaurs-3d2d4e70c6d8 What Are Fossil Fuels? | Smithsonian Ocean. (2020, March 26). Si.edu. https://ocean.si.edu/conservation/gulf-oil-spill/what-are-fossil-fuels Explainer: Where fossil fuels come from. (2018, September 20). Science News for Students. https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/explainer-where-fossil-fuels-come DINO History | Sinclair Oil Corporation. (2015). Sinclairoil.com. https://www.sinclairoil.com/dino-history Bees Yell “Whoop” When They're Surprised by Anna Todd Wong, S. (2020). Honeybees let out a “whoop” when they bump into each other. New Scientist. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2121275-honeybees-let-out-a-whoop-when-they-bump-into-each-other/ Ramsey, M., Bencsik, M., & Newton, M. I. (2017). Long-term trends in the honeybee “whooping signal” revealed by automated detection. PLOS ONE, 12(2), e0171162. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0171162 Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free!
Learn the easiest way to forgive and forget; whether human fossils can produce oil; and what bees yell when surprised.
The forgetting part of "forgive and forget" is easier when you forgive emotionally by Kelsey Donk
If we get oil from dinosaur fossils, will future civilizations get oil from human fossils? by Steffie Drucker (Listener question from Hunter in Chicago)
Bees Yell “Whoop” When They're Surprised by Anna Todd
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free!
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/will-future-civilizations-get-oil-from-human-fossils
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 a way to make it easier to “forgive and forget”; and what bees yell when they’re surprised. We’ll also answer a listener question about whether future civilizations will get oil from human fossils.
CODY: Let’s satisfy some curiosity.
You know the saying “Forgive and forget?” That’s one of those things that’s much easier said than done. Lots of research has focused on ways to forgive, sure; but not much has investigated the forgetting part. Now, a new study from De Montfort [duh MOHNT-fert] University in the UK is showing how different types of forgiveness could help people who want to forget an unpleasant experience.
As for why you would want to forget: past research has shown that reducing the memories of a bad event also helps people feel less negative emotions, so it could be helpful for people with PTSD or other severe anxiety.
For the study, researchers focused on two different types of forgiveness. Decisional forgiveness is when a person decides to forgive the person who’s hurt them and maintain the relationship, even if they still hold a grudge. Emotional forgiveness involves getting rid of the grudge altogether by working to replace their negative emotions with positive ones.
In the first experiment, participants were told to imagine that just before moving in with a romantic partner, they discovered that person was having an affair. Some tried to forget through emotional forgiveness, like wishing positive things for the offender. Others tried to forget through decisional forgiveness — to decide to treat the offender well despite their pain.
The results showed that emotional forgiveness was more effective than decisional forgiveness for helping participants forget the details of how they’d been hurt. The emotional-forgivers also felt more psychological distance from their pain.
In another experiment, people wrote about a betrayal they’d actually been through and were still angry about. Then they performed the same forgiveness exercises. Again, emotional forgiveness was better at helping people forget the details of the betrayal, and it also helped them feel more forgiveness overall.
But emotional forgiveness isn’t a silver bullet. In both studies, even emotional forgiveness couldn’t make people forget everything about how they’d been hurt. Instead, it just helped them distance themselves from the event and think about it at a more abstract level.
While more research is needed, these results are pretty encouraging. They suggest that emotional forgiveness could help people get more distance from negative events and emotions.
They say that holding a grudge is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. If you want to rid yourself of that poison, you might try out emotional forgiveness. Send good thoughts and positive feelings toward the offender, and it might help you recover, too.
Hunter in Chicago asked an interesting question on Twitter: “If fossil fuels come from dead dinos, does that mean we’ll reach a point where people who died during the plague will become oil? Will I be able to fuel up my car using Shakespeare’s remains?”
CODY: [ad lib about how this question threw me off]
The answer is a resounding no. That’s because fossil fuels don’t come from dinosaurs. Mind blowing, right?
Your first clue: the term “fossil fuel” was first coined in 1759, before the first dinosaur fossil was ever found. “Fossil” originally just meant something found buried or dug up from the earth. It didn’t refer to the preserved remains of ancient living organisms until paleontology was invented in the early 19th century.
The sources of our fossil fuels are actually much older than the dinosaurs. Most of the fossil fuels we use today come from algae, bacteria, and plants that started decaying at least 50 million years before the earliest dinosaurs even lived.
But even without this timeframe mismatch, dinosaurs still wouldn’t be fueling our cars. That’s because fossil fuels come from organic matter, meaning once-living things that contain a lot of carbon. Dinosaur fossils were once living too, of course, but the parts that are left behind, like shells and bones, are inorganic. That means they don’t have any carbon in them.
Oil, coal, and natural gas are all fossil fuels that formed under similar processes. First, microscopic plants and animals died and sank to the bottom of the ocean or were buried by debris. As layers built up on top of those decaying materials, the increased pressure and heat transformed them into different types of hydrocarbons (named because they contain hydrogen and carbon). We call those hydrocarbons fossil fuels. These compounds accumulate in underground reservoirs until we drill down to collect them. Burning these fuels releases energy stored in their atomic bonds, which we use to drive our cars, make electricity, and a whole lot more. But this process also releases carbon back into the atmosphere, which heats our planet and contributes to climate change.
So, Hunter, you’re not driving on a tank of T-Rex. But will the plants and plankton of today turn into the fossil fuels of tomorrow? Probably not. The era that this life came from had extra oxygen in the atmosphere, which led to way more vegetation than there is today. That makes it pretty special as far as fuel goes. Besides, we need to get away from using fossil fuels FAST for there to be even a chance of some future civilization burning fuel from Shakespeare’s day. Otherwise we’ll end up going the way of the dinosaurs ourselves.
Thanks for your question, Hunter! If you have a question, send us an email or a voice recording to curiosity at discovery dot com, or leave us a voicemail at 312-596-5208.
When you bump into someone, you might say, "Whoops, sorry!" Well, bees do the same thing! Sort of. When a bee bumps into another bee, it makes a "whoop" sound. Scientists once thought this was a stop signal, but new research reveals bees make a whooping sound when they’re startled.
The "whoop" sound honeybees let out is actually a vibrational pulse that's inaudible to human ears, but can be recorded by accelerometers placed inside a honeycomb. In the 1950s, researchers noticed bees making this noise before exchanging food, and they assumed this noise was a food request. Later, scientists noticed the noise again when one bee tried to stop another bee from performing a waggle dance, which is used to tell other bees where to locate a food source. So they thought it might be a way to say “stop!”
But in 2017, research by scientists at Nottingham Trent University in the UK found that it may be an expression of surprise. They placed cameras inside the hive and noticed that these sounds happened most often when a bee bumps into another bee, not just when they're requesting food or blocking another bee from waggle dancing. In fact, those earlier researchers may have misjudged which bee was doing the whooping: instead of the bee saying stop, it was probably the dancing bee reacting to a well-placed headbutt. A food exchange is also preceded by a headbutt, so that explains the food request finding from the 1950s.
The researchers also found that bees whoop a lot — six or seven times a minute in one small area. Want to hear what it sounds like? Here’s a sound clip made from a collection of their recordings:
[beeswhoop.wav]
This discovery may be one way to measure the overall stress levels of a colony. Scientists might be able to deliver a standardized stimulus — like a tap to the hive — and measure the amount of “whooping” that followed. An unstressed colony might have less of a response, while a stressed colony would break into a whooping fest. Nobody wants a stressed out honeybee!
CODY: Before we recap what we learned today, here’s a sneak peek at what you’ll hear next week on Curiosity Daily.
ASHLEY: Next week, you’ll learn about how mammals can breathe through their butts;
How a newly discovered pregnant mummy is challenging what we know about ancient Egypt;
Tips for managing your work-from-home paranoia;
And more! We’ll also talk to a leading AI researcher about why you probably don’t need to worry about a robot apocalypse any time soon. But for now, let’s recap what we learned today.
[ad lib optional]
ASHLEY: Today’s writers were Kelsey Donk, Steffie Drucker, and Anna Todd.
CODY: Our managing editor is Ashley Hamer.
ASHLEY: Our producer and audio editor is Cody Gough.
CODY: It’s the weekend! WHOOP! Forgive me for that outburst, but don’t FORGET to join us again Monday to learn something new in just a few minutes.
ASHLEY: And until then, stay curious!