Learn how to see the Ursids, the last meteor shower of the year; how researchers figured out whether dogs can understand what you tell them; and how long it takes before you believe your own lies. 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: How to See the Ursids, the Last Meteor Shower of the Year — https://curiosity.im/2EgU95S Can Dogs Really Understand What You Tell Them? — https://curiosity.im/2Sonb6A It Doesn't Take Long to Believe Your Own Lies — https://curiosity.im/2EjrLjB If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Learn 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!
Learn how to see the Ursids, the last meteor shower of the year; how researchers figured out whether dogs can understand what you tell them; and how long it takes before you believe your own lies.
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 love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Learn 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/you-believe-your-own-lies-very-quickly-how-dogs-understand-human-speech-and-where-to-see-the-ursids
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. 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 how to see the Ursids, the last meteor shower of the year, how researchers figured out if dogs can understand what you tell them, and how long it takes before you believe your own lies. Spoiler alert, it's not very long.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity. You don't need a telescope to see cool things in the sky. If you don't believe me, then let me tell you about the Ursids meteor shower. It's the last meteor shower of the year. And if you're listening to this in December, then you might want to mark your calendar. I know I'm going to because I have not actually watched a single meteor shower this year.
ASHLEY HAMER: To be fair, neither have I, but we live in Chicago where there is a ton of light pollution. And so to see anything in the sky, you need to drive a good long distance.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. So shout-out to our listeners that don't live in a major city because you can see stars.
ASHLEY HAMER: Let us come visit. [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: [CHUCKLES]
We can see the Ursids anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, and that's because they emanate, more or less, from the North Star, or Polaris, which sits right in line with the North Pole. The Ursids are visible for about a week once a year around the winter solstice, when Earth passes through the space debris left behind by comet 8P/Tuttle. In 2018, its peak will be the night of Friday, December 21 and into the wee hours of Saturday, December 22. And those wee hours are actually the best time to see it this year because the moon won't be up.
The Ursids peaks right around December's full moon, and all that moonlight can interfere with its visibility. You definitely don't want too much light from the moon since you can expect to see five to 10 meteors per hour around that time. To find the meteor shower, look for the Little Dipper. It should be pretty easy to find. It's near the Big Dipper. And the North Star is right at the end of its handle.
Once you find that constellation, look for Kochab, the brightest star in the Little Dipper's bowl. If it helps, Kochab has an orange hue. This is the rough origin point for the meteor shower.
And you can see it with the naked eye. In fact, binoculars might actually make it worse to see because they'll narrow your field of vision quite a bit. Probably not worth it. Now try to keep realistic expectations since the Ursids aren't quite as spectacular as, say, the Perseids. But on two different occasions, the shower has had bursts of 100 meteors in an hour. Keep your fingers crossed and your eye on the sky, and who knows what you'll see.
ASHLEY HAMER: New research has looked into whether dogs can really understand what you're telling them. It's obvious that people can communicate with dogs, sure. But if you tell a dog to go fetch something, then is it the word they're understanding or just the fact that you threw a ball and made a sound? Science may have the answer.
So a recent study in Frontiers in Neuroscience wanted to find out if dogs can understand words. The word "understand" can mean a lot of things. But in this context, the researchers decided that one fundamental cross-species element of understanding was the discrimination of words from non-words. In other words, dogs should be able to differentiate familiar commands from nonsense sounds.
And for this study, researchers used fMRI brain scans, not just actions like fetching a ball. That's because if a dog understands the term "fetch," they'll fetch a ball. But that mixes up understanding with obedience. This study, on the other hand, had dogs spend between two and six months learning the names of two different toys. First, the dog's owners just repeatedly named the toys. They'd play fetch or tug of war with their dogs using, say, a toy called monkey. And they'd say "monkey" multiple times while they were playing to reinforce the object's name in the dog's brain.
Then the dogs transitioned into actually identifying the objects. Owners would place monkey and say "piggy" several feet away from the dog and several feet apart. The owners would give commands, like get monkey, or where's piggy, and only give out treats if their dogs picked up the correct toy.
The fMRI scan was the final stage. And while dogs held still in the tubular machines, their owners said familiar and gibberish words to the dogs. They used a mix of known words, like "monkey" and "piggy," and mechanically generated non-words, like "strew," in various combinations.
It turned out that the dogs did reach the base criteria for understanding. Their brains reacted differently to familiar words than they did to unknown words. Interestingly, the dogs brains reacted differently than human brains. Their brain activity spiked when they heard unfamiliar words, whereas human brain activity spikes when we hear familiar words. We're not sure why dogs react differently to the unfamiliar or how deep their understanding of our words goes, but this study at least suggests that our speech is more than background chatter to dogs. They can distinguish one word from another.
CODY GOUGH: Before we get to our last story, I want to give a special shout-out to some of our patrons. Thank you, Anthony Hyland, Mark [? McCullough, ?] [? Manny ?] [? Blaze, ?] Paul Larson, Brianna Webster, and Kyle Hewitt, for supporting our show on Patreon. You all rock.
ASHLEY HAMER: If you love our show and you want to help us out, then visit patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out. Any amount helps, and we try to give back by offering cool incentives, like bonus episodes, uncut interviews, and fun conversations on Discord. One more time, that's patreon.com/curiosity.com.
CODY GOUGH: According to a new study, it doesn't take long to believe your own lies. In fact, as reported by Futurity, we can start to believe the lies we tell are actually the truth in as little as 45 minutes. This makes me kind of paranoid, not going to lie. Or am I lying?
ASHLEY HAMER: Oh, you might be. No, you're definitely not. I am also paranoid about this.
CODY GOUGH: Are you?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes. Well, Cody, this banter is really engaging.
CODY GOUGH: Or is it?
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES] It's definitely not.
CODY GOUGH: Or is it?
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: For this study out of Brandeis University, researchers used electroencephalography, or EEG, to monitor the brain activity of younger and older adults while they answered questionnaires. Now in this study, the older participants were significantly more likely than the younger ones to accept the lie they had told less than an hour earlier as the truth. And by older group, I mean, the group was aged 60 to 92. And the younger group was aged 18 to 24.
According to the researchers, the findings suggests that telling a falsehood scrambles older people's memory, so they have a harder time remembering what really happened-- in effect, giving greater credence to the lie. This is a relatively small study with 42 participants. On half of the questions on the questionnaire they were given, they were told by the researchers to lie. And 45 minutes later, the respondents answered the same questionnaire but were told to answer all the questions truthfully.
The central research question was, did the lie stick? And the EEG data revealed that lying engaged the brain processes responsible for working memory. This finding suggests a lie can embed itself in memory and come to feel as real as the truth. Lying creates a new memory for something that didn't happen. So if you catch somebody in a lie, then remember, the person may actually think the lie happened if it's not the first time they've told it.
ASHLEY HAMER: I think the main takeaway from today's episode is that researchers need to study whether dogs can tell whether you're lying.
CODY GOUGH: While watching a meteor shower, right?
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. And once researchers do study that, then you'll be able to read all about it on curiosity.com and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS. That's where you can also go to read about today's stories and more.
CODY GOUGH: Or is it?
ASHLEY HAMER: [CHUCKLES]
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow with the award-winning Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
NARRATOR: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.
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