Learn about why you can’t really “boost” your immune system; the benefits of some weird pupils you can find in the animal kingdom; and what Cody and Ashley learned at CES 2019, the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas. 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: You Can't Boost Your Immune System, and You Really Don't Want to — https://curiosity.im/2s5lM9V 5 Weird Pupils You Can Find in the Animal Kingdom — https://curiosity.im/2LPDDuK 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 Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Learn about why you can’t really “boost” your immune system; the benefits of some weird pupils you can find in the animal kingdom; and what Cody and Ashley learned at CES 2019, the Consumer Electronics Show, in Las Vegas.
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
Download the FREE 5-star Curiosity app for Android and iOS at https://curiosity.im/podcast-app. And Amazon smart speaker users: you can listen to our podcast as part of your Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing — just click “enable” here: https://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing.
Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/you-cant-and-shouldnt-boost-your-immune-system-pupil-shapes-and-ces-2019-recap
CODY: Hi! We’re here from curiosity-dot-com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I’m Cody Gough.
ASHLEY: And I’m Ashley Hamer. Today, you’ll learn about why you can’t really “boost” your immune system; and, the benefits of some weird pupils you can find in the animal kingdom.
CODY: We’ll also tell you about what we learned at CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, when we were there last week in Las Vegas. Let’s satisfy some curiosity on the award-winning Curiosity Daily.
You Can't Boost Your Immune System, and You Really Don't Want to — https://curiosity.im/2s5lM9V (Cody)
Walk through a pharmacy, and you’ll probably see lots of products that say they’ll boost your immune system. There are a few problems with that: It's not really possible, and even if it was, you wouldn't like it. Here's why. Despite the way it's portrayed, the immune system is not one thing: It's a complex network that incorporates multiple cells, organs, and biological functions. In the simplest terms, the immune system has two jobs: the innate response and the acquired response. The innate response is what you notice when you get sick. It attacks infection with mucus, fever, coughing, and, in general, inflammation. What it lacks in specificity, it makes up for in speed. But the innate response doesn't actually drive infection out of the body. That's up to the acquired response, like the antibodies your system collects from past illnesses and vaccines. In fact, vaccinations could be considered the exception to the immunity rule — they're the only known way to improve your immune system. Still, a vaccine can't boost the system's overall response; just its ability to fight the bug it's designed for. Since over-the-counter immunity boosters aren't vaccines, they must claim to boost the innate response — as in, the one that can't actually drive away infection but does cause inflammation, giving you inconvenient symptoms like a runny nose and fever. Even if you could boost your innate immune system and suffered through those symptoms, it wouldn't be good for you. Long-term inflammation is associated with all sorts of bad health effects, including hardening of the arteries and heart attacks. What you CAN do to make your life easier is to put your body in the best possible shape for the next time infection strikes. Eat a balanced diet, get enough rest, drink enough water, and exercise, and your plain old garden-variety immune system will be ready to fight off invaders. Sorry there’s no magic bullet at the pharmacy, but hey, we’ll let you know if scientists come up with one.
5 Weird Pupils You Can Find in the Animal Kingdom — https://curiosity.im/2LPDDuK (Ashley)
Today I’m gonna give you a crash course in five different types of pupils you can find in the animal kingdom. You know — the pupil in your eye. That’s the dark circular opening in the center of your iris, and it varies in size to control how much light reaches your retina. Turns out pupils can kinda have super powers. They can be vertical, horizontal, or crescent-shaped, and all for good reasons. First, let’s get into vertical pupils. I’m talking foxes, cats, crocodiles, snakes, and geckos. Ambush predators that’re active by day AND night. Turns out a vertical pupil can have razor-sharp focus in lots of light conditions. One reason is because they can open really wide or close to tiny slits, depending on how much light they need to let in. A cat’s pupils can expand by 135 times, and a gecko’s can expand to more than 300-fold. Humans? 15-fold. Yeah, well… we’ve got opposable thumbs. So now who’s the boss, ANIMALS? Anyway. Next is horizontal pupils. They’re like panorama mode on your camera, so animals can see all around. Think grazing prey animals, like goats, sheep, horses, moose, and white-tailed deer. An animal in this group tends to have its eyes on each side of its head. That makes it easy to see oncoming predators, and know where to go when they’re running away. And get this: their their eyes swivel to remain aligned with the ground while they graze. Whoa. Finally, we’ve got crescent-shaped pupils, and they’re for water-dwelling animals that don’t move around a lot, like rays, flatfishes, catfish, and some whales. Long story short, these pupils help compensate for the way light bends differently in water than it does on air. You can read about the specifics of how that works in our full write-up on curiosity-dot-com and on our free Curiosity app for Android and iOS. But one more fun fact about crescent-shaped pupils is that they have a wide visual field, and they can take in more information than a circular pupil with the same surface area.
CES 2019 Recap (Both)
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