In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: 5 of the Best Workouts to Help You Get Into Exercise, According to Harvard Doctors Many Of History's Greatest Minds Always Made Time For Walk Breaks Is Social Media Hurting Your Memory? This Is Why Grocery Stores Sell Crusty Bread in Paper Check out the whole Starting to Exercise report for more information on how to get into a healthy workout routine. And if you’re hungry for more food and kitchen learning, then check out Nathan Myhrvold's book "Modernist Cuisine at Home." Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter withCody Gough andAshley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Check out the whole Starting to Exercise report for more information on how to get into a healthy workout routine. And if you’re hungry for more food and kitchen learning, then check out Nathan Myhrvold's book "Modernist Cuisine at Home."
Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to get smarter with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer — for free! Still curious? Get exclusive science shows, nature documentaries, and more real-life entertainment on discovery+! Go to https://discoveryplus.com/curiosity to start your 7-day free trial. discovery+ is currently only available for US subscribers.
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/your-memory-on-social-media-best-workouts-and-why-grocery-stores-sell-bread-in-paper
[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 whether social media is hurting your memory, why grocery stores sell crusty bread and paper, and the best workouts to help you get into exercise, according to Harvard doctors.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: So Cody, you're a pretty experienced exerciser, right?
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Experienced, not always consistent.
ASHLEY HAMER: What was the first exercise you ever did when you were trying to just get into regular exercise?
CODY GOUGH: Probably running because it's easy. You don't need any equipment.
ASHLEY HAMER: Sure.
CODY GOUGH: Go outside.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, for some people, it's not easy, though. If you're older, if you're a little overweight, sometimes that's not that easy, which is why these Harvard doctors came up with a list of exercises that are super easy for people to do if they're just getting into exercise. They put together this special health report called Starting to Exercise, to help people, basically, start a healthy exercise program. Basically, you just want to stay active, whoever you are, right?
CODY GOUGH: So what does that mean staying active? You always hear this.
ASHLEY HAMER: Right. Well, according to Healthbeat by Harvard Health Publishing, quote "as long as you're doing some form of aerobic exercise for at least 30 minutes a day and you include two days of strength training a week, you can consider yourself an active person." unquote. So that actually sounds like a lot of exercise to me.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Like, every day. But that's an average, right? So you can do an hour, four days a week, and some strength training in there. And I think the strength training, you can do it at the same time, right? Well, to make that a little easier, in no particular order, here are the best five workouts that you can recommend to anyone. First is swimming. It works more muscle groups than any other exercise, and your spine and respiratory system get benefits too. It's also fun for all ages. Who doesn't like to swim?
CODY GOUGH: Right.
ASHLEY HAMER: Second is Tai Chi. That is a Chinese martial art that centers on slow, steady movements, earning it the title of meditation in motion. It's particularly good for older people since it focuses on balance, which we lose as we get older. Third is strength training. I love strength training. The old saying use it or lose it applies to your muscles too. Just make sure you have good form, so you don't hurt yourself.
Focus on lifting smart, not hard. You can always add heavier weights, but doing it right is key. The fourth exercise on the list is walking. What? It might sound lame. But just walking can help you maintain a healthy weight, improve your cholesterol level, strengthen your bones, keep your blood pressure in check, improve your mood, lower your risk for various diseases, like diabetes and heart disease, and even improve your memory.
We've written about this before on curiosity.com, but some of history's greatest minds always made time to take a walk. We're talking people like Darwin, Kierkegaard, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Charles Dickens. Check the show notes for a link to read more about that. And the final exercise, Kegel exercises, curveball. Kegel exercises strengthen the pelvic floor muscles that support your bladder, prevent incontinence, and sexual health. These are all things that are really important as you get older.
You can read more about all these exercises today on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
CODY GOUGH: What's your favorite social media site?
ASHLEY HAMER: It used to be Facebook, but I'm really getting into Twitter.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah?
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. You've watched my Twitter transformation.
CODY GOUGH: It's been fantastic to watch. You should follow us on Twitter. We'll put links in the show notes. I'm @producercody.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm @smashleyhamer.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. Well, today Curiosity dug into how social media impacts your memory. We looked into this because a new study suggests that just by sharing a story or a photo, that's enough to form a less precise memory of an event.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's weird because usually, people share those things to keep those memories, to make sure that they have them forever.
CODY GOUGH: Right. Exactly. That study happened, and we wanted to know, is this the fault of social media? Or is it just taking the picture, in general? So we'll get into it. This is a study out of Princeton University, and it had participants watch a video or take a self-guided tour of a location on campus. And the first experiment, they watched a video of a Ted Talk online and followed one of six sets of instructions. Either watch the video and do nothing. Think about the video while watching it. Write about totally irrelevant stuff around them while they watched, like the lamp in the corner. Or write down their thoughts about the video while watching.
The last group was told their writing would either be erased, returns to them or shared with others. So lots of different groups. The second experiment asks participants to simply take a self-guided tour or to take pictures without sharing them while they were doing it or to take pictures with the intention of sharing them on Facebook during the self-guided tour.
And it turned out that even having the intention of telling other people about their experience was one of the worst ways to make sure an event stayed in their brains. The people who recorded an event performed about 10% worse when they were asked to remember details of the experience a week later. But that decreased performance popped up whether they shared those experiences or not.
So just the intention decreased their performance. Instead, it was the act of reproducing the experience that made memories falter. That's rooted in the theory of transactive memory. And that describes how we delve up data between our internal storage, which is like our own brains, and our external storage or anything else, from notepads to Facebook to other people's brands.
The big takeaway from the study is that if you want to be able to easily remember a full, rich experience, then you should focus on experiencing it and not on recording it. But the study also found that all of the participants reported enjoying themselves about the same amount whether they were recording or not in the moment. So snap those photos if you want. But just know that you might have a harder time reliving them in your head later if you do.
ASHLEY HAMER: So Cody, do you buy a lot of bread? Are you a bread eater?
CODY GOUGH: I never buy bread. I literally have not bought bread in probably eight years.
ASHLEY HAMER: Wow.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, I'm a bit of a bread buyer, and you've got the two different types of bread, right? You've got the bread that's in the aisle, that's in plastic, and it's got the little wire twisty.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, like the Wonder Bread.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah. And then in the bakery section, they have all that beautiful, crusty French bread that's in the paper that doesn't even really close, usually. It just open.
CODY GOUGH: Yeah. The brown bag, sometimes they have a little plastic screen, so you can see into them.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, yeah. Have you ever wondered why that is?
CODY GOUGH: Yes.
ASHLEY HAMER: Well, today, we will answer that age-old question.
CODY GOUGH: Yes.
ASHLEY HAMER: It's not because of a conspiracy to make your bread go stale faster, so you have to go back to the store to buy more sooner. It's all in the word crusty, which is a gross word when used in certain contexts. But for bread, it's beautiful. So compared to soft slice sandwich bread, that's sealed in a plastic bag to lock in the moisture, so it doesn't get stale and hard.
If you tied a crusty baguette in a plastic bag, the bread's locked-in moisture would get those delicious outer chewy bits all soft and soggy, not ideal in a bakery loaf. So while a plastic bag might help keep it fresher longer, you'd be sacrificing that sweet, crusty crust in the process. It's a give and take.
According to Food52, you don't need to do a lot to keep your bakery loaf fresh for a long time, anyway. Bread that doesn't have added fat or sugar, like ciabatta, sourdough or a baguette are at their prime for just a few days after baking. If you're not going to eat your crusty loaf in a single sitting, stick your bread cut-side down in the paper bag. That'll keep the inner bread soft for a short time, anyway, and your crust hard and chewy.
Pro tip, you can also refrigerate bread to make it last longer because it doesn't lose moisture in the fridge. It might look like it's going stale because of a process called starch retro gradation. That's the recrystallization of the starch in the bread. But you can reverse that effect by just toasting or microwaving the bread a bit, super helpful if you're going to toast or warm it up, anyway, which I always do.
CODY GOUGH: Might I also say that is the best tip since sliced bread.
ASHLEY HAMER: Bam!
[LAUGHTER]
Read about everything we talked about today and more on curiosity.com and on the Curiosity app for Android and iOS.
CODY GOUGH: Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
SPEAKER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.