Hi, we've got three stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter in just a few minutes.

I'm Cody Gough, and I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you'll learn about how reading daily can actually add a year to your life,

how scientists are using machine learning to predict the

unpredictable, and the heartwarming story of Indonesia's chicken church.

Let's satisfy some curiosity.

All right Ashley, what's your favorite thing about reading?

But I learned something every time I do it.

Well, I have something that might even enjoy more than that, and it's living longer.

Ooh.

Yeah, about a quarter of American adults report not having read a book in the last year.

Geez.

As especially bad news because a recent study proves that reading can actually make you live longer.

As in older adults who read books for at least 30 minutes a day, live an average of 23 months longer than those who don't read at all. Wow! So nearly two years longer. The data comes from Health and Retirement Study, HRS, a biennial study that's been examining the health of retired people since 1992.

They compared people who read books to people who didn't and found that book readers also tend to be less depressed

and more educated and wealthier than their non-reading counterparts.

Yeah, so did the reading cause that?

Probably not, but there's a link between reading and lifespan probably associated with some of those elements too.

Right and all of those factors obviously being less depressed, more educated, stuff like that has a positive effect on lifespan.

Now the readers versus non readers tended to skew female,

but more surprisingly, the readers were also much more likely to be blind

or suffer from some form of visual impairment.

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