Does Truth Serum Really Work? and Geology from Indigenous Myth
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2021
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about an island “geomyth” that helped researchers solve an ancient mystery; and whether truth serum really works.
An indigenous "geomyth" helped scientists figure out where 3 huge boulders came from by Grant Currin
- Hakai Magazine. (2021). Rounding Out the Story of Three Legendary Boulders | Hakai Magazine. Hakai Magazine; Hakai Magazine. https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/rounding-out-the-story-of-three-legendary-boulders/
- Terry, J. P., Karoro, R., Gienko, G. A., Wieczorek, M., & Lau, A. Y. A. (2021). Giant palaeotsunami in Kiribati: Converging evidence from geology and oral history. Island Arc, 30(1). https://doi.org/10.1111/iar.12417
Does truth serum really work? by Cameron Duke
- Cottier, C. (2021). The Truth About Truth Serum. Discover Magazine; Discover Magazine. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/the-truth-about-truth-serum
- Inglis-Arkell, E. (2012, April 19). What truths does “truth serum” sodium pentothal actually reveal? Gizmodo; Gizmodo. https://gizmodo.com/what-truths-does-truth-serum-sodium-pentothal-actuall-5902559
- Winter, A. (2005). The Making of “Truth Serum,” 1920-1940. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 79(3), 500–533. https://doi.org/10.1353/bhm.2005.0136
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes, with Curiosity Daily from Discovery. |
| 0:05.8 | I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about an indigenous geo myth that helped scientists solve an ancient island mystery and whether truth serum |
| 0:15.1 | really works. Let's satisfy some curiosity. Researchers who study tsunamis |
| 0:21.6 | in the Pacific Ocean have a problem. |
| 0:24.4 | They don't have any records of the ancient waves that surely swept the region from time to time. |
| 0:30.8 | But someone does. A new study shows that residents of one Pacific island have likely been telling and retelling the story of an ancient tsunami for nearly 500 years. |
| 0:43.7 | Macin is one of the many atolls that make up the modern nation |
| 0:48.7 | of Kiribati. |
| 0:49.8 | It has a distinctive geological feature. |
| 0:53.2 | Three huge boulders made of dead coral |
| 0:57.2 | that sit in the middle of the atoll between two islands. |
| 1:01.0 | The smallest boulder is 60 feet, or about 18 and a half meters around, and sits |
| 1:06.8 | under water. And the largest is 130 feet around, about 39 meters, and it sticks out of the water. That one is wider than a school bus is long. |
| 1:18.3 | Indigenous residents of the island have a legend about how the boulders got there. It goes like this. A long time ago, |
| 1:26.2 | villagers who lived on an island sent a gift of fruit to a neighboring king. |
| 1:31.2 | When the king discovered the fruit was rotten, he punished the |
| 1:35.2 | islanders by sending three huge waves crashing onto the tiny island, and each wave |
| 1:41.2 | was carrying a giant boulder. Just before the third boulder hit, the king heard |
| 1:47.3 | the villagers please for mercy and decided to spare them. Traditional stories that contain information about the geological history of a place are called geo myths. |
| 1:59.3 | Indigenous cultures across the world use geoomyths to share information and pass warnings through time. |
| 2:07.3 | One story told by Aboriginal people in Australia is thought to tell the story of a volcanic eruption that happened 35,000 years ago. |
| 2:17.0 | Of course, not every traditional story is a geomyth, so geologists need a bit more supporting evidence to figure out what's going on. |
... |
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