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Curiosity Weekly

Earworms Aid Memory, How Auroras Happen, Don’t Give Cats Milk

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6963 Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2021

⏱️ 14 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Learn how earworms could be helping your memory; how auroras are created; and what your cat should drink instead of milk.

Maybe that song stuck in your head is helping your long-term memory by Cameron Duke

We have the first experimental evidence for how auroras are created by Briana Brownell

A Feline Myth Debunked: Don't Give Your Cat Milk by Anna Todd

Follow Curiosity Daily on your favorite podcast app to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. 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.

 

Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/earworms-aid-memory-how-auroras-happen-dont-give-cats-milk


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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 Curiosity.com.

0:06.1

I'm Cody Gough.

0:07.0

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

0:08.2

Today you learn about how that song that's stuck in your head could be helping your memory.

0:12.4

The first experimental evidence for how

0:14.3

auroras are created, and why you should not give your cat milk.

0:19.2

Would satisfy some curiosity? So no one told you life was going to be this way, but

0:25.8

catchy songs will get stuck in your head time after time. We call them earworms,

0:32.3

and what a wicked game they play but earworms aren't just

0:36.4

background noise that earworm digging into your brain might actually be doing

0:41.1

a good thing it might help you solidify long-term memories.

0:46.2

When you think about a song, it can have the power to take you back to childhood or a past relationship or even just a simple moment that somehow became

0:55.9

entwined with it. The relationship between music and memory is one that we all intrinsically

1:01.4

understand, but academically it's not well understood at all.

1:07.2

Recently, a group of researchers at UC Davis explored whether there's a functional purpose

1:12.4

to the way that music is linked to memories,

1:15.1

or if it's all just dust in the wind. The researchers performed three experiments,

1:20.8

each with around 30 participants.

1:23.0

The experiments all involved participants listening to clips of music they had never heard before while doing various tasks.

1:30.0

One week later, the participants came back and watched unfamiliar movie clips with those same songs as the soundtrack.

1:38.0

And they were also asked which songs they felt were the catchiest.

1:42.0

The researchers found that the catchiest songs

...

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