How Blind People Describe Animals, Plague Myths About “Ring Around the Rosie,” and Radiation Shields Made from Fungus

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2020

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Learn about how blind people can describe what animals look like, how “Ring Around the Rosie” probably doesn’t reference the Plague, and why scientists used Cladosporium sphaerospermum, a radiosynthetic species of fungus, to build a radiation shield.

Ring Around the Rosie probably doesn't reference the plague by Kelsey Donk

Mikkelson, D. (2000, November 17). Is ‘Ring Around the Rosie’ About the Black Plague? Snopes. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ring-around-rosie/
Opie, I. A. and Opie, P. (1985). The Singing Game. Oxford University Press. https://archive.org/details/ibald00iona/page/221/mode/2up

Blind People Can Describe What Animals Look Like — But How? by Sonja Hodgen

Tantibanchachai, C. (2019). Flamingoes, Elephants and Sharks: How Do Blind Adults Learn About Animal Appearance? News from The Johns Hopkins University. Jhu.Edu; Johns Hopkins University. https://releases.jhu.edu/2019/05/21/flamingoes-elephants-and-sharks-how-do-blind-adults-learn-about-animal-appearance/
Kim, J. S., Elli, G. V., & Bedny, M. (2019). Knowledge of animal appearance among sighted and blind adults. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1900952116

We might be able to use fungus as a radiation shield by Cameron Duke

Ryan, J. (2020, July 26). Self-replicating Chernobyl mold could protect the ISS from space radiation. CNET. https://www.cnet.com/news/self-replicating-chernobyl-mold-could-protect-the-iss-from-space-radiation/
Shunk, G. K., Gomez, X. R., & Averesch, N. J. H. (2020). A Self-Replicating Radiation-Shield for Human Deep-Space Exploration: Radiotrophic Fungi can Attenuate Ionizing Radiation aboard the International Space Station. BioRxiv. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.07.16.205534

Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY

Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-blind-people-describe-animals-plague-myths-about-ring-around-the-rosie-and-radiation-shields-made-from-fungus

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from
0:04.7	Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about
0:08.8	why Ring Around the Rosie probably doesn't reference the plague, how blind people can describe what animals look like, and
0:15.5	why scientists used fungus to build a radiation shield.
0:19.5	Let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:22.0	The COVID-19 pandemic has a lot of people thinking about
0:24.9	plagues and pandemics of history, which is why you may have heard people mention
0:29.2	the Children's Rhy Ring Around the Rosie recently. After all, isn't it a coded reference to the black plague?
0:35.0	Well, I'm here to tell you that's almost definitely a myth.
0:40.0	Ring around the rosy probably doesn't reference the plague at all.
0:44.0	Cody, do you remember how Ring Around the Rosie goes?
0:47.0	Yeah, it's kind of a whiny, annoying nursery rhyme.
0:50.0	It's like, Ring Around the Rosiesy pocket full of posy ashes ashes we all fall down and the down is hilarious
1:00.0	because then everyone falls down. Yes and then everyone laughs and it's great fun.
1:05.0	Hilarity ensues.
1:07.0	So if you haven't heard the plague theory about this lovely little song,
1:11.0	it goes like this. The Ring around the rosy in the rhyme refers to the red rash that was an early symptom of the bubonic plague.
1:19.7	A pocketful of posies refers to the way people would carry flowers for protection against the disease.
1:25.6	Ashes is kind of like what it sounds like when someone sneezes.
1:29.6	And we all fall down refers to, you guessed it, death.
1:34.7	Some of the details of the plague in this common ring around the rosy explanation
1:39.2	are pretty accurate.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Warner Bros. Discovery, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Warner Bros. Discovery and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.