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Curiosity Weekly

How Copper Changed Our Language (w/ Materials Scientist Ainissa Ramirez)

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6964 Ratings

🗓️ 18 February 2021

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Award-winning scientist and science communicator Ainissa Ramirez explains how copper changed our language. Then, learn about the surprising health benefits of brown fat.

Additional resources from Ainissa Ramirez:

Largest study of brown fat ever shows just how healthy it is by Grant Currin

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Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-copper-changed-our-language-w-materials-scientist-ainissa-ramirez


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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

0:04.7

Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff, and I'm Ashley Hamer.

0:07.9

Today you learn about how Copper changed our language with award-winning scientists

0:12.0

Anisa Ramirez. Then you learn about the

0:14.3

surprising health benefits of brown fat. Let's satisfy some curiosity.

0:18.6

When you lock your door or install an app on your phone, you're influencing technology to do what you want.

0:26.0

But what you may not always realize is that technology is influencing you right back.

0:31.0

And today we have a guest who will tell us the hidden ways

0:33.7

the technology has dramatically changed society. Anisa Ramirez is an award-winning

0:39.4

scientist and science communicator and author of the book The Alchemy of Us, how humans and matter

0:45.1

transformed one another. And she's going to tell us how copper wire influenced the way we speak.

0:50.8

Well copper wires are linked to the telegraph and the telegraph was a fantastic way to send information because

0:58.0

before that if I wanted to mail you a letter it would take days, it would take weeks to get information.

1:04.5

And the telegraph made it possible for me to send a message to you in just a few minutes.

1:08.7

So that was a tremendous breakthrough.

1:11.0

But it had a limitation because the telegraph was using Morse code of dots and dashes.

1:16.0

It became really a pain to translate a letter into dots and dashes and then for a person to be on the

1:21.8

other side to receive those dots and dashes and then

1:24.0

translate it.

1:25.0

So not that people are lazy, but it just became onerous.

1:28.0

And so the style changed in how people sent messages.

1:31.0

They would make a shorthand.

...

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