How Copper Changed Our Language (w/ Materials Scientist Ainissa Ramirez)
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 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:
- Pick up "The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another" on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2MyB4l8
- Ainissa's website: https://www.ainissaramirez.com/
- Ainissa Ramirez on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ainissaramirez
Largest study of brown fat ever shows just how healthy it is by Grant Currin
- Study of 50,000 people finds brown fat may protect against numerous chronic diseases. (2021). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-01/ru-so5010421.php
- Becher, T., Palanisamy, S., Kramer, D. J., Eljalby, M., Marx, S. J., Wibmer, A. G., Butler, S. D., Jiang, C. S., Vaughan, R., Schöder, H., Mark, A., & Cohen, P. (2021). Brown adipose tissue is associated with cardiometabolic health. Nature Medicine, 27(1), 58–65. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-1126-7
- Peres Valgas da Silva, C., Hernández-Saavedra, D., White, J., & Stanford, K. (2019). Cold and Exercise: Therapeutic Tools to Activate Brown Adipose Tissue and Combat Obesity. Biology, 8(1), 9. https://doi.org/10.3390/biology8010009
- Cool Temperature Alters Human Fat and Metabolism. (2015, May 14). National Institutes of Health (NIH). https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/cool-temperature-alters-human-fat-metabolism
- Velickovic, K., Wayne, D., Leija, H. A. L., Bloor, I., Morris, D. E., Law, J., Budge, H., Sacks, H., Symonds, M. E., & Sottile, V. (2019). Caffeine exposure induces browning features in adipose tissue in vitro and in vivo. Scientific Reports, 9(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-45540-1
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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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