nature in an experiment i don't know yet why is it like so far like it sounds so simple they had no idea

but now the data's i find this not only refreshing but but at some level astounding nature

welcome back to the nature podcast.

This week, why going the extra mile might make you feel good.

And how extreme weather events could threaten malaria elimination efforts in Africa.

I'm Benjamin Thompson and I'm Nick Petra Chow.

Why bother doing hard work? It may seem like a silly question, but it is a question that's puzzled scientists. After all, given the chance, we often

avoid hard work. If we can do something easily, we will. So, why would we bother doing something

difficult? Well, partly, as it was probably necessary for our survival. Life isn't always rosy,

especially for our evolutionary ancestors. Maybe there's

little food around, but we need to find it in order to survive. If we didn't do hard things,

then we probably wouldn't survive that long. And so there has to be some mechanism that

guides our behaviour towards trying hard. And now, researchers have uncovered the neurological basis of this paradox in nature,

how the brain chemistry of mice changes in response to hard work.

Despite the effort, I reached out to one of the authors of the new study, near Eschel,

and he started by telling me a bit more about this

counterintuitive process. So what to me is so fascinating is that effort is a paradox in some

ways. So we usually try to avoid it. You know, if we can get something easier, then usually we'll

take that path. But there's this converse thing that's also true, which is that if you

get something good after having worked really hard for it, that thing feels better to most of us

than that same thing, that same reward that came easily. So take, for example, the view from the top of a mountain,

if you climbed up laboriously that mountain and you look at that view versus if you drove up

...