Juneteenth’s Origins, Change Your Routine to Be Happier, and Why Americans Don’t Say “Maths”
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 964 Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2020
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about Juneteenth, the oldest celebration of the end of slavery in the US; how switching up your routine can make you happier; and the grammar behind why Americans don’t say “maths” and do say “LEGOs.”
Juneteenth, the oldest celebration of the end of slavery by Ashley Hamer
- Juneteenth World Wide Celebration (2020). Juneteenth.com. https://www.juneteenth.com/history.htm
- What Is Juneteenth? (2013, January 16). The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/what-is-juneteenth/
- Criss, D. (2019, June 19). Source: National Juneteenth Observance Foundation. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/19/us/juneteenth-state-holidays-trnd/index.html
New and diverse experiences are linked to greater happiness (so switch it up!) by Kelsey Donk
- New and diverse experiences linked to enhanced happiness, new study shows. (2020). EurekAlert! https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/nyu-nad051520.php
- Heller, A. S., Shi, T. C., Ezie, C. E. C., Reneau, T. R., Baez, L. M., Gibbons, C. J., & Hartley, C. A. (2020). Association between real-world experiential diversity and positive affect relates to hippocampal–striatal functional connectivity. Nature Neuroscience. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-0636-4
Why did America take the s off of maths (and put it on LEGOs) by Ashley Hamer (Listener question from Randy)
- Waldman, K. (2014, December 8). Why Do Brits Say Maths and Americans Say Math? Slate Magazine; Slate. https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/12/math-versus-maths-how-americans-and-brits-deploy-the-collective-noun.html
- Murphy, L. (2010). Math(s). Separated by a Common Language. https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2007/03/maths.html
- Murphy, L. (2006) Count/mass nouns: potato, egg, tax, sport, Lego. Separated by a Common Language. https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2006/07/countmass-nouns-potato-egg-tax-sport.html
- How to Make Product Names Plural. (2016, May 5). Quick and Dirty Tips. https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-make-product-names-plural
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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. |
| 0:06.0 | I'm Cody Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. |
| 0:08.0 | Today you learn about Juneteenth, the oldest celebration of the end of slavery in the US. |
| 0:13.4 | And how switching up your routine can make you happier. |
| 0:16.3 | We'll also answer a listener question about why Americans don't say maths and do say Legos. |
| 0:22.3 | Let's satisfy some curiosities. |
| 0:24.0 | Today is June 19th, also known as Juneteenth, |
| 0:29.0 | the oldest known U.S. celebration of the end of slavery. |
| 0:33.0 | But the date it commemorates is actually two and a half years |
| 0:36.0 | after President Abraham Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation |
| 0:40.0 | that should have abolished slavery. |
| 0:43.0 | So what took so long? |
| 0:45.0 | Well, there are a few explanations, but one thing's for sure. |
| 0:49.0 | The end of slavery was a long, complicated and violent process. But in the end, it's something to celebrate. |
| 0:56.3 | On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger and his Union troops |
| 1:01.5 | landed at Galveston, Texas and announced that the Civil War was over and that all slaves were free. |
| 1:07.0 | Reactions from those newly free people ranged from absolute shock to utter jubilation. But by this time not only was the |
| 1:15.8 | Emancipation Proclamation two and a half years old but nearly 200,000 free |
| 1:20.9 | black men had joined the Union Army in the meantime. |
| 1:24.0 | You know, because slavery was over. But that wasn't the case for slaves in Texas. |
| 1:30.0 | Since the capture of New Orleans in 1862, slave owners in surrounding areas had begun |
| 1:35.7 | migrating to Texas to escape the Union Army. They migrated so far that there weren't enough |
... |
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