Pigeons Can Be Superstitious, Why Allergy Drugs Make You Sleepy, and The 5 Ages of the Universe

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Self-improvement, Science, Astronomy, Education

4.6 • 935 Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn about how a psychologist named B.F. Skinner proved that pigeons can be superstitious; the science of histamines and why allergy medications make us sleepy; and the 5 ages of the universe, including the Stelliferous Era we’re in right now.

Pigeons Can Be Superstitious — And a Psychologist Once Proved It by Ashley Hamer

Superstitious behavior | Comparative Cognition Laboratory | Psychological and Brain Sciences. (2020). Uiowa.edu. https://psychology.uiowa.edu/comparative-cognition-laboratory/glossary/superstitious-behavior
Classics in the History of Psychology -- Skinner (1948). (2020). Yorku.ca. http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Skinner/Pigeon/
Inglis-Arkell, E. (2011, January 31). How pigeons get to be superstitious. io9. https://io9.gizmodo.com/how-pigeons-get-to-be-superstitious-5746904

Why do allergy medications make us sleepy? by Cameron Duke

Basophils - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics. (2013). Sciencedirect.com. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/agricultural-and-biological-sciences/basophils
Castro, J. (2013, December 16). Why Do Antihistamines Make You Drowsy? Livescience.Com; Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/41999-antihistamines-drowsy-benadryl-allergies.html
Diez-Garcia, A., & Garzon, M. (2017). [Regulation of the phases of the sleep-wakefulness cycle with histamine]. Revista De Neurologia, 64(6), 267–277. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28272728
Jutel, M., Blaser, K., & Akdis, C. A. (2006). The role of histamine in regulation of immune responses. Chemical Immunology and Allergy, 91, 174–187. https://doi.org/10.1159/000090280
Thakkar, M. M. (2011). Histamine in the regulation of wakefulness. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 15(1), 65–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2010.06.004
Regenerative Medicine Partnership in Education. (2020). Duq.edu. http://sepa.duq.edu/regmed/immune/histamine.html

There are 5 ages of the universe, and we're in the Stelliferous Era by Grant Currin

Physics offers glimpse into the universe’s dark era. (1997, January 13). University of Michigan News. https://news.umich.edu/physics-offers-glimpse-into-the-universe-s-dark-era/
Adler, D. (2020, March 24). The Degenerate Era: When the universe stops making stars. Astronomy.com. https://astronomy.com/news/2020/03/the-degenerate-era-when-the-universe-stops-making-stars

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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 how a psychologist proved that pigeons can be superstitious, why allergy medications make a sleepy, and which one of the five ages of the universe we're in right now.
0:18.6	Let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:20.6	Name a behavior unique to humans, and I'll name an animal that does it too.
0:25.3	Humans aren't the only ones who dream or laugh or even have self-awareness.
0:29.8	And in the 1940s psychologist B.. Skinner added something to that list.
0:35.0	He showed that pigeons can be superstitious.
0:38.0	Even if you don't consider yourself superstitious,
0:41.0	you probably are on some level. Do you ever knock on wood or avoid
0:44.4	walking under ladders? That's all superstitious behavior. Researchers say
0:49.3	superstitious behavior happens when an independent action, like opening an umbrella indoors, happens close in time with some reinforcement or punishment, like maybe a vase breaks across the room.
1:00.0	And because they happen around the same time, you conclude that one caused the other.
1:05.0	B.F Skinner was a behaviorist who is fascinated with stuff like this.
1:09.0	Most of his strange experiments centered on what's known as a skinner box. That's a sensory deprivation vessel
1:15.8	that limited an animal to one stimulus at a time. In one experiment, he demonstrated positive
1:21.8	reinforcement by placing a rat in a skinner box with a lever that produced a food pellet.
1:27.0	The rat would first knock the lever accidentally, but as it learned how it worked, it began pushing the lever on purpose.
1:33.2	But what would an animal do if there was no lever at all?
1:36.8	For one of his studies, Skinner put hungry pigeons in a box, but instead of giving them
1:41.4	a lever to push, he just timed their food hopper to release food pellets at regular intervals.
1:46.0	Of course, the pigeons didn't know that, and in trying to predict when the food would arrive,
	...

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