Play a Game to Help Cure Alzheimer’s, Building the Perfect Swear Word, and May’s Curiosity Challenge

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Self-improvement, Science, Astronomy, Education

4.6 • 935 Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn what researchers found when they tried to build the perfect profanity, then learn how playing an online game called Stall Catchers can help scientists speed up Alzheimer’s research. Then, test your knowledge with Curiosity Challenge trivia questions.

A new study tried to build the perfect swear word by Kelsey Donk

Neuroskeptic. (2020, March 31). Building the Perfect Profanity. Discover Magazine; Discover Magazine. https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/building-the-perfect-profanity
Reilly, J., Kelly, A., Zuckerman, B. M., Twigg, P. P., Wells, M., Jobson, K. R., & Flurie, M. (2020). Building the perfect curse word: A psycholinguistic investigation of the form and meaning of taboo words. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27(1), 139–148. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-019-01685-8

Thousands of volunteers are speeding up Alzheimer's research by playing an online game by Steffie Drucker

Join a global game that’s trying to cure Alzheimer’s. (2019). Stall Catchers. https://stallcatchers.com/
Cavalier, D. (2020, April 9). How Thousands of People are Helping Find a Treatment for Alzheimer’s Disease. Discover Magazine; Discover Magazine. https://www.discovermagazine.com/mind/how-thousands-of-people-are-helping-find-a-treatment-for-alzheimers-disease
Alzheimer’s Statistics. (2019). Alzheimers.net. https://www.alzheimers.net/resources/alzheimers-statistics/
Brain blood flow finding gives hope for Alzheimer’s therapy | Cornell Chronicle. (2019). Cornell Chronicle. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2019/02/brain-blood-flow-finding-gives-hope-alzheimers-therapy

Curiosity Challenge episodes:

Why Stress Makes You Eat Differently, Humpback Whales Hunt with Bubble Nets, and the Surprising Genetic Reason Females Outlive Males https://curiositydaily.com/why-stress-makes-you-eat-differently-humpback-whales-hunt-with-bubble-nets-and-the-surprising-genetic-reason-females-outlive-males/
Astronauts Grew Lettuce in Space, Why Smelling a Dirty Shirt Can Help You Sleep, and Early Animals That Acted Like an Ancient Internet https://curiositydaily.com/astronauts-grew-lettuce-in-space-why-smelling-a-dirty-shirt-can-help-you-sleep-and-early-animals-that-acted-like-an-ancient-internet/
Using Lava Lamps to Generate Randomness (w/ Matt Parker), How Ritalin Makes You Focus, and What Bacteria Beneath the Sea Floor Means for Life on Mars https://curiositydaily.com/using-lava-lamps-to-generate-randomness-w-matt-parker-how-ritalin-makes-you-focus-and-what-bacteria-beneath-the-sea-floor-means-for-life-on-mars/

Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer. You can also listen to our podcast as part of your Alexa Flash Briefing; Amazon smart speakers users, click/tap “enable” here: https://www.amazon.com/Curiosity-com-Curiosity-Daily-from/dp/B07CP17DJY

Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/play-a-game-to-help-cure-alzheimers-building-the-perfect-swear-word-and-mays-curiosity-challenge

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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.
0:06.3	I'm Cody Goff.
0:07.2	And I'm Ashley Hamer.
0:08.3	Today you learn about what researchers learned when they tried to build the perfect profanity and an online game you can play to help speed up Alzheimer's research.
0:17.0	Speaking of games, we'll wrap up by testing what you've learned recently with Trivia
0:25.0	satisfy and challenge some curiosity.
0:28.0	A new study tried to build the perfect swear word.
0:32.8	Seriously.
0:34.0	A new paper from researchers at Temple University
0:36.8	was designed to help us invent the most profane
0:39.7	word combinations possible.
0:41.6	And it's titled, Building the Perfect Curse Word, a Psycholinguistic
0:46.0	investigation of the form and meaning of taboo words. Don't worry though, parents,
0:51.5	I'm here to help you understand the finer points of what these scientists have learned about cursing without actually cursing.
0:58.0	It's a cursing free podcast.
1:01.0	First of all, what makes one word more profane than another? I mean there are lots of words you might not say in church or at a job interview that don't actually count as curse words.
1:11.0	To find out the difference, the researchers asked people to rate
1:14.7	a thousand English words on a scale from least to most taboo. They found that the
1:19.7	most obscene sounding words were more abstract and had to do with body parts, bodily acts, gender, or disease.
1:27.0	But to truly understand what made a curse word a curse word, the researchers needed to figure out how to invent one that didn't already exist.
1:35.9	So they took 487 common nouns like Door and Gibbon and asked participants to imagine combining those words with profanities.
1:45.7	The goal was to decide which normal words sounded the most profane when combined with actual
	...

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