Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from Discovery.

Time flies when you're learning super cool stuff.

I'm Nate.

And I'm Callie. If you're dropping it for the first time

welcome to curiosity where we aim to blow your mind by helping you to grow your mind. If you're a loyal

listener, welcome back. Today you'll learn about the positive psychological effects of listening to podcasts, how climate

change actually makes us more likely to engage in hate speech and how giving plants

alcohol in the form of ethanol can make them resistant to drought.

Without further ado, let's satisfy some curiosity.

Great news, Callie, we are actually making people's lives better by doing this podcast.

Turns out there is a link between listening to podcasts

and having a greater sense of purpose in your life.

Okay, well I am immediately intrigued and happy because that means that we might be helping people.

What is this link?

It turns out it all boils down to parasocial relationships.

Parasocial relationships are the one-sided relationships a listener has with their favorite

artists, like musicians or authors, movie stars, or even, yes, us humble podcast hosts.

Now, podcast hosts don't usually know their listeners well,

but listeners feel like they know the hosts well and that feeling of relatedness helps people

feel smarter, funnier, and more focused than people who don't consume podcasts.

I feel like I understand that but I don't understand how this would be measured

can you shed some light on that? Yeah so this is measured through a study

...