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Curiosity Weekly

Pop Songs Are Getting Sadder, Mysterious Radio Signals from Outer Space, and It Pays to “Just Be Yourself”

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Self-improvement, Science, Astronomy, Education

4.6935 Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Learn about why pop songs are getting sadder; a mysterious radio signal coming from outer space every 16 days; and why it pays to be yourself when you’re in a high-stakes situation.

Pop songs are getting sadder by Kelsey Donk

A newly detected fast radio burst appears to be repeating in a 16-day cycle by Grant Currin

It pays to be yourself in job interviews by Kelsey Donk

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://curiosity.im/podcast-flash-briefing

Find episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/pop-songs-are-getting-sadder-mysterious-radio-signals-from-outer-space-and-it-pays-to-just-be-yourself



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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.

0:05.9

I'm Cody Gough.

0:06.7

And I'm Ashley Hamer.

0:07.7

Today you learn about why pop songs are getting sadder, a mysterious radio signal coming

0:12.3

from outer space every 16 days and why it pays to be

0:15.9

yourself when you're in a high-stakes situation. Let's satisfy some curiosity.

0:20.6

If you went out with friends over the weekend and found yourself at a bar singing along to your favorite top 40 hits, then I'm sure you were so happy together.

0:29.0

But you might have noticed you weren't exactly singing about your sugar pie or your honey bunch.

0:34.0

Well, there's a reason for that.

0:35.0

New research shows that pop songs are getting sadder as time goes on.

0:40.0

Our favorite pop songs have actually become more negative and less joyful in the last 50 years.

0:45.6

And it's not just that American musicians are having a sad moment.

0:49.2

Researchers have seen the trend in English language songs worldwide. So what's going on? Don't worry, we can work

0:56.5

it out. All of your pop song references were from like the 70s? At least 1965, most of these were from the 60s. Oh, all right.

1:05.0

What can I say? I grew up listening to an oldie station.

1:08.0

To be fair, they were all from my wedding band's playlists.

1:12.0

Also that.

1:14.0

So first, to come to this conclusion,

1:16.5

researchers analyzed more than 150,000 songs

1:20.4

released between 1965 and 2015.

1:24.0

They scanned the lyrics for words related to positive and negative emotions.

1:29.0

This kind of study is called Sentiment Analysis.

...

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