Who Ate the First Oyster? (w/ Cody Cassidy)

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6 • 964 Ratings

🗓️ 29 September 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn about why we remember things in the opposite order as we see them and how spiders use atmospheric electricity to balloon through the air. You’ll also learn who actually ate the first oyster from author Cody Cassidy.

You Remember in the Opposite Order as You See by Reuben Westmaas

Human brain recalls visual features in reverse order than it detects them: Study challenges traditional hierarchy of brain decoding; offers insight into how the brain makes perceptual judgements. (2017). ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171009154946.htm
Ding, S., Cueva, C. J., Tsodyks, M., & Qian, N. (2017). Visual perception as retrospective Bayesian decoding from high-to low-level features. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706906114
Mohs, R. (2007, May 8). How Human Memory Works. HowStuffWorks. https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/human-memory1.htm

Ballooning spiders surf on electric fields by Cameron Duke

Kuchment, A. (2012). How Spiders “Balloon.” Scientific American, 307(1), 28–28. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0712-28b
Martin Lister. (2020). Ypsyork.Org. https://www.ypsyork.org/resources/yorkshire-scientists-and-innovators/dr-martin-lister/
Palermo, E. (2015, May 15). Cloudy with a Chance of Arachnids? “Spider Rain” Explained. Livescience.Com; Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/50856-spider-rain-explained.html
Morley, E. L., & Robert, D. (2018). Electric Fields Elicit Ballooning in Spiders. Current Biology, 28(14), 2324-2330.e2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.05.057
Spiders go ballooning on electric fields. (2018, July 5). Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2018-07-spiders-ballooning-electric-fields.html
Science Magazine. (2018). Watch a ‘ballooning’ spider take flight [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrS0igctMi0
Yong, E. (2018, July 5). Spiders Use Earth’s Electric Field to Fly Hundreds of Miles. The Atlantic; The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/the-electric-flight-of-spiders/564437/

Additional resources from author Cody Cassidy:

Pick up “Who Ate the First Oyster?: The Extraordinary People Behind the Greatest Firsts in History” on Amazon: https://amazon.com
Cody Cassidy’s articles on Wired: https://www.wired.com/author/cody-cassidy/
Cody Cassidy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CodyCassidy

Subscribe to Curiosity Daily to learn something new every day with Ashley Hamer and Natalia Reagan (filling in for Cody Gough). 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/who-ate-the-first-oyster-w-cody-cassidy

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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 Ashley Hamer.
0:07.0	And I'm Natalia Reagan.
0:08.0	Today you learn why we remember things in the opposite order as we see them
0:12.0	and how spiders use atmospheric
0:14.2	electricity to balloon through the air. You'll also learn who actually ate the
0:19.0	first oyster from author Cody Cassidy. Let's satisfy some curiosity.
0:24.0	When you watch a movie for the first time,
0:27.0	you take in every detail.
0:29.0	The actor's expressions, their costumes,
0:31.0	the particular way they deliver their lines.
0:34.0	But when you talk about it afterward, you probably mention big stuff, like the overall plot and the relationships between the characters.
0:41.0	That may come down to a difference in the way we perceive and the way we remember.
0:46.2	One happens in the opposite order from the other.
0:49.8	Scientists know that the brain processes sensory information starting with the details and
0:54.0	working its way up to the big picture. They had assumed that memory worked the same
0:58.2	way. That's why the results of a 2017 study were so surprising.
1:03.0	That assumption turned out to be wrong.
1:05.0	Here's how they figured it out.
1:07.0	For the experiment, the researchers had 12 participants
1:10.0	judged the angles of two lines.
1:12.0	First, the participants were shown one line at a 50 degree angle for half a second,
	...

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