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

I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer.

Today you learn about why an overheard phone conversation is so distracting, how big or small a black hole can distracting, and why you should definitely tell

your anesthesiologist if you smoke marijuana. Let's set us some

curiosity. There's a reason why overhearing someone's phone conversation is so distracting.

You know what I'm talking about.

Those times you're trying to finish that project at work and you hear a coworker nearby take a personal call,

or you're trying to read a book when you're on the train and a

stranger just starts chatting on their cell phone. So annoying. Well check this out. Research suggests that when you

overhear these one-sided phone conversations or half a logs, it's

actually more distracting than hearing the whole conversation.

And that has important implications for the office.

So for a 2010 study, researchers recorded two college

students having a phone conversation. Then they recorded each student giving a

one-person monologue summary of the conversation after it happened. Then they asked 24 undergraduate students to

perform a simple computer task. Like for one they basically tracked a moving dot on a computer

screen with a cursor. Another task had them hit a button every time they saw a

certain series of four letters. These tasks were chosen for their similarity to

driving. The first mimicked the concentration you need to stay in your lane, and the second was similar to responding

to traffic lights.

Of course, while they worked on these tasks, the students heard various clips from the phone

conversations.

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