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Curiosity Weekly

Why Some People Can’t Recognize Faces, Weight-Lifting Strengthens Your Nerves Too, and Why Earth’s Core Doesn’t Melt

Curiosity Weekly

Warner Bros. Discovery

Science

4.6964 Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2020

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Learn about why you might feel stronger after just one workout; why the Earth’s core doesn’t melt, even though it’s so hot; and prosopagnosia, the surprising neurological condition of face blindness.

Feeling stronger after one workout? It's not your muscles, it's your nervous system by Grant Currin

If The Earth's Core Is So Hot, Why Doesn't It Melt? by Ashley Hamer

What do you do when you can’t recognize faces? by Cameron Duke

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/why-some-people-cant-recognize-faces-weight-lifting-strengthens-your-nerves-too-and-why-earths-core-doesnt-melt


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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 Gough. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about why you might feel stronger after just one workout,

0:11.9

why the Earth's core doesn't melt even though it's so hot,

0:15.0

and the surprising neurological condition of face blindness.

0:19.0

But satisfy some curiosity.

0:21.0

Getting stronger means growing bigger muscles, right? Well, not necessarily. A flurry of

0:27.8

studies published over the last few years has revealed something surprising

0:31.8

about getting those gains.

0:33.4

It turns out the nervous system plays a huge role in getting stronger,

0:37.8

at least when you first start working out.

0:40.3

Stay with me here.

0:42.0

So imagine you start going to a gym or doing some socially

0:45.8

distant body weight exercises at home. You steadily increase the number of

0:50.4

push-ups and pull-ups you can do over the first week, but when you look in the mirror,

0:54.9

it doesn't seem like your muscles are any bigger. And they're not. It takes several weeks of exercise

1:00.7

for muscles to grow. But judging by the number of reps you can do, you're definitely stronger.

1:06.0

So where are those gains coming from?

1:09.0

Well, they're happening in your nerves.

1:12.0

In order to lift a weight, whether it's a barbell or your own body,

1:16.2

your brain has to send a signal from the motor cortex to your spinal tract

1:20.1

to the motor neurons in the muscle that make it contract.

1:23.0

As you exercise, those signals get stronger.

...

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