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You’ll Die Smarter — Education
You’ll Die Smarter

If you ever wanted to know why you should drink before telling a lie, why Disney characters wear white gloves, or what is the ideal vacation length, then look no further.

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Copyright: © Choses à Savoir

Latest Episodes:

Why do they run 42.195 km in a marathon? Jan 14, 2021

Show notes

Contrary to what you may have heard, no, this distance does not come from antiquity because it isn’t the distance between Marathon and Athens. The length of 42.195km run in all the marathons in the world comes from the royal family of England. Originally, the marathon appeared at the first modern...

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Why do Greek statues have a small penis? Jan 13, 2021

Show notes

In his book “Greek Homosexuality,” Professor Kenneth Dover explains that long and thick penises were considered grotesque in the ancient Greek cultural world. Their representations were thus limited to works of satirical art and depictions of ugliness and barbarism. Contrarily, small penises were associated with moderation, a cardinal virtue of the masculine ideal at the time, and, by extension, an artistic aesthetic. The ideal Greek man was rational and intellectual. And this "ideal" man had to be endowed with a small sexual organ...

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Are we really descendants of apes? Jan 12, 2021

Show notes

The idea that man is descended from the ape was popularized in the 19th century by opponents of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Nowadays, paleoanthropologists all agree that the great apes are more like our cousins. By claiming that the human species had evolved over millions of years, Darwin was opposing biblical claims that it took God only one day to create a man that was no different from his 19th century successors...

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Why does reading aloud help with memorization? Jan 11, 2021

Show notes

Recent research suggests that reading aloud allows us to memorize what we read better than any other form of reading. And there is a particular reason why this technique is so effective. A recent study has shown the role played by reading aloud in memorization. It was conducted with the collaboration of students. Researchers presented 20 words to volunteers. For the purposes of the experiment, these volunteers were divided into four groups, each of which had to memorize words using a different technique. Depending on the group, the students either read the words silently, read the words aloud, listened to them through the voice of another speaker, or listened to their own recordings of the words...

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Why do we become more irritable when we are hungry? Jan 10, 2021

Show notes

You may have already noticed this. When it's time to eat, temperaments can get heated and you may feel more irritable than at other times of the day. The phenomena of being "hangry" has been the subject of very serious scientific research. A study was conducted by nutritionist Amanda Salis at the University of Sydney. The conclusion: the culprit is blood sugar levels. Let me explain...

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Why are solar eclipses doomed to disappear? Jan 07, 2021

Show notes

The interactions between the Earth and the Moon demonstrate how far away our natural satellite actually is. This phenomenon, as well as the current position of the Sun, explains the diminishing of, then the eventual projected end of total solar eclipses. The Moon is moving away from the Earth at a rate of 3.8 centimeters, or about 1.5 inches, each year. In 600 million years, the moon will be 23,500 kilometers (or over 14,000 miles) further away than it is today...

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Why are beer bottles sometimes made of dark glass? Jan 06, 2021

Show notes

To understand the reason for this, we should start by pointing out that during the brewing process, the alpha acids in the hops are transformed into isomerized alpha acids. It sounds complicated, but it’s not. It is these acids that give beer its bitterness. But when the beer is exposed to light, the photons trigger a process that causes some of these acids to react with another substance (riboflavin to be exact, better known as vitamin B2). The result is a compound whose structure is quite similar to … wait for it ... the substances found in skunk secretions. Including the smell that goes with it!

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Why do we rub our eyes when we are tired? Jan 05, 2021

Show notes

Sometimes, when we are tired, we may rub our eyes. This reflex is widely shared amongst humans, and in most cases, uncontrollable. But how do we explain it? There is apparently no particular gain in terms of energy spent doing it. Once we rub our eyes, we don’t feel livelier than before we did this, but we do it anyway. So, what is it good for?

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What is the ideal number of days for a vacation? Jan 04, 2021

Show notes

Every person asked this question might have a different answer, depending on their personality and their role in society. For example, if we ask an employer what the ideal length of vacation is for their employees, the answer will certainly not be the same as when we ask this same person how many days of vacation they would like to take...

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Why do main Disney characters wear gloves? Jan 03, 2021

Show notes

Many of the earliest Disney characters wear white gloves. This means we never see the hands of Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck, or Pinocchio. It seems Walt Disney himself was the first to draw white gloves on Mickey Mouse in The Opry House, After that, the emblematic white gloves became the Disney trademark for many years! To be more exact, in 1928, when the first Mickey Mouse cartoon came out, this character still had completely black hands. But by 1929, he started to wear white gloves. There are several explanations to this evolution...

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