The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - Get a Good Brainwash, Museum Tragedies, Scary Smart Cuttlefish

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

The weirdest things we learned this week range from literal brainwashing to the marshmallow test.  Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  Click here to follow our sibling podcast, Ask Us Anything!  -- Follow our team on Twitter! Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Sara Kiley Watson: www.twitter.com/SaraKileyWatson Sara Chodosh: www.twitter.com/schodosh Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Produced by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy Theme music by Billy Cadden: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's code weirdest for 20% off. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or The Hilton.com. Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and heck stories every week.

And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Sarah Kylie Watson. And I'm Sarah Tradesh. So before we get into the show today, I just want to make sure that all of our weirdos got the chance to listen to the very special audio clip that dropped in our feed, I believe yesterday, which is the first episode of Popular Science's brand new show.

Ask Us Anything. Woo! Very exciting. I'mote. I forget that I have to emote, like, vocally. Yay! So definitely pop back into the weirdest thing feed to check out that first episode if you haven't already. And if you have and you are hungry for more, don't worry.

The second episode of Ask Us Anything is coming tomorrow, but you will not find it here. You have to go subscribe to Ask Us Anything itself. And you will find a link to that in the show notes. So check it out if you want to hear Jess and Claire's voices twice a week. Which we all do. Why wouldn't you? Truly. So on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about

some kind of fact or story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, et cetera, and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Sarah Kylie. I'm just realizing this is the first time we've had Sarah Kylie and Sarah on. Are you going to double Sarah? It's so fun.

Sarah's squared. But my story is about how when we go to sleep every night, we get brainwashed, literally. Uh-oh. Get excited. Honestly, I'm fine with it. It's a good thing. It's a good thing, apparently. Okay, good, good.

Can't wait to hear more. And Sarah, Chodosh, what is your tease? I am going to be telling the absolutely tragic story behind the enormous meteorite that is sitting in the middle of the Hall of Meteorites at the American Museum of Natural History. It will not be the weirdest thing you learned this week, but it may be the saddest. So I'm sorry in advance. Great. I'm like really looking forward to that. I'm so sorry.

A nice cathartic cry here on the weirdest thing we learned this week. Sometimes you need that. My tease is that I want to talk about how a cuttlefish passed the marshmallow test and how the marshmallow test kind of failed the rest of us. The cuttlefish has more self-discipline than most humans. Oh, well, that's true. Yeah. So what do we want to start with? I guess brainwashing kind of has to take it because I, you know, what a tease.

I'm on the edge of my seat. I agree. So this is a very fun one. So shout out to all the people on TikTok doing Did You Know TikToks because this is where I found them. I love you guys. You're always teaching me something new. But so I am going to start off by saying this is about two of my favorite things, sleeping and taking baths. And it's all wrapped up into one little fact.

Wow. So specifically I am talking about how our brains take baths while we sleep. But before we dive into all of that, I'll talk a little bit about. what we know our brains do while we're asleep before they even get into the sedzy bath taking part of it. But so back in the day, like in the 50s and earlier, we used to think that brains just kind of like shut off when we went to sleep. Like just hit that restart button and then that's all that was going on. But now we know our brains are doing all sorts of crazy stuff while we're sleeping. We cycle through four different unique stages of sleep every 90 minutes or so.

The first stage is that like I'm not really sleeping 100%. Like anything can wake me up and we're there for a couple of minutes. Our bodies might be twitching. And then we kind of get into what I call the nap zone or stage two, which is like still light sleeping, but our brainwaves are doing these like super fast little spindles is what they're called. And you're kind of in the zone where you're not deep sleeping yet. And if you're taking a nap, which I love to do, this is the zone that you need to wake up in

or you're going to be a groggy monster probably. And then the third zone is their deep sleep zone. zone, which is when our brain waves are going super slow. They're like delta waves. So it's like extreme sleepy time. And we're like basically processing all of this information and storing all our memories from the day and, you know, all of that. And then R.M.

Which is when your eyes are moving about at the dreamy time, the dreamy zone. And so again, your brain's doing some serious work of putting together all of those things you learn today, all those things you saw. And, you know, making it all makes sense. and then basically that cycle goes on and on until your alarm goes off and then you're awake again. But our brains apparently do more than just like this processing of information while we're sleeping and, you know, restoring our bodies, like setting off those alarms like, hey, let's like restore some of our stuff while we're asleep. There's also this waste removal process or some kind of

cleaning, if you may. But it's kind of confusing and we've never really 100% known what's going on and how the brain cleans itself until relatively recently. So it all begins with some mice, as it typically does in these kinds of studies. So back in, I think it was 2013, 2014, a study that was done on mice showed that waste removal amped up when the mice were sleeping. So the scientists tested this out in the little mice brains by injecting dye into their cerebral spinal fluid, which I'm going to call CSF from now on, because every time I say that, my brain explodes.

it's too many syllables. So they injected dye into the CSF, which is like this cushiony, not, it's like clear, doesn't smell like anything, but it's the liquid that protects our brain so it's not like slamming around on the inside of our heads. So obviously you don't want your brain just to be bopping around your skull. We've got to have some squishy good stuff in there. Yeah, would not recommend bop it brain into skull. Yeah, don't do that.

So we have this stuff, and mysty too. And basically, during the day, they could see that this CSF stuff was moving, not really at all. Like it's just kind of like, meh, like just there. But at night, it flows around everywhere. It's going all over the place. And they also noticed that during the day, then they injected this thing as called beta amyloid, which are proteins that are associated with Alzheimer's. They injected into the mice's brains. And during the day, they didn't really like get cleaned up or taken out as waste as quickly as at night. So we kind of start to put the puzzle pieces together that maybe the CSF is doing some of the...

this washy washing around, picking up waste products and getting rid of them when we're asleep. But obviously, mice, mice aren't people. And so there's still a lot to be done. But a couple years later, this team at Boston University figured out a way to track and look at an image CSF in human brains. So they had like 13 young, healthy people come in, put on those MRI things on their heads and had them go to sleep and then was just checking out what was going on with the fluid. They're there for two hours, and we're looking at the CSF while they're sleeping.

And so what happened was every 20 seconds or so when they're deep sleeping, a giant wave of like CSF goes through the brain, basically scooping, like doing a little like car wash action, giving the brain a nice nightly scrub down. So I'm going to like try to make that make more sense because obviously that's kind of a crazy thing to think about our brains being extremely scrubbed like that. So basically think about like your skull as like a bathtub and think about the CSF as bathwater. Think about your brain as a soapy lufa and those soap suds as amy moids and other wastes. So throughout the day we're just living our lives, bathtub brain just going around. And so you've got your soapy lufa in the bathtub in the water. And, you know, we're walking around.

Our hearts are beating. We're breathing. So there is some motion. But, you know, you're not going to get the suds out of the lupa by just a couple little motions. So you're still at the end of the day while you're awake, got a pretty soapy lufa. But at night, what really needs to happen... I have a very soapy lupa. I just have to say, we really need...

We really need merge that just says you have a really... It's a really soapy lupa. That's how I really accurate description of how I feel. I always, thanks to the torture of consciousness. Yeah, and so if you want to unsoapy the lufa, you have to like really get in there and squish. I really do.

Squish that soap out. You know, there's got to like smush the brain to get the soap out, if that makes sense. So when you're sleeping, it's kind of like your brain is really, bringing out the soap in your alufa. So the CFS, CSF starts to more intensely wave in and out of the brain.

And the researchers can see this. They can see this on, because nobody had ever imaged CSF before. Nobody ever was like, okay, let's check this out. And basically, it's kind of freaky because you can literally see when someone's awake or not by like, if the lufa is being, like, cleaned or not. So, but there's obviously like the question of, like, what is powering? the lufa cleansing, you know? So it's...

Who squeezes our lufus. Yeah, who is squeezing the lufa? That's the big question. Because obviously during the day, the lufa is just there. But at night, there is this squishing going on. So this is going to go back. So stay with me to when we're talking about those phases of sleep in your brain ways. When your brain is oscillating, you've got neurons that are saying like, hello,

and then going away for a little bit, like in a nice oscillating, rotating scale. So the scientists behind the research that saw the C.O. like go in and out of the lufa brain, basically said that it's probably related or they hypothesize that's related to blood levels in neurons. So neural oscillations, your brain waves, change when you sleep. And especially in that third, like the deep sleep zone, they tend to move really slow, which means for a few hundred milliseconds on that brainwave loop, they go quiet and they don't really need as much blood flow. So that's when the squishing of the lufa happens. So it's when the neurons don't need blood. They hypothesize.

size that your blood flow is doing that, the squishing. So yeah, so we still don't know 100% about who is doing this squishing, but there is, there are suspects of who is squishing the lufa. And like, there's still a lot of other questions that I personally have. Like, when we're taking a nap, is that like a super speedy shower? And at night, is it like the, like, deep condition or hair bathtub bath? But we obviously don't know. The scientists only looked at the brains for like two hours and unhealthy people, because there is the question of like, if you don't get a full squish on your lufa, what happens when the soap is still there? So there's lots of questions like that.

But now you can go to sleep at night and know that the fluid that keeps your brain from balking into your skull is also doing a little rinsy rinse and getting some of that waste out theoretically. Wow. That's beautiful. Hashtag self-care. Hashtag spring cleaning. I know.

It's like bathing and napping at the same time. I will be thinking about my brain as a lufa desperately in need of squishing. A squishy luf. From now on. Yeah. I've had that image. And also, bonus, bonus on that is that the bathtub, the faucet's always running and it's also always draining. So don't worry about your bathtub water getting too soapy.

It's being replaced. Oh, that's good. So you're not just like squishing the lufa and waiting for the soap to come back eventually. Like it goes away. So it's a very good cleaning process. My dad told me this story that when he was, my dad's a physician. And when he first started treating patients, like, I want to see he told me that this was like when he was like possibly one of the first patients he ever saw like on his own. And that this guy came in and told him that he had a runny nose. And that specifically he always had a running nose when he would like lean forward and that that was like such a weird thing and the guy was just like yeah

just like always worse when I lean forward and then it turned out that the man had a tiny hole in the piece of bone that separates your nose from your brain and that was his cerebral spinal fluid that was leaking out his nose not the I remember a case study coming out about a case like that a few years ago and it like made the rounds um as like a very clickbaited headline being like runny nose it's Maybe it's your brain leaking. Yeah. The guy, I think the guy was fine in the end.

So, you know, because it replenishes, as long as you're not losing too much. Just another, like, drain. There's a bonus drain in the tub. Yeah, exactly. He's just got a soapier lupa, I guess. All right. We're going to take a quick break, and then we'll be back with some more facts. Okay, we're back.

And, Sarah, please make me sad. Yeah, great. My pleasure. Okay, so for those of you who have been to the Hall of Meteorites at AMNH, if you live in the New York area, it's something I think you're maybe contractually obligated to do at some point in your schooling career. But right in the middle of the hall, there is this, like, truly enormous meteorite. It weighs 34 tons, which is heavy enough that the supports are actually driven into the bedrock underneath the museum. It is the largest meteorite on display in any museum in the world. is the third largest meteorite ever found anywhere. And it is only the largest chunk of what used

to be a roughly 200-ton meteorite that fell like roughly 10,000 years ago, but which itself is like 4.5 billion years old. And collectively, these are called the Cape York meteorites, which is the part of Greenland where they were found. And this giant chunk right in the middle of the is generally known as Anya Gito, which I'm sure I'm saying wrong because it's an Inuit word, and I don't know anything about Inuit languages. But it is also sometimes called the Tent, which is the English word for the Inuit word for it. There were like three main chunks of this meteorite, and they were called like Tent, woman and dog, supposedly from an Inuit story about them, but also possibly a story they

made up to humor the Western explorers who showed up and were like, how did these meteorites get here? And they just kind of made up a story about it. It's unclear. I'm going to call it Tent, because that's closer to the Inuit actual word for it. So A.M.H. incorrectly states on their main page about Tent that it was discovered in 1894, but it was, like many things that were discovered in the 1800s, actually discovered a long time before that, roughly like a thousand years before by the Inuit group that was living in this part of Greenland, which we know because they used it to make tools. Because in Greenland there are... But they just had been completely unaware of its existence as they used it.

Yes, yes. Who even knew it was there except for all of the people who used it for a long time. Generations of people. Science is great. Yeah. There are not a lot of natural resources in Greenland, which makes a giant chunk of iron extremely valuable. So the local Inuits would hack off pieces of it to make like spear chips and axes. And very conveniently, we can actually like track how much trade was going on in that region at the time. And sometimes like which other exploring groups made it to this part of Greenland because you can trace the tools that were made specifically with iron from this meteorite, which is very interesting. Oh, that's so cool.

Yeah. But because it's kind of unusual for a group of people living in the Arctic Circle to have metal tools, when white people showed up from. from Europe and America in the 1800s, they were like, hmm, where are you getting all this iron? So John Ross, who was a polar explorer from Scotland, seems to have been like the first non-inuit to learn about the meteorites. And they told him it was from what they called an iron mountain, but refused to tell him where it was because it was their only source of iron. Yeah, they knew how valuable that was. Get your own iron mountain.

Yeah, he had plenty of iron. He was doing fine. they did trade him some tools that were made from the meteorites, and he donated them to the British Museum, and I assume they're still there because that's what the British Museum does. Then, like, 80 years later, in the meantime, lots of people search for the meteorites, by the way, and we're never able to find them. Anyway, 80 years later, the explorer Robert Peary, who is best known for supposedly being the first person to reach the North Pole, but also maybe not, and we're not going to get into that whole thing. but he showed up in Greenland. He was actually at the time trying to set the record for the furthest distance traveled north, but that failed. And so he couldn't return home without being superlative in some way.

And he had heard about these mysterious meteorites. And he traded a little bit with the local Inuits. He had maybe a bit of trust. Like he wrote down that, quote, their feeling towards me is a blend of gratitude and confidence. But that is not what the Inuits say about him. They say that everybody basically hated him. but apparently

I'm surprising but apparently Peary managed to persuade one annuit man possibly by promising him like guns or some kind of other valuables to show him where the media rights were and that was kind of

the beginning of the end so that was 1894 and that year he took the chunks woman and dog which are much much smaller than tent that I think they're only about half a ton obviously all entirely without permission from the Inuit. And then the next year he came back to figure out how you get a 34-ton chunk of iron off of ice and to New York.

It took him more than a year just to get it to the ship. It involved building a small railroad. It broke at least two jacks and a crane on the way. But he eventually dragged it to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and he sold it to AM&H in 1904 for 40,000. at the time, which is about $1.2 million today. So he did pretty well. A Mn H, I gather, was doing very well to have $1.2 million lying around. But unfortunately, that is not all he brought back from Greenland, because one of the anthropologists who worked at the museum had asked Piri if he could bring back a person for him to study, because that was a thing that was okay in 1984, I guess.

So Piri figured, well, he wasn't just going to take one person. This was 1984? No, 198. 2004. Oh, God. I mean, not that it makes it okay, but I was like, what? Oh, no. Yeah. No. Again, still bad. Some things had progressed by 1984. Anyway, he didn't just take one person, because why stop at one? Why not bring six people? He apparently told them that he would give them, quote, nice form houses in the sunshine land and also other valuables like guns and knives. And he also, other valuables like guns and knives. And he also, he also. said explicitly that he would bring them back in a year, that like, you're just going to come, and you're going to be in New York, and I don't know if he even told them why, but he said explicitly he would bring them back. But in the end, only two of them even survived to the one year mark.

On arrival, they were basically handed over to the museum where they were housed in the basement, which was quite dark and damp and unpleasant. And within eight months, four of them had died of tuberculosis because of course they did. They had arrived in a land where they had never been that had all kinds of diseases that they had no immunity to. In the end, there were only two of them. One of the survivors somehow got back to Greenland. It's not really clear to me like how he did that or when it happened. But in the end, there was only one person left of Inuit descent in all of New York, which was a roughly 13-year-old boy named Minnick. The superintendent of the museum and his wife actually adopted him, and he took their last name. They were apparently

very kind and loving to him, which I guess is like a very small consolation. But like the rest of this kid's life was just an exercise in suffering because of Robert Piri. Like Minnick's father had died, like his father, his mother had died previously when they were in Greenland, so he came with his father. His father died of tuberculosis and there was a funeral that was held for him, except that years later, Minnick found out by reading a newspaper that the funeral had been staged because the museum wanted to keep his father's remains for study. So instead, they put a mask on a log and wrapped it in a piece of cloth, and then they buried it in Central Park and told him it was his father, but in fact, they kept his remains in the museum so that they could study them.

So that's great. In the meantime, Pierre also refused to bring me. to Greenland, as he had promised. Even though he went back regularly on various exploration trips, he didn't feel the need to actually bring the kid back. Eventually, in 1909, the Peary Arctic Club, which was like, as the name implies, an Arctic exploration club that was like, I don't think founded by him, but founded by his friends or something. Anyway, his friends convinced him that it would be really bad press after being the first person to reach the North Pole if everybody found out that this like literal child was still living in New York, basically alone having been abandoned.

So eventually he agreed that they should pay for it. Minick was interviewed at the time by the San Francisco Examiner, and he told them, quote, I can never forgive Peary, and I hope to see him to show him the wreck he has caused. I have lost hope. He goes on and he talks about basically how hypocritical he thinks it is that these like Christian people who have been preaching kindness and Christianity to him have been essentially nothing but cruel and says, quote, what has your civilization done to my people and me but harm us? By the time he got back to Greenland, he had actually somewhat forgotten how to speak

his local language and also how to hunt. And he re-learned both of those things pretty quickly, but at this point he'd spent like six or seven years in New York. And so by that time, he, I think, had gotten somewhat accustomed to this other life and felt very out of place in Greenland, so he actually moved back to New York, tried to get his father's remains back again. The museum again said no, and I guess the press did not carry enough to cover his story. He felt like he wasn't going to win that battle. And then to top it off, he couldn't find any work in the city. So he moved to New Hampshire, strangely, and became a lumberjack there.

He lived on a farm with a friend, and I would love to tell you that he lived out his years, happily being a lumberjack, but he did not. He died two years later in the Spanish flu pandemic. and he is buried on his friend's farm in New Hampshire. Ironically, his father's bones were returned to Greenland in 1993, so it only took them most of the century. And there's a plaque there that reads, they have come home in the local Inuit language.

A. Minnage pretty much glosses over all of this, like definitely the fact that the meteorite was stolen from the Inuit. There's like a main page about Onigito that doesn't mention the Inuit even a tiny bit, It also doesn't mention Peary, I assume, because that's not a great association for the museum at this point. But I think, like, maybe the most telling thing is actually something that Aaron Thompson, who is this amazing art crime professor, she wrote about this on Twitter. This is actually how I found out about this whole story. So she pointed out something that I think is, like, I have been to the Hall of Meteorites.

It's one of my favorite parts of the museum. And I have always found it extremely strange that you are allowed to touch the meteorite. like it's just sitting there in the open and I'm very used to like in museums you don't touch anything but like you're just there's a sign that explains that you're allowed to touch it and the signs explicitly says you're allowed to touch it because people already damage this meteorite by hammering it for centuries and that that basically means that like the human part of this story is like what the museum considers to have ruined it as an artifact like people People used this meteorite for centuries to make tools and weapons, and therefore they wrecked it.

And so now you're allowed to touch it, because who cares? And I think that's just awful. Like, I think it's way too common in museums, and it's just like something you don't read about. Because why would a museum want to tell you that they staged a funeral for a man's father so they could study his bones? But this is the terrible story, and it is the end, so we can be, we are done being sad. That was a roller coaster. just immediately done being sad about that. Yeah. No, it's

yeah, there are so many stories. I mean, obviously this is a particularly horrific story, but there are so many similar stories you know, from museums around the world, from places that have

done, if possible, even less reckoning than the American Museum of Natural History has done with their, you know, their legacy of studying people like their animals, of stealing things from other cultures and not returning them. You know, it's really, it's like the stories are countless. So, you know, I guess I would say for any listeners who were shocked by this story, it is shocking, but it is certainly like not

unusual. Yeah, it is something I think about, I mean, not this story specifically because I just learned about it. But, like, stories like this are what I think about now when I go to museums because it was not something I was aware of at all as a kid, like when I was actually going to these kinds of museums regularly. And I don't know, I kind of have yet to go to a museum that does a really good job of reckoning with this stuff. Yeah, well, and it's something, you know, it's so important to always be asking yourself, like, who's writing the history because so much of what we take for granted in U.S. culture

and in European culture and a lot of cultures is just that like there is something austere and civilized about history and about natural history museum specifically but really so many of them are just like this veneer of academia over like real atrocities that have been committed. Yeah.

So yeah. I think also like I think it's kind of easy to forget also because in our head museums are things that like sort of bring the rest of the world to you like you can go to a museum and see Egyptian artifacts and see you know see things from around the world and we're very used to thinking of that as like almost like they're visiting you from somewhere else in the world but the truth is like anytime you see a thing on display in a museum not in that country of origin like entirely possible that they got it through totally legitimate means or it is on loan or it is a traveling exhibition but also like especially if you are in the U.S. or the U.K., like ask yourself how it got there.

And if the people who made that thing maybe want it back, because a lot of them do. Sorry about this one. My heart just like hurts. Like I have like brain no thought, like just pain after that story. Squeeze the lufa. I need some like hand held lufa squeezes right now after that. It's just so sad. We will all squeeze our loophos later.

All right. We're going to take a quick break and then be back for one more, hopefully, slightly less sad fact. Hey there, weirdos. Claire Maldarelli here. I'm just popping in to let you know about a brand new podcast from the editors of popular science. It's called Ask Us Anything, and it's a bite-sized show that answers your most outlandish, mind-burning questions, from what the universe is made of to why not everyone can touch their toes. If you like the weirdest thing I learned this week, we promise you'll love Ask Us Anything.

And you'll hear a few familiar voices too. Check out new episodes of Ask Us Anything every Tuesday and Thursday wherever you get podcasts. Okay, we're back. And I'm going to finish us off with my fact. So first, a piece of recent news that several people sent to me because my love of cephalopods is very well known. I have an octopus tattoo. I think they're very smart and beautiful. whatever, yeah. The first time I don't eat much meat these days, and I definitely don't really

eat cephalopods, but, because they're very smart, which I'll get into. But the one time I ate some octopus because it was offered to me, I was a little drunk, and I cried and said they even taste perfect. So that's, it's true, though. That's me. But I do want to shout out a member of our Facebook group, DREAMA, who did post this story, which was one of the several ways that it found its way to me. Just a shout out, reminder that if you are not a member of our Facebook group, you can find it by Searching Weirdest Thing on Facebook, and it's a great place to share and talk about weird things. And I'll, like, post pictures of my cat in there sometimes. It's a nice place to be. So, basically, if you weren't already aware, Cephalopods, which is the class

that includes octopus, cuttlefish, nautiluses, and squids tend to be very, very smart. Primarily, the research on this is about octopus, cuttlefish, and squids, but now researchers are actually starting to get very intrigued by nautilus intelligence, too. It's not their fault that they're just, like, giant shells with little squiggly bits at the end, like they may have inner lives as well. But anyway, cephalopods have the largest brain-to-body mass ratio of all known invertebrates, and they have incredibly complex nervous systems. They hunt actively, like they'll actually sneak onto boats and hide there for food.

They'll go wandering out of their tanks to eat critters from other tanks if they're kept in captivity. Like, literally go from one room to another in aquariums, which just always gets me. They'll sometimes show evidence of being able to learn and play, and they show signs being very social. You might remember a previous episode of Weirdest Thing where we talked about how Octopuses act on MDMA, which is very, similar to how humans act on MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy. And there's even evidence that octopuses can distinguish between different humans and remember which human they have a preference for. And by the way, that is like very uncommon. And if you want a frame of preference for like what a big feat that is, just like think about whether you would be able to tell the difference between

like one octopus and another if they had like the same coloring. Oh, damn. That's such a good. I'm always like. you know, who can't tell a human from another? But like, I couldn't tell an octopus from another. That's a really good point. Well, as someone with face blindness, I have to tell you. An activist might be better at it than I am. But we're not generally, like, most species are not designed to, like, learn how to distinguish between numbers of other species.

It's just not something that comes up a lot. And, yeah, they also might use tools to hunt and to create shelter. There are octopuses that will take, like, coconut shells. and put them over their little bodies, like little houses. I've seen those videos. If you have not seen them, dear listener, you definitely should Google it. It will cheer you up after the last segment. I will put some on Popside.com slash weird, just because.

And, yeah, they're also, they're so used to, like, doing complex problem solving in their day-to-day lives that octopuses will actually, like, get sluggish in captivity if they're not given games and puzzles. Like, they get bored and morose. you need to entertain them. So recently, scientists at the University of Cambridge marked another milestone in the journey to understand cephalopod intelligence by showing that cuttlefish can pass the marshmallow test. So first conducted at Stanford in 1972, the marshmallow test is a very, very famous experiment on self-control and the ability to delay gratification by planning ahead. And actually, speaking of TikTok, I have definitely seen TikTok trends of people trying to do the

marshmallow test on their kids. The classic experiment features children being given the choice between a small, immediate treat, like one marshmallow, or double treats after a waiting period, like two marshmallows. Scientists would then leave the kids alone with the single marshmallow for 15 minutes, and they would promise to double the prize as soon as they came back. And the question was whether kids would get impatient and scarf down the initial treat or whether they would wait to get double treats.

Also, by the way, in that particularly famous 1972 experiment, not all the kids got marshmallows. If they expressed a preference for pretzel sticks, that was used as the reward instead. I would love to see the data on how many of the children said, no, I want a pretzel stick, but apparently some of them did. If you are one of the marshmallow study children grown up and you wanted pretzels, call me. So we'll get back to the Stanford study and what it can and can't say about, human behavior in a minute. But first, let's focus on the cuttlefish. So researchers presented six critters with two clear chambers, one of which contained an easily accessible bit of shrimp. And then the other chamber was initially closed off that was also clear they could see into it.

And it would eventually open to allow access to a live shrimp after a short delay. And live food is better than dead food if you're a cuddlefish. So, While some of the subjects eagerly ate up the bit of raw dead shrimp, others would wait as long as two minutes to get the delicious Riggly live snack. Now, some of them would actually even shrink away from the available treat while they waited, as if they were trying to avoid temptation, which I just love. And researchers say that their responses, both this behavior and the amount of time they were willing to wait, was comparable to what has been seen in large brain vertebrates like chimps, crows, and parrots.

And there was actually a similar study about a year ago that had a slightly different experimental protocol, but was also, you know, in theory testing the marshmallow test on cuttlefish. So at this point, the evidence is pretty strong that cuttlefish can wait for a big payoff. It's possible that they develop the skill because they tend to sit around camouflaged until it's time to, like, very briefly forage, which is dangerous because they, you know, emerge from their camouflage. And by the way, if you've never seen a camouflage cuddlfish, it is pretty amazing. I will also post a video to this on popside.com slash weird just for funsies.

So, yeah, it's beneficial for them to be able to say, like, I don't think so. That snack isn't worth it. I'm going to wait a little longer for something better. And in this latest study, the researchers also found that the cuttlefish who were best at waiting for a better snack, because my. Not all of them waited. Some of them were like, you know, I'll just eat this denture. That's fine. The ones who could wait the longest were also the best at mastering, like little tests of learning and cognitive ability. They did like a little experimental procedure involving some shapes and like getting them to like respond to to the shapes in a particular way.

And the cuttlefish who were better at that were also better at waiting. So what we're inferring there is that like maybe more. intelligent cuttlefish are also better at planting ahead, which is, you know, we can't really say that for sure. And that really reminded me of the human marshmallow experiment, which has been pretty largely misunderstood. The marshmallow experiment, I think, is like one of the most widely discussed behavioral experiments, like among lay people. Like I said, like they're definitely like TikTok videos and Instagram reels of people like trying to replicate with their kids. But I don't think most people understand, like, what the takeaway of the study was or what the

shortcomings were. So I'm just going to run through that real quick. So in follow-up studies, the Stanford researchers claim to find that the kids who had delayed gratification in the initial experiment were described as, quote, significantly more competent by their parents, which I assume was based on some kind of, like, you know, survey questions. They also eventually had higher SAT scores and even had like healthier BMI's. So, uh, the researchers basically ended up arguing like, look, the kids who could delay gratification just like turned into like smarter, better, healthier adults who like created better lives for themselves. But follow-up studies, I can see Sarah shaking her head. She knows. I'm just like, oh boy. So then further follow-up

studies by outside researchers called that correlation into question. So some research has actually confirmed that a crucial aspect of the marshmallow experiment lies in a child participant's certainty that the experimenter will keep their promise. So one study showed that when experimenters broke some kind of promise to kids before the marshmallow pact was set, like saying they'd be back by a certain time and then failing to be back by that time before the marshmallow thing came into play, the children waited just a fourth as long as came. kids who had seen a demonstration of reliability from their proctor. So basically, if the experimenter did something to indicate that they would keep their promises, kids would wait four times longer for the second marshmallow, which is kind of heartbreaking to me because it suggests that actually what the marshmallow test was demonstrating was whether or not a kid felt confident that an adult saying they would get two marshmallows for two minutes later would actually come to

pass. And that leads us to some further follow-up studies. So in 2018, a study by NYU and UC Irvine researchers that included like 10 times as many children as the initial marshmallow study, because the initial marshmallow study was like less than 100 kids. And they were also all from a preschool on the Stanford campus, which like obviously a very representative sample. Yes, indeed. Obviously a limited a socioeconomic swath of preschool-aged America going to preschool on the Stanford campus. So this 2018 study, they used 900 kids and they tried to actually do a representative sample. And they found really limited support for the idea that succeeding in the marshmallow delay

actually led to better life outcomes. Instead, their finding suggested that it was your social and economic background that influenced your decision to hold out for a second marshmallow. And that, of course, those same things would also influence your future prospects. So what it boils down to is that, you know, there's this persistent belief in the lay public that we've shown that, like, kids who are good at self-control will, like, do well in life. But really, what the data suggests is that creating an environment where food is plentiful, and promises are kept, creates a child who is able to believe that they can, like, wait for a bigger payoff. And, of course, the same circumstances that would allow you to create an environment

like that for your child would also help them succeed later in life. It reminds me a lot, too, of, you know, what we talk about in terms of, like, the, I don't know, a lot of times, like, financial writers would talk about, like, poor thinking, like, you know, or, you know, or when you, from an outside perspective, it might seem like you spend money on frivolous things or you're not good at managing your money, but that it's very reasonable psychologically to get the small luxuries for you and your family that you can, like an iPod, when you can't, like, buy a house. Those are two very different things. So a lot to think about here in terms of, like, social science and, like, childhood behavior. But,

at least cuttlefish have self-control. And humans can if we give them every chance to succeed. Wow, I had no idea about that whole history. Like I was mostly shaking my head because I remember I remember learning about the marshmallow test in my like intro psych class that I promptly jumped because I thought it was not very good. But we like learned about the marshmallow test and I was like, look, just from my anecdotal experience, I could not be more of a wait 15 minutes for two marshmallows. Like, you could make me wait 24 hours for two marshmallows. And my little brother could not be more of an eat the marshmallow right now. Who cares about two marshmallows 15 minutes later person?

And, like, this just had zero to do with how well either of us has done in life. Like, my little brother's getting a PhD in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. Like, I think he's doing fine. I don't know. It's just, it's one of many of those like... Sometimes one marshmallow is enough. Also, marshmallows aren't even that great if we're being honest. Yeah, it's true. Maybe the pretzel stick kids knew what was that. Yeah, I would have asked for pretzel sticks personally, but I...

I'd probably ask for two pretzel sticks before I asked for two marshmallows. Like, if it was just one, I'd be like, what kind of mood am I in? But I almost never want two marshmallows. There's so many factors. It's like, how hungry am I? Like, am I two marshmallow hungry right now? because if I'm not, then, like, hold on to that extra marshmallow, okay? Also, just, like, sometimes you don't want to sit waiting for 15 minutes with nothing to do, and the thing to do is to eat a marshmallow.

Yeah. One of those, it's just like there's so many psych studies from this era that are, like, popularized because they're simple to tell you about. Yeah, absolutely. And a great anecdote from one of the follow-up studies that I came across that I just want to share real quick before we go. because Sarah, to your point, being someone who's willing to wait 15 minutes for marshmallow doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your success in life, personality-wise.

So they did a bunch of follow-up studies. They just kept coming up with ways to, like, create metrics that they could, you know, show that these kids had succeeded on. And in one experiment, apparently they, like, sent a bunch of the kids, I guess, who at this point were probably, college students or at least like middle school students, they sent them laptops with some kind of like game like task on it, but game in like a psych lab way where you like had to like answer questions or like click through things. And they weren't given any instructions about how

long the process would take, but it actually was just infinite. And one kid played it like until 2 a.m. before like quitting the game and sending the laptop back to the researchers. Oh my God. Being a kid who's grown up being proud of being one of the like 15 minute marshmallow kids, maybe not actually good for your personality. Like, it reminds me of that episode of Community

where I was just going to say that. Oh, I was so glad you brought that up. So yeah, you know, sometimes what someone says, I'm going to make you sit in a room and wait for something, The best response is like, uh, or not, like, I'd rather not. Like, is my time worth the marshmallow? Like, let's be real here. Oh, so true.

I want to, like, I think it's important to be like a five-minute marshmallow kind of gal. Like, you know, within reason. So, yeah. What was the weirdest thing we learned this week? mine was the marshmallow thing. I'm still thinking about the marshmallow. I'm thinking about my brain as a soapy lufa. I also think Sarah that while your story loses points for making me very sad,

it was a very important and well-told tale. So maybe this is a three-way tie today. If there were a prize for the saddest thing I learned this week, I feel that I would have won that more often than not a lot of them. this show. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. We're available on all major podcast platforms, so subscribe wherever you're listening now. And if you like what you hear, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

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