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00:06 Sarah Crespi: Welcome to the Science podcast for April 21st 2017. I'm Sarah Crespi. In this
week's show, Elise Amel joins Julia Rosen to talk about why changing our behavior collectively is
so challenging. And David Grimm is here with a roundup of stories from the online news site.
00:27 SC: And just a quick thank you to Scribie.com for supplying us with free transcripts this
month. Scribie.com, audio transcription perfected. Seventy-five cents a minute and 99% accuracy.
Best deal on the internet for audio transcription.
00:46 SC: Now we have David Grimm, editor for our daily news site. He's here to talk about some
recent online stories. First up, we have a story about listening for meteors. In movies that I've seen,
meteors are depicted as these fast moving streaks, bright in the sky, accompanied by a sizzling noise
that ends when it inevitably crashes to earth with a loud booming noise, but that's just special
effects. There are actually no recordings of a meteor making noise.
01:16 David Grimm: Yeah, I was really surprised about that.
01:18 SC: I know. Whether meteors make any noise and how they would actually make a noise is
hotly contested. Dave, okay, why wouldn't we be able to hear a noise of something traveling
through the atmosphere?
01:30 DG: Well, because of the speed of sound and the speed of light. Scientists say that you
shouldn't hear a meteor if you heard anything for several minutes after you actually saw it burning
through the atmosphere.
01:44 SC: So it's going really fast and the sound just would never catch up and you wouldn't be
able to connect those two things?
01:49 DG: Exactly. They would feel like two completely separate things.
01:51 SC: But many people do maintain that meteors make a sound at the same time that they see
them, and amazingly, as we've mentioned, there's just no record of this. So scientists did look into it
anyway and asked how would it make a sound that would be heard at the same time, and the answer
is radio waves.
02:10 DG: Radio waves. Radio, yeah. Old-fashioned radio.
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02:13 SC: How would meteors generate radio waves?
02:17 DG: Well, meteors release huge amounts of energy as they disintegrate into the atmosphere
and they also produce low-frequency radio waves that travel at the speed of light. So some scientists
have suggested that those radio waves produce the sound that accompanies meteors. So what this
news site did was actually try to model this phenomenon. Is there a way for meteors to actually
make these radio waves in a way that we would actually hear a sound at the same time that we saw
the meteor crashing to earth. And what the model shows is that, or what the models suggest
anyway, is that as a meteor streaks through earth's atmosphere, it ionizes the air around it and
basically what that means is it splits it in two, splits the air into these heavy positively charged ions
and lighter negatively charged ions, and the ions actually follow the meteor, whereas the electrons
are deflected by earth's magnetic field.
03:08 DG: It's the separation of positive and negative charges in the meteor's wake that produces a
large electric field that drives an electric current, and it's that current that launches the radio waves.
03:20 SC: Okay. We've got the waves, but here's the trick. We know radio is associated with sound
but you can't hear radio waves. What's the next step?
03:30 DG: Well, we're not actually hearing these waves directly. What's happening is that the
waves cause everyday objects, things like fences, hair and even your glasses to vibrate, which our
ears actually pick up as sound, meaning we can actually hear it.
03:43 SC: Okay, so it's making a local sound, but it's traveling at the speed of light and then
making a local sound that we can hear.
03:48 DG: That's right. That's right.
03:50 SC: Okay. Now here's something out of left field. They also say that this might be happening
with the Aurora Borealis.
03:57 DG: Right. The Aurora Borealis also involves charged particles and, in a sort of similar
phenomenon, what we're seeing with the meteor is these particles can be translated into radio
waves, and actually people have said they've heard clapping when they've seen the Aurora, and
maybe this might explain that sound.
04:14 SC: Well, I think we just need to record it. Why hasn't...
04:17 DG: It's amazing to me, shocking to me, that we don't have an audio recording of this. Get on
it, Sarah.
[chuckle]
04:24 SC: Well, I looked it up and there's a few meteors every night but I think the size is what's
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important. So the Chelyabinsk meteorite, they say one of those every five years and often it's
nowhere anyone would see it.
04:38 DG: Ah, or hear it.
04:39 SC: Yeah. Okay. Now we have a story on pigeon culture. We humans, obviously, build on
the knowledge of our ancestors. We metaphorically stand on their shoulders. But how often does
this happen in animals? We know that some can learn from each other, non-human primates,
chimps can show each other how to use a tool. But when does it become cumulative culture? Let's
talk about pigeons, Dave. Why are they a good place to look for this?
05:09 DG: Well, pigeons are pretty remarkable. Not only do they have rudimentary math skills,
they've been shown capable of symbolic communication, but they also are very complex navigators.
They use smell, sight, sound and magnetism to get from place to place. They go on these pretty
complicated routes and they're always trying to do the most efficient route, right? Because that's
gonna save the most energy, that's gonna ideally get them there the quickest. So this is ostensibly
something they're always trying to improve upon.
05:40 SC: Right, and the researchers then based this approach that they used to test this idea of
cumulative culture in pigeons on the spaghetti tower experiment that's been done with people. Let's
just start there. What's the spaghetti tower?
05:54 DG: The spaghetti tower test, not as fun as it sounds, but it does involve spaghetti, actually
dried spaghetti, and what basically happens is you got a couple of people in the room and one is
asked to build a tower using raw spaghetti and clay, while the other person just looks at them. And
then the tower builder leaves and the person that's left behind now has to build a tower from what
they have learned from that first person. And what the researchers find is that over time, as new
people come in, the towers get taller and taller, which means they're more structurally stable, which
means that the towers are actually getting better over time, which means that this knowledge is
getting passed on over time and improved upon.
06:34 SC: Right, right. So pigeons, how can... Pigeons are not building something. We're obviously
gonna talk about their path-finding, so how do they set up an experiment to kind of put the spaghetti
tower together with pigeons?
[chuckle]
06:47 DG: Well, no spaghetti involved here, but the researchers took GPS devices, strapped them
on a bunch of pigeons and then divided the birds into three groups. In one group, the birds had to
home by themselves; in the second group, the birds had to fly with the same partner over and over
again; and in the third group, the birds were switched up so that they got sort of a new partner every
half dozen flights or so.
07:09 SC: So that sounds the most like this example where there's an observer?
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07:12 DG: Right. And just like with the spaghetti tower test, the researchers found that the first two
groups really didn't improve their path over time. The third group, where you had a bird getting
switched out every once in a while, actually did improve their path. They actually got closer and
closer to what the researchers call a "perfect route," sort of that ideal route home.
07:32 SC: Okay. Is this really cumulative culture or is there something more simple going on here?
07:38 DG: Well, it depends who you ask, because some researchers say, "Yes, this is. This is a
great example and we only thought this could happen in humans, and now we can see it happens in
pigeons as well, which probably means it's happening in a whole bunch of other animals." But
others say that this is just really kind of a subset of what we consider this sort of cumulative culture
that because the birds weren't actually learning a new skill, they were sort of improving on a skill
they already knew, it's not quite the same as what we do as humans.
08:05 SC: Last up, we have a story on why good lions turned bad.
08:09 DG: Yes.
08:10 SC: This is an old story dating back to 1898 and, Dave, you seemed really excited when this
was first mentioned. [laughter] So why don't you just tell us how you first heard about lions that
turn on us and eat people?
08:23 DG: Yeah. I love this story. This is actually an incident we've written about a few times and
actually was immortalized in a movie that came out a few years ago starting Val Kilmer called The
Ghost and the Darkness, but it's basically about two male African lions that killed 35 people over
the course of nine months in the Tsavo region of Kenya.
08:43 SC: So how can they... How do they dramatize this in a movie?
[laughter]
08:47 DG: Well, yeah, I don't remember. I don't think they had CGI lions back then. But it just
fascinates me 'cause it's sort of like a Jaws tale on land and it fascinates scientists, too, because
scientists have been forever trying to figure out... Well, not forever, maybe more than 100 years,
trying to figure out why the lions did this because lions, for the most part, don't eat people. People
are a very small percentage of their diet. For these two lions, 30% of their diet came from people.
09:14 SC: Wow. There's been a lot of speculation over the years about what happened with these
lions and one thought was that they were starving, that they just would eat anything. Now
researchers are revisiting the scene of the crime, but in Chicago.
09:28 DG: So both lions were eventually killed by this British colonel called John Patterson. Their
bones have since been stored in a museum, actually the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, and
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what the researchers did... They wanted to test one of the prevailing theories was that the lions were
so hungry that they had become these scavengers that would just eat everything, that they would
just not eat the skin but they would eat the bone. And if the lions were actually doing that, they were
so starving they were basically consuming everything, every part of a person or an animal or
whatever, you would notice that in wear marks on their teeth. But when they looked at the teeth of
these lions, and they compared them to the teeth of other animals that eat bone, they didn't see the
same type of wear marks on the teeth of these two lions.
10:11 SC: But they asked another question which was, "How healthy were these lions' teeth?"
10:17 DG: Right. And while they were looking at the teeth, what they found was they found
evidence of dental disease. In fact, one of the lions seemed to have a very painful abscess at the root
of one of his canines which would have made normal hunting, grabbing, suffocating prey
impossible. And even the other lion didn't have as much dental disease, but seemed to have some
injuries, some milder disease that also may have made it a little bit harder for him to hunt in the
traditional way.
10:43 SC: Does that mean a lion in need of dental work is in general more dangerous to people?
10:50 DG: Well, so that begs the question, "What does this have to do with people?" And the idea
is, first of all, people are, sad to say, a lot easier to hunt and kill for lions than other kinds of
animals, so it may have made easier hunting for them, but also we have nice soft flesh, believe it or
not. And so if you're a lion with a very hurty tooth, just like we might go for Jell-O when our teeth
are hurting versus a taco, these lions went for people versus maybe a wildebeest.
11:25 SC: What else is on the site this week, Dave?
11:27 DG: Well, Sarah, we've got a story about a new study in this evolving story about whether
young blood can reverse aging effects. And this study shows that some protein that comes from
human cord blood actually seems to have anti-aging effects in mice, especially when it comes to
their memory and learning functions. Also a story about the amazing naked mole rat. This is a blind
animal that has a bunch of remarkable traits, including it doesn't ever seem to get cancer but it can
also live for 18 minutes without oxygen. [chuckle] And this new study shows how they do it.
Finally, for Science Insider, we are hot and heavy into our coverage of the March for Science,
which is happening this weekend, April 22nd. We will have more than a dozen reporters at more
than a dozen locations across the world, covering various science marches, when we will have live
coverage starting Friday night with some of the first marches happening in New Zealand, all the
way through Saturday night, when some of the last marches end in Hawaii. So be sure to check out
all the stories, all the live coverage, videos, pictures, and everything else on the site.
12:42 SC: Thanks, Dave.
12:42 DG: Thanks, Sarah.
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12:43 SC: David Grimm is the editor for our online daily news site. I'm Sarah Crespi.
[pause]
[music]
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Wonder Capital: Do well and do good.
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14:28 SC: This week's episode is brought to you by stamps.com. These days you can get practically
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15:11 SC: This site is super easy to log in to. It's a very straightforward process. And you know I
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[music]
16:13 Julia Rosen: Many of us live with an uncomfortable dissonance when it comes to
sustainability. We know that our lifestyles exact a heavy toll on the planet and on future
generations. But even so, we drive to work, and fly on airplanes, and buy disposable products that
are destined for landfills. In short, we do things that we know will make the problem worse. It turns
out that our psychology is at least partly to blame. Humans are poorly equipped to tackle challenges
like climate change, particularly when doing so requires us to go against the cultural grain. So what
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can we do about it? I'm Julia Rosen. Elise Amel is here to explain why building a more sustainable
society starts with understanding our own psyches. Welcome, Elise.
16:52 Elise Amel: Well, thank you, Julia. It's really great to be here.
16:55 JR: You say that calling something like climate change an environmental problem is a
misnomer, it's actually a human behavior problem. Explain why.
17:04 EA: There are really two pieces to this, and one is that the root cause of most of our
environmental crises are a result of our own behavior. We're burning fossil fuels and that's creating
our climate crisis and despite knowing this, we've been really slow to respond appropriately.
Unfortunately, just repeating that we need to change or providing information like the top 10 things
you can do to save the planet, or even scaring people about how desperate the situation is, really
aren't sufficient to motivate us to do things. And in the case of scaring people, it can really backfire.
17:37 JR: What does research show are some of the psychological barriers that make it hard for us
to make sustainable choices?
17:43 EA: There are really so many behaviors, it's hard to pick just a few. But some cognitive
limitations are pretty predictable. When we evolved, we didn't really have to worry about problems
that were too far in the future or things that weren't happening right around us. And so now, we're
not equipped to detect problems that are diffuse and that change slowly, or are happening far away
from us, and so we're less motivated to respond to them. And then when do detect information, we
process it in a biased way based on how we think about how the world works, we call these
worldviews and they're developed over the course of a lifetime. They're really strong and so what
happens is we develop these belief systems and then if we get new information that is contrary to
that, we tend to just ignore it and look for information that actually supports how we already think
about the world.
18:34 JR: What are the costs and benefits of our behavior when it comes to sustainability?
18:39 EA: Another thing we know is that consequences are really powerful. We tend to avoid
things that feel bad and we gravitate toward things that feel good. For instance, our current
transportation infrastructure really facilitates driving in personal autos over walking and biking. It's
probably because pedestrians and bikers feel unsafe, it's essentially punishing. In contrast, we
perceive that using a car gives us freedom to go where we want whenever we want, that's
rewarding, and so driving ends up dominating. Sometimes a problem arises that we don't actually
perceive the logical consequences of, for instance like the convenience in our culture means that we
often don't know where our food comes from or where material goods go if we throw them away,
and so it's really hard to make good choices under those conditions. And then sometimes, while
incentives can motivate us, the most persistent changes come when we're intrinsically motivated.
This kind of motivation comes from when we feel competent, and if we feel free to make choices,
and if we feel like we belong, and so any kind of new behavior like acting sustainably usually
means that we have to do something that's new or difficult. And if we have to feel awkward because
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it kind of goes against what other people are doing, those are all things that just demotivate us.
19:55 JR: How hard is it for individuals to change their behavior if the social and economic
systems around them don't change too?
20:02 EA: It's really incredibly hard to go against both social and other economic type of systems.
For instance, if we're trying to work against our transportation system or the food system, it really
requires us to do a lot of extra work, even conscious intention requires extra energy for us to do, and
we tend to want to reserve our effortful thinking for the super, super important things in life. All the
little details, if we have to think really hard about them, we usually just avoid it. We're even called
cognitive misers because of this. So when we have to look harder for alternatives or do a bunch of
background investigating for each choice, it just becomes overwhelming. Now socially, we really
underestimate how much we're affected by social cues and expectations that are around us.
20:49 EA: From an evolutionary perspective, we really tended to survive when we were part of
groups and so it's really a part of what we are as humans to not wanna be rejected. Any time we are
imagining that we might become rejected for doing something different, we tend to avoid that. So
there's some really interesting research that's been done to demonstrate how we're impacted by
social information. Households received energy bills that included some normative information
about how their neighbors were using energy and in subsequent months, people who tended to use
more energy than others did reduce their usage. But unfortunately, the below average users actually
increased their usage, and this is really not that surprising, because we all tend to gravitate toward
the norm. What was really interesting was that adding a smiley face to the bill for the people who
use less, basically showing approval for that behavior inspired the below average users to stay
below average.
21:47 JR: You write that we need collective action to promote sustainability. How can
organizations help and what does it require from the individuals within them?
21:56 EA: Informal and formal groups have a lot of power to drive our individual human behavior.
And luckily, some of the same drivers that keep us working against sustainability are really the
same mechanisms that can support sustainable activities and behaviors, such as norms and policies
and those kinds of things. For instance, in many businesses the purchasing practices of an
organization are largely based on how much something costs and while cost is always going to be a
factor, some companies have indicated that it's okay for it to cost a little bit more if it actually is
more sustainable in nature. But it's really important to remember that organizations really some
aren't some abstract actor, they're really comprised of individuals and each individual makes all
kinds of decisions.
22:46 EA: So for any organizational level change, an individual has to step up and be the one to
make the first move. And leading change is not all that easy, it's obviously easier if you're in an
official position like being a CEO or a manager, but theoretically anyone can be a leader. Leading
towards sustainability really involves recognizing the need for change, in this case seeing
inconsistencies between the status quo and our ecological reality. But they also have to believe that
something can be done about it, and they have to have confidence that their contributions matter.
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Then it also involves individuals overcoming basic social pressure, as well as the additional
challenges of being afraid that your job is in jeopardy because you might speak out and do
something a little different.
23:29 JR: At the end of the article, you talk about how resisting the pressure to conform is "nothing
less than heroic." How can people overcome our own psychological limitations and summon the
courage to speak out?
23:40 EA: I think there are several key practices that can help build courage. First of all, we should
recognize the source of our emotions. When we go against cultural norms, sometimes people shout
at us or, more subtly, they might give us some odd questioning look and these social signals really
lead to a flight or fight response, our heart rate goes up. We start sweating, we might get a dry
mouth and feel negative emotions. These are all cues to make us try and change what we're doing
and avoid the situation. So it's important to recognize these fight or flight responses are really just
leftovers from our evolution and that, while embarrassment used to cue us to the risks of rejection,
anymore we probably don't have the same extreme consequences associated with any particular
behavior. So we can actually override these feelings by telling ourselves that being rejected just
doesn't matter so much. Social influence becomes even stronger when we have to do public things
like speaking up in a group about issues that concern us. There's a new article about what's called
Pluralistic Ignorance, and that's a phenomenon that we tend to underestimate how many people
agree with us about controversial issues, and then we fail to speak out if we have an inaccurate
belief that many people disagree.
24:56 EA: Now, regarding climate change, most people agree that it's happening and that human
behavior is contributing. But we think that people will disagree with us, so we don't speak out. And
what they found out is that people who are aware of how many other people are concerned do tend
to speak out and it seems to be because we don't wanna appear incompetent and lose people's
respect. The good news is that pluralistic ignorance can be corrected. Secondly, there's safety in
numbers. Standing up by yourself is the hardest thing to do, so we also know that social support is
really powerful. So finding some people who are willing to stand up with you or go to a meeting
with you can be really helpful to get over this barrier. And this has really gotten easier with
technological innovation, such as the internet. And finally, practice makes perfect. There are
programs now for kids that help them really effectively develop a thick skin, and they do this by
having them practice doing something that they feel is morally right, even if they're facing social
pressure. I think we can all benefit from these.
26:00 JR: Thanks so much for talking with me, Elise.
26:02 EA: Thank you, Julia, it's been a pleasure.
26:04 JR: Elise Amel and colleagues write about the psychology of sustainability in this week's
issue of Science.
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26:14 SC: And that concludes this edition of the Science podcast. If you have any comments or
suggestions for the show, write us at [email protected]. Or tweet to us @sciencemagazine.
You can subscribe to the show on iTunes, Stitcher and many other apps, or listen to us on the
Science site. The show was a production of Science magazine. Jeffrey Cook composed the music.
I'm Sarah Crespi on behalf of Science Magazine and its publisher, AAAS. Thanks for joining us.
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