Sumrio

12 Stanford researcher explains the science behind

15 Dear Hardwork

21 You Don't Need College to Get a College Education, with Salman

Khan
6
22 Dean Ornish: The world's killer diet

23 How to hire, manage, and lead people

24 Habit 3  Put First Things First

11

25 Laura Trice: The power of saying thank you

12

26 Unhappiness is a Habit You Can Learn to Break, With Gretchen

Rubin
14
27 Win-Win, The 4th of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits

15

28 Ron Garan: To the Moon or to Mars?

16

29 Do your organs grow with you?

17

30 This New Material Makes Things `Invisible' To Touch!

19

31 Habit 5  Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood

20

32 How Does THE WALKING DEAD Zombie Virus Work?

21

33 My New Favorite Way to Read

23

34 Why THE FLASH Is Faster Than You Think!

24

35 Are Discipline and Play Compatible?

25

36 The Four Agreements

26

37 Feel  Inspirational Video

27

38 The Starbucks Interview Spelling Test

28

39 Native Speakers

30

40 Derek Sivers  How to start a movement

32

41 A Simple Mind Trick Will Help You Think More Rationally

33

42 Nature's Real Life Monsters!

34

43 Could a Saturn Moon Harbor Life?

36

44 Start With Why By Simon Sinek

37

45 Habit 6  Synergize

39

46 Learn English With Songs  A Good Idea?

40

47 The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg

41

48 What's The Oldest Tree in the World?

42

49 Habit 7  Sharpening The Saw in Language Learning

44

50 Study English, How Much?

45

51 Best Motivational Video

47

52 The American Thanksgiving Story

48

53 The Tale of The Three Brothers

50

54 King Alfred and The Cakes

51

55 How Sugar Aects The Brain

53

56 What Makes the Great Wall of China So Extraordinary

55

57 A brief history of video games  Part I

57

58 How Memories Form and How We Lose Them

59

59 Do Animals Have Language?

61

60 How To Stay Motivated

63
2

61 How False News Can Spread

64

62 3 Tips to Boost Your Condence

66

63 The Akune brothers: Siblings on opposite sides of war

68

64 The Treadmill's Dark and Twisted Past

70

65 Where Did English Come From?

72

66 The Benets of a Good Night's Sleep

74

67 What Makes Muscles Grow?

76

68 The Benets of a Bilingual Brain

78

69 How to Win Friends and Inuence People

80

70 The Benets of Good Posture

82

12

Stanford researcher explains the science behind

Ant-Man is Hank Pym, famous biochemist, who was able to create these magical particles, when combined with the suit, was able to shrink his size down to the size of an
ant. And when he needed to, he could increase the size back to the grown adult that
he was before. So that's how you would do it in the comic books, but in real life, there
are actual molecular mechanisms that regulate these processes.
Size variation already exists within a natural population.

In humans, you have

people that are very, very short and those that are very, very tall. But more importantly,
there's a continuum that exists between those two points. Now what's really interesting
is that there are natural genetic and environmental processes that regulate that size
dierence.
We just published some work looking at ants, specically, where we were able to
explore the dierence and the size variation that exists within an ant colony and be
able to match up environmental mechanisms, such as epigenetic mechanisms, more
specically DNA methylation, and how they regulate size dierence in ants. So DNA
methylation is a chemical modication that can be made to your DNA that regulates
a lot of the ways in which your genes function.

And when you look at a lot of the

growth, development, and sizing pathways that exist across the animal kingdom and,
specically, in ants, most of them can be found to be regulated by the same processes.
So what we did is we took the ants during an early developmental stage, and we
gave them drugs that could manipulate DNA methylation. When we added drugs that
increase the amount of DNA methylation, we made them much smaller, in fact smaller
than exists in the natural population. And when we added drugs that inhibited DNA
methylation, we made them much larger. More importantly, we were able to narrow
those dierences down to an individual gene.
Now what was important about that gene, especially across an entire population,
is that when we saw a 10% change in size, we saw a 10% change in DNA methylation
of that specic gene. when we saw 20% change in size, we saw a 20% change in DNA
methylation as well. If I were Hank Pym and I wanted to imagine a new way of making
a suit that regulate my size so I could shrink if I really had to, I would probably focus
more on these epigenetic mechanisms that regulate size, as opposed to Pym Particles.
There is still one power that we didn't talk about, and it's the ability to talk to ants.
Now whether that involves pheromones or anything else, I'm not too sure.
that's a conversation left for another time.

Perhaps

15

Dear Hardwork

Dear hardwork, I used to hate you.

When you called my name, I heard it but ran

away from you. When I knew you were coming, I used to hide from you. When you
inuenced others to talk to me, I quickly made excuses to get away from you. Afraid
of the pain because I didn't want to get hurt. Afraid to fail so I didn't even try. And
afraid of your name because of what you have done to others. Who do you think you
are making me so afraid of who you are? Reection in the mirror, shadow behind me, I
take one step and you're still ahead of me. Sweat in my face, tears in my eyes, I keep on
going, I heard you tell no lies. You turned the poor to rich, F to A's. Is there anything
that you can't do?
Now look at me. You made me who I am today. And because of you, I have this
never losing, never giving up attitude. Quitting? That's not in my vocabulary. When
they quit, I keep going. When they sleep, I work harder. When they say that I can't
and count me out, I show them that I can. When I tell them about my dreams and they
laugh, I make sure I laugh last. I'm a dream chaser. That means I chase my dream and
no one else's. Only I can defeat me. It's me against this work you put on me. There's
no losing. I will not lose. I came this far and I'm not stopping now. Oh hardwork, my
Dad was right about you. You do payo. And because of that, I love you. How can
I not? I'm no longer hiding from you. I'm waiting for you. Matter of fact, where are
you? I need you. Because in hardwork, I trust.

21

You Don't Need College to Get a College Education, with Salman Khan

The key to learning online is actually the same key that has always been to learning, is
that you have to take ownership over it yourself. A lot of people have, you know, there's
this illusion that is created in our classical education system and even at university that
someone is teaching it to you. Really they're creating a context in which you need to
pull information and own it yourself.

And that especially happens at the university

level where if you're not pulling and if you're not owning it, you're not going to do so
well. And when you think online, that becomes that much more important. Because
you can create the best software and the best video, but unless you set your own goals
and you apply, you know, some of the work from Carol Dweck at Stanford, your own
growth mindset, unless you exhibit grit and perseverance where you keep trying until
you get to something, then even the fanciest software is not going to be of a ton of
value.
And so what we do as creators is we try to make that easier for the consumer of
the content. So at Khan Academy we do a lot of trying to virtually coach someone to
have the right mindset, to be perseverant with things. And, y'know, one thing that we
strongly believe is videos you can learn from, but even if you're just looking at a video
or reading an article, try to do so actively. Don't just passively listen to it, pause it;
try to solve it yourself. Once you gure out what the person making the video is about
to do, pause it and see if you can do it yourself. Review it yourself. And ideally there
would be exercises. And this is actually where most of Khan Academy's investment is,
is unlimited exercises that give people feedback and unlimited practice to make sure
that they really do understand the material and allows them to review it in a spaced
repetition way so they can understand when do they apply with skills. So it really is the
active listening, active learning and the practicing and getting feedback and reviewing
this. And then actually applying it in your everyday life through projects and whatever
else.

22

Dean Ornish: The world's killer diet

With all the legitimate concerns about AIDS and avian u, and we'll hear about that
from the brilliant Dr. Brilliant later today, I want to talk about the other pandemic,
which is cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, all of which are completely
preventable for at least 95 percent of people just by changing diet and lifestyle.
And what's happening is that there's a globalization of illness occurring, that people
are starting to eat like us, and live like us, and die like us. And in one generation, for
example, Asia's gone from having one of the lowest rates of heart disease and obesity
and diabetes to one of the highest.

And in Africa, cardiovascular disease equals the

HIV and AIDS deaths in most countries. So there's a critical window of opportunity
we have to make an important dierence that can aect the lives of literally millions of
people, and practice preventive medicine on a global scale.
Heart and blood vessel diseases still kill more people, not only in this country, but
also worldwide, than everything else combined, and yet it's completely preventable for
almost everybody. It's not only preventable; it's actually reversible. And for the last
almost 29 years, we've been able to show that by simply changing diet and lifestyle,
using these very high-tech, expensive, state-of-the-art measures to prove how powerful
these very simple and low-tech and low-cost interventions can be like, quantitative
arteriography, before and after a year, and cardiac PET scans.
We showed a few months ago, we published the rst study showing you can actually
stop or reverse the progression of prostate cancer by making changes in diet and lifestyle,
and 70 percent regression in the tumor growth, or inhibition of the tumor growth, compared to only nine percent in the control group. And in the MRI and MR spectroscopy
here, the prostate tumor activity is shown in red, you can see it diminishing after a
year.
Now there is an epidemic of obesity: two-thirds of adults and 15 percent of kids.
What's really concerning to me is that diabetes has increased 70 percent in the past
10 years, and this may be the rst generation in which our kids live a shorter life span
than we do. That's pitiful, and it's preventable. Now these are not election returns,
these are the people, the number of the people who are obese by state, beginning in
'85, '86, '87, these are from the CDC website, '88, '89, '90, '91, you get a new category,
'92, '93, '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, '99, 2000, 2001, it gets worse. We're kind of devolving.
Now what can we do about this? Well, you know, the diet that we've found that can
reverse heart disease and cancer is an Asian diet. But the people in Asia are starting
to eat like we are, which is why they're starting to get sick like we are. So I've been
working with a lot of the big food companies. They can make it fun and sexy and hip
and crunchy and convenient to eat healthier foods, like, I chair the advisory boards

to McDonald's, and PepsiCo, and ConAgra, and Safeway, and soon Del Monte, and
they're nding that it's good business. The salads that you see at McDonald's came
from the work, they're going to have an Asian salad.

At Pepsi, two-thirds of their

revenue growth came from their better foods.

And so if we can do that, then we can free up resources for buying drugs that you
really do need for treating AIDS and HIV and malaria and for preventing avian u.
Thank you.

23

How to hire, manage, and lead people

Steve Jobs: The greatest people are self-managing. They don't need to be managed.
Once they know what to do, they'll go gure out how to do it. They don't need to be
managed at all. What they need is a common vision. And that's what leadership is.
What leadership is is having a vision, being able to articulate that so the people around
you can understand it, and getting a consensus on a common vision. We wanted people
that were insanely great at what they did, but we're not necessarily those seasoned
professionals, but who had all at the tips of their ngers and in their passion the latest
understanding of where technology was and what we could do with that technology,
and we wanted to bring that to lots of people. So the neatest that happens is when
you get a core group of, you know, 10 great people, it becomes self-policing as to who
they led into that group. So I consider the most important job of someone like myself
is recruiting.
Speaker 2: We agonized over hiring. We had interviews. I could go back and look
at some of the interviews. They have started at 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning and go
through dinner.

A new interviewee would talk to everybody in the building at least

once, maybe a couple of times, and then come back for another round of interviews,
and then we'd all get together and talk about it.
Crosstalk 01:17
Andy: The most critical part of the interview, at least to my mind, was when we
nally decided we liked them enough to show them the Macintosh prototype, and then
we sat them down in front of it. And if they just kind of we're bored or say this is a
nice a computer. We didn't want that. We wanted their eyes to light up and then to
get really excited, and then we knew they were one of us.
Rony: And everybody just wanted to work, not because it was work that had to be
done, but it was because something that we really believed in, that was just going to
really make a dierence. And that's what kept the whole thing going.
Andy: We all wanted exactly the same thing.

And instead of spending our time

arguing about what the computer should be, we all knew what the computer should be
and we just went and did it.
Steve Jobs: We went through that stage in Apple where we went out and we thought
we're going to be a big company. Let's hire professional management. We went out
and hired a bunch of professional management. It didn't work at all. Most of them
were bozos. They knew how to manage but they didn't know how to do anything. And
so if you're a great person, why do you want to work for somebody you can't learn
anything from? And, You know what's interesting? You know who the best managers
are? They're the great individual contributors who never ever want to be a manager,

but decide they have to be a manager because no one else is going to be able to do as
good a job as them.
Voiceover: After hiring two professional managers from outside the company and
ring them both, Jobs gambled on Debbie Coleman, a member of the Macintosh team.
32 years old, an English literature major with an MBA from Stanford, Debbie was a
nancial manager with no experience in manufacturing.
Debbie: I mean there's no way in the world anybody else would give me this chance
to run this kind of operation, and I don't kid myself about that. This is an incredible
high risk, both for myself personally and professionally and for Apple as the company
to put a person like myself in this job. I mean they're really betting on a lot of things.
We're betting that my skills at organizational eectiveness, you know, overrides, all
those, you know, lack of technology, lack of experience, lack of time and manufacturing.
So, It's a big risk. And I'm just an example and every single person on the Mac team,
almost to your entry-level person you could say that about. This is a place where people
were aorded just incredibly unique opportunities to prove that they could do, they
could write the book again.
Voiceover: Inscribed inside the casing of every Macintosh, unseen by the consumer,
are the signature of the whole team. This is Apple's way of arming that their latest
innovation is a product of the individuals who created it, not the corporation.

10

24

Habit 3  Put First Things First

Hi there, Steve Kaufmann here.

This is the third in the series of videos where I talk about how Stephen Covey's 7
Habits of Highly Eective People applies to language learning. The third of Stephen
Covey's habits is what he calls `Put First Things First'. Now, this is advice to a manager
and it means if you want your people to perform well you, yourself, have to be proactive
and have to be a model they can follow.
He says rule number two `Begin With the End in Mind' is what he calls the mental
creation, you've got this idea of where you want to get to, and rule three is the physical;
that is, where you can actually make it happen. So with language learning you have
this vision of what you want to be, what level you want to achieve, now rule three is
put rst things rst. In other words, make it happen.
Because language learning takes a lot of time, do it every day or as close to every
day as you can and be prepared to do it for quite a while.

Whenever you have an

opportunity, do it. I often talk about how I always have my mp3 player and now, of
course, my iPhone 6 Plus, which is a phenomenal device.

I have mp3 les on there

and I have my texts in ILingQ that I can read whenever I am stuck anywhere. If I'm
driving I'll listen, but if I'm sitting in a waiting room somewhere I can read. I can save
words and phrases.
I'm always with my language because I know in order to achieve results it's that
time with the language. I don't have to be talking to someone on Skype. I don't have to
be in the country. I can determine that at every opportunity I'm going to connect with
the language by putting rst things rst because that's my goal. It's only by doing that
that I'm going to achieve that vision I have of myself speaking the language uently.
So Stephen Covey's advice is for a manager or a businessman, but I think it has
equal application for language learning.

Once you've determined where you want to

get to, you have that vision, what he calls the mental creation, now it's the physical
creation. You've got to make it happen, so do it.
That's the third of his Habits of Highly Eective people. Thanks for listening.

11

25

Laura Trice: The power of saying thank you

Hi. I'm here to talk to you about the importance of praise, admiration and thank you,
and having it be specic and genuine.
And the way I got interested in this was, I noticed in myself, when I was growing
up, and until about a few years ago, that I would want to say thank you to someone,
I would want to praise them, I would want to take in their praise of me and I'd just
stop it. And I asked myself, why? I felt shy, I felt embarrassed. And then my question
became, am I the only one who does this? So, I decided to investigate.
I'm fortunate enough to work in the rehab facility, so I get to see people who are
facing life and death with addiction. And sometimes it comes down to something as
simple as, their core wound is their father died without ever saying he's proud of them.
But then, they hear from all the family and friends that the father told everybody else
that he was proud of him, but he never told the son. It's because he didn't know that
his son needed to hear it.
So my question is, why don't we ask for the things that we need? I know a gentleman,
married for 25 years, who's longing to hear his wife say, Thank you for being the
breadwinner, so I can stay home with the kids, but won't ask. I know a woman who's
good at this. She, once a week, meets with her husband and says, I'd really like you to
thank me for all these things I did in the house and with the kids. And he goes, Oh,
this is great, this is great. And praise really does have to be genuine, but she takes
responsibility for that. And a friend of mine, April, who I've had since kindergarten,
she thanks her children for doing their chores. And she said, Why wouldn't I thank it,
even though they're supposed to do it?
So, the question is, why was I blocking it?

Why were other people blocking it?

Why can I say, I'll take my steak medium rare, I need size six shoes, but I won't say,
Would you praise me this way? And it's because I'm giving you critical data about
me. I'm telling you where I'm insecure. I'm telling you where I need your help. And
I'm treating you, my inner circle, like you're the enemy. Because what can you do with
that data? You could neglect me. You could abuse it. Or you could actually meet my
need.
And I took my bike into the bike store  I love this  same bike, and they'd do
something called truing the wheels.

The guy said, You know, when you true the

wheels, it's going to make the bike so much better. I get the same bike back, and
they've taken all the little warps out of those same wheels I've had for two and a half
years, and my bike is like new. So, I'm going to challenge all of you. I want you to
true your wheels: be honest about the praise that you need to hear. What do you need
to hear? Go home to your wife  go ask her, what does she need? Go home to your

12

husband  what does he need? Go home and ask those questions, and then help the
people around you.
And it's simple. And why should we care about this? We talk about world peace.
How can we have world peace with dierent cultures, dierent languages? I think it
starts household by household, under the same roof. So, let's make it right in our own
backyard. And I want to thank all of you in the audience for being great husbands,
great mothers, friends, daughters, sons. And maybe somebody's never said that to you,
but you've done a really, really good job. And thank you for being here, just showing
up and changing the world with your ideas.
Thank you.

13

26

Unhappiness is a Habit You Can Learn to Break,

With Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin: One question is how are happiness and habits related? And I've been
researching and writing and thinking and talking to people about happiness for years.
And what I started to notice was that habits play a really important role in happiness.
Because a lot of times when I would talk to people, there was some big happiness
challenge in their life that I realize was actually related to some core habit.

And it

wasn't that they didn't think or know that if they got more sleep, they'd feel better or
that if they didn't spend so much time on the Internet during work, they'd be more
productive, or whatever. They had identied the change that they wanted to make, but
for some reason they weren't able to stick to that change. They weren't able to make
that change happen no matter how much they wanted to. They could see that there
was a happiness gain out there, but they weren't able to translate it into action. And
that got me very focused on the issue of habit change. So how is it that we specically
change a habit so that we can make these desires, these aims that are so pressing in
our lives  how can we translate it into real action, real change in our everyday lives.
Because the fact is, you know, for most of us there's a lot of low-hanging fruit. There's
a lot of things  just part of our ordinary day  things that don't take a lot of time,
energy, or money that if we could do them, they would make us happier. Well we really
have to get ourselves to actually follow through. And so that's where habits come into
play because habits are the thing that allow you to make those changes and just put
them on automatic pilot. They're just part of your everyday life and they make you
happier.

14

27

Win-Win, The 4th of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits

Hi there.

Here we are, number four in Stephen Covey's Habits of Highly Successful

People, `Win-Win'.
Now, in negotiations win-win means that I'm not going to try to impose something
on you that's only going to benet me and not benet you.

If I can come up with

something that benets you and benets me we both win.

That's far more likely

to be a successful negotiation, a successful business relationship or even a successful

discussion with someone that's working for you. How does it apply to language training,
oh language learning?
I meet so many people who are constantly negative about themselves when it comes
to language learning.

They say, I can't do this, I can't do that.

I've been trying to

understand, I don't understand. I keep forgetting my words, when I go to speak I'm

tongue-tied.

I mean, there's no end of complaints that people have about their own

performance in the language. The fact is that language learning takes time. You are
moving from the comfort of your own language where you understand everything and
you can express yourself as an adult and now you're trying to start all over again in
another language.
It takes time and everything is very foggy and uncertain for a long time. My own
experience is if I look something up a dictionary, I forget the meaning as soon as I close
the dictionary. That's why I don't use traditional dictionaries. It's just a waste of time,
that's why we have our system.

But, there's a lot of frustrating things in language

learning, you have to realize that going in. So, once you accept that, then all of the
time you spend with the language speaking it, listening to it, reading it with however
much diculty and however it didn't maybe meet your expectations it's a win because
you need to spend that time with the language.
So if you have struggled through a text and you still don't understand it or you
can read it but then when you go to listen to it you don't understand it, all of these
things which can be frustrating, shouldn't be frustrating. You say to yourself great, I
did that. I was, y'know, had enough willpower, staying power to spend that half hour
or that hour and I'm going to do the same thing again tomorrow and every time I do
that I'm gaining slowly on the language.
I've experienced this so many times when it seems that for months and months I
just can't seem to understand it. I can get now to where I can read it, I can actually
hear the words, I know where they sort of end and the next word begins, but I still can't
understand it. Yet, eventually I do. So whatever time you spend with the language is
a win. It's a win-win situation.
Thanks for listening, bye for now.

15

28

Ron Garan: To the Moon or to Mars?

Ron Garan: Should we go to the moon or should we go to Mars?

We should go to

both. But I guess the real question is, Where do we go next? What's the next step?
And I think this goes back to The Orbital Perspective as well.

I think The Orbital

Perspective, you know, the part of The Orbital Perspective that talks about long-term
planning. You know let's look 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the road and see what aects
our decisions that we make today will take us, you know, what trajectory will that
put us on? Where will that get us in that timeframe? And so if we go to Mars rst,
which we can do. I'd say it would probably be 10 to 15 years from the time we make a
decision to go to Mars we could probably get to Mars. But by making a decision that
means we've allocated the necessary funding, et cetera, et cetera. But another path to
Mars would be to go to the moon rst. And by going to the moon rst  and what I
mean by that is by establishing a transportation infrastructure between the Earth and
the moon and a permanent human presence on the moon. So we have routine travel
between Earth and its nearest neighbor. By doing that, that would open up the entire
solar system. That enables us to use the resources that are on the moon. It enables us
to launch in a much lower gravity eld than Earth. It opens up tremendous benets
to the entire population of the Earth by making use of our nearest neighbor. There's
energy on the moon. There's scientic discoveries on the moon. The list goes on and on
all the benets to Earth that the moon provides. And so not only would we get those
benets. Not only would we be able to have this trac infrastructure for routine travel
to the Earth and the moon, but we'd open up the rest of the solar system including
Mars. So to me, from a long-term point of view it makes sense to have the next step
being to return to the moon, this time to stay.

16

29

Do your organs grow with you?

Hi I'm Craig, I have regular sized organs, and this is Mental Floss on YouTube. Today,
I'm going to answer Jen Alexander's BIG question, Do your organs grow with you?
Well, Jen, the answer is yes, for the most part. They grow until you're fully grown, which
is usually your late teens and early twenties.

But it's hard to generalize considering

you have almost 80 organs, which make up many dierent organ systems.
So, I'm going to explain the development of a few dierent organs for you today,
including the heart, the lungs, the liver, and the brain. Let's get started! Right after
conception, a fetus's heart takes up almost all of its midsection. Other than that though,
your heart is pretty much always around the same size as your st at the time. Even
babies have hearts the size of their itty bitty sts. Then, it grows with that person.
Once they stop growing, their heart stops growing too. There are some conditions that
make the heart continue to grow after this point though.

These include high blood

pressure and a leaky heart valve. Or love. But that's metaphorical.

Lungs start working after birth. At rst, they're lled with amniotic uid. Then,
the baby takes their rst breath and lungs start to do their job. Crying. A lot. Lungs
continue to grow until people are in the late teens or early twenties. This is why young
people smoking is such a concern  their lungs don't end up developing to the extent
and size they should. The liver reaches its full size, of around 3 pounds, at the same
time. The liver is capable of regenerating itself though which is why people are able
to donate a piece of their liver to another person. Or to a dog, maybe. Probably has
never happened.
At birth, the brain is about 25% of the size it'll reach, then it starts to grow fast. By
the time a child is 2-years-old, the brain is 80% of its adult size. It also stops growing
around your twenties. But, even when it has stopped growing, the brain continues to
develop in other ways until it's around 25-years-old. And then we just all, just remain
that smart. We're just dumb until we die.
No!

Never stop learning.

Putting aside the liver's ability to regenerate and the

brain's ability to continue to develop, there's really only two organs that will continue
to grow until you die: your ears and your nose. Six-year-olds have ears that are 90%
fully grown.

And that's the case for teenagers with their noses.

But, still, a little

elongation continues throughout life thanks to cartilage growth and gravity. And lying.
Speaking of organs on our faces, there's a common misconception that eyes don't
grow at all after birth. In fact, they grow a little, but stop when you're about 13-yearsold.
Thanks for watching Mental Floss on YouTube, which is made by these regular
organ sized people. If you have a question of your own that you'd like answered, leave

17

it below in comments. And I will see you next week!

18

30

This New Material Makes Things `Invisible' To

Touch!

German scientists have invented a material that can conceal any object known to man.
This will only be used for good. . . .I hope. Oh God, what've we done?
Hey guys, Tara here for Dnews  and if it isn't obvious already, the future is amazing.
We have self-driving cars, we have robots that can dance and sing. But you know what
we don't have enough of ? Invisibility cloaks. Until now  cause we just invented one.
The ne people over at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany have
created a polymer that can make any object invisible to the sense of touch. So when
you lay it over something, it perfectly adapts and absorbs the shape of whatever's
underneath it. This example photo shows a tiny metal cylinder, encased in this polymer
 so no matter how hard you press down on it, you won't be able to feel the cylinder
underneath.
The polymer itself consists of a bunch of tiny needle-shaped cones, whose tips meet
to form a crystalline structure that encases an object and makes it completely impervious to detection.

Even a force feedback mechanism won't be able to determine

the object hidden underneath.

What's even cooler, is that each of those tiny cones

is constructed with sub-micrometer accuracy, so by changing the size of the contact

points, you can theoretically create a material with any kind of mechanical properties
you want. Even those not found in nature. The researchers who invented this say it
was developed purely for experimental purposes, but it does open up ideas for some
interesting new applications.
One example they give  that I could totally see myself using, is for camping. If you
created a very thin mattress out of this meta-material, it could completely absorb all of
the twigs and jagged rocks underneath it  so you'd have a completely smooth surface,
with no indication you were even sleeping on the ground. Of course, this is brand new
 so practical applications are still a long ways o. But still! Just think of all the things
we could do with this! I'm sure you guys have some awesome suggestions, so as long as
they don't involve couch cushions and several kilos of cocaine, feel free to share them!
Just leave them in the comments below, or you can hit me up on Twitter at @TaraLongest.
That's all for me, but as always  thank you guys for watching!

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31

Habit 5  Seek First to Understand, Then to Be

Understood

Hi there, Steve here, again, continuing in this series about the application of Stephen
Covey's very inspiring book 7 Habits of High Eective People and how it applies to
language learning. His fth habit was what he calls, y'know `Seek First to Understand,
Then to Be Understood.' This applies in life. We should always listen before talking.
Hear what people have to say. If we understand what they have to say we can respond
to it much better.
Well, the same is true in language learning, and that's why my whole approach to
language learning is so heavily input-based. I want to understand. I want to understand
the culture. I want to understand what people have to say. I want to feel condent that
in any conversation there won't be any big surprises.

I won't nd myself constantly

saying I beg your pardon, I beg your pardon. So developing this level of understanding
is key then what we have to say is going to make sense. It's going to be a response to
what people have said. It's not just going to be trotting out a few sentences that we
feel condent in uttering.
It also gets back to some of these other habits like the Win-Win. In other words,
any engagement you have with the language.

If you are connecting with it, unders-

tanding, listening and reading, all of this is a powerful win. So by having a learning
strategy that focuses on understanding, you're guaranteeing yourself the sense of win
and achievement. If, on the other hand, you look at language learning as a performance
then you're constantly second guessing yourself. Oh, I didn't speak as well as I would
like. I wasn't able to express my thoughts. I struggle to nd words. Whereas, when
you are listening you're constantly gaining. You're constantly learning, listening and
reading, understanding, understanding not only the language, but understanding some
aspect of the culture.
I just nd that this emphasis on understanding the language, the culture, on soaking
it in rather than wanting to trot out the few sentences that you can use is much more
long lasting, much more in the long run satisfying way and it builds up a solid base from
which to develop your output skills. So seek rst to understand, then to be understood,
I think that applies to language learning.

20

32

How Does THE WALKING DEAD Zombie Virus

Work?

In movies and TV, pandemics are pretty scary things. That's because, they are. The
only way to make them scarier. . . Zombies.
Now The Walking Dead is arguably the most popular zombie story of our generation.
Most of the story is centered around infection and how people get bit by zombies so I
thought it'd be fun if we gured out. . . How the virus works.
First let's start with what we know. Well, from the end of Season 1 when they all
venture to the CDC, the Centers for Diseas Control and Prevention in Atlanta, we know
that Rick and the gang gured out that Zombie Virus is indeed a virus and everybody
has it. No matter how you die, you come back. Unless your brain is destroyed. Now is
there anything in the real-world that even comes close to this? Well there are a number
of parasites, that after infecting their hosts they eectively mind-control them. In the
popular video game The Last of Us, there's a genus of fungus called cordyceps which
infects ants, mind controls them and bursts forth from the backs of their heads to infect
more unfortunate hosts.
There's even another parasite called toxoplasma gondii that aects an estimated
one third of the human population. To complete its life cycle, it gets into the bodies
of rats, mind controls them so that they're no longer fearful of the smell of cat urine,
which makes them get eaten more often by cats. The parasite then reproduces in the
bodies of cats and eventually infects us. Now, is that a form of mind control? I think
it is. But knowing what we do from the real world, The Walking Dead virus doesn't
exactly control a living host, and the chief concern is getting bit by a zombie and
getting infected. Now in reality, dying from a virus that you already have doesn't really
make sense. When you already have a virus but it's not aecting you, that's called a
reservoir. For example, we think that bats are a reservoir for the deadly Ebola virus.
That means that Ebola is denitely coursing through their veins, but they don't die
from it. Similarly, it'd be odd if getting bit by a zombie that has the zombie virus would
kill you with that virus if everyone already had it. So if all of humanity is already a
reservoir for the virus in The Walking Dead, it has to be something else that makes the
bite so deadly. I think it has something to do with the bacteria in their mouths. In a
world where nothing works, it would be nearly impossible to get anything like proper
medical care, bandages, antibiotics, medications, even if you had your own octogenarian
veterinarian on hand.
So what in real life kills with a dirty mouth? Well, famously, the giant lizard called
komodo dragons have enough bacteria in their, wait, wait a second, that's not quite

21

right. New research has actually come out showing that komodo dragons do kill with
venom found in the glands of their mouth. So we're gonna have to think of something a
little bit dierent for that. How about, natural disaster victims Unfortunately we know
when we pick up dead bodies from natural disasters that they can harbor sometimes
deadly bacteria and viruses like tuberculosis and even Ebola.

If we consider a dead

and decaying body to have some of that bacteria and virus in their mouth, it stands to
reason that if you got chomped on in the arm or the neck and it went straight to your
bloodstream that would almost be a death sentence. Sorry about that leg, Hershel.
So, what do we know? Well although there are real world parasites that zombify
their hosts, this isn't quite what The Walking Dead had in mind when it created its own
zombie virus. That's not quite how viruses work. However, we can guess at what really
kills you in The Walking Dead: and it seems to be a dead, diseased, decaying mouth
chomping down on you, and not having access to the right medical care or supplies to
treat it. Why? Because Science

22

33

My New Favorite Way to Read

1  I'm pretty sure I've tried every way there is to read by now, but here's something
that I've found to be the most eective if you're going for maximum productivity and
eciency. Basically what I do is I listen to the audiobook at twice the speed while I
look at the book and follow along.
2  And there are so many great things about that. . . First of all, it combines two
senses, seeing and hearing, so you end up with really good comprehension while being
really ecient at the same time. It's kind of like these videos. . .

Imagine if you were

only hearing or seeing. . . It just wouldn't be as eective, so combining the two senses
does magic for comprehension.
3  Another possibly even more important benet is that it keeps you in a straight
line and keeps you going. So you're not going back and rereading things, you're not
taking all kinds of unnecessary breaks and pauses, your eyes aren't running around all
the time, and you're not getting distracted every two minutes.
4  So again, I'm pretty sure I've tried everything at this point, and this is absolutely
one of the best and the most eective and ecient ways to read. You can take a book
like The Richest Man in Babylon and nish it in literally only 2 hours. You can take a
book like How to Win Friends and Inuence People and nish it in about three and a
half hours.
5  You can basically nish most books in 5 hours unless you're reading Ayn Rand,
in which case, let's be honest, you're screwed no matter what you do. So let me just
address one other thing. . .

Every time I talk about eeciency with reading, someone

always points out that you shouldn't be rushing, you should just enjoy the book.
6  And I actually sympathize with that because I know what it feels like to just
relax and read, and I absolutely love that feeling. But at the same time, I don't just
read for pleasure. Most of the time, I read with the sole purpose of improving my life,
and the more I read the better my life gets, so there's absolutely a sense of urgency for
me.
7  Anyway. . .

I really hope you try this out and nd it useful. It has denitely

been one of the best things I've introduced into my life lately. I don't have some crazy
attention span, so I get tired and distracted after a while but this keeps me going and
keeps me focused.
8  I think I've read one book a day for seven days in a row now, which is something
that I denitely wouldn't be able to do if I wasn't using this method.

23

34

Why THE FLASH Is Faster Than You Think!

You live in the past.

It's weird, I know, but even right now you are living life with

lag. The only human who isn't is The Flash. In the DC universe a few mortals have
assumed the identity of The Flash, but they all possess the almighty speed force, an
ability to move at incredible speeds derived from some undened extra-dimension.
Moving at superhero-speed makes for some weird consequences in physics, but time
perception is denitely the weirdest.

Light has to go through a few steps in your

eyes and brain before you actually see it. For example, when you're looking at your
computer screen right now photons are hitting the backs of your eyes, touching o
complex chemical signals that are then translated into electricity.
These electrical signals are sent along neurons to the back of the brain, and eventually translated into what we see. But this process isn't instantaneous. This path is
some distance and it takes some time. If life were a movie, it would be running at about
sixty frames per second. This means that there is some of life that you are missing.
Not only are you seeing the world as it was milliseconds ago, but you are seeing life in
frames, and not continuously.
Other organisms live a bit more in the now. The golden-mantled ground squirrel,
for example, experiences the world at 120 frames per second.

Flies see the world at

what would eectively look like bullet-time, at 250 frames per second. But the epitome
of perception has to be The Flash. It's because he wouldn't be able to see anything
otherwise. The Flash can sprint at the speed of light. At those speeds, it would seem
like light bunches up like how an ambulance seems to get louder when it's rushing
towards you.

If The Flash's brain also couldn't process information at those insane

speeds, the world would blur out. It's counter-intuitive, but by moving at or near lightspeed, The Flash's world would be one standing still. By processing information as fast
as he can run, he is closer to reality than any of us. Woah. There are less philosophical
points here too.

By processing information that fast, The Flash could pick out any

single frame of a movie just by watching it, you know, kinda like that single frame of
porn in Fight Club.

Or not.

He could see every individual ap of a hummingbird's

wings. Thinking at the speed of light gives The Flash access to more of reality than
any of us have. To him, our lives would look like a laggy MMO. To understand the
present it seems. . . you have to understand the fast. Why? Because science.
Thanks for watching the rst episode of my new show, you can check back right here
every Thursday for a new episode or click subscribe to get them delivered automatically.
Still have questions? You can nd me on the Twitterverse
@Sci_Phile. Thanks!

24

35

Are Discipline and Play Compatible?

I think of myself as a man of contradictions. I mean rst I am very brutal in my way

of thinking.

I love or I hate; it's black or it's white, which is not very true because

then a part of me loves the gray festivals.

But anyway I realize that I am a man

of contradiction and extreme and very often I state something and within the same
sentence I contradict myself. Or I give a rule and of course I add the exceptions to that
rule.
The discipline that I demand in many of my arts  the discipline of spending hours
in front of a mirror perfecting a magic trick by manipulation  also comes with its
antidote or its extreme, which is the opposite of discipline. Forget about what you're
doing.

Don't work; play.

And very often in my arts, taking the magic again as an

example, if I stop working on a move, but if I just fool around, as you would say, with
a deck of cards, you know, watching a lm or talking to a friend  suddenly out of
the playfulness will come a great invention. It could be a very small detail, but a way
to turn a card or something that I can use in a magic trick and it didn't come from
the discipline of work; it came from its opposite. It came with playing, you know. So I
advocate that and I think I am a man who works very hard and also plays very hard,
enjoys life.

25

36

The Four Agreements

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD. THAT IS THE FIRST AGREEMENT.

Stop gossiping, complaining, and criticizing. Your word is one of the most powerful
tools you have. When was the last time you used it to bring someone up instead of
gossip? When was the last time you used it to put value out into the world instead
of complaining and criticizing the person who didn't? Practice being impeccable with
your word.
THE SECOND AGREEMENT IS: DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY.
Imagine a person who hates books watches one of my videos. What's his comment
going to look like? Now imagine that same person in two years; this time he's gone
through a major life transformation and loves reading books.
going to look like now?

What's his comment

But, notice how my video is the same in both cases.

How

people treat you is a projection of who they are. That is why it doesn't make sense to
ever take anything personally.
THE THIRD AGREEMENT IS: DON'T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS.
If you're in a leadership position, you will lose all respect when something doesn't
get done the way it's supposed to, and instead of having the courage and skill to
communicate, you just assume things and start treating people like trash. If you had
asked, who knows, you might have actually found out that the person is going through
a divorce and your little task isn't really his number one priority right now. Build up
the skill and the courage to communicate, and you will easily turn hatred towards you
into loyalty and respect.
THE FINAL AGREEMENT IS: ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST.
Your best is going to change from moment to moment but under any circumstance,
simply do your best. Nobody abuses us more than we abuse ourselves, but if we simply
do our best, we can avoid all the unnecessary self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.
These are the four agreements that I constantly break, but when I do, I just say, Okay,
I broke the agreement of being impeccable with my word. I will start all over again.
Today I will be impeccable with my word, I will not take anything personally, I will
not make assumptions, and I will do my best.

26

37

Feel  Inspirational Video

We're all looking for something, we're all looking for hope. Hope you can't, just have,
just because you were born with hope. No, we're born with pain, we're born and lived
through diculties, and in our life we have a choice, either to be angry for what we
don't have or be thankful for what we do have. It is your mindset that is going to allow
you to spot opportunities where everyone else is frightened. Victims are frightened by
change, leaders are inspired by change. If your mind is full of worry, you're going to
miss the opportunities, because you're focusing on what's not working, versus what is
working.
It's your job to make yourself do the crap you don't want to do, so you can be
everything that you are suppose to be, and you're so damn busy waiting to feel like it,
and you're never going to. You have to force yourself, and I mean force.
You must really go for your own and realize how short life is, you got what you got,
so you got to make the most of it. You really can't spend a whole lot of time worrying
about his, you have to go for your own.
If you have an idea of what you want to do with your future, you must go at it with
almost monastic obsession. Be it music, the ballet or just a basic degree, you have to
go at it single mindedly.
Being brave isn't suppose to be easy, and for me I feel it's the key way to keep
moving forward.
Stop looking to others for approval, go about doing things to improve yourself, do
what-ever you can to improve yourself, go make money for yourself, go to the gym, do
what-ever makes you feel good, do it for your own reasons, but what I'll ask you to
do is this: go inside yourself, ok? stop looking outside yourself, but actually go inside
yourself and say what do I really value?

What is meaningful to me?

What would I

want to make out of my life? not because I saw the fucking magazine, not because I
had someone tell me it was a value, but what would be a value to me, and if everyday
you're taking action toward that outcome, give yourself a pass to feel fully secure.

27

38

The Starbucks Interview Spelling Test

 All right, congrats. Welcome to the nal round of the interview.

 Thank you.
 One quick last thing that we like to go over is checking your spelling skills.
 Sure thing, all right.
 There are a lot of people coming in got to spell their names right.
 Yeah, I understand.
 Real simple, nothing to worry about here. Gonna start o with a lob, pretty easy,
Mike.
 Now is that a Mike with an M?
 You're. . . Okay. I'd be worried there for a second.
 Yeah, right. Mike.
 That's Myke with an M.
 Okay.
 Okay, another one, John.
 I'm sorry, could you please use it in a sentence for me?
 Yeah. Just, Hi, I'm John.
 June.
 That's John. I'm looking at John.
 Hey, let's go with Amy, my wife's name.
 I think I got all the letters there. Let's check that out.
 Amy. It's actually exactly how my wife spells it. Here comes a curve ball. . .
 Uh-oh.
 Dan.
 I actually don't think I know any Dans.
 We actually get quite a few Dans here on a daily basis.

Call them our Daily

Dans. You don't want to disappoint them.

 Okay.
 Perfect! Lisa.
 I think that's pretty close.
 Shading is a little o on the left clavicle but yeah! Not bad. I'm just realizing I
don't even know your name, and I guess it's good a time as any, ask you to spell that.
 Okay.

28

 Justin.
 Yes.
 Great, I think you've passed with ying colors here. One last question, can you
make a cup of coee?
 No.
 Great. Can you start tomorrow?
 Yeah.

29

39

Native Speakers

Hi I'm A.J Hoge of EortlessEnglishClub.com

A common question or comment that I get frequently from learners is, What can
I do? Where I live there are no native speakers, there are no Americans in my town,
there are no British people, no Australians. I'll never be able to practice my English,
what can I do? It's impossible, Oh my God, I have no chance to practice, that means I
can't, y'know, speak English well, I'll never improve. And they write in, What should
I do? what should I do? And they are always so worried.
Well, let me give you some good news. You don't need to practice with a native
speaker, with someone living in your town, and you don't need to go to the United
States or to England to speak English powerfully. It's not necessary.
Let me tell you a story about a Japanese girl I met. Her name was Shiori, and I
met her when I was teaching English in Japan, several years ago. And I just met her
one time at a coee shop, and we started chatting and she spoke English very well. So,
whenever I meet someone who speaks English very well, I'm very curious, so I'll always
ask them, y'know, how did you learn?, how did you study? what methods did you use?
and what did she do? She did not practice with lots of American people in fact. What
she did, was constantly listen to English, she listened, listened, listened to English all
the time, real English. She got it from the internet, she got it from dierent audios,
and she constantly listened, she listened to movies, listened to TV shows. Everyday
she was constantly listening to English. So then when she nally met me and started
chatting with me, her rst time really talking with a native speaker, she spoke very
well and she understood very well.
You see, speaking comes from listening. Yes, it's great of course, if you can chat
with people, if you can get a conversation partner in your hometown or an American
friend, yeah that's great, of course that can help, but it's not necessary.

So if you

can't do that in your hometown, instead of worrying, getting so nervous, oh my God,
what I'll do. Focus on what you can do, because you can still learn to speak English
powerfully , correctly, clearly and understand it very well, simply by listening to lots
and lots and lots of real English everyday. And with the internet, you have so much
available, when you have these videos from me, use them for listening practice, you can
listen to a dierent video everyday.
In my email course I give you audios, mp3's, I give you some sample lessons in my
free email course. On my podcasts, there are so many audios, mp3 les. Put them on
your phone, on your iPod and listen to them. And then of course, you can watch news
programs, TV shows, all kinds of things, from America, from Canada, from the U.K,
from Australia. It's all out there on the internet, so focus on that. Focus your energies

30

on what you can do, on what will really, really, really help your English speaking, and
that is massive, a huge amount of listening everyday, as much as possible. Do that, I
guarantee your speaking will improve, and it will improve quickly and you will speak
English powerfully.

So stop focusing on what you can't do and focus on what you

can do, on what's possible, on these amazing resources that you have now, all of these
incredible audios from Americans, Canadians, etc, available to you right now. That's
what you should be focusing on, that's what you should be using everyday, do that,
you will speak English powerfully, I guarantee it.
I'm A.J Hoge of EortlessEnglishClub.com

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40

Derek Sivers  How to start a movement

Ladies and gentlemen, at TED we talk a lot about leadership and how to make a
movement. So let's watch a movement happen, start to nish, in under three minutes
and dissect some lessons from it. First, of course you know, a leader needs the guts to
stand out and be ridiculed. But, What he's doing is so easy to follow. Here's his rst
follower with a crucial role; he's going to show everyone else how to follow.
Now, notice that the leader embraces him as an equal. Now it's not about the leader
anymore; it's about them, plural. Now, there he is calling to his friends. Now, if you
notice that the rst follower is actually an underestimated form of leadership in itself.
It takes guts to stand out like that. The rst follower is what transforms a lone nut
into a leader.
And here comes a second follower. Now it's not a lone nut, it's not two nuts  three
is a crowd, and a crowd is news. So a movement must be public. It's important to show
not just the leader, but the followers, because you nd that new followers emulate the
followers, not the leader.
Now, here come two more people, and immediately after, three more people. Now
we've got momentum. This is the tipping point. Now we've got a movement. So, notice
that, as more people join in, it's less risky. So those that were sitting on the fence before
now have no reason not to. They won't stand out, they won't be ridiculed, but they
will be part of the in-crowd if they hurry. So, over the next minute, you'll see all of
those that prefer to stick with the crowd because eventually they would be ridiculed
for not joining in. And that's how you make a movement.
But let's recap some lessons from this. So rst, if you are the type, like the shirtless
dancing guy that is standing alone, remember the importance of nurturing your rst
few followers as equals so it's clearly about the movement, not you. Okay, but we might
have missed the real lesson here.
The biggest lesson, if you noticed  did you catch it?  is that leadership is overgloried. Yes, it was the shirtless guy who was rst, and he'll get all the credit, but it
was really the rst follower that transformed the lone nut into a leader. So, as we're
told that we should all be leaders, that would be really ineective.
If you really care about starting a movement, have the courage to follow and show
others how to follow.And when you nd a lone nut doing something great, have the
guts to be the rst one to stand up and join in. And what a perfect place to do that,
at TED.
Thanks.

32

41

A Simple Mind Trick Will Help You Think More

Rationally

There's one way to be rational; there are many ways to be irrational.

We could be

irrational by getting confused, not taking actions, being myopic, vindictive, emotional.
You name it. There's lots of ways to be wrong. And because of that, there's not one
way to x it.
But one interesting way to try and inject some rationality is to think from an
outsider's perspective. So here's what happens. When you think about your own life,
you're trapped within your own perspective. You're trapped within your own emotions
and feelings and so on. But if you give advice to somebody else, all of a sudden you're
not trapped within that emotional combination, mish-mash, complexity and you can
give advice that is more forward-looking and not so specic to the emotions.
So one idea is to basically ask people for advice. So if you're falling in love with
some person, good advice is to go to your mother and say, Mother, what do you think
about the long-term compatibility of that person? You're infatuated, right.

When

you're infatuated you're not able to see things three months down the road.

You're

saying I'm infatuated. I'll stay infatuated forever and this will never go away. Your
mother being an outsider is not infatuated and she could probably look at things like
long-term compatibility and so on. But there's other ways to do it which is not to be
advisors to other people but to be advisors for ourselves.
So for example, in one experiment, we asked people, we said, Look, you went
to your doctor.

They gave you this diagnosis.

You know that the thing that the

doctor recommended is much more expensive and there are other things that would be
much cheaper. Would you go for a second opinion? And people say, No, my doctor
recommended it. How could I not take their advice? How could I say, `Can you please
refer me for a second opinion?'  Then we asked another group. We said, Here is the
situation. If this happened to your friend, would you recommend that they go for a
second opinion? People said, Absolutely. How could you not go for a second opinion?
So one idea is to try and get ourselves from an outside perspective. You look at the
situation and then you say to yourself if this was about somebody else, somebody I love
and care about and then when this situation. . .

what would I advise them? And you

would realize that often your advice will be dierent and often a more rational, useful
perspective.

33

42

Nature's Real Life Monsters!

Picture a monster.

It's probably a ghost or a vampire or a Frankenstein beast or

something but it should probably look like something with a bit more legs, or none
at all, because nature has been literally making monsters for millions of years before
goosebumps were even a thing.
Let's start with a Hollywood staple: vampires. Vampires are undead or mutated
humans with a thirst for blood and a tendency to get really bad sunburns. Sometimes
they explode or sparkle, but generally it's their blood diet that denes them. Now, you
probably know about the real-world blood suckers like the leech, the mosquito, and the
vampire bat.

But birds have gotten in on the hemoglobin game too.

One island in

the Galapagos is ruled by so-called mobs of vampire nches. One of Darwin's famed
nches, these vampires get their food by relentlessly pestering larger birds  they peck
at the tail feathers until the blood starts owing, and slurp it up.
Whole gangs of these vampires conspire to drain the blood of island birds, roll
eggs o clis for the food inside, and to slurp up their vomit.

How about nature's

Frankenstein? Well, there's nothing really in nature stitched together and reanimated
like Frankenstein, but there is a bug that pieces body parts together for a purpose. The
assassin bug is like a vampire crossed with Frankenstein. When the assassin bug gets
a hold of its prey, it stabs it with a mouth sword then slurps up what's inside. But
it doesn't let the body go to waste. It piles the corpses and body parts of its victims
on its back to act like armor and camouage. It gives you the perfect opportunity to
yell IT'S ALIVE! when that pile of dead bugs starts moving around. I think bodysnatching monsters are probably the creepiest of all. Yep, nature has those too, and
they take over your eyes. Leucochloridium is a fancy name for a parasite that turns a
snail's eyestocks into pulsing rave lights.
This parasitic worm is a cross between a zombier and a body snatcher. After eating
one of the worm's eggs, the snail gets basically a worm tumor in its liver. Then it's
chemically castrated. After that, the worm sends sacs of larvae into the eye stocks of
the snail, which dance like every bird is watching. The eyestocks now look like tasty
caterpillars to passing birds, but the snails don't just wait around all day waiting to
be blinded. So the worm changes the snail's behavior so that it's no longer nocturnal
and makes it move around up to three times as much. Then the snails get their eyes
plucked out by birds.
In Hollywood they say, never work with kids or animals. The latter is much better
advice, especially if you're making a monster movie. We know that nature has been
making its own horror lm fodder for billions of years, and we are just playing catch-up.
Why? Because Science. Want more creepy science? Check out my latest video on The

34

Walking Dead virus. And got questions?

Follow me on the Twitterverse @Sci_Phile. Thanks!

35

43

Could a Saturn Moon Harbor Life?

Two years ago here at TED I reported that we had discovered at Saturn, with the
Cassini Spacecraft, an anomalously warm and geologically active region at the southern
tip of the small Saturnian moon Enceladus, seen here. This region seen here for the
rst time in the Cassini image taken in 2005. This is the south polar region, with the
famous tiger-stripe fractures crossing the south pole.

And seen just recently in late

2008, here is that region again, now half in darkness because the southern hemisphere
is experiencing the onset of August and eventually winter.
And I also reported that we'd made this mind-blowing discovery  this once-ina-lifetime discovery of towering jets erupting from those fractures at the south pole,
consisting of tiny water ice crystals accompanied by water vapor and simple organic
compounds like carbon dioxide and methane. And at that time two years ago I mentioned that we were speculating that these jets might in fact be geysers, and erupting
from pockets or chambers of liquid water underneath the surface, but we weren't really
sure.

However, the implications of those results  of a possible environment within

this moon that could support prebiotic chemistry, and perhaps life itself  were so
exciting that, in the intervening two years, we have focused more on Enceladus.
We've own the Cassini Spacecraft by this moon now several times, ying closer
and deeper into these jets, into the denser regions of these jets, so that now we have
come away with some very precise compositional measurements. And we have found
that the organic compounds coming from this moon are in fact more complex than
we previously reported. While they're not amino acids, we're now nding things like
propane and benzene, hydrogen cyanide, and formaldehyde. And the tiny water crystals
here now look for all the world like they are frozen droplets of salty water, which is a
discovery that suggests that not only do the jets come from pockets of liquid water, but
that that liquid water is in contact with rock. And that is a circumstance that could
supply the chemical energy and the chemical compounds needed to sustain life.
So we are very encouraged by these results. And we are much more condent now
than we were two years ago that we might indeed have on this moon, under the south
pole, an environment or a zone that is hospitable to living organisms. Whether or not
there are living organisms there, of course, is an entirely dierent matter. And that will
have to await the arrival, back at Enceladus, of the spacecrafts, hopefully some time
in the near future, specically equipped to address that particular question.

But in

the meantime I invite you to imagine the day when we might journey to the Saturnian
system, and visit the Enceladus interplanetary geyser park, just because we can.
Thank you.

36

44

Start With Why By Simon Sinek

A lot of people don't realize that I actually hated reading for the majority of my life.
By the time I was 18, I don't think I had really read a single book unless it was part of
an assignment and I was just forced to do it. But ever since I went to rst grade, my
teachers constantly tried to inspire me to read, and it never worked. It just made me
hate it even more. And then nally when I was about 18 or so, I started to nd mentors,
most of them online, and they were able to inspire me to read almost instantly, and
now I can't even imagine a life where I don't read. So what was the dierence between
my teachers who tried to inspire me to read for 12 years and failed constantly and my
mentors who were able to do it in basically no time? Well here it is in the context of
the golden circle.
My teachers started with the what. You have to read this classic. This is a great
book!

You have to!

Then they sometimes went to the how, and said, this is how

you read it. But that was it, there was no why. The funny thing is, if I had asked,
why should I read it, they would probably get angry and start yelling. How could you
ask a stupid question like that? What do you mean why should you read a classic?!
And that anger would mostly come from the fact, that they haven't really thought
about the why, so they can't really clearly articulate it. Most people and even most
organizations don't really know why they do what they do.
But how were my mentors dierent from my teachers at school? They had successful
relationships. They had success in their businesses. And they said, Look, do you want
your girlfriend to be attracted to you? Do you want to build a successful business?
Do you want to create powerful relationships instead of always getting your emails
ignored just like everyone else? And I was like, Yeah, that's exactly what I want.
And they were like, Okay. . . Good. Then pick up a book. Oh and by the way, How to
Win Friends and Inuence People is a great book, and so is The Way of the Superior
Man.

And I picked up both of those books and read them, and now reading is an

inseparable part of my life.

That is how great leaders inspire action. Everybody starts from the what, and most
people never even get to the why. Most people create a product and they want to tell
you about all the amazing features and specications. They want to tell you about how
these features work so well. But the truth is, most people don't care about your what
and how. Most people don't want to be told the exact measurements of your CPU,
they don't want to be told how the little chips interact with each other so amazingly,
they want to be told something like this. . . We value eciency just like you do. Here's
how we can help you be more ecient. And here's a product that will help you achieve
exactly that.

And that's exactly what I want to buy.

37

If you tell me my company's

going to be more ecient, I want to know more. If you tell me how great your newest
chip is, I don't really care. So again, most people start from the what and never even
get to the why. You're not going to make that mistake. You're going to know your why
and you're going to start with it because you realize that people don't buy what you
do, they buy why you do it

38

45

Habit 6  Synergize

Now, again, The 7 Habits of Highly Eective People and how it applies to language
learning and the sixth habit that Covey has is `To Synergize'. He talks about combining
the strengths of people through positive teamwork so as to achieve goals that you
couldn't achieve on your own. As I said in my introductory video, in language learning
the synergy comes from doing all of the dierent skills or all of the dierent language
tasks. There's no point in saying that y'know, I can speak, but I can't read or I can
read, but I can't speak and everything that we do contributes to the other skill.
Reading, for example, is not just about reading. Although, it's a wonderful way to
learn about a culture, it's a wonderful way to accumulate words.

If you accumulate

words, you have more condence when you're speaking. When we read we often subvocalize, and so that reading is a way to improve our pronunciation. As we sub-vocalize,
we become aware that there are words we don't know how to pronounce and so we might
become more attentive and listen more carefully to those words when we're listening.
I nd that, for example, if I listen without having the text I have trouble remembering the word. I really need to read and then I can associate a written, depending
on the language. It could be characters in Chinese, it could be simply an alphabet in
Russian or Korean, but that I associate this sound with these words and that reinforces
my ability to remember it. Writing, if you have the discipline to do it, is a great way
to get started in output. Because there's no pressure on you, so you write.
And when you write, I nd that when I write in a foreign language, basically, I just
write as if I were speaking. I don't, y'know In English I can have sort of a literary style
and a more casual style, but when I'm speaking a foreign language, unless it's maybe
French y'know, I don't really have a separate literary style. It's essentially my spoken
language written down.

So, Writing reinforces your speaking ability, in my opinion,

and your speaking ability reinforces your writing ability, so it's a good idea to practice
all skills.
Even though, as you know from my videos, I prefer to spend the bulk of my time
on input for the longest while to build up my sort of potential capability, then I need
more and more opportunity to speak where I take advantage of what I have built up
through these other activities. But all activities, in fact, work with each other so you
do have lots of synergy when you are learning languages.

39

46

Learn English With Songs  A Good Idea?

Hi I'm AJ Hoge the director of Eortless English. It's time for today's student question.
Here's the question: Should I use songs to learn English? now this is a very common
question, so many students ask me this AJ should I use songs?

Should I listen to

music? English music, English songs, pop songs to improve my English? Because, you
know this sounds fun right? I understand the question, it sounds fun to listen to music
in English to improve your English.
However you may not like my answer but I say NO. Do not use songs to learn
English. If you enjoy songs that are in English, ne listen to the music because you
enjoy the music, dance, have fun, enjoy it, but it's probably not going to help your
English listening or speaking very much. Why not? well the main reason is that songs
are very hard to understand, most of them, I mean to be honest when I listen to pop
songs or rock music or whatever, hip-hop, if I listen to it many times I can't understand
the words it's hard to hear what they're saying because when, when people sing they
change the way they pronounce words they change the natural way of speaking right,
they're not speaking they're singing. So, you probably know this in your own language.
Sometimes you listen to songs in your own language you can't understand what they're
saying. So that's the rst problem, it's hard to understand, many times it's hard to
understand.
Problem number two.

Even if you understand the words, the individual words,

you probably won't understand the meaning. You may not understand the meaning.
Again, I don't understand the meaning of many songs.

Why?

because it's, it's like

poetry sometimes there is no obvious meaning, right? it's a lot of dierent words but,
who knows what it means we have no idea maybe the person who wrote it doesn't
know, right. So this is a bad way to learn English because you're listening to something
that's hard to understand, the pronunciation is unnatural and the actual meaning of the
sentences is unclear, strange, it's more like poetry, it's not normal English conversation.
So for all these reasons, using songs to improve your English speaking it's just
generally not a good idea, don't do it it.

You're wasting your time, listen to, you

know, real conversations, listen to audiobooks, even listen to something like this like
just someone speaking real normal English that is much better.

Focus on that with

your English listening, not on songs. Enjoy the songs have fun with them but don't
include them in your English learning.

And that's today's question.

To learn more

about the eortless English system visit our website at eortlessEnglishclub.com, I see
you there bye bye.

40

47

The Power Of Habit by Charles Duhigg

In the early 1900s, only 7 percent of Americans had toothpaste in their homes. After
Pepsodent put a few ingredients in its toothpaste which had absolutely no eect on the
cleanliness of teeth, that number jumped up to 65 percent in about a decade. What
did Pepsodent do? A few months ago, I wanted to meditate for 15 minutes a day. I
had all the free time in the world, so I thought I would do it whenever I wanted to.
After a few days, I realized I was extremely inconsistent.

I couldn't believe my

entire day was free and I couldn't nd 15 minutes. I started to blame myself for lacking
discipline and having low willpower. Luckily, I had just started reading The Power of
Habit by Charles Duhigg. Then I started working over 12 hours a day. Even though
I was extremely busy, I realized over a month had passed and I hadn't missed a single
day of meditation. How did I do it? Both Pepsodent and I used the power of the same
conceptthe habit loop.
The habit loop is comprised of a routine, which is preceded by a cue, and followed
by a reward. Pepsodent put citric acid and other chemicals in its formula, which had no
eect on the cleanliness of teeth whatsoever. However, what they did produce was the
cool, tingling sensation on the tongue and gums which we are so familiar with today.
People in America had started to crave that feeling. What did I do? I focused on the
cue instead. In my rst case, there were no dened cues. So I made a simple change. I
decided I was going to meditate when I took a bath in the morning. The location  my
bathroom, the time  bath time in the morning, and the immediately preceding action
 my waking up made the cue much stronger.

And that is exactly how you achieve

consistency. You keep tweaking the cues and the rewards instead of beating yourself
up for lacking discipline and having low willpower.

41

48

What's The Oldest Tree in the World?

What is the oldest tree in the world?

Well, when you start talking about the oldest, the biggest or almost any other
superlative nature, you're unlikely to nd a cut and dry answer. There are in fact two
contenders for oldest tree, and it depends on how you dene the term.
The oldest known individual tree was discovered in 2012 in the White Mountains of
east central California, a great northern bristlecone pine that's 5.063 years old. That's
older than the pyramids, here's a photo of a similar bristlecone pine, now it doens't
look exactly alive and that may be part of its secret to success.

The high cold arid

climate of the white mountains turns out to be the perfect environment for fostering
these ancient trees.

Strangely, the higher you go in those mountains, the older the

trees get and several studies have suggested that the longevity of pines there, is directly
related to how bad the growing conditions are. Not only is the average rainfall on the
White Mountains less than 30 centimeters per year, but most of the trees are growing
on dolomite, a type of limestone in highly alkaline soil with very few nutrients. But
over time bristlecones have adapted to this alkalinity unlike other trees which has left
them free to grow without much if any competition.
Bristlecones also don't expend a lot of energy on their growth and in good year the
tree's girth will increase by about 0.25 milimeters. So instead they can make the most
of their meager resources. As a result bristlecones tend to have a pretty high proportion
of dead to live wood, but this has its advantages too, reducing respiration and water
loss, and it also helps that there are many other trees around, which makes it less likely
that they'll fall victim to a forest re over the millenia.
Researchers are able to determine these trees precise age thanks to a process called
cross dating, which involves taking core samples from both living and dead trees and
then matching up the patterns of their rings to come back with the timeline. That goes
back thousands of years.
For our second contender, we're going to Fish Lake National Forest in south central
Utah.

Here lives a clonal colony of quaking aspen that may very well be the oldest

living thing on earth. It's been named Pando and every tree or stem as they're called
in the half square kilometer colony, is genetically identical. Although no individual tree
in the colony is older than 200 years, they're all connected by a single root system that's
at least eighty thousand years old and possibly much older. At over 6.000 metric tons,
it also holds the distinction of being the heaviest known living organism on earth. So,
how do Padon get so old? Clonal colonies like Pando can reproduce either by owering
and producing seeds or by producing a clone of themselves. In this case cloning just
means extending the enourmous network of roots and forcing a new stem up through

42

the ground, because the heart of Pando, is so far beneath the ground, it can't be killed
by a forest re. Recent studies have found that Pando hasn't reproduced sexually in
more than 10.000 years.

That's quite a dry spell, and not that surprising given its

age. That just means that it's up to the root system to continue producing clones and
letting forest res burn to keep invading conifers at bay.
So thanks to the evolutionary tips, world's oldest trees, I'll be sure to keep them
in mind when I turn ve thousand years old and wanna go for another ve thousand,
and thank you for watching this episode of SciShow.

If you have any questions or

comments or ideas, write down on the comments bellow and on facebook and twitter, and if you want to keep getting smart with us here at SchiShow, you can go to
youtube.com/scishow and subscribe.

43

49

Habit 7  Sharpening The Saw in Language Learning

Now, the nal habit in Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Eective People is what he called
`Sharpening the Saw'. In other words, doing things to. . . if you're a manager you want
to work on making sure you have good values. He stresses values in his book, y'know,
developing certain skills, whether it be the ability to use certain modern technology or
if you're a professional in some eld, you need to constantly take courses to make sure
you're up to date and so forth.
In the case of language learning, there are a number of ways in which we can sort of
sharpen our saw. One of them is simply through exposure to the language and building
up your vocabulary because a good vocabulary is going to help you in every situation.
Also, I nd that occasional review of grammar, especially if the grammar is heavy to
examples rather than explanations.
The brain has trouble dealing with theoretical explanations, but the brain is very
good at creating and recognizing patterns and creating connections that relate to patterns. I nd it useful to review patterns, so that it makes me more conscious of certain
structures and then I start to notice them better, so an occasional review of grammar.
Another way of sharpening the saw is actually to start speaking because it's all going
to make you more attentive.
But, If we take this sort of image of sharpening the saw, so we are doing something
that is not urgent. In other words, rather than sort of being all concerned about this
next engagement with the language that I won't understand or I won't be able to say
what I want to say, it's sink in that I am doing something that is going to build up my
skills for the future. So what I'm doing is important, but it's not urgent. I'm developing
my skills; therefore, I have this sense of, y'know, satisfaction, achievement. I'm doing
things to improve my skills and the benets will come later on.
And so, I think we can have this sort of sharpening-the-saw approach to all of our
language learning activities so we don't get discouraged when we feel that we're not
making as much progress as we would like, because all of our activities are actually
improving our skills and the benets will ow to us later on.
So there it is, I've tried in these short videos to kind of go over again how Covey's 7
Habits of Highly Eective People has application for us in our language learning, and
I hope it kind of helps to stimulate you to put that eort in to, y'know, reaching your
language goals. Thanks for listening, bye.

44

50

Study English, How Much?

Hi I'm A.J Hoge the director of Eortless English. It's time for today's student question.
Here's today's question: A.J how much should I study English each day? That's a great
question, a super common question students ask me all the time. A.J how much should
I study English? you know 30 minutes a day, 40 minutes a today, an hour, what's the
best?
Well, the best would be 24 hours a day, but of course you probably have to sleep
eventually and you probably have a life, you probably have a job or you're going to
school, hopefully you have friends. If you have a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a wife or a
husband you may have children, so you have a busy life. So obviously for most people,
studying English 8 hours a day or 10 hours a day, it's not possible it's too much. And
that's okay because it's not necessary. So my best answer for you is, at least one hour
per day, total.
So if you can listen to English, study and learn English one hour per day, that's a
good amount that will help you improve, improve, improve steadily. You will improve
by doing one hour a day. Now if you're very busy maybe one hour still seems like a lot,
like Oh one hour a day, that's a lot but, it's actually not so tough if you break it into
pieces.
So for example one hour a day, you could listen to English 15 minutes when you
wake up in the morning. Later when you're going to work or going to school or cleaning
the house, you could listen to English again for 15 minutes, now you have 30 minutes,
that day. Then later when you're, when you're coming home or your kids go to school
or or your you're, you're in a bus or driving, you could listen another 15 minutes, now
you're up to 45.
And then nally before bed you could listen to English again for 15 more minutes,
that's one hour, right. Just little small pieces through the day, anyone can do that, you
can certainly do that. That gives you the minimum one hour per day. Do that and
your English denitely will improve, your listening will improve and you're speaking
will improve. And by the way, I don't like this word study, study English. Study has
this feeling of school, feels very serious, feels boring to me.
I like the word play, play English. For example think of sports, a basketball player
right?

that people play basketball.

People are happy to go out and play basketball

for one hour or two hours or more.

People love to play soccer or football they play

it, even though they're practicing even though they're getting better, the feeling inside
the emotion is play, nd happiness. Well, I want you to have that same feeling as you
listen to English, practice English. I want you to play English, don't study it.
So one hour minimum each day. If you can do more, that's great! of course more

45

is better, the more you do each day the faster you will improve. So if you can do two
hours per day, again break it into pieces, you can do two hours per day that's the even
better, three hours per day fantastic, ve hours a day incredible.
Just remember, follow the pattern break things into pieces, use your iPod, so you
can walk and exercise and drive and sit in a bus or a train, you can do other things
as you listen to English by using an iPod.

So use these methods at least one hour

a day, that's the minimum and more is better.

That's the answer to today's ques-

tion, to learn more about the eortless English system, join our free e-mail course at
EortlessEnglishClub.com, bye bye.

46

51

Best Motivational Video

Dismissed from drama school with a note that read, wasting her time, she's too shy to
put her best foot forward.
Lucille Ball
Turned down by the Decca recording company who said, We don't like their sound
and guitar music is on the way out.
The Beatles
A failed soldier, farmer, and real-state agent, at 38 years old, went to work for his
father as a handy man.
Ulysses S. Grant
Cut from the high school basketball team, he went home, locked himself in his room
and cried.
Michael Jordan
A teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything and that he should go into
a eld where he might succeed by virtue of his pleasant personality.
Thomas Edison
Fired from a newspaper because he lacked imagination and had no original ideas.
Walt Disney
His anc died, he failed in bussiness twice. He had a nervous breakdown and he
was defeated in eight elections.
Abraham Lincoln
If you've never failed, You've never lived!

47

52

The American Thanksgiving Story

Early in the 17 century, a group of people called the Pilgrims, wanted to reform and
purify England's churches. As a result of their eorts, they were persecuted. So they
sailed to the Netherlands, also known as Holland, seeking religious freedom. After 12
years in Holland, where they struggled to make a living and felt threatened by the
permissive Dutch society, the Pilgrims decided to seek refuge in a place that they could
create a society that matched their religious ideas. In exchange for seven years of work,
the Puritans persuaded a London stock company to nance their journey to the New
World. In September 1620, 102 passengers set sail from Plymouth, England on a ship
called the Mayower.

The journey took 65 days and was lled with much diculty.

Bad storms weakened the ship and caused many leaks.

Many passengers were cold

and damp for much of the journey and others were concerned that they wouldn't even
survive. Though many were sick and one person died, they did make it. On December
11, 1620 the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock and began to explore the surrounding
area for a suitable place to build their colony. They chose Plymouth because it had
an excellent harbor and a large brook in which to catch sh to eat. While living on
the Mayower and ferrying back and forth to land, the Pilgrims built their houses and
barns, constructions were hindered by exceptionally heavy snow and intense cold, but
the settlement was completed in late March, 1621.

Their success was dampened by

great sorrow, nearly half of their original group died that rst winter.
Besides survival, the Pilgrims were concerned that the native American Indians
would attack them. To their surprise an Indian named Samoset walked right into the
colony, and welcomed them in broken English. Samoset was from an Indian tribe in
Maine and had picked up a few English words from the shermen who came into the
harbors there. He told them also of another Indian named Squanto, a native of that
place who had been in England and could speak better English than he. The Pilgrims
used the opportunity to negotiate a peace treaty and to establish trading relations.
Squanto's importance to the Pilgrims was enormous and it can be said that they would
not have survived without his help. It was Squanto who taught the Pilgrims how to
tap the maple trees for sap, how to plant Indian corn and other crops, and how to tell
which plants were poisonous and which could be used as medicine. As a result, they
had a bountiful harvest that provided food for the coming winter. The Pilgrims had
much to celebrate, although nearly half of their people died.

They had successfully

built homes in the wilderness, raised enough crops to keep them alive during the long
coming winter, and they were in peace with their Indian neighbors. It was time to give
thanks. The Pilgrim Governor, William Bradford, proclaimed a day of thanksgiving to
God, for helping them survive the brutal winter. They invited Squanto and the other

48

Indians to join them in their celebration. Their chief, Massasoit, and 90 braves came
to the celebration which lasted for 3 days.
Two years later the colony suered a drought and Governor Bradford ordered a day
of fasting and prayer. It is reported that soon afterward it began to rain. To celebrate
God's answer to prayer November 29th was proclaimed the day of thanksgiving. This
date is believed to be the beginning of the present day Thanksgiving Day which is held
on the 4th Thursday of November. The custom of an annual thanksgiving celebration
held after the harvest continued, but it became a national observance under President's
George Washington in 1789, and Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

Only after Lincoln did

thanksgiving become an annual observance.

Thanksgiving weekend has become one of the busiest travel periods of the year,
because it is a 4 to 5 day vacation for many schools and some businesses. It has also
become the beginning of the Christmas buying season.

Many people today observe

the holiday by watching professional football games, Thanksgiving TV programs and

the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade held in New York City. Thanksgiving is a time
when families gather and enjoy time together. Many families give thanks to God for his
goodness and faithfulness to them. Regardless of one's religious beliefs, most families
will share a large meal together of turkey, stung, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet
potatoes, cranberry sauce, sweet corn and pumpkin pie. Afterwards, family members
may share what they are thankful for from that year. What are somethings you are
thankful for?

49

53

The Tale of The Three Brothers

1  There were once three brothers who were traveling along a lonely winding road
at twilight. In time, the brothers reached a river too treacherous to pass. But being
learned in the magical arts, the three brothers simply waved their wands, and made a
bridge. Before they could cross however, they found their path blocked by a hooded
gure.
2  It was Death, and he felt cheated. Cheated because travelers would normally
drown in the river, but death was cunning.

He pretended to congratulate the three

brothers on their magic, and said that each had earned a prize for having been clever
enough to evade him.
3  The oldest asked for a wand more powerful than any in existence, so Death
fashioned him one from an elder tree that stood nearby. The second brother decided
he wanted to humiliate Death even further and asked for the power to recall loved ones
from the grave, so Death plucked a stone from the river and oered it to him.
4  Finally, Death turned to the third brother.

A humble man, he asked for so-

mething that would allow him to go forth from that place without being followed by
Death, and so it was that Death reluctantly handed over his own cloak of invisibility.
5  The rst brother traveled to a distant village where with the elder wand in
hand, he killed a wizard with whom he had once quarreled. Drunk with the power that
the elder wand had given him, he bragged to his invincibility. But that night, another
wizard stole the wand and slit the brother's throat for good measure, and so Death
took the rst brother for his own.
6  The second brother journeyed to his home where he took the stone and turned it
thrice in hand. To his delight, the girl he had once hoped to marry before her untimely
death appeared before him. Yet soon she turned sad, and cold for she did not belong in
the mortal world. Driven mad with hopeless longing, the second brother killed himself
so as to join her, and so Death took the second brother.
7  As for the third brother, Death searched for many years but was never able to
nd him, only when he attained a great age did the youngest brother shed the cloak
of invisibility and give it to his son. He then greeted Death as an old friend and went
with him gladly, departing this life, as equals.

50

54

King Alfred and The Cakes

Many years ago there lived in England a wise and good king whose name was Alfred.
No other man ever did so much for his country as he; and people now, all over the
world, speak of him as Alfred the Great.
In those days a king did not have a very easy life. There was war almost all the
time, and no one else could lead his army into battle so well as he. And so, between
ruling and ghting, he had a busy time of it indeed.
A erce, rude people, called the Danes, had come from over the sea, and were
ghting the English. There were so many of them, and they were so bold and strong,
that for a long time they gained every battle. If they kept on, they would soon be the
masters of the whole country.
At last, after a great battle, the English army was broken up and scattered. Every
man had to save himself in the best way he could.

King Alfred ed alone, in great

haste, through the woods and swamps.

Late in the day the king came to the hut of a woodcutter. He was very tired and
hungry, and he begged the woodcutter's wife to give him something to eat and a place
to sleep in her hut.
The woman was baking some cakes upon the hearth, and she looked with pity upon
the poor, ragged fellow who seemed so hungry. She had no thought that he was the
king.
"Yes,"she said, "I will give you some supper if you will watch these cakes. I want
to go out and milk the cow, and you must see that they do not burn while I am gone."
King Alfred was very willing to watch the cakes, but he had far greater things to
think about. How was he going to get his army together again? And how was he going
to drive the erce Danes out of the land? He forgot his hunger, he forgot the cakes,
he forgot that he was in the woodcutter's hut. His mind was busy making plans for
tomorrow.
In a little while the woman came back.

The cakes were smoking on the hearth.

They were burned to a crisp. Ah, how angry she was!

You lazy fellow! she cried. See what you have done! You want something to eat,
but you do not want to work!
I have been told that she even struck the king with a stick; but I can hardly believe
that she was so ill natured.
The king must have laughed to himself at the thought of being scolded in this way;
and he was so hungry that he did not mind the woman's angry words half so much as
the loss of the cakes.

51

I do not know whether he had anything to eat that night, or whether he had to go
to bed without his supper. But it was not many days until he had gathered his men
together again, and had beaten the Danes in a great battle.

52

55

How Sugar Aects The Brain

Picture warm, gooey cookies, crunchy candies, velvety cakes, wae cones piled high
with ice cream.

Is your mouth watering?

Are you craving dessert?

happens in the brain that makes sugary foods so hard to resist?

Why?

What

Sugar is a general

term used to describe a class of molecules called carbohydrates, and it's found in a
wide variety of food and drink. Just check the labels on sweet products you buy.
Glucose, fructose, sucrose, maltose, lactose, dextrose, and starch are all forms of
sugar. So are high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, raw sugar, and honey. And sugar
isn't just in candies and desserts, it's also added to tomato sauce, yogurt, dried fruit,
avored waters, or granola bars. Since sugar is everywhere, it's important to understand
how it aects the brain.
What happens when sugar hits your tongue? And does eating a little bit of sugar
make you crave more? You take a bite of cereal. The sugars it contains activate the
sweet-taste receptors, part of the taste buds on the tongue. These receptors send a signal
up to the brain stem, and from there, it forks o into many areas of the forebrain, one
of which is the cerebral cortex. Dierent sections of the cerebral cortex process dierent
tastes: bitter, salty, umami, and, in our case, sweet. From here, the signal activates the
brain's reward system.
This reward system is a series of electrical and chemical pathways across several
dierent regions of the brain. It's a complicated network, but it helps answer a single,
subconscious question: should I do that again? That warm, fuzzy feeling you get when
you taste Grandma's chocolate cake? That's your reward system saying, Mmm, yes!
And it's not just activated by food. Socializing, sexual behavior, and drugs are just a
few examples of things and experiences that also activate the reward system.
But overactivating this reward system kickstarts a series of unfortunate events: loss
of control, craving, and increased tolerance to sugar. Let's get back to our bite of cereal.
It travels down into your stomach and eventually into your gut. And guess what? There
are sugar receptors here, too. They are not taste buds, but they do send signals telling
your brain that you're full or that your body should produce more insulin to deal with
the extra sugar you're eating.
The major currency of our reward system is dopamine, an important chemical or
neurotransmitter.

There are many dopamine receptors in the forebrain, but they're

not evenly distributed.

Certain areas contain dense clusters of receptors, and these

dopamine hot spots are a part of our reward system. Drugs like alcohol, nicotine, or
heroin send dopamine into overdrive, leading some people to constantly seek that high,
in other words, to be addicted.
Sugar also causes dopamine to be released, though not as violently as drugs. And

53

sugar is rare among dopamine-inducing foods.

Broccoli, for example, has no eect,

which probably explains why it's so hard to get kids to eat their veggies.
Speaking of healthy foods, let's say you're hungry and decide to eat a balanced meal.
You do, and dopamine levels spike in the reward system hot spots. But if you eat that
same dish many days in a row, dopamine levels will spike less and less, eventually
leveling out. That's because when it comes to food, the brain evolved to pay special
attention to new or dierent tastes.

Why?

Two reasons: rst, to detect food that's

gone bad. And second, because the more variety we have in our diet, the more likely
we are to get all the nutrients we need.
To keep that variety up, we need to be able to recognize a new food, and more
importantly, we need to want to keep eating new foods. And that's why the dopamine
levels o when a food becomes boring.
Now, back to that meal. What happens if in place of the healthy, balanced dish,
you eat sugar-rich food instead? If you rarely eat sugar or don't eat much at a time, the
eect is similar to that of the balanced meal. But if you eat too much, the dopamine
response does not level out.
In other words, eating lots of sugar will continue to feel rewarding.
sugar behaves a little bit like a drug.

In this way,

It's one reason people seem to be hooked on

sugary foods. So, think back to all those dierent kinds of sugar. Each one is unique,
but every time any sugar is consumed, it kickstarts a domino eect in the brain that
sparks a rewarding feeling. Too much, too often, and things can go into overdrive.
So, yes, overconsumption of sugar can have addictive eects on the brain, but a
wedge of cake once in a while won't hurt you.

54

56

What Makes the Great Wall of China So Extraordinary

A 13,000 mile dragon of earth and stone winds its way through the countryside of China
with a history almost as long and serpentine as the structure. The Great Wall began as
multiple walls of rammed earth built by individual feudal states, during the Chunqiu
period to protect against nomadic raiders north of China and each other.
When Emperor Qin Shi Huang unied the states in 221 BCE, the Tibetan Plateau
and Pacic Ocean became natural barriers, but the mountains in the north remained
vulnerable to Mongol, Turkish, and Xiongnu invasions. To defend against them, the
Emperor expanded the small walls built by his predecessors, connecting some and fortifying others.

As the structures grew from Lintao in the west to Liaodong in the

east, they collectively became known as The Long Wall. To accomplish this task, the
Emperor enlisted soldiers and commoners, not always voluntarily.
Of the hundreds of thousands of builders recorded during the Qin Dynasty, many
were forcibly conscripted peasants and others were criminals serving out sentences.
Under the Han Dynasty, the wall grew longer still, reaching 3700 miles, and spanning
from Dunhuang to the Bohai Sea.

Forced labor continued under the Han Emperor

Xuandi, and the walls reputation grew into a notorious place of suering. Poems and
legends of the time told of laborers buried in nearby mass graves, or even within the
wall itself. And while no human remains have been found inside, grave pits do indicate
that many workers died from accidents, hunger and exhaustion.
The wall was formidable but not invincible. Both Genghis and his son Khublai Khan
managed to surmount the wall during the Mongol invasion of the 13th Century. After
the Ming dynasty gained control in 1368, they began to refortify and further consolidate
the wall using bricks and stones from local kilns. Averaging 23 feet high and 21 feet wide,
the walls 5500 miles were punctuated by watchtowers. When raiders were sighted, re
and smoke signals traveled between towers until reinforcements arrived. Small openings
along the wall let archers re on invaders, while larger ones were used to drop stones
and more. But even this new and improved wall was not enough.
In 1644, northern Manchu clans overthrew the Ming to establish the Qing dynasty,
incorporating Mongolia as well, Thus, for the second time, China was ruled by the very
people the wall had tried to keep out. With the empire's borders now extending beyond
the Great Wall, the fortications lost their purpose. And without regular reinforcement,
the wall fell into disrepair, rammed earth eroded, while brick and stone were plundered
for building materials. But its job wasn't nished. During World War II, China used
sections for defense against Japanese invasion, and some parts are still rumored to be

55

used for military training. But the Wall's main purpose today is cultural.
As one of the largest man-made structures on Earth, it was granted UNESCO
World Heritage Status in 1987. Originally built to keep people out of China, the Great
Wall now welcomes millions of visitors each year.

In fact, the inux of tourists has

caused the wall to deteriorate, leading the Chinese government to launch preservation
initiatives. It's also often acclaimed as the only man-made structure visible from space.
Unfortunately, that's not at all true.

In low Earth orbit, all sorts of structures, like

bridges, highways and airports are visible, and the Great Wall is only barely discernible.
From the moon, it doesn't stand a chance. But regardless, it's the Earth we should be
studying it from because new sections are still discovered every few years, branching o
from the main body and expanding this remarkable monument to human achievement

56

57

A brief history of video games  Part I

Hi, I'm Medium Invader from the classic video game Space Invaders, and I want to tell
you a little bit about where video games came from.

A video game is an electronic

game that has an interface designed for human interaction on a video device. Simple.
Video games are used by scientists, the military, and people like you, and their
evolution has spread across arcades, consoles, computers, smart phones, and all kinds
of other electronics. These days video games are everywhere, but they were actually
made in science labs. In fact, the earliest U.S. video game patent on record was in 1948,
and at the time it was referred to as a cathode-ray tube amusement device.
That's a mouthful! Some of the earliest video games include the Nimrod computer,
OXO, Tennis for Two, and my personal favorite, Spacewar!

But none of these early

video games were ever sold to the public because they were either too huge or too
expensive to get out of the lab.
This all changed when a man named Ralph Baer looked at his television screen and
wondered how else it might be used. In 1972, Baer's idea to get video games out of the
science lab and into the living room led to the release of a game console called Odyssey.
Odyssey allowed you to play a game on your TV.
At about the same time, two other people, Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney, were
working on something similar in a little company called Atari. You might have heard
of it, and even if you haven't, I'm sure that your Dad has. Atari's rst major game
release was in 1972, an arcade game called Pong.

It was an immediate hit, and it's

credited as the rst commercially successful video game.

Atari then released a home version of Pong in 1974. By 1978, competition between
Atari and another game company called Midway was heating up. Midway had licensed
an arcade game for the Japanese company, Taito, that put them on the map.

The

game: Space Invaders. It featured iconic actors, like me, and it went on to become the
second highest selling arcade game of all time.
Space Invaders also helped kick o what is known as the Golden Age of Arcade
Games.

In response, Atari followed with the release of the arcade game Asteroids,

which ranked sixth on the list of highest selling arcade games. It was a good game, but
it's no Space Invaders. By 1980, color came to arcade games, and this was also the year
that another video gaming milestone was born.
Pac-Man, created by the Japanese company Namco, was brought to the U.S. by
Midway. Important to the spread of video games into popular culture, Pac-Man was
a character that could be licensed. It wasn't long before it had a song on the charts,
a Saturday morning television show, and all sorts of other products.
Pac-Man arcade games made over one billion dollars in quarters.

57

In just a year,

Then, in 1981, a company called Nintendo started making waves in the U.S. video
game market with their release of Donkey Kong. It was the earliest video game to have
a storyline. The story went a bit like this: Donkey Kong is the pet of a carpenter named
Jumpman. Jumpman mistreats his pet ape, so the ape steals his girlfriend, leaving the
game player to assume the role of Jumpman and rescue the girl.
Jumpman was eventually renamed to Mario. Other iconic arcade games from the
early 80s include Frogger, Dragon's Lair, and Mario Brothers. Perhaps the last iconic
game considered to be part of the Golden Age of Arcade Games is Double Dragon.
It was the rst really successful example of the beat-them-up genre.

It was released

in 1987, and, like Donkey Kong, it featured a damsel in distress storyline, a storyline
common in many video games.
By the mid-90s, the Golden Age of Arcade Games was coming to an end, and the
home game console was gaining in popularity. While arcade games continued to decline
in sales over the years, the popularity of video games was merely beginning, and we'll
talk about that and a lot more in part two of a brief history of video games. *OLHAR
GLOSSRIO NO SITE

58

58

How Memories Form and How We Lose Them

Think back to a really vivid memory. Got it? Okay, now try to remember what you had
for lunch three weeks ago. That second memory probably isn't as strong, but why not?
Why do we remember some things, and not others? And why do memories eventually
fade? Let's look at how memories form in the rst place.
When you experience something, like dialing a phone number, the experience is
converted into a pulse of electrical energy that zips along a network of neurons.

In-

formation rst lands in short term memory, where it's available from anywhere from a
few seconds to a couple of minutes. It's then transferred to long-term memory through
areas such as the hippocampus, and nally to several storage regions across the brain.
Neurons throughout the brain communicate at dedicated sites called synapses using
specialized neurotransmitters.

If two neurons communicate repeatedly, a remarkable

thing happens: the eciency of communication between them increases. This process,
called long term potentiation, is considered to be a mechanism by which memories are
stored long-term, but how do some memories get lost? Age is one factor.
As we get older, synapses begin to falter and weaken, aecting how easily we can
retrieve memories. Scientists have several theories about what's behind this deterioration, from actual brain shrinkage, the hippocampus loses 5% of its neurons every decade
for a total loss of 20% by the time you're 80 years old to the drop in the production of
neurotransmitters, like acetylcholine, which is vital to learning and memory.
These changes seem to aect how people retrieve stored information.

Age also

aects our memory-making abilities. Memories are encoded most strongly when we're
paying attention, when we're deeply engaged, and when information is meaningful to
us. Mental and physical health problems, which tend to increase as we age, interfere
with our ability to pay attention, and thus act as memory thieves.
Another leading cause of memory problems is chronic stress. When we're constantly
overloaded with work and personal responsibilities, our bodies are on hyperalert. This
response has evolved from the physiological mechanism designed to make sure we can
survive in a crisis. Stress chemicals help mobilize energy and increase alertness.
However, with chronic stress our bodies become ooded with these chemicals, resulting in a loss of brain cells and an inability to form new ones, which aects our ability
to retain new information.

Depression is another culprit.

are 40% more likely to develop memory problems.

People who are depressed

Low levels of serotonin, a neuro-

transmitter connected to arousal, may make depressed individuals less attentive to new
information.
Dwelling on sad events in the past, another symptom of depression, makes it dicult
to pay attention to the present, aecting the ability to store short-term memories.

59

Isolation, which is tied to depression, is another memory thief. A study by the Harvard
School of Public Health found that older people with high levels of social integration
had a slower rate of memory decline over a six-year period.
The exact reason remains unclear, but experts suspect that social interaction gives
our brain a mental workout. Just like muscle strength, we have to use our brain or risk
losing it. But don't despair. There are several steps you can take to aid your brain in
preserving your memories.
Make sure you keep physically active. Increased blood ow to the brain is helpful.
And eat well.

Your brain needs all the right nutrients to keep functioning correctly.

And nally, give your brain a workout. Exposing your brain to challenges, like learning
a new language, is one of the best defenses for keeping your memories intact.

60

59

Do Animals Have Language?

All animals communicate. Crabs wave their claws at each other to signal that they're
healthy and ready to mate. Cuttlesh use pigmented skin cells called chromatophores
to create patterns on their skin that act as camouage or warnings to rivals. Honeybees
perform complex dances to let other bees know the location and quality of a food source.
All of these animals have impressive communication systems, but do they have
language? To answer that question, we can look at four specic qualities that are often
associated with language: discreteness, grammar, productivity, and displacement.
Discreteness means that there is a set of individual units, such as sounds or words,
that can be combined to communicate new ideas, like a set of refrigerator poetry magnets you can rearrange to create dierent phrases. Grammar provides a system of rules
that tells you how to combine those individual units.
Productivity is the ability to use language to create an innite number of messages.
And displacement is the ability to talk about things that aren't right in front of you,
such as past, future, or ctional events. So, does animal communication exhibit any of
these qualities? For crabs and cuttlesh, the answer is no.
They don't combine their signals in creative ways.

Those signals also don't have

to be in a grammatical order, and they only communicate current conditions, like, I

am healthy, or I am poisonous. But some animals actually do display some of these
properties. Bees use the moves, angle, duration, and intensity of their waggle dance to
describe the location and richness of a food source.
That source is outside the hive, so they exhibit the property of displacement. They
share that language trait with prairie dogs, which live in towns of thousands, and are
hunted by coyotes, hawks, badgers, snakes, and humans.

Their alarm calls indicate

the predator's size, shape, speed, and, even for human predators, what the person is
wearing and if he's carrying a gun.
Great apes, like chimps and gorillas, are great communicators, too. Some have even
learned a modied sign language. A chimpanzee named Washoe demonstrated discreteness by combining multiple signs into original phrases, like, Please open. Hurry.
Coco, a female gorilla who understands more than 1000 signs, and around 2000
words of spoken English referred to a beloved kitten that had died. In doing so, she
displayed displacement, though it's worth noting that the apes in both of these examples
were using a human communication system, not one that appeared naturally in the wild.
There are many other examples of sophisticated animal communication, such as in
dolphins, which use whistles to identify age, location, names, and gender.

They can

also understand some grammar in a gestural language researchers use to communicate

61

with them. However, grammar is not seen in the dolphin's natural communication.
While these communication systems may have some of the qualities of language
we've identied, none display all four.

Even Washoe and Coco's impressive abilities

are still outpaced by the language skills of most three-year-old humans. And animals'
topics of conversation are usually limited. Bees talk about food, prairie dogs talk about
predators, and crabs talk about themselves.
Human language stands alone due to the powerful combination of grammar and
productivity, on top of discreteness and displacement.

The human brain can take a

nite number of elements and create an innite number of messages.

We can craft and understand complex sentences, as well as words that have never
been spoken before. We can use language to communicate about an endless range of
subjects, talk about imaginary things, and even lie.
Research continues to reveal more and more about animal communication. It may
turn out that human language and animal communication aren't entirely dierent but
exist on a continuum. After all, we are all animals.

62

60

How To Stay Motivated

When I rst got into lifting weights, I couldn't stay motivated at all. I made sure my
lifting routine and nutrition were pretty much perfect, but I couldn't understand why
I wasn't progressing.
I would lift my personal record one week, then perfectly stick to my routine and
nutrition, and I would come back one or two weeks later and guess what, lift the same
weight or even less.
This literally discouraged me to a point, where often I would completely disregard
the gym for a few weeks because I felt like I needed to change everything about my diet
and routine.
And then I read Mastery by George Leonard, one of my biggest role models and a
person who knew a thing or two about Mastery. And he said, Look, the reason you
feel that way is because of what you've been taught.
My mommy told me, Hey, just work hard, you'll get better and better every day.
And I bought into that so the mastery curve in my head looked like this. . . I thought
over time, I would see constant progress.
And Leonard said, That's the stupidest, most unrealistic thing you could expect
on your path. Your path is actually going to look something like this. And here you
have the most important idea of a plateau.
Most of your journey on your path to mastery is spent on that plateau.

And it

is after dedicated time on this plateau that you see progress and possibly even slight
regress afterwards, but the big idea is that the new plateau is higher than your previous
one.
And that is how real growth happens. So I've literally used this idea with everything
ever since I rst read Leonard. Do you think I look at how my channel is doing today
compared to yesterday or a week ago? Why, why would I do that?
I look at. . . Is my routine and nutrition optimized or in this case, am I oering as
much value as I possibly can and am I constantly trying to improve my content for my
viewers? And the answer is yes.
So there is no reason for me to lose motivation when my channel isn't doing better
than it was, I don't know, yesterday or a week ago, because I know that in six months
my channel will be kicking ass compared to today. And I will be on yet another plateau,
diligently putting in the work to get to the next one.

63

61

How False News Can Spread

There's a quote usually attributed to the writer Mark Twain that goes, A lie can travel
halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. Funny thing about
that. There's reason to doubt that Mark Twain ever said this at all, thus, ironically,
proving the point.
And today, the quote, whoever said it, is truer than ever before. In previous decades,
most media with global reach consisted of several major newspapers and networks which
had the resources to gather information directly.
Outlets like Reuters and the Associated Press that aggregate or re-report stories
were relatively rare compared to today. The speed with which information spreads now
has created the ideal conditions for a phenomenon known as circular reporting.
This is when publication A publishes misinformation, publication B reprints it, and
publication A then cites B as the source for the information. It's also considered a form
of circular reporting when multiple publications report on the same initial piece of false
information, which then appears to another author as having been veried by multiple
sources.
For instance, the 1998 publication of a single pseudo-scientic paper arguing that
routine vaccination of children causes autism inspired an entire anti-vaccination movement, despite the fact that the original paper has repeatedly been discredited by the
scientic community.
Deliberately unvaccinated children are now contracting contagious diseases that had
been virtually eradicated in the United States, with some infections proving fatal. In
a slightly less dire example, satirical articles that are formatted to resemble real ones
can also be picked up by outlets not in on the joke.
For example, a joke article in the reputable British Medical Journal entitled Energy
Expenditure in Adolescents Playing New Generation Computer Games, has been referenced in serious science publications over 400 times.
User-generated content, such as wikis, are also a common contributor to circular
reporting. As more writers come to rely on such pages for quick information, an unveried fact in a wiki page can make its way into a published article that may later
be added as a citation for the very same wiki information, making it much harder to
debunk.
Recent advances in communication technology have had immeasurable benets in
breaking down the barriers between information and people. But our desire for quick
answers may overpower the desire to be certain of their validity.
And when this bias can be multiplied billions of people around the world, nearly

64

instantaneously, more caution is in order. Avoiding sensationalist media, searching for

criticisms of suspicious information, tracing the original source of a report can help slow
down a lie, giving the truth more time to put on its shoes.

65

62

3 Tips to Boost Your Condence

When faced with a big challenge where potential failure seems to lurk at every corner,
maybe you've heard this advice before: Be more condent. And most likely, this is
what you think when you hear it: If only it were that simple.
But what is condence?

Take the belief that you are valuable, worthwhile, and

capable, also known as self-esteem, add in the optimism that comes when you are
certain of your abilities, and then empowered by these, act courageously to face a
challenge head-on.
This is condence. It turns thoughts into action. So where does condence even
come from? There are several factors that impact condence. One: what you're born
with, such as your genes, which will impact things like the balance of neurochemicals
in your brain. Two: how you're treated.
This includes the social pressures of your environment.

And three: the part you

have control over, the choices you make, the risks you take, and how you think about
and respond to challenges and setbacks.
It isn't possible to completely untangle these three factors, but the personal choices
we make certainly play a major role in condence development. So, by keeping in mind
a few practical tips, we do actually have the power to cultivate our own condence.
Tip 1: a quick x. There are a few tricks that can give you an immediate condence
boost in the short term. Picture your success when you're beginning a dicult task,
something as simple as listening to music with deep bass; it can promote feelings of
power. You can even strike a powerful pose or give yourself a pep talk.
Tip two: believe in your ability to improve. If you're looking for a long-term change,
consider the way you think about your abilities and talents. Do you think they are xed
at birth, or that they can be developed, like a muscle? These beliefs matter because
they can inuence how you act when you're faced with setbacks.
If you have a xed mindset, meaning that you think your talents are locked in place,
you might give up, assuming you've discovered something you're not very good at. But
if you have a growth mindset and think your abilities can improve, a challenge is an
opportunity to learn and grow.
Neuroscience supports the growth mindset. The connections in your brain do get
stronger and grow with study and practice. It also turns out, on average, people who
have a growth mindset are more successful, getting better grades, and doing better in
the face of challenges. Tip three: practice failure.
Face it, you're going to fail sometimes. Everyone does. J.K. Rowling was rejected
by twelve dierent publishers before one picked up Harry Potter. The Wright Brothers

66

built on history's failed attempts at ight, including some of their own, before designing
a successful airplane.
Studies show that those who fail regularly and keep trying anyway are better equipped to respond to challenges and setbacks in a constructive way. They learn how to try
dierent strategies, ask others for advice, and persevere.
So, think of a challenge you want to take on, realize it's not going to be easy, accept
that you'll make mistakes, and be kind to yourself when you do. Give yourself a pep
talk, stand up, and go for it.
The excitement you'll feel knowing that whatever the result, you'll have gained
greater knowledge and understanding. This is condence.

67

63

The Akune brothers: Siblings on opposite sides of

war

There are many stories that can be told about World War II, from the tragic to the
inspiring. But perhaps one of the most heartrending experiences was that of the Akune
family, divided by the war against each other and against their own identities.
Ichiro Akune and his wife Yukiye immigrated to America from Japan in 1918 in
search of opportunity, opening a small grocery store in central California and raising
nine children. But when Mrs. Akune died in 1933, the children were sent to live with
relatives in Japan, their father following soon after.
Though the move was a dicult adjustment after having been born and raised in
America, the oldest son, Harry, formed a close bond with his grand uncle, who taught
him the Japanese language, culture and values. Nevertheless, as soon as Harry and his
brother Ken were old enough to work, they returned to the country they considered
home, settling near Los Angeles.
But then, December 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor. Now at war with Japan,
the United States government did not trust the loyalty of those citizens who had family
or ancestral ties to the enemy country.
In 1942, about 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were stripped
of their civil rights and forcibly relocated to internment camps, even though most of
them, like Harry and Ken, were Nisei, American or dual citizens who had been born in
the US to Japanese immigrant parents.
The brothers not only had very limited contact with their family in Japan, but
found themselves conned to a camp in a remote part of Colorado.

But their story

took another twist when recruiters from the US Army's military intelligence service
arrived at the camp looking for Japanese-speaking volunteers.
Despite their treatment by the government, Harry and Ken jumped at the chance
to leave the camp and prove their loyalty as American citizens. Having been schooled
in Japan, they soon began their service, translating captured documents, interrogating
Japanese soldiers, and producing Japanese language propaganda aimed at persuading
enemy forces to surrender.
The brothers' work was invaluable to the war eort, providing vital strategic information about the size and location of Japanese forces. But they still faced discrimination and mistrust from their fellow soldiers.
Harry recalled an instance where his combat gear was mysteriously misplaced just
prior to parachuting into enemy territory, with the white ocer reluctant to give him a
weapon. Nevertheless, both brothers continued to serve loyally through the end of the

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war.
But Harry and Ken were not the only Akune brothers ghting in the Pacic. Unbeknownst to them, two younger brothers, the third and fourth of the ve Akune boys,
were serving dutifully in the Imperial Japanese Navy, Saburo in the Naval Airforce, and
15-year-old Shiro as an orientation trainer for new recruits.
When the war ended, Harry and Ken served in the allied occupational forces and
were seen as traitors by the locals. When all the Akune brothers gathered at a family
reunion in Kagoshima for the rst time in a decade, it was revealed that the two pairs
had fought on opposing sides.
Tempers ared and a ght almost broke out until their father stepped in.

The

brothers managed to make peace and Saburo and Shiro joined Harry and Ken in California, and later fought for the US Army in Korea.
It took until 1988 for the US government to acknowledge the injustice of its internment camps and approve reparations payments to survivors.

For Harry, though, his

greatest regret was not having the courage to thank his Japanese grand uncle who had
taught him so much.
The story of the Akune brothers is many things: a family divided by circumstance,
the unjust treatment of Japanese Americans, and the personal struggle of reconciling
two national identities. But it also reveals a larger story about American history: the
oppression faced by immigrant groups and their perseverance in overcoming it.

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64

The Treadmill's Dark and Twisted Past

The constant thud underneath your feet, the constrained space, and the monotony of
going nowhere fast. It feels like hours have gone by, but it's only been eleven minutes,
and you wonder, Why am I torturing myself ? This thing has got to be considered a
cruel and unusual punishment.
Actually, that's exactly what it is, or was. You see, in the 1800s, treadmills were
created to punish English prisoners. At the time, the English prison system was abysmally bad. Execution and deportation were often the punishments of choice, and those
who were locked away faced hours of solitude in lthy cells.
So social movements led by religious groups, philanthropies, and celebrities, like
Charles Dickens, sought to change these dire conditions and help reform the prisoners. When their movement succeeded, entire prisons were remodeled and new forms
of rehabilitation, such as the treadmill, were introduced.
Here's how the original version, invented in 1818 by English engineer Sir William
Cubitt, worked. Prisoners stepped on 24 spokes of a large paddle wheel. As the wheel
turned, the prisoner was forced to keep stepping up or risk falling o, similar to modern
stepper machines.
Meanwhile, the rotation made gears pump out water, crush grain, or power mills,
which is where the name treadmill originated. These devices were seen as a fantastic
way of whipping prisoners into shape, and that added benet of powering mills helped
to rebuild a British economy decimated by the Napoleonic Wars.
It was a win for all concerned, except the prisoners. It's estimated that, on average,
prisoners spent six or so hours a day on treadmills, the equivalent of climbing 5,000 to
14,000 feet. 14,000 feet is roughly Mount Everest's halfway point. Imagine doing that
ve days a week with little food.
Cubitt's idea quickly spread across the British Empire and America.

Within a

decade of its creation, over 50 English prisons boasted a treadmill, and America, a
similar amount. Unsurprisingly, the exertion combined with poor nutrition saw many
prisoners suer breakdowns and injuries, not that prison guards seemed to care.
In 1824, New York prison guard James Hardie credited the device with taming
his more boisterous inmates, writing that the monotonous steadiness, and not its
severity. . . constitutes its terror, a quote many still agree with. And treadmills lasted
in England until the late 19th century, when they were banned for being excessively
cruel under the Prison's Act of 1898.
But of course the torture device returned with a vengeance, this time targeting the
unsuspecting public.

In 1911, a treadmill patent was registered in the U.S., and by

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1952, the forerunner for today's modern treadmill had been created.
When the jogging craze hit the U.S. in the 1970s, the treadmill was thrust back
into the limelight as an easy and convenient way to improve aerobic tness, and lose
unwanted pounds, which, to be fair, it's pretty good at doing.
And the machine has maintained its popularity since. So the next time you voluntarily subject yourself to what was once a cruel and unusual punishment, just be glad
you can control when you'll hop o.

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65

Where Did English Come From?

When we talk about English, we often think of it as a single language, but what do
the dialects spoken in dozens of countries around the world have in common with each
other, or with the writings of Chaucer? And how are any of them related to the strange
words in Beowulf ? The answer is that like most languages, English has evolved through
generations of speakers, undergoing major changes over time.
By undoing these changes, we can trace the language from the present day back to
its ancient roots. While modern English shares many similar words with Latin-derived
romance languages, like French and Spanish, most of those words were not originally
part of it.
Instead, they started coming into the language with the Norman invasion of England
in 1066. When the French-speaking Normans conquered England and became its ruling
class, they brought their speech with them, adding a massive amount of French and
Latin vocabulary to the English language previously spoken there.
Today, we call that language Old English.

This is the language of Beowulf.

It

probably doesn't look very familiar, but it might be more recognizable if you know
some German. That's because Old English belongs to the Germanic language family,
rst brought to the British Isles in the 5th and 6th centuries by the Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes.
The Germanic dialects they spoke would become known as Anglo-Saxon.

Viking

invaders in the 8th to 11th centuries added more borrowings from Old Norse into the
mix.

It may be hard to see the roots of modern English underneath all the words

borrowed from French, Latin, Old Norse and other languages.

But comparative linguistics can help us by focusing on grammatical structure, patterns of sound changes, and certain core vocabulary. For example, after the 6th century,
German words starting with p, systematically shifted to a pf  sound while their Old
English counterparts kept the p unchanged. In another split, words that have sk
sounds in Swedish developed an sh sound in English.
There are still some English words with sk, like skirt, and skull, but they're
direct borrowings from Old Norse that came after the sk to sh shift. These examples
show us that just as the various Romance languages descended from Latin, English, Swedish, German, and many other languages descended from their own common ancestor
known as Proto-Germanic spoken around 500 B.C.E. Because this historical language
was never written down, we can only reconstruct it by comparing its descendants, which
is possible thanks to the consistency of the changes.
We can even use the same process to go back one step further, and trace the origins
of Proto-Germanic to a language called Proto-Indo-European, spoken about 6000 years

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ago on the Pontic steppe in modern day Ukraine and Russia.

This is the reconstructed ancestor of the Indo-European family that includes nearly all languages historically spoken in Europe, as well as large parts of Southern and
Western Asia. And though it requires a bit more work, we can nd the same systematic similarities, or correspondences, between related words in dierent Indo-European
branches.
Comparing English with Latin, we see that English has t where Latin has d, and
f  where latin has p at the start of words. Some of English's more distant relatives
include Hindi, Persian and the Celtic languages it displaced in what is now Britain.
Proto-Indo-European itself descended from an even more ancient language, but
unfortunately, this is as far back as historical and archeological evidence will allow us
to go.

Many mysteries remain just out of reach, such as whether there might be a

link between Indo-European and other major language families, and the nature of the
languages spoken in Europe prior to its arrival.
But the amazing fact remains that nearly 3 billion people around the world, many of
whom cannot understand each other, are nevertheless speaking the same words shaped
by 6000 years of history.

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66

The Benets of a Good Night's Sleep

It's 4 a.m., and the big test is in eight hours, followed by a piano recital. You've been
studying and playing for days, but you still don't feel ready for either. So, what can you
do? Well, you can drink another cup of coee and spend the next few hours cramming
and practicing, but believe it or not, you might be better o closing the books, putting
away the music, and going to sleep.
Sleep occupies nearly a third of our lives, but many of us give surprisingly little
attention and care to it. This neglect is often the result of a major misunderstanding.
Sleep isn't lost time, or just a way to rest when all our important work is done. Instead,
it's a critical function, during which your body balances and regulates its vital systems,
aecting respiration and regulating everything from circulation to growth and immune
response.
That's great, but you can worry about all those things after this test, right? Well,
not so fast. It turns out that sleep is also crucial for your brain, with a fth of your
body's circulatory blood being channeled to it as you drift o. And what goes on in
your brain while you sleep is an intensely active period of restructuring that's crucial
for how our memory works.
At rst glance, our ability to remember things doesn't seem very impressive at all.
19th century psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus demonstrated that we normally forget
40% of new material within the rst twenty minutes, a phenomenon known as the
forgetting curve.

But this loss can be prevented through memory consolidation, the

process by which information is moved from our eeting short-term memory to our
more durable long-term memory.
This consolidation occurs with the help of a major part of the brain, known as
the hippocampus.

Its role in long-term memory formation was demonstrated in the

1950s by Brenda Milner in her research with a patient known as H.M. After having his
hippocampus removed, H.M.'s ability to form new short-term memories was damaged,
but he was able to learn physical tasks through repetition.
Due to the removal of his hippocampus, H.M.'s ability to form long-term memories
was also damaged. What this case revealed, among other things, was that the hippocampus was specically involved in the consolidation of long-term declarative memory,
such as the facts and concepts you need to remember for that test, rather than procedural memory, such as the nger movements you need to master for that recital.
Milner's ndings, along with work by Eric Kandel in the 90's, have given us our current model of how this consolidation process works. Sensory data is initially transcribed
and temporarily recorded in the neurons as short-term memory. From there, it travels
to the hippocampus, which strengthens and enhances the neurons in that cortical area.

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Thanks to the phenomenon of neuroplasticity, new synaptic buds are formed, allowing new connections between neurons, and strengthening the neural network where
the information will be returned as long-term memory. So why do we remember some
things and not others? Well, there are a few ways to inuence the extent and eectiveness of memory retention.
For example, memories that are formed in times of heightened feeling, or even stress,
will be better recorded due to the hippocampus' link with emotion. But one of the major
factors contributing to memory consolidation is, you guessed it, a good night's sleep.
Sleep is composed of four stages, the deepest of which are known as slow-wave sleep
and rapid eye movement.
EEG machines monitoring people during these stages have shown electrical impulses
moving between the brainstem, hippocampus, thalamus, and cortex, which serve as
relay stations of memory formation. And the dierent stages of sleep have been shown
to help consolidate dierent types of memories.
During the non-REM slow-wave sleep, declarative memory is encoded into a temporary store in the anterior part of the hippocampus. Through a continuing dialogue
between the cortex and hippocampus, it is then repeatedly reactivated, driving its
gradual redistribution to long-term storage in the cortex.

REM sleep, on the other

hand, with its similarity to waking brain activity, is associated with the consolidation
of procedural memory.
So based on the studies, going to sleep three hours after memorizing your formulas
and one hour after practicing your scales would be the most ideal. So hopefully you
can see now that skimping on sleep not only harms your long-term health, but actually
makes it less likely that you'll retain all that knowledge and practice from the previous
night, all of which just goes to arm the wisdom of the phrase, Sleep on it.
When you think about all the internal restructuring and forming of new connections
that occurs while you slumber, you could even say that proper sleep will have you waking
up every morning with a new and improved brain, ready to face the challenges ahead.

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67

What Makes Muscles Grow?

Muscles. We have over 600 of them. They make up between 1/3 and 1/2 of our body
weight, and along with connective tissue, they bind us together, hold us up, and help
us move. And whether or not body building is your hobby, muscles need your constant
attention because the way you treat them on a daily basis determines whether they will
wither or grow.
Say you're standing in front of a door, ready to pull it open. Your brain and muscles
are perfectly poised to help you achieve this goal. First, your brain sends a signal to
motor neurons inside your arm.

When they receive this message, they re, causing

muscles to contract and relax, which pull on the bones in your arm and generate the
needed movement.
The bigger the challenge becomes, the bigger the brain's signal grows, and the more
motor units it rallies to help you achieve your task. But what if the door is made of
solid iron?

At this point, your arm muscles alone won't be able to generate enough

tension to pull it open, so your brain appeals to other muscles for help.
You plant your feet, tighten your belly, and tense your back, generating enough force
to yank it open. Your nervous system has just leveraged the resources you already have,
other muscles, to meet the demand.

While all this is happening, your muscle bers

undergo another kind of cellular change.

As you expose them to stress, they experience microscopic damage, which, in this
context, is a good thing. In response, the injured cells release inammatory molecules
called cytokines that activate the immune system to repair the injury.

This is when

the muscle-building magic happens. The greater the damage to the muscle tissue, the
more your body will need to repair itself.
The resulting cycle of damage and repair eventually makes muscles bigger and stronger as they adapt to progressively greater demands.

Since our bodies have already

adapted to most everyday activities, those generally don't produce enough stress to
stimulate new muscle growth.
So, to build new muscle, a process called hypertrophy, our cells need to be exposed
to higher workloads than they are used to. In fact, if you don't continuously expose your
muscles to some resistance, they will shrink, a process known as muscular atrophy. In
contrast, exposing the muscle to a high-degree of tension, especially while the muscle is
lengthening, also called an eccentric contraction, generates eective conditions for new
growth.
However, muscles rely on more than just activity to grow. Without proper nutrition,
hormones, and rest, your body would never be able to repair damaged muscle bers.
Protein in our diet preserves muscle mass by providing the building blocks for new tissue

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in the form of amino acids. Adequate protein intake, along with naturally occurring
hormones, like insulin-like growth factor and testosterone, help shift the body into a
state where tissue is repaired and grown.
This vital repair process mainly occurs when we're resting, especially at night while
sleeping. Gender and age aect this repair mechanism, which is why young men with
more testosterone have a leg up in the muscle building game.
Genetic factors also play a role in one's ability to grow muscle. Some people have
more robust immune reactions to muscle damage, and are better able to repair and
replace damaged muscle bers, increasing their muscle-building potential.
The body responds to the demands you place on it. If you tear your muscles up,
eat right, rest and repeat, you'll create the conditions to make your muscles as big and
strong as possible.

It is with muscles as it is with life: Meaningful growth requires

challenge and stress.

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68

The Benets of a Bilingual Brain

Hablas espaol?

Parlez-vous franais?

Mandarim?

If you answered, s, oui, or

Mandarim and you're watching this in English, chances are you belong to the world's
bilingual and multilingual majority.
And besides having an easier time traveling or watching movies without subtitles,
knowing two or more languages means that your brain may actually look and work
dierently than those of your monolingual friends.
So what does it really mean to know a language?

Language ability is typically

measured in two active parts, speaking and writing, and two passive parts, listening
and reading. While a balanced bilingual has near equal abilities across the board in two
languages, most bilinguals around the world know and use their languages in varying
proportions.
And depending on their situation and how they acquired each language, they can
be classied into three general types. For example, let's take Gabriella, whose family
immigrates to the US from Peru when she's two-years old.
As a compound bilingual, Gabriella develops two linguistic codes simultaneously,
with a single set of concepts, learning both English and Spanish as she begins to process
the world around her. Her teenage brother, on the other hand, might be a coordinate
bilingual, working with two sets of concepts, learning English in school, while continuing
to speak Spanish at home and with friends.
Finally, Gabriella's parents are likely to be subordinate bilinguals who learn a secondary language by ltering it through their primary language.

Because all types

of bilingual people can become fully procient in a language regardless of accent or

pronunciation, the dierence may not be apparent to a casual observer.
But recent advances in brain imaging technology have given neurolinguists a glimpse
into how specic aspects of language learning aect the bilingual brain.
It's well known that the brain's left hemisphere is more dominant and analytical
in logical processes, while the right hemisphere is more active in emotional and social
ones, though this is a matter of degree, not an absolute split.
The fact that language involves both types of functions while lateralization develops
gradually with age, has lead to the critical period hypothesis.
According to this theory, children learn languages more easily because the plasticity
of their developing brains lets them use both hemispheres in language acquisition, while
in most adults, language is lateralized to one hemisphere, usually the left.
If this is true, learning a language in childhood may give you a more holistic grasp of
its social and emotional contexts. Conversely, recent research showed that people who

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learned a second language in adulthood exhibit less emotional bias and a more rational
approach when confronting problems in the second language than in their native one.
But regardless of when you acquire additional languages, being multilingual gives
your brain some remarkable advantages. Some of these are even visible, such as higher
density of the grey matter that contains most of your brain's neurons and synapses,
and more activity in certain regions when engaging a second language.
The heightened workout a bilingual brain receives throughout its life can also help
delay the onset of diseases, like Alzheimer's and dementia by as much as ve years. The
idea of major cognitive benets to bilingualism may seem intuitive now, but it would
have surprised earlier experts.
Before the 1960s, bilingualism was considered a handicap that slowed a child's development by forcing them to spend too much energy distinguishing between languages,
a view based largely on awed studies.
And while a more recent study did show that reaction times and errors increase
for some bilingual students in cross-language tests, it also showed that the eort and
attention needed to switch between languages triggered more activity in, and potentially
strengthened, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
This is the part of the brain that plays a large role in executive function, problem
solving, switching between tasks, and focusing while ltering out irrelevant information.
So, while bilingualism may not necessarily make you smarter, it does make your
brain more healthy, complex and actively engaged, and even if you didn't have the
good fortune of learning a second language as a child, it's never too late to do yourself
a favor and make the linguistic leap from, Hello, to, Hola, Bonjour or Mandarim's
because when it comes to our brains a little exercise can go a long way.

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69

How to Win Friends and Inuence People

The rst big idea I want to talk about is the importance of remembering that a man's
name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
I used to meet people and I was so concerned about all the social pressures and
expectations, that I would miss the most important part. And that part is when the
person tells you his name. I would hear it, but in about 30 seconds I would realize I
had no idea what that person's name was.
Not only did that make my interactions awkward, but it also made me unable to
connect with people on a deeper level.

And unless you have some kind of awless

memory, you probably identify with this.

So what I started doing was not only focusing on the name more, but using a helpful
technique. When the person says, Hey, my name is Bill. Instead of saying, Nice to
meet you, try saying, Nice to meet you, Bill.
You have just repeated his name back to him and that helps tremendously with
actually remembering the person's name. You will also start to notice that people feel
more connected to you and respond better when you use their name, and it is because
a man's name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
Now, the following story combines two big ideas: If you are wrong, admit it quickly
and emphatically, and make the other person feel importantand do it sincerely.
A few years ago, I went out with my friends, and by the end of the night they were
all drunk and I was driving them back. They are all yelling and screaming the whole
way, and suddenly they all decide they are hungry and want Taco Bell.
So I take the exit on the highway, and I have no idea where I am, it's 3AM in the
morning, and I see I'm going the wrong way and need to turn around. All of a sudden
I have to make a split-second decision, I'm about to turn around but then I see the no
turnaround sign. I still turn around.
I drive to Taco Bell and as I approach to order, I see police lights in the rear mirror.
The policeman comes up and says, Hey, how are you doing tonight? And I said, I'm
doing well, sir, how are you? He says, I'm doing well, too, and asks me if I know why
he pulled me over.
Now, in the next second, my social conditioning kicks in. I want to say no. I want
to say I didn't know where I was. I want to say it's really late, there are no cars around
anyway. I want to say I didn't see the sign.
I want to say I'm being responsible, and my friends are creating all this chaos in
the car, and I couldn't think straight.

Once that second is up however, Carnegie's

principles kick in and I say, Yes, sir.

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I turned even though I saw the no turnaround sign. I panicked and made a poor
decision. As I said this, his face changed completely. It looked so confused like he had
never heard anything like this before.
After some silence, I said, I know I made a mistake and I'm willing to face the consequences for it. Thank you for doing your job. And he kept looking back in confusion
and amazement, then smiled like he had never been that happy in his entire life and
said this while he handed me my driver's license, Thank you for being responsible and
taking care of these guys and I hope you have a good night.
Now some people might hear this and say, Okay, you admitted you were wrong.
Good.

You made him feel important.

Good.

But you weren't being genuine. And

look, could I have pulled this o without being genuine? Possibly.

But I do really appreciate that policeman doing his job. I really do. I appreciate
him just like I would appreciate him if he pulled over a huge SUV with a bunch of
drunk guys in it, before they crashed into my girlfriend's car and killed her while she's
driving on her way home.
So the three big ideas are: Big idea 1: Remember that a man's name is to him the
sweetest and most important sound in any language. Big idea 2: If you are wrong, admit
it quickly and emphatically. Big idea 3: Make the other person feel importantand do
it sincerely.

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70

The Benets of Good Posture

Has anyone ever told you, Stand up straight! or scolded you for slouching at a family
dinner? Comments like that might be annoying, but they're not wrong. Your posture,
the way you hold your body when you're sitting or standing, is the foundation for
every movement your body makes, and can determine how well your body adapts to
the stresses on it.
These stresses can be things like carrying weight, or sitting in an awkward position.
And the big one we all experience all day every day: gravity.

If your posture isn't

optimal, your muscles have to work harder to keep you upright and balanced. Some
muscles will become tight and inexible.
Others will be inhibited. Over time, these dysfunctional adaptations impair your
body's ability to deal with the forces on it. Poor posture inicts extra wear and tear on
your joints and ligaments, increases the likelihood of accidents, and makes some organs,
like your lungs, less ecient.
Researchers have linked poor posture to scoliosis, tension headaches, and back pain,
though it isn't the exclusive cause of any of them.

Posture can even inuence your

emotional state and your sensitivity to pain. So there are a lot of reasons to aim for
good posture.
But it's getting harder these days. Sitting in an awkward position for a long time can
promote poor posture, and so can using computers or mobile devices, which encourage
you to look downward. Many studies suggest that, on average, posture is getting worse.
So what does good posture look like? When you look at the spine from the front
or the back, all 33 vertebrae should appear stacked in a straight line. From the side,
the spine should have three curves: one at your neck, one at your shoulders, and one
at the small of your back.
You aren't born with this s-shaped spine. Babies' spines just have one curve like a
c. The other curves usually develop by 12-18 months as the muscles strengthen. These
curves help us stay upright and absorb some of the stress from activities like walking
and jumping.
If they are aligned properly, when you're standing up, you should be able to draw
a straight line from a point just in front of your shoulders, to behind your hip, to the
front of your knee, to a few inches in front of your ankle. This keeps your center of
gravity directly over your base of support, which allows you to move eciently with
the least amount of fatigue and muscle strain.
If you're sitting, your neck should be vertical, not tilted forward. Your shoulders
should be relaxed with your arms close to your trunk. Your knees should be at a right

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angle with your feet at on the oor. But what if your posture isn't that great? Try
redesigning your environment. Adjust your screen so it's at or slightly below eye level.
Make sure all parts of your body, like your elbows and wrists, are supported, using
ergonomic aids if you need to. Try sleeping on your side with your neck supported and
with a pillow between your legs. Wear shoes with low heels and good arch support, and
use a headset for phone calls. It's also not enough to just have good posture.
Keeping your muscles and joints moving is extremely important.

In fact, being

stationary for long periods with good posture can be worse than regular movement
with bad posture. When you do move, move smartly. Keep anything you're carrying
close to your body.
Backpacks should be in contact with your back carried symmetrically. If you sit a
lot, get up and move around on occasion, and be sure to exercise. Using your muscles
will keep them strong enough to support you eectively, on top of all the other benets
to your joints, bones, brain and heart.
And if you're really worried, check with a physical therapist, because yes, you really
should stand up straight.

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