12 questions

All episodes

Short answers to everyday questions, with the studies behind them and an honest note on how sure anyone can be.

• Why your recorded voice sounds wrongWhy your voice sounds wrong on recordings: air and bone conduction, plus a 2013 study where people rated their own voice without noticing.
• Why you can't tickle yourselfWhy you can't tickle yourself: a 1999 robot experiment, your cerebellum's predictions, and what a fifth of a second changes.
• Why a poll lead can be a tieWhy a 3-point poll lead can be a tie: how the margin of error works for each candidate and for the gap between them.
• Your body clock after the clocks go backWhat a clock change does to your body clock: morning light, sleep data from 55,000 people, and why autumn is the easier direction.
• Why pay to get scared?Why people pay to get scared: what haunted-house studies in Pittsburgh and Denmark found about mood, relief and the sweet spot of fear.
• How to get a song out of your headSong stuck in your head? In a 2015 study, chewing gum cut it by about a third. Playing the song to the end has little evidence behind it.
• Why rain smells so goodWhat makes rain smell so good: petrichor, geosmin from soil bacteria, and the bubbles MIT filmed inside raindrops.
• Why you forget things in doorwaysDo doorways make you forget? What the 2011 Notre Dame experiments and a 2021 VR study found, and why it may take a busy brain.
• The colors you see when you rub your eyesWhy you see colors when you rub your closed eyes, and what that has to do with the flashes astronauts saw on Apollo 11.
• Brain freezeWhy one gulp of a slushie hurts your forehead: what a brain freeze is, what a small study showed, and how to stop one.
• The sugar rush mythDoes sugar make kids hyper? Double-blind studies found no effect on behavior, and a Kentucky study suggests expectations may do the rest.
• Why your nose runs in the coldWhy your nose runs in the cold: how it warms and moistens air, where the watery drip comes from, and why a scarf helps.