Wealth inequality: What a creative experiment shows | Science Unscripted Podcast

Is it my fault I feel bad, or is it the world’s fault? 🌍

Ever had the feeling that something’s just… fundamentally wrong with the way things are? 🤔
Or that the world is just totally overwhelming, and in a way that’s hard to describe, even though it’s supposed to be full of all sorts of perks and ‘conveniences’ to make our lives better?🛒
There’s a name for that feeling:

Evolutionary mismatch 🧬🌳
Evolutionary mismatch describes the gap between how we humans have biologically evolved to feel happy, or content, over the last few million years – surrounded by trees, fresh water, other animals and generally being outdoors – and... the world as it is today. Today, that same biological organism (us) is confronted with, what, exactly? A 'jungle' made of concrete, cars, pollution, noise, and flashing bits of silicon light blinding us on a daily (if not hourly) basis 🚗🏭💻
The result?

Stress, fatigue, anger, high cortisol levels, depression, cognitive decline, malaise, you name it 😓
Listen in as Conor and Gabe talk to one of the lead researchers behind a compelling new paper on that subject, Danny Longman, a senior lecturer in the evolutionary physiology at Loughborough University in the UK, about the evidence that's out there to support a hypothesis that, to so many of us, feels intuitively correct🎙️
Also, do you – or does anyone you know – have eczema? 🩹 It’s a skin condition that results in rashes, sores, flaking and cracked skin, and it affects 100m+ people around the globe. And while we don’t know its cause (or cure), a study designed with the help of people who have ‘atopic dermatitis’ has answered a question they'd been asking for decades: Does bathing make it worse? And does bathing frequently make it MUCH worse?🛁
Finally, a creative experiment on wealth inequality put 1k+ people in 50+ groups to see how they’d react to being poor or rich in a ‘world’ of either poor or rich people 💰... and the reuslts weren't always what you'd expect.
All that – and a whole lot of emails about raccoons – on Science unscripted, with Conor and Gabe! 🦝

Questions? Comments? Random thoughts and no to tell ‘em to?
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STUDY – evolutionary mismatch 🌳
Homo sapiens, industrialisation and the environmental mismatch hypothesis. Biological Reviews:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...
STUDY – music & dementia 🎵🧠
What Is the Association Between Music-Related Leisure Activities and Dementia Risk? A Cohort Study. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...
STUDY – wealth inequality 💰
Social networks affect redistribution decisions and polarization. PNAS NEXUS:
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...
STUDY – eczema 🩹
Weekly versus daily bathing for people with eczema: results of the Eczema Bathing online randomised controlled trial. British Journal of Dermatology:
https://academic.oup.com/bjd/advance-...

Chapters:
00:00 – 04:30 – Listener emails: A Science unscripted fan created a foot-long hot dog sub sandwich and tantalized a raccoon with it to pay homage to researcher’s story aired a week earlier
04:30 – 08:25 – A study designed by people with eczema sought to answer a simple, but critical, question: Does bathing often make the condition better, or worse?
08:25 – 11:56 – Wealth inequality: A creative experiment shows that being exposed more often to the reality (and breadth) of the rich-poor divide leads to increased support for taxing wealth
11:56 – 14:40 – Listening to music (or playing it) is associated with a 35-39% decline in the onset of dementia, according to a longitudinal look at 10k+ seniors in Australia
14:40 – 30:00 – Why does it feel like this world wasn’t made for me? The answer may be connected to something called ‘evolutionary mismatch’
If you've read this far, you deserve a special greeting. So here it is: "Moin," from Gabe and Conor (one of various regional takes on 'Guten Tag' here in Germany).