Good morning, John! So there's a new study out in the Journal of
Psychoneuroendocrinology
that I know you're gonna be super excited about.
Basically, they tested young people's bedtime cortisol levels.
Cortisol is a stress hormone. The amount of cortisol in your blood goes up when you're more stressed out,
and it has all kinds of effects on your physiology, your psychology and your behavior.
Physiological effects can include everything from like more acne, which is a bummer,
to heart disease and death.
Correlations. It's not gonna kill you it just increases your chances of death. Aggression, depression, anxiety,
Difficulty staying focused, difficulty making decisions.
Some people actually make fewer decisions, like they'll avoid decisions when they have a lot of stress.
And others make worse, more impulsive, less rational decisions.
So that's interesting. Some people, when they're stressed, avoid the source of the stress,
others seek out more of it. If you listen to the podcast I do with my wife,
"Delete This", you know that Katherine and I are opposite sides of that spectrum.
Anyway, this study not super surprising.
But they found that bedtime levels of cortisol
increased after the election for people who didn't vote for Donald Trump.
Specifically young people. And that level went up more if you were a woman or from what they called
non-dominant social groups, so LGBT people, people of color, that kind of thing.
I don't know if I need to bring this up, but the last year has sort of felt like just a constant barrage of
upsetting or confusing news.
Every week it seems like there's a new scandal, a new fear, a new tragedy.
And all these things are problems that need to be faced,
but if there is no respite from the stress we will make worse decisions.
We will not be as healthy as we could be, we will not be as productive as we could be.
I don't want you to think that I'm not okay.
I'm okay, but I have been looking for things to provide me with respite.
I don't actually definitely know what the word respite means, so let's look that up.
A short period of rest or relief from something difficult or unpleasant. YES!
So I asked Twitter and Facebook if there were some things that I maybe am missing out on that are great,
and here is a list of some sources of respite from other people and from my own brain.
Starting off with "Space Opera" by Catherine Valente.
Finally, I feel like somebody had the chops and the guts to not just understand the genius of Douglas Adams,
but to maybe even move beyond it in some ways. You want a book about glam rock in space, it's happening!
The horns of bovids. There are 143 different species of bovids,
which include cows, sheep, goats, antelopes and some other good stuff
And they have great horns!
"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel", which is currently a season of eight episodes on Amazon Prime
written by the creator of the "Gilmore Girls", and it makes me so happy!
"Hello from the Magic Tavern is" a podcast produced by a guy who fell into a portal behind a Burger King
and interviews citizens of the magical land of "Foon" and it is always a wonderful break from all this earth stuff.
Janet from "The Good Place". I mean yeah, the whole show but mostly Janet.
Whenever I think about that character, I smile.
This collaboration we did on "Eons" discussing the first ever organism.
With help from PBS Space Time, and It's Okay to be Smart,
we got as close to the bottom of this ultimate question of where life began as we could get.
Elle Mills, always.
Our new show "Nature League", which explores biology. All biology everywhere with my friend Brit.
And I'm just learning and relaxing and getting my curiosity satisfied.
This Long Long Man advertisement for some kind of weird candy in Japan. It's good.
"Ask a Mortician". A YouTube channel about what happens to people's parts after they die
from a person who does that professionally.
Janelle Monáe. I feel like I'm late to this party, but every time I listen to her music, I feel better.
Abby Norman's "Let Me Google That" podcast which covers everything from why we have names
to crossword puzzles to the Titanic and it's always got, every morning, new good information for me.
And I'm always happy to have it.
Orla Gartland, who's doing the singer-songwriter thing so good, and I'm just so happy her music is in the world.
And finally this three second long video of my baby's butt.
John, I hope that this list provides you and some other people with some respite and I'll see you on Tuesday.
♫ And now it's time for the endscreen card, oh write me an endscreen song. This one's not very good.