Lonely Brains Have Cravings Too 🧠

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👩🏽‍🏫 What will the new CDC guidelines say about reopening schools during COVID-19? 🧠 How did a team of scientists link the feeling of hunger to the feeling of loneliness? 🍪 How many Girl Scout cookies do the troops sell each year? Learn what makes Girl Scout Troop 6000 unique and special! 🐸 It's time for the Screen Report: The Muppet Show edition! Plus! The Trivia Question of the Day.

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📝 Sign up for The Ten News-letter!

🍪 Get inspired by the Girl Scouts of Troop 6000 in New York City!

🐸 Prepare to immerse yourself in the world of Jim Henson with The Muppet Show on Disney Plus!

👩🏾 Get to know the mathemetician Dr. Gladys West, the Hidden Figure behind the GPS!

🎇 Join us on Instagram

Transcript

Various Voices: [00:00:00] Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, four, three, two, one.

Bethany Van Delft: [00:00:07] From hungry brains to hidden figures! In the next ten minutes, we'll get the low down on what's up in the world. 

I'm Bethany Van Delft, and this is The Ten News.

This week, the CDC is expected to release new guidelines and how to safely reopen schools as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. There's been some debate between teachers, organizations, and scientists on whether or not teachers need to be and should be vaccinated before returning to classrooms. But everyone seems to agree that getting kids and teachers back together for in-person instruction, and doing it as safely as possible is really important.

President Biden has said that he wants schools to reopen and stay open, and that the guidelines for doing so will be based on science and not politics. We'll be keeping a close eye on what the new guidelines say. And of course, we'll keep you posted!

Next up, it's a look inside our brains with Laine Farber, from the Nature Nerds podcast! 

Laine Farber: [00:01:19] We all get hungry, but did you know that we can get hungry for people? Don't panic, y'all. This is not a zombie story. That's an October exclusive. This is a much more wholesome craving. Phew A new study proved that lonely people crave human interaction the same way I crave cake after bingeing, the Great British Baking Show for like eight hours straight. Yeah, you heard that correctly, I watch way too much of The Great British Baking Show and lonely brains are hungry for human connection. Now, before we learn how the study was conducted, we have to understand the basics of hunger.

Hunger is that familiar sensation of your body telling you that it's time to eat. Hunger cues can be both physical and mental because all of our systems require nutrients to function properly. Sometimes it's a rumble of the tummy and inability to focus, or even sudden irritability, AKA the hangrys.

When we're hungry, we see food as a reward. Scientists know this to be true from past studies. So the neuroscience team at MIT was not surprised when their participants brains responded positively to pictures of pizza and cake after fasting for 10 hours. What did surprise them or the brain scans of people starved of human interaction.

Participants were socially isolated for 10 hours, no phone, no social media, no outside communication whatsoever. No way. After the 10 hours, they had their brain scanned while being shown pictures of people hanging out and participating in group sports. And guess what? Their brains lit up just like when being shown pictures of food, that means that our brains crave company, just like we crave food.

The longer we go without food, the more we crave it. And this study proves that the same thing is true about genuine human connection. The lonelier we are, the more our brains crave company. So why is this study important right now? Well, it's easy to feel isolated during times of quarantine. This study proves that forcing humans to self isolate makes us crave social interactions, even more.

So if you're feeling antsy or blue, cause you miss your friends and family. Don't fret. There's a scientific reason behind it. Many of us are stuck indoors working from home or doing virtual schooling, but just because we can't be together in person, doesn't mean we're alone. Challenge yourself to find new ways to spend time with your friends and family in 2021. Try writing letters, playing games online with friends, or even throwing a zoom party. Get creative, have fun. And remember the take care of yourself.

Olivia: [00:04:21] Hi, I'm Olivia, age 10, from Troop 32211 and I'm here to share some cookies news. Did you know that Girl Scouts sold over 200 million packages of cookies each year? That's a whole lot of Thin Mints. But since the pandemic makes selling door to door, a no-go this year, the Girl Scouts have gone digital, selling online through social media and even through the food delivery app, GrubHub. Awesome. Want to spread kindness through cookies? You can donate cookies to the USO or even support a Troop made up of girls living in New York City's homeless shelter system. Visti Thetennews.com to find out more. And seriously though, you want these cookies.

Bethany Van Delft: [00:05:05] Lucky you, it's screen time report.

It's time to play the music. It's time to light the lights. It's time to get things started. The muppets are coming! Kermit The Frog, Miss Piggy, and the whole fuzzy gang, we'll be on Disney Plus when all five seasons of The Muppet Show join the streaming platform. This will be the first time seasons four and five have ever been available to stream.

Oh my gosh. Binge watch! The Muppets Show, a variety show that featured the Muppets in different sketches and musical numbers, often accompanied by celebrity guest stars, originally aired on TV in the late 1970s and early eighties. It was created by the legendary puppeteer, Jim Henson, whose work you may know from, oh, I don't know, Sesame Street. And introduced characters like Fozzie Bear, Gonzo. The Swedish Chef. and animal. The show is hosted by Kermit, and offered just as much in the way of kooky backstage antics, as it did in actual performances. It was filmed in England, where Jim Henson took production after his pitch for the show was rejected by major American networks, though it did air in the U. S. On CBS.

I bet those network execs were a little bit sad about that decision because following the success of their television run, the Muppets went on to make 13 feature films and become pop culture icons. Yes. So now's your chance to see where the Muppets got their start and to check out a show your grown-ups might have watched when they were kids.

The Muppet Show will be available to stream on Disney Plus on February 19.

And now, Trivia on The Ten.

What modern technology was made possible by the work of a mathematician in the 1960s? Was it A) the internet, B) GPS or C) cell phones? 

Did you guess it?  The answer is B! Dr. Gladys West is one of the reasons we're now able to get directions to anywhere right on our phones. Dr. West was born in 1930 in rural Virginia, where she grew up on her family's farm.

From a young age, she knew that education was the key to living the life she imagined for herself. She worked hard and got a scholarship to Virginia State University where she majored in mathematics. By 1956, Gladys West had a job as a mathematician at the Naval Proving Ground in Dahlgren, Virginia. She was one of only four African-Americans working there at the time.

Throughout the 1960s, Dr. West worked on projects that help more accurately measure the shape of the earth using satellites, radars, and mathematical modeling. This modeling is critical to the technology that lets satellites determine the position of a receiver. So the GPS we use every day, wouldn't be possible without the contributions of hidden figure Dr. Gladys West.

Time's up! That's the end of The Ten for today. But you can catch new episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Ten News is a co-production of Small But Mighty Media in collaboration with Next Chapter Podcasts and distributed by iHeartRadio. The Ten News writing team is led by editorial director Tracy Crooks, with contributions from Stephen Tompkins and Laine Farber.

The creative producer is Jenner Pascua. Social media and web support by Stephen Tompkins. Editing and sound design by Pete Musto under the production direction of Jeremiah Tittle, Executive producer Donald Albright and show creator  Tracy Leeds Kaplan round out the team. If you have questions about the show, a story idea, or a fun fact you want to share,  email us at hello at thetennews.com. And don't forget to subscribe, rate and review The Ten News on Apple Podcasts, iHeart Radio, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Bethany Van Delft, and thanks for listening to The Ten News. Bye.