🐐 7 things I learned last week (Issue 012)
Hey folks! Here’s what I learned last week: goats can hear your mood, naps sharpen your brain, languages bend time, and building a civilisation takes 2,500 years.
Goats can distinguish human emotions by voice, reacting differently to happy and angry tones.
African nations spent $465 million on space programs in 2024, representing less than 1% of global space spending but marking a 64% increase since 2018.
Older adults who take regular afternoon naps have better cognitive function than non-nappers, with 30-90 minute rest periods providing the optimal benefits.
After six months in Antarctica, scientists developed a slight accent. The “ou” sound in words like “flow” and “sew” shifted forward, and several vowels began to converge.
Language shapes how we see time: English speakers imagine it as a line moving left to right; Mandarin speakers see it as a vertical line with the future down; Greeks describe it as “big” or “much” rather than “long”; Pormpuraaw people in Australia organise it by east and west.
Gender-diverse boardrooms reduce deal leaks. When at least 30 per cent of a target firm’s executive board are women, leak rates drop from 8.6 to 6.7 per cent.
When a society grows on its own, it usually takes around 2,500 years to become highly organised.
What I’ve been reading
The original Kindle was crazy: “In a world of companies competing to make phones that all look the same, I miss products that truly felt innovative. It got a lot of things wrong but it was daring. It was unapologetically strange. It was ambitious with how it wanted to change the world.”
Why some animals have evolved a sense of humour: “Orangutans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas tease one another. Their teasing behaviours include poking, hitting, hindering the movement of a fellow ape, body slamming, and pulling on a body part. Some apes repeatedly waved body parts or objects in front of their fellow apes’ faces, or, in the case of orangutans, pulled each other’s hair.”
A smarter way to read recipes: “There is no one right way to make a dish; there is only the way that’s right for you. Remember that the recipe is there to help guide you along, not to make you feel like a failure.”
From the archives
What it takes to build sustainable urban transport: My interview with Jonas Junk
Do cities really need more buildings? My conversation with Francesco Pomponi
Why sustainable cities start with better data: My interview with Rokia Raslan
And that’s it for today! Thanks for reading! If you enjoy the newsletter, share it with a friend—or a dozen. And if you really enjoyed it, consider upgrading to a paid subscription—it helps support my work and means a lot.
Elia Kabanov is a science writer covering the past, present and future of technology (@metkere)
Illustration: Elia Kabanov feat. DALL-E.