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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.

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Speaker 1: Let's not dally up, bit. We've got to get right

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Speaker 1: into it today because I know you are ripping to

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Speaker 1: talk about the connection between demonology and flatulence. That's right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's hidden in the title itself, right,

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Speaker 1: the Fartonomicon. We're going to be discussing not only the

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Speaker 1: actual science of farts, but this this fascinating connection between

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Speaker 1: demonology and flatulence. And I want to note by the

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Speaker 1: way that the word fart predates flatulence and goes back

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Speaker 1: at least to the fourteenth century. And of course the

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Speaker 1: reality of human flatulence is is far older than humanity,

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Speaker 1: of course it is, and it goes deep, deep into time,

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Speaker 1: just as demons seem to do. Uh So, Yeah, demonology

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Speaker 1: does him to have a whole lot of farting in it.

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Speaker 1: And this is one of the funny things, you know.

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Speaker 1: When I was growing up, I was taught at church

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Speaker 1: not to say cuss words, and cuss words included a

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Speaker 1: lot of potty language and words for defecation and things

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Speaker 1: like that. But if you go back into say the

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Speaker 1: Renaissance or the medieval period before that, you will actually

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Speaker 1: find a lot of pious holy men writing about theological

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Speaker 1: topics who are also quite potty mouthed. Yes that they

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Speaker 1: have their head. They have their head both in the

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Speaker 1: heavens and in the toilet at the same time. Yes, well,

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Speaker 1: that connection between heaven and the toilet is something we'll

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Speaker 1: discuss here. You know, one of my my favorite accounts,

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Speaker 1: and this, of course, is a medieval account from one

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Speaker 1: of the great works of medieval literature, and particularly Italian

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Speaker 1: medieval literature, uh, Dante's Inferno, of course. Uh. To refresh everyone,

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Speaker 1: of course. In in Dante's Inferno, Dante himself is guided

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Speaker 1: by the deceased poet Virgil through hell, through the underworld

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Speaker 1: in a journey that will eventually take him back up

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Speaker 1: to Paradise. Now, I love the Inferno, but I honestly

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Speaker 1: did not remember the farting segments. Oh man, the Inferno.

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Speaker 1: So Robert, you're gonna you're gonna have to illuminate me,

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Speaker 1: educate me on the farting. All right, well, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: set the stage here here we have our duo venturing

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Speaker 1: into the Mala Boga the as a region of the

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Speaker 1: hell with all these uh, these these pits, these boulders

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Speaker 1: in which various tortures are taking place and roaming about

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Speaker 1: are the Malibranchia, the the evil clause. This is a

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Speaker 1: group of demons that are patrolling about and you know,

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Speaker 1: torturing uh as part of their job. And they all

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Speaker 1: have fabulous names like Scarmiglion, which means troublemaker, and Malacotah,

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Speaker 1: which means evil tail. And he's apparently the leader of

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Speaker 1: the group. So I'm gonna read just a bit here

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Speaker 1: from this encounter. Oh me, what is it, master, that

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Speaker 1: I see pray? Let us go? I said, without an escort,

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Speaker 1: If thou knowest how since for myself I asked none.

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Speaker 1: If thou art as observant as thy want is, dost

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Speaker 1: thou not see that they do nash their teeth and

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Speaker 1: with their brows are threatening woe to us. And he

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Speaker 1: to me quote, I will not have the fear let

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Speaker 1: them nash on according to their fancy, because they do

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Speaker 1: it for those boiling wretches Along the left hand dike.

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Speaker 1: They wheeled about, but first had each one thrust his

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Speaker 1: tongue between his teeth toward their leader for a signal,

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Speaker 1: and he had made a trumpet of his rump. Trumpet

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Speaker 1: of his rump. That is like the ultimate hell signal.

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Speaker 1: Now we see that kind of blasphemous behavior also in

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Speaker 1: the Monty Python animations, you know, in Monty Python and

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Speaker 1: the Holy Grail, there's a scene depicting like cartoon versions

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Speaker 1: of the heavens, and it definitely includes people playing musical

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Speaker 1: instruments with their butts. And then, of course I can't

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Speaker 1: help but think of the French insult uh I fart

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Speaker 1: in your general direction. Oh yeah, there's that too. The

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Speaker 1: funny thing about about this uh trumpet of his rump

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Speaker 1: business is that scholars have actually argued for more than

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Speaker 1: a century. It seems like the last century has really

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Speaker 1: been the period in which this has been a matter

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Speaker 1: of scholarly debate over whether this is supposed to be

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Speaker 1: funny or not. Why would it not be funny? I know,

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Speaker 1: I mean I vaguely remember my college Dante professor thinking

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Speaker 1: it was funny and generally enjoying the the humor that

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Speaker 1: is to be found throughout Inferno. Especially, things get less

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Speaker 1: funny as you get up to towards the paradise. But

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Speaker 1: there there are plenty of moments that I think we

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Speaker 1: can legitimately say are funny within Inferno. Yeah. Well, I

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Speaker 1: mean it's it's definitely there. In the same time that

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Speaker 1: Dante is uh depicting and sometimes very lavish and excruciating

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Speaker 1: detail the terrors and tortures of Hell, he sometimes also

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Speaker 1: seems to be sort of satirizing the foibles of humanity. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and skewering his personal enemies. Yeah. Yes. So for instance,

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Speaker 1: those demon names that I mentioned earlier, Alex Scarmiglian, Apparently

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Speaker 1: these these names are plays upon various family names that

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Speaker 1: that Dante took issue with as well. Right now, in general,

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Speaker 1: we should add there there's a lot of butt action

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Speaker 1: when it comes to Christian demonology. Lots of demons speak

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Speaker 1: from their butts. Uh. They seal packs with their butts,

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Speaker 1: and of course they're all about doing things too human

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Speaker 1: butts in hell depending on the depictions. Uh, and you

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Speaker 1: can have a field day teasing apart all of the

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Speaker 1: various elements wound up in this sort of butt centric

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Speaker 1: myth making. Folks, if you haven't already figured it out,

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Speaker 1: this episode is gonna be heavy with a lot of

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Speaker 1: like butts and flatulence. So if you're not interested, uh,

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Speaker 1: you may be warned to tune out now because it

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Speaker 1: will continue, Yes, it will. It will not stop until

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Speaker 1: we reach the end. Uh. So another thing I should

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Speaker 1: point out this idea that you know, this link between

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Speaker 1: demons and flatuents. There is this idea that you see

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Speaker 1: where demons use flat uns against the faithful. I did

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Speaker 1: run across this account of fourth century Christian monk I

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Speaker 1: vag Risks of Pontus warning that demons may bloat the

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Speaker 1: faithful with flatulence to distract them from religious observation. That

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Speaker 1: is an insidious tactic. Did that go in the screwtape letters?

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Speaker 1: That's that's smart it should have. Incidentally, I did run

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Speaker 1: across a contemporary ride up where I think the the

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Speaker 1: author was arguing for the demonic powers of yoga and

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Speaker 1: how it was. It was one of these wonderful accounts

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Speaker 1: where the like, yes, I too have been to a

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Speaker 1: yoga class, and I thought it's connections to to a

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Speaker 1: non Christian religion was was harmless. And then they talk

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Speaker 1: about some of the the signs that you may have

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Speaker 1: demonic spirit annual in. One of them is flatments. Really, yes, really, yes.

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Speaker 1: It is kind of odd to see in the modern

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Speaker 1: day people associating an evil spirit or kind of a

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I feel like generally the idea of

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Speaker 1: an evil spirit has been more abstracted these days, But

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Speaker 1: it is very true if you go back into history,

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Speaker 1: there's a very physical kind of quality to it that

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Speaker 1: it that it is embodied by bad smells and bad

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Speaker 1: physical forces and excrement and things like that. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: yet still you have to realize that all of these individuals, uh,

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Speaker 1: they experienced flatulence as just a regular aspect of their

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Speaker 1: lives and everyday reality of their biology. Yeah. If this

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Speaker 1: guy gets flatulence in church, is that also a demon

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Speaker 1: possessing him? Yeah? I mean, let's let's not be silly

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Speaker 1: about it, like that those those guys are gonna fart

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Speaker 1: in church. It's just going to happen, no matter how

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Speaker 1: holy the monk, Uh, there is going to be a

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Speaker 1: bit of a flat us in play. Now. It's obvious

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Speaker 1: that many people in the Middle Ages, and lots of

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Speaker 1: people involved in creating Christian theology and mythology have been

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Speaker 1: interested in the idea of flatulence and the role that

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Speaker 1: plays in demonology. But sometimes it goes beyond the demonology.

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Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier that that some of these theologians really

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Speaker 1: do seem to have their head in the toilet. And

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Speaker 1: who I mainly had in mind was Martin Luther, because

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Speaker 1: I know Martin Luther loved some potty humor jokes, and

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Speaker 1: he he was he had a he had a wicked,

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Speaker 1: witty pin and he would fling just powerful volleys of scatological,

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Speaker 1: excoriating invective against his enemies. Yeah, they're a number of different,

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Speaker 1: uh Martin Luther quotes that use scatological references, probably with

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Speaker 1: the most famous one is quote but I resist the devil,

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Speaker 1: and often it is with a fart that I chase

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Speaker 1: him away. That's great because so it's not just a rebuke,

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Speaker 1: but it's also like a an implied diminishment of the

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Speaker 1: power of the devil. Right, It's like, I don't need

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Speaker 1: powerful spiritual forces or strong weapons or anything like that

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Speaker 1: to chase the devil away. I dismissed the devil. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's not just merely a get behind me satan um.

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Speaker 1: It's get behind me satan. Now here comes a tuot.

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Speaker 1: And of course there are other examples of this as well.

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Speaker 1: I was looking at a book titled luther Man Between

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Speaker 1: God and the Devil by he ik A Oberman, who

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Speaker 1: points out that Luther often used poopy language against the

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Speaker 1: Devil and his work. So here are just a few examples. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and and Joe, maybe you can you can read these

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Speaker 1: with me. Uh. Here's one. But if that is not

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Speaker 1: enough for you, you devil, I also have and wipe

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Speaker 1: your mouth on that and take a hearty bite o ruh. Okay,

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Speaker 1: we got another one here. A slanderer does nothing but

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Speaker 1: ruminate the filth of others with his own teeth and

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Speaker 1: wallow like a pig with his nose in the dirt.

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Speaker 1: That is also why his dropping stink most surpassed only

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Speaker 1: by the devil's. And though man drops his excrements in private,

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Speaker 1: the slanderer does not respect this privacy. He gluts on

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Speaker 1: the pleasure of wallowing in it, and he does not

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Speaker 1: deserve better according to God's righteous judgment. When the slanderer whispers,

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Speaker 1: look how he has on himself, the best answer is

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Speaker 1: you go eat it. He's almost there's almost like a

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Speaker 1: childish glee. It is that is that is present in

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Speaker 1: these quotes. Yes, and of course Luther being the author

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Speaker 1: of the Christian Reformation, you know, the birth of Protestantism. Luther,

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Speaker 1: of course, had a lot of farty invective for the pope. Quote,

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Speaker 1: I will give a fart for a staff you Satan,

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Speaker 1: Antichrist or pope can lean on it a stinking nothing man.

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Speaker 1: This is making me think I would not want to

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Speaker 1: make enemies with Martin Luther. Yeah, I mean, he's going

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Speaker 1: to really let you have it, maybe physically. Now, all

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Speaker 1: of this makes me think that you could actually write

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Speaker 1: a whole book on the cultural significance of farting in

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Speaker 1: Middle Age Europe. You could, And in fact, Valerie Allen

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Speaker 1: did just that, Yeah, in her book on Farting, Language

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Speaker 1: and Laughter in the Middle Ages, published in two thousand seven.

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Speaker 1: And Uh, this is just this is a rich tone.

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Speaker 1: This is truly a part anomicon, uh in its own right.

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Speaker 1: So I just wanted to pull a few choice tidbits

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Speaker 1: from the text. So she she, for instance, mentions uh

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Speaker 1: the fourteenth century Icelandic tale of uh poor Stein's pattern Skulks,

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Speaker 1: in which a demon arises from the depths of a

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Speaker 1: twenty two seat toilet to confront our hero whoa So

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Speaker 1: is it like the number of seats is proportional to

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Speaker 1: the depths of degradation that the toilet embodies. I guess,

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Speaker 1: so you know, because I'm guessing that those twenty two

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Speaker 1: seats share a common pit of foulness, and it's it takes.

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Speaker 1: It's that sort of foulness from which the demon must arise.

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Speaker 1: She also notes that late medieval art often depicts demons

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Speaker 1: is covered in fecal matter, as well as the mystery

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Speaker 1: plays of the time. So an example of this from Alan,

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Speaker 1: she says that in the drama The Fall of Lucifer,

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Speaker 1: as Lucifer quote thuds to his stinking sty, he wails

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Speaker 1: for fear of fire, I crack a fart, and then

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Speaker 1: in the Fall of Man you have this character Diabolos,

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Speaker 1: and he cries out, and this is of course the translation.

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Speaker 1: On account of this fall, I am starting to quake

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Speaker 1: with a art my britches I break, which again is

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Speaker 1: just kind of another almost like grade school poopy insult

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Speaker 1: or parody leveled at at the devil. It has some

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Speaker 1: of the wit of the couplets you see in like

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Speaker 1: Dryden and Alexander Pope. Yea more like Alexander poop, though

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Speaker 1: I'm alright, um, so I want to share one more

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Speaker 1: quote from Valerie Allen because she she sums up a

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Speaker 1: lot of this very nicely, and and she says the

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Speaker 1: following quote. If in the popular theatrical imagination, Satan's descent

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Speaker 1: to bottomless perdition is punctuated by flatulence, it is a

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Speaker 1: natural consequence to picture him as the load that Heaven

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Speaker 1: discharges into Hell the show of the Cosmos. I I

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Speaker 1: just love that because it does it just sums up

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Speaker 1: so much of this this energy and inner interconnectedness between

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Speaker 1: bodily movements and flatulence and these demonic entities and just

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Speaker 1: the overall like theological structure of the universe. Christian cosmology

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Speaker 1: reduced to us your everyday bowel movement on the potty.

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Speaker 1: And of course, the Christian tradition is not the only

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Speaker 1: tradition to to play with flash lens, not at all.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, we will leave the Christian tradition for a

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Speaker 1: moment and look at the fact that fart humor goes

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Speaker 1: way back and covers pretty much the entire world. There

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Speaker 1: are fart jokes everywhere, and they go deep into history.

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Speaker 1: There's actually a writer and academic named Paul McDonald who

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Speaker 1: he teaches at the University of Wolverhampton and he was

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Speaker 1: involved in this list that came out a few years back.

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Speaker 1: That was where they were trying to find the oldest

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Speaker 1: jokes known in history, and it turned out that, according

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Speaker 1: to this University of Wolverhampton list, the oldest known joke

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Speaker 1: at the time was a fart joke. It is a

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Speaker 1: fart joke from ancient Mesopotamia. It's a Sumerian joke that

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Speaker 1: traces back to about nineteen d BC e, making it

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Speaker 1: almost four thousand years old. And it reads in translation

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Speaker 1: as the following quote, something which has never occurred since

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Speaker 1: time immemorial. A young woman did not fart in her

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Speaker 1: husband's lap. Okay. I think maybe like the the particulars

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Speaker 1: of the joke don't don't carry well across you know,

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Speaker 1: more than four millennia. But it does seem to, yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's lost something in in translation, maybe language wise and

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Speaker 1: definitely culturally. I don't know if this is topical humor

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Speaker 1: for the time. Is it like there was a big

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Speaker 1: problem with I don't know, dudes getting married and then

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Speaker 1: their wife farting in their lap. I don't know, but

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Speaker 1: that's what it seems to suggest it's like everybody will

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Speaker 1: be like, oh, yeah, that always happens. Uh. It's sort

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Speaker 1: of a mandatory contemplation here. Do you think that the

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Speaker 1: presence of an ancient fart joke like this supports uh,

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Speaker 1: the idea of of the camera a mind Julian James's theory?

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Speaker 1: Or is it? Or is it? Or is this uh?

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Speaker 1: Or is this some some ammunition one could use against it?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess i'd say it's neutral. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I certainly wouldn't say supports okay, But but I do

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Speaker 1: wonder what would one, given the particulars of of the

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Speaker 1: bicameral theory, would would one have to be conscious as

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Speaker 1: a modern human is conscious in order to make a

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Speaker 1: fart joke like this? That's a good question. I don't

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Speaker 1: know how humor would play into the presence of consciousness. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I will say though that I love Julian James's theory,

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Speaker 1: and I would I would hate it if it were

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Speaker 1: an ancient fart joke that truly brought it down, like

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Speaker 1: this was the this was the arrow that managed to

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Speaker 1: to kill the beast. That's the nail in the coffin.

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Speaker 1: It's a fart joke, Yeah, sorry, James could be well,

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Speaker 1: I say, we look elsewhere for more fart jokes in history.

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Speaker 1: One of the best that I have come across is

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Speaker 1: actually not a verbal joke, but it is a series

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Speaker 1: of amazing illustration sans from medieval Japanese art. So, Robert,

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Speaker 1: have you seen these medieval Japanese fart scrolls? I had

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Speaker 1: not until you showed them to me this morning. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I've seen so many different bits of Japanese art that

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Speaker 1: depict basically just all sorts of body horror, be they

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Speaker 1: in the form of yokai or other monster stories, or

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Speaker 1: or even just like the magical testicle based ability of

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Speaker 1: the raccoon dogs. So in Edo period Japan, which is

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Speaker 1: the early seventeenth to mid nineteenth century, some artists or

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Speaker 1: group of artists created a collection of artworks that have

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Speaker 1: now been digitized and you can find them at the

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Speaker 1: website of Waseda University Library. And these artworks are contained

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Speaker 1: on a scroll known as hay Gassin or Fart Battle,

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Speaker 1: and the name says it all. You've got dudes blasting

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Speaker 1: each other with farts in every way you can imagine,

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Speaker 1: but not just any farts. These are kind of a

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Speaker 1: supernatural high powered fart that appears to have the power

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Speaker 1: to knock people over and do all kinds of damage.

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Speaker 1: It's represented in the artwork as a kind of spreading

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Speaker 1: beam of darkness that comes out of the butt. And

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Speaker 1: so it's you've got dudes farting and enemies while riding

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Speaker 1: on horseback. You've got dudes farting through holes in the walls.

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Speaker 1: You've got farting on cats, I don't know why, sometimes

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Speaker 1: farting at cats and the cats are like And then

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Speaker 1: you've got people farting into bags and then releasing the

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Speaker 1: bags on rivals and then repelling farts with handheld fans.

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Speaker 1: That's pretty smart, like Mortal Kombat. Yeah, right there, all

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Speaker 1: kinds of havoc and destruction. And this particular scroll actually

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Speaker 1: appears to be part of a larger tradition of fart

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Speaker 1: battle artworks. I found one academic article discussing medieval Japanese

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Speaker 1: fart battles in art, and it was by Akiko Yano.

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Speaker 1: The article was called Historiography of the Fallic Contest hand

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Speaker 1: scroll in Japanese Art in the Japan Review, and Yano

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Speaker 1: describes one art scroll housed at the Mitsui Memorial Museum

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Speaker 1: in to Kio, which is known as catchier a maki,

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Speaker 1: and it's a hand scroll that contains both the phallic

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Speaker 1: contest component that was in the title of the paper,

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Speaker 1: which is a competition quote among men with surrealistically huge

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Speaker 1: male members, and then it's also got a fart battle component.

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Speaker 1: And in the fart battle section, the only text is

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Speaker 1: a few brief descriptions of what is happening in some

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Speaker 1: of the artworks. Examples of the explanatory text include quote,

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Speaker 1: they prepare to fart like arrows by drinking cold water

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Speaker 1: to chill their bellies, picking sweet acorns and eating them

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Speaker 1: with raw chestnuts. Their stomachs are chilled. Now they line

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Speaker 1: up to fart like arrows by eating hot rice porridge. Okay,

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Speaker 1: now this lines up with some of the science will

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Speaker 1: be discussing later. Yes, And finally they collect the farts

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Speaker 1: in a bag and prepare to volley fart arrows. Fart arrows,

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Speaker 1: fart arrows. All right. I really like the way that's written,

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Speaker 1: as if it's like you should already know what a

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Speaker 1: fart arrow is. But yeah. Another interesting thing Yano points

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Speaker 1: out in the article is that many of the figures

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Speaker 1: depicted in these artworks releasing these huge sort of fart

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Speaker 1: Hadukins are supposed to be priests. They're dressed as priests,

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Speaker 1: so you have to wonder. It's like, is there a

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Speaker 1: satirical aspect to this? Yeah, I mean we see this

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Speaker 1: in East and West, right, this idea perhaps that you know,

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Speaker 1: no matter how holy this particular holy man or woman

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Speaker 1: may seem, we all know that they fart, and we

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Speaker 1: can imagine it, and sometimes, if we're lucky, we can

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Speaker 1: hear it, and it's it serves to sort of knock

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Speaker 1: them down a peg, at least in our minds. Okay,

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Speaker 1: I got one more good one, Robert, did you did

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Speaker 1: you know previously about Roland the Farter? I had not

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Speaker 1: heard of Roland the Farter. No, do tell of Roland

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Speaker 1: the Farther. Well, there's a really great Warren Zevon song

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Speaker 1: about him. I'm getting confused for something else, roll on

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Speaker 1: the head of Thompson Gunner. Yeah. So there is a

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Speaker 1: section on good old Roland in the book A Social

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Speaker 1: History of England nine to twelve hundred, edited by Julia

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Speaker 1: Crick and Elizabeth van Houts, and this is discussing what

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Speaker 1: went on in the court of the English King Henry

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Speaker 1: the Second, who ruled in the middle of the twelfth century.

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Speaker 1: So I'm going to read this quote quote at the

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Speaker 1: royal court, Christmas was evidently a time for special entertainments,

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Speaker 1: as suggested by the records of one Roland le Patur,

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Speaker 1: also called rue Landas Lefarterre, who was granted a sergeanty,

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Speaker 1: apparently of the late twelfth century. And aside, note, a

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Speaker 1: sergeanty was part of the feudal system, where a person

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Speaker 1: would be awarded control of a feudal estate in exchange

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Speaker 1: for some non standard service rendered. So basically it was

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Speaker 1: kind of like a feudal knighthood. You'd be given a

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Speaker 1: grant of land, except instead of being a night in

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Speaker 1: service of the King of the queen, you would do

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Speaker 1: some kind of other service. But going back to the quote,

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Speaker 1: his grant is typical of that given to favored entertainers

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Speaker 1: as well as to others of service to the king.

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Speaker 1: In his case, it included the requirement of performing saltum,

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Speaker 1: siffletum petum, or a jump, a whistle a fart before

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Speaker 1: the king on Christmas Day. The phrase was a stock

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Speaker 1: expression and seems to represent standard buffoonery, the kind of

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Speaker 1: thing that would constitute a jester's performance, and so it

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Speaker 1: is likely that Roland the Farter was a royal jester

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Speaker 1: and the fart was his stock in trade. I wonder

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Speaker 1: if these were legitimate farts or were these like sort

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Speaker 1: of clown based farts. Did he have some sort of

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Speaker 1: cushioned devices at a poem in the armpit kind of thing? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would tend to suggest they wouldn't settle for anything

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Speaker 1: less than the real thing. Isn't that interesting because you

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Speaker 1: can in the same way that you know, we have

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Speaker 1: these these festivals in which the fool has made king

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Speaker 1: for for a day, you know, everything is the reverse

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Speaker 1: for the For the jester in the in the actual

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Speaker 1: king's court, to fart in the king's presence, Uh, could

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Speaker 1: be a extreme embarrassment. It could It could diminish your

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Speaker 1: standing in the royal court. And yet the opposite is

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Speaker 1: true for the jester. What it would if he has

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Speaker 1: called upon to to do his performance and he has

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Speaker 1: no flatuss upon which to call it? Could that could

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Speaker 1: be disaster? That could could cause his head to be

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Speaker 1: separated from his body. Yeah. I can't remember the details,

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Speaker 1: but you've just called to mind a story. I think

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Speaker 1: I recall about some lord or some some noble dignitary whoever,

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Speaker 1: who was appearing before Queen Elizabeth the First and who

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Speaker 1: I've heard this one farted in her presence and it

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Speaker 1: was so embarrassing that he essentially had to leave the

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Speaker 1: country or at least disappeared to somewhere somewhere far away

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Speaker 1: for a while, but then came back. Is the version

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Speaker 1: of the story that he came back years later and

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00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:52,679
Speaker 1: it presented himself before the Queen and she said, I

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Speaker 1: remember you. You're the boy who farted again again if

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Speaker 1: it was, and it's your whole identity. Yeah, that's like

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00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:02,560
Speaker 1: a I think that's a human fear like that if

400
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Speaker 1: if if you let one rip in the wrong context, Uh,

401
00:23:07,119 --> 00:23:10,359
Speaker 1: that fart will haunt you forever for no good reason,

402
00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:15,600
Speaker 1: because again everyone does this, This is a basic aspect

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Speaker 1: of of human behavior. Well, unfortunately, that is exactly the

404
00:23:19,240 --> 00:23:21,480
Speaker 1: route that the role in the farter story goes down,

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Speaker 1: So it has a kind of sad ending. According to

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Speaker 1: stories collected. Actually, oh you know what, I just realized

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Speaker 1: in a book that's the same Valerie Allan book you

408
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Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. Yeah, so in that same Valerie Allen book,

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Speaker 1: apparently she She talks about how a later king, probably

410
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Speaker 1: Henry the Third, took the crown, and the story goes

411
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Speaker 1: that the laughs dried up and this king did not

412
00:23:43,840 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 1: find Roland's act very funny, and he revoked Roland's grant

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Speaker 1: of land, citing the fact that his buffoonery was indecent.

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Speaker 1: But Alan also notes that some things about the timeline

415
00:23:54,560 --> 00:23:57,440
Speaker 1: don't really add up. These chronicles would have role in

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Speaker 1: the Farter having a career that was like a hundred

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Speaker 1: and twenty years long or more so. Something about the

418
00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:05,320
Speaker 1: story is probably garbled or wrong, but there does appear

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00:24:05,359 --> 00:24:07,800
Speaker 1: to be some kind of historical core to it. We

420
00:24:07,840 --> 00:24:09,880
Speaker 1: do think there was a role in the farter who

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00:24:09,920 --> 00:24:12,320
Speaker 1: farted for his bread and butter. Huh, Well, I wonder

422
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Speaker 1: if it This is near speculation on my part, but

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Speaker 1: I wonder if it could have been more of a role.

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Speaker 1: It's kind of like Bozo the clown, or you could

425
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:24,479
Speaker 1: have different actors playing Roland the Farter, and therefore he

426
00:24:24,520 --> 00:24:27,840
Speaker 1: could live for the doctor. Yeah, yeah, you know, every

427
00:24:27,840 --> 00:24:30,159
Speaker 1: time the doctor disappears, you have a new role in

428
00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:33,639
Speaker 1: the Farter time Lord shows up. Yeah, the basic that

429
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:37,480
Speaker 1: basic transformation scene, except with farting sounds at it. Get

430
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:39,880
Speaker 1: on at Hollywood. I want to see the Roland Roland

431
00:24:39,880 --> 00:24:42,040
Speaker 1: at the farther chronicles. All right, I think we should

432
00:24:42,080 --> 00:24:43,560
Speaker 1: take a quick break and when we come back we

433
00:24:43,560 --> 00:24:48,800
Speaker 1: will look at the science of flatulence. Than alright, we're back.

434
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:53,720
Speaker 1: So what exactly is flatulence? Tell me, Robert, Well, when

435
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:55,920
Speaker 1: you you boil it down to just the basics, it's

436
00:24:56,040 --> 00:25:00,520
Speaker 1: gas produced during digestion and flatus. Only A applies to

437
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:03,840
Speaker 1: gas expelled through the anus, So not the cloaco or

438
00:25:03,880 --> 00:25:07,680
Speaker 1: a specialized glander duck. We're talking about gas from your

439
00:25:07,680 --> 00:25:11,560
Speaker 1: anus or the anus of any anally empowered animal. Because,

440
00:25:11,560 --> 00:25:13,800
Speaker 1: of course, as we do. We discussed on our our

441
00:25:13,840 --> 00:25:16,560
Speaker 1: anus episode, which I'll link to on the Landing page

442
00:25:16,600 --> 00:25:18,400
Speaker 1: for this episode stuff to blow your mind dot com.

443
00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:21,760
Speaker 1: There's always more, Yeah, there's there's always more content out there.

444
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:24,600
Speaker 1: But as we mentioned in that, uh, not every creature

445
00:25:24,720 --> 00:25:27,920
Speaker 1: has an anus. Now that being said, it should also

446
00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:30,960
Speaker 1: be noted that not every animal farts, and we will

447
00:25:30,960 --> 00:25:34,120
Speaker 1: get back to that truth as well. But let's talk

448
00:25:34,119 --> 00:25:37,280
Speaker 1: about the composition of the average two. Yeah, so how

449
00:25:37,359 --> 00:25:39,880
Speaker 1: much does the average person far it? Alright, so, sure

450
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:41,760
Speaker 1: people out there are wondering like am I am I

451
00:25:41,840 --> 00:25:45,960
Speaker 1: farting too much? Not enough? I've got to know, uh yeah,

452
00:25:46,040 --> 00:25:47,720
Speaker 1: And you know, it is one of those things that's

453
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:52,600
Speaker 1: probably difficult for most people to gauge because it's depending on,

454
00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:55,160
Speaker 1: like I guess your what kind of household you grew

455
00:25:55,240 --> 00:25:57,800
Speaker 1: up in, and what sort of culture you're a part of. Uh.

456
00:25:57,960 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: Sometimes farting is something that must be done in secret

457
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:05,480
Speaker 1: uh and blamed upon children and animals. But apparently the

458
00:26:05,520 --> 00:26:09,640
Speaker 1: average person uh, let's rip between five hundred and two

459
00:26:09,680 --> 00:26:12,840
Speaker 1: thousand million leaders of gas per day and each about

460
00:26:12,960 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: is likely to be thirty five to ninety million leaders. Okay,

461
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:18,840
Speaker 1: I just did some extremely rough math on that, and

462
00:26:18,920 --> 00:26:21,919
Speaker 1: it looks like that would average out to about twenty

463
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:23,720
Speaker 1: farts a day on average if you go for the

464
00:26:23,720 --> 00:26:26,119
Speaker 1: middle of those ranges. All right, Well, I would be

465
00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:30,879
Speaker 1: curious to hear from listeners who want to uh speak

466
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:33,639
Speaker 1: truth to that number. Does that line up with your experience?

467
00:26:33,640 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 1: What do you think? Uh? Incidentally, I also have run

468
00:26:37,760 --> 00:26:41,159
Speaker 1: across um uh some material in the past that spoke

469
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:45,359
Speaker 1: to at least in uh in some cultures and maybe

470
00:26:45,359 --> 00:26:48,280
Speaker 1: all cultures. I don't know, but the you're gonna have

471
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:51,639
Speaker 1: different volumes with with men and women depending on is

472
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:54,680
Speaker 1: it is it seem more proper for men to regularly

473
00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:59,320
Speaker 1: pass gas versus women, and therefore women might um contain

474
00:26:59,359 --> 00:27:01,800
Speaker 1: themselves more more than the men. I'm not sure how

475
00:27:01,800 --> 00:27:05,040
Speaker 1: that research actually lines up with our figures here, though.

476
00:27:05,240 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 1: Is there fart injustice being done? Yeah? I mean again,

477
00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:10,399
Speaker 1: we come back to the basic reality that this is

478
00:27:10,400 --> 00:27:14,760
Speaker 1: something that everybody's body does. So, according to Jeffrey Klueger,

479
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:19,280
Speaker 1: writing for Discover magazine and nineteen and fabulous article in

480
00:27:19,320 --> 00:27:23,719
Speaker 1: which is primary source is gastro inturologists and two thousand

481
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:28,160
Speaker 1: thirteen Nobel Prize winner Dr Michael Levitt, who will keep

482
00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:31,119
Speaker 1: coming back to because Levitt is a big name in

483
00:27:31,280 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: the fart science community. Yes. Uh, but according to this

484
00:27:35,200 --> 00:27:41,440
Speaker 1: article of Flatus, is carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and methane.

485
00:27:41,560 --> 00:27:45,879
Speaker 1: I read somewhere that among some people tested, the nitrogen

486
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:49,840
Speaker 1: seemed to be the greatest component by volume. Okay, and

487
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: these are all either swallowed in or with the food

488
00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:57,359
Speaker 1: or released during digestion. Now this is all odorless is

489
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:00,600
Speaker 1: the interesting part to consider here? Uh. In the methane,

490
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:04,480
Speaker 1: the remaining one percent of the composition is to blame

491
00:28:04,520 --> 00:28:08,680
Speaker 1: for the smell, and it's the byproduct of the microbe

492
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 1: legions that live in your gut aiding in your digestion.

493
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:15,960
Speaker 1: That one percent is their waste gas. So yeah, what

494
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:20,160
Speaker 1: exactly are these odor carrying compounds? And by god, there's

495
00:28:20,200 --> 00:28:25,040
Speaker 1: a study on that. So this is a study by Suarez,

496
00:28:25,280 --> 00:28:28,080
Speaker 1: Springfield and Love at the same Levet we mentioned earlier

497
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:31,520
Speaker 1: called identification of Gases responsible for the odor of hum

498
00:28:31,560 --> 00:28:35,080
Speaker 1: inflate us and Evaluation of a device purported to reduce

499
00:28:35,200 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: this odor, published in Gut And so I've not heard

500
00:28:39,400 --> 00:28:42,400
Speaker 1: of the journal Gut before. That's great. Yeah, all your

501
00:28:42,440 --> 00:28:46,120
Speaker 1: gut needs met in one place. So they took sixteen

502
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:49,280
Speaker 1: healthy subjects and fed them pinto beans and stool softener

503
00:28:49,640 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 1: and hooked them up to quote rectal tubes. Getting off

504
00:28:52,880 --> 00:28:57,320
Speaker 1: to a good start. So results results were that most

505
00:28:57,400 --> 00:29:00,400
Speaker 1: but not quite all of the malodorous calm pounds and

506
00:29:00,520 --> 00:29:04,720
Speaker 1: human flatus where sulfur based compounds, and the following where

507
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:09,160
Speaker 1: the major sulfur compounds detected yet hydrogen sulfide, which has

508
00:29:09,200 --> 00:29:12,520
Speaker 1: a rotten eggs smell, and it's associated with the microbial

509
00:29:12,560 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 1: breakdown of organic matter in an oxygen free environment. So

510
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:20,360
Speaker 1: if you've ever had that really bad microbial decomposition smell,

511
00:29:20,400 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: it's often coming from some kind of anaerobic source. It's

512
00:29:23,560 --> 00:29:27,360
Speaker 1: breakdown occurring where there's no oxygen in the breakdown area,

513
00:29:27,440 --> 00:29:31,479
Speaker 1: and it's it's producing these horrible sulfurous by products. And

514
00:29:31,520 --> 00:29:34,720
Speaker 1: this was followed by methane thiol, which is sometimes described

515
00:29:34,760 --> 00:29:37,200
Speaker 1: as the smell of rotten cabbage, and it's a major

516
00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:41,600
Speaker 1: component of bad breath, and then also by dimethyl sulfide,

517
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:45,000
Speaker 1: which has a strong bad smell, also sometimes described as

518
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:47,880
Speaker 1: cabbage like. In fact, I've read that it's produced when

519
00:29:47,880 --> 00:29:50,120
Speaker 1: you boil cabbage. So part of the bad smell of

520
00:29:50,160 --> 00:29:53,040
Speaker 1: boiled cabbage is going to be this stuff dimethyl sulfide,

521
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:57,520
Speaker 1: but it's also in lower concentration when paired with other smells.

522
00:29:57,600 --> 00:30:00,760
Speaker 1: One of the major components of the smell we identify

523
00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:04,520
Speaker 1: as the smell of the ocean, which is funny because

524
00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:06,880
Speaker 1: when you think about the smell of the sea, it's

525
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:08,880
Speaker 1: one of those that that's kind of sitting on the

526
00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:11,680
Speaker 1: fence between a good smell and a bad smell, right right,

527
00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:15,720
Speaker 1: And it's kind by context really exactly, it's kind of nice,

528
00:30:15,800 --> 00:30:19,800
Speaker 1: but it can also get kind of kind of foul. Yeah,

529
00:30:19,960 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 1: I guess it's when you're actually at the ocean. You

530
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:24,400
Speaker 1: know that you have you have all the other sensory

531
00:30:24,440 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 1: information to to skew it into a more positive place

532
00:30:28,120 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 1: and in a definite uh oceanic vibe. It's kind of

533
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: like the whole like like cheese versus smelly shoes or

534
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:40,320
Speaker 1: smelly socks situation where oftentimes that you're essentially talking about

535
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:44,680
Speaker 1: a very similar odor, but when associated with the shoes

536
00:30:44,720 --> 00:30:47,680
Speaker 1: it is gross. But when associated with a particular cheese,

537
00:30:47,720 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: if you are a cheese eater, then it will excite you.

538
00:30:51,120 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point of comparison. Now, so

539
00:30:53,440 --> 00:30:58,240
Speaker 1: the human judges in judging the malodorous nous of different farts,

540
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:02,480
Speaker 1: they apparently were able to significantly correlate the worst smelling

541
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:06,200
Speaker 1: farts with hydrogen sulfide concentration. So it seems like the

542
00:31:06,280 --> 00:31:09,840
Speaker 1: more hydrogen sulfide is in the flate US, the worse

543
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:12,640
Speaker 1: it smells. Now, as a side note, the study also

544
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:15,680
Speaker 1: looked at a couple of methods for eliminating the odor

545
00:31:15,720 --> 00:31:19,400
Speaker 1: of flate US quote. Odor intensity was also determined after

546
00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:23,640
Speaker 1: treatment of FLATEUS samples with zinc acetate which binds sulfidril

547
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 1: compounds hydrogen sulfide and methane thiol or activated charcoal utilizing

548
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:36,320
Speaker 1: gas type milar pantaloons. Yes, gas type milar pantaloons. The

549
00:31:36,360 --> 00:31:40,880
Speaker 1: ability of a charcoal lined cushion to adsorb sulfur containing

550
00:31:40,920 --> 00:31:45,160
Speaker 1: gases instilled at the anus of eight subjects was assessed,

551
00:31:45,320 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 1: and what they found was the activated charcoal anus cushion

552
00:31:48,960 --> 00:31:52,800
Speaker 1: worked best and it adsorbed more than of the sulfur

553
00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:56,479
Speaker 1: based gases. So if you want your farts to not stink,

554
00:31:56,640 --> 00:32:00,160
Speaker 1: you can use an activated charcoal anus cushion and it

555
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:02,960
Speaker 1: will apparently work pretty darn well. How come that's not

556
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:07,120
Speaker 1: a standard feature in these, uh, these various underwears that

557
00:32:07,200 --> 00:32:09,960
Speaker 1: one can order online these days. I think maybe there

558
00:32:10,000 --> 00:32:12,240
Speaker 1: actually is underwear you can get like that. I don't

559
00:32:12,240 --> 00:32:15,040
Speaker 1: know if it uses activated charcoal, but there are I've

560
00:32:15,080 --> 00:32:18,520
Speaker 1: seen advertisements for underwear that is supposed to get rid

561
00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 1: of the bad smell of farts, and I don't know

562
00:32:21,360 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: how effective it is or what it's made out of,

563
00:32:23,560 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 1: but I know I've seen that before. Interesting, Now, Robert,

564
00:32:26,560 --> 00:32:29,680
Speaker 1: here's a question I've got. I know people are very

565
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:33,800
Speaker 1: often prone to link the prevalence of farts and the

566
00:32:33,840 --> 00:32:38,080
Speaker 1: bad smell of farts to certain elements in the diet.

567
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:40,960
Speaker 1: But when people talk about this, it sounds completely random

568
00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:43,400
Speaker 1: to me. It sounds like they're just making up one

569
00:32:43,480 --> 00:32:47,360
Speaker 1: thing or another because there's no consistency whatsoever, and what

570
00:32:47,440 --> 00:32:51,040
Speaker 1: people say leads to lots of farts or bad smelling farts,

571
00:32:51,080 --> 00:32:53,680
Speaker 1: except maybe beans. Well, and then here's the thing to

572
00:32:53,840 --> 00:32:58,959
Speaker 1: write anything that you any particular food you associate with

573
00:32:59,040 --> 00:33:03,000
Speaker 1: a fart to speak of it. Uh. Thus lee is humorous,

574
00:33:03,080 --> 00:33:05,120
Speaker 1: so that if you were to say, oh, man, someone's

575
00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:08,720
Speaker 1: got the tutsie roll toots today, or I have a

576
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:12,160
Speaker 1: bad case of the beef farts, huh uh yeah, it's

577
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:14,640
Speaker 1: it actually gets funnier. I think the more mundane the

578
00:33:14,680 --> 00:33:17,280
Speaker 1: food you say, is like, oh, you know, Terry's got

579
00:33:17,320 --> 00:33:21,560
Speaker 1: bread farts over here. Yeah, there's there's nothing that isn't funny.

580
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:24,840
Speaker 1: But as it turns out, there there is a science

581
00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:27,880
Speaker 1: to what's going on here, and we can classify our

582
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 1: foods into different toot categories. The more complex the carbohydrates

583
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,480
Speaker 1: in your diet, the more pungent the odor is likely

584
00:33:35,560 --> 00:33:39,000
Speaker 1: to be. Yeah, so meat, fish, nuts, and berries not

585
00:33:39,120 --> 00:33:43,080
Speaker 1: too much to worry about citrus, bread and potatoes. Those

586
00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 1: are full of complex sugars. Uh, So you get a

587
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 1: two tier consistency. And then the beans, bananas and milk

588
00:33:50,440 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 1: foods such as this. That's where you really in your

589
00:33:52,560 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: fart city. And this is because the more complex carbohydrates

590
00:33:55,480 --> 00:33:58,080
Speaker 1: are more difficult to break down, requiring more work in

591
00:33:58,120 --> 00:34:02,320
Speaker 1: the lower regions of the bowels. In general, however, it's

592
00:34:02,360 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: not only the creature's diet that's gonna be a major factor,

593
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:08,560
Speaker 1: but also the specific gut floor that they have, the

594
00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:12,520
Speaker 1: specific uh you know, microbes that are residing within them

595
00:34:12,520 --> 00:34:16,120
Speaker 1: to aid in their digestion. But and then also overall

596
00:34:16,200 --> 00:34:19,319
Speaker 1: health of the individual. So these are gonna character These

597
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:21,800
Speaker 1: are gonna influence not only the character but the volume

598
00:34:21,840 --> 00:34:24,960
Speaker 1: of the toots and high fiber diets. They have a

599
00:34:24,960 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 1: lot of veggies in them. For instance, these have been

600
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:30,560
Speaker 1: linked to increased flash lens as well as have dairy

601
00:34:30,680 --> 00:34:34,240
Speaker 1: starch and fructose. That's interesting. I mean, not knowing anything

602
00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 1: going in, I might have assumed, Hey, who's gonna fart

603
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:38,480
Speaker 1: the most, don't I don't know, Maybe people who eat

604
00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:40,880
Speaker 1: a lot of meat. No, it's the it's the curse

605
00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:46,160
Speaker 1: of the vegetarian, but but also Brussels sprouts and meat

606
00:34:46,200 --> 00:34:49,000
Speaker 1: are also examples of foods with high concentrations of sulfur

607
00:34:49,360 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 1: leading to the production of that hydrogen sulfide that we've

608
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 1: mentioned already, the smell of rotten eggs, but also hey,

609
00:34:56,080 --> 00:34:58,560
Speaker 1: the smell of fire and brimstone. Oh, that brings us

610
00:34:58,640 --> 00:35:01,360
Speaker 1: right back to the demonic associate. Yes, I wonder, I

611
00:35:01,400 --> 00:35:05,440
Speaker 1: wonder now speaking of fire and brimstone. Mary Wroach actually

612
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:09,560
Speaker 1: breaks down the flammable components of platus in her excellent

613
00:35:09,600 --> 00:35:14,239
Speaker 1: book Gulp Adventures in the Alimentary Canal. Uh. This is

614
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:16,520
Speaker 1: this is a fabulous book I've mentioned on the show before.

615
00:35:16,920 --> 00:35:20,279
Speaker 1: Uh and and Mary does a fabulous job exploring fart

616
00:35:20,360 --> 00:35:22,960
Speaker 1: science and at least two different books that she's written.

617
00:35:24,800 --> 00:35:27,799
Speaker 1: So here's some of the facts. Methane and hydrogen are

618
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:33,960
Speaker 1: explosive in concentrations higher than four to five percent, and

619
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:38,080
Speaker 1: then up to eight of plates is hydrogen. That's interesting.

620
00:35:38,080 --> 00:35:40,200
Speaker 1: I wonder how that compares to what I read that

621
00:35:40,239 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 1: a major component is nitrogen. I guess maybe it's got

622
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:47,680
Speaker 1: to be highly variable, right, I imagine. So, now we've

623
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:50,520
Speaker 1: all heard tales of lighted farts and if you're like me.

624
00:35:50,640 --> 00:35:52,560
Speaker 1: You might have seen it done on stage that at

625
00:35:52,600 --> 00:35:55,719
Speaker 1: an Atlanta improv show. Do not take that as an

626
00:35:55,800 --> 00:35:59,919
Speaker 1: endorsement of this behavior. This podcast is not recommending lighting fart,

627
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:03,360
Speaker 1: which is actually seriously dangerous behavior, right and you and

628
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:05,120
Speaker 1: you will see why it's dangerous as we roll out

629
00:36:05,160 --> 00:36:09,720
Speaker 1: some of the details. Um but but Roache does describe

630
00:36:09,719 --> 00:36:13,200
Speaker 1: a few of the more harrowing cases of flate is fire,

631
00:36:13,640 --> 00:36:19,360
Speaker 1: such as the fatal N seven mishap during a colonic polypectomy,

632
00:36:19,440 --> 00:36:22,799
Speaker 1: that is, the surgical removal of polyps from the colon. Wow,

633
00:36:22,840 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 1: how did this happen? So the gastro intrologist here was

634
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:31,000
Speaker 1: using electrocoagulation to cut to cut down on bleeding, and

635
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:34,640
Speaker 1: about eight seconds into the procedure there was an explosion.

636
00:36:35,400 --> 00:36:38,399
Speaker 1: The patient's body jerked on the table. Uh, and then

637
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:42,759
Speaker 1: the the colonoscope was quote completely ejected from the body,

638
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:46,000
Speaker 1: which Mary interprets is essentially it was launched out of

639
00:36:46,040 --> 00:36:50,000
Speaker 1: the anus by the explosion. It is horrifying. Yeah, but

640
00:36:50,040 --> 00:36:53,120
Speaker 1: basically what happened is that there is there the gas

641
00:36:53,160 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 1: in the colon was flammable, and the the the electro

642
00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:02,439
Speaker 1: cauterization device touched it off and bamo. This is why

643
00:37:02,640 --> 00:37:07,400
Speaker 1: Roach says there's so much overkill in pre colonoscopy bowel cleansing.

644
00:37:07,719 --> 00:37:10,920
Speaker 1: The patient in this case had followed the pre surgical instructions.

645
00:37:11,200 --> 00:37:15,399
Speaker 1: He'd taken the laxative manitol to clear everything out. But

646
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:18,239
Speaker 1: but while there was no fecal matter inside of him,

647
00:37:18,440 --> 00:37:22,799
Speaker 1: there was gas. Now important note here manitol is not

648
00:37:22,960 --> 00:37:26,759
Speaker 1: used anymore. So Mary Road churches everyone not to worry

649
00:37:26,800 --> 00:37:30,879
Speaker 1: about exploding during the colonoscopy. Uh and she She also

650
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:34,480
Speaker 1: points out that doctors will blow air or carbon dioxide,

651
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:38,440
Speaker 1: which is non flammable, into the colon as they work. Quote.

652
00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 1: Inflating the colon also helps them see what they're doing.

653
00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:45,960
Speaker 1: Air creates the magnificent billowing flatulence that rings through the

654
00:37:46,000 --> 00:37:50,879
Speaker 1: colonoscopy recovery room. I've never considered that. Apparently it's the thing.

655
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:53,640
Speaker 1: If only the Fart Battle illustrators had known, I know,

656
00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:57,360
Speaker 1: it would be a much more fiery affair right unexplored

657
00:37:57,440 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 1: territory here. So some of you might be wondering, well, heck,

658
00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:03,840
Speaker 1: if there is a lethal amount of gas in my

659
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:07,000
Speaker 1: colon right now, should I be afraid? Should I? Should

660
00:38:07,000 --> 00:38:12,000
Speaker 1: I step away from campfires? Etcetera. And uh, Roach says,

661
00:38:12,160 --> 00:38:16,640
Speaker 1: don't worry. Basically, so the hydrogen and methane dilutes as

662
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:19,279
Speaker 1: you pass gas, so basically as it comes out into

663
00:38:19,320 --> 00:38:23,799
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, very quickly disperses and enters a concentration. That's

664
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:27,560
Speaker 1: not dangerous. That's right. Too light of fart. And again

665
00:38:27,640 --> 00:38:30,480
Speaker 1: we do not encourage you to do so, you'd have

666
00:38:30,560 --> 00:38:33,680
Speaker 1: to hold the match. So the flame made contact with

667
00:38:33,719 --> 00:38:37,439
Speaker 1: the gas the second it left the body, too close

668
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:39,960
Speaker 1: for comfort. In other words, I feel like the commercial

669
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:44,680
Speaker 1: like showing people skateboarding, do not attempt, do not attempt. Yeah,

670
00:38:44,719 --> 00:38:46,960
Speaker 1: we can't drive that home enough here. Oh, and I

671
00:38:47,000 --> 00:38:50,480
Speaker 1: have to mention this this section from from from the

672
00:38:50,480 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: book Gulp as well, because Roach chats with University of

673
00:38:54,160 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 1: Alabama's Stephen Secor. Uh. If you look him up, he's

674
00:38:58,440 --> 00:39:02,360
Speaker 1: almost always draped in a which is which is an

675
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:06,560
Speaker 1: encouraging sign of a biologist. And Secor has this interesting

676
00:39:07,120 --> 00:39:10,920
Speaker 1: theory regarding the myth of the of the fire breathing dragon.

677
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:15,960
Speaker 1: So imagine this, imagine us, Uh, the sort of gas

678
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:20,399
Speaker 1: a large snake would generate. Snakes do fart? Yeah, like yeah,

679
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: that they do. And and so this would be like

680
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:25,640
Speaker 1: a python or a constrictor. Right now, imagine in that

681
00:39:25,800 --> 00:39:31,000
Speaker 1: inside that snake of a vegetation gorged mammal that is

682
00:39:31,080 --> 00:39:36,200
Speaker 1: also decomposing. Okay, so like snake eats a ruminant herbivore, right,

683
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:40,120
Speaker 1: that's that it that itself had just previously eaten a

684
00:39:40,160 --> 00:39:44,080
Speaker 1: whole bunch of grass. Now, bear in mind that many

685
00:39:44,120 --> 00:39:48,040
Speaker 1: plant eaters lacking rumans, have a seasome as a pouch

686
00:39:48,160 --> 00:39:50,880
Speaker 1: between the small intestines and the colon, and animals like

687
00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:53,880
Speaker 1: rabbits have extra large ones. And the interesting thing is

688
00:39:53,880 --> 00:39:56,880
Speaker 1: that pythons and boas do as well, not for the

689
00:39:56,920 --> 00:40:00,720
Speaker 1: plants they're not eating, but for the plant eaters their gobbling,

690
00:40:00,960 --> 00:40:04,360
Speaker 1: gobbling down whole. So that's quite a lot of methane

691
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 1: building up in there. So imagine some prehistoric hunters dragging

692
00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:11,640
Speaker 1: a gorge snake homeb to the campfire. You know, something

693
00:40:11,640 --> 00:40:14,719
Speaker 1: that's just thick with its recent meal, some sort of

694
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 1: whole large herbivore just lodged in its gut being broken down.

695
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:23,160
Speaker 1: So the hunters dragged this back to the campfire and

696
00:40:23,200 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: they PLoP it down in front of the fire hard

697
00:40:25,640 --> 00:40:30,040
Speaker 1: enough to blast the creature's mouth open, and then this

698
00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:33,840
Speaker 1: brilliant burst of flame. I will say that as a

699
00:40:33,920 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 1: highly contrived scenario, but I like it nonetheless. Yeah, it's

700
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:40,480
Speaker 1: it's it's beautiful in its own way. Now I mentioned

701
00:40:40,520 --> 00:40:43,280
Speaker 1: that Mary Roach has more than one book that explores

702
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:47,320
Speaker 1: the science of flatus. Uh. The other is Packing for Mars,

703
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:51,319
Speaker 1: which is because this actually matters in space. Yeah, yeah,

704
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: I mean it's a big it's a big deal. Um.

705
00:40:53,840 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 1: She She explores the threat of of NASA fart studies

706
00:40:57,800 --> 00:40:59,400
Speaker 1: in a couple of her books, and these are just

707
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:02,960
Speaker 1: a couple of the choice nuggets. Here she mentions that

708
00:41:03,120 --> 00:41:08,279
Speaker 1: Edwin Murphy researched unquote experimental bean meal h fed to

709
00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:11,879
Speaker 1: volunteers who had been rigged via erectal catheter to out

710
00:41:11,920 --> 00:41:15,239
Speaker 1: gas into a measurement device. Yea, he was interested in

711
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:18,840
Speaker 1: individual differences, not just in the overall volume of flate us,

712
00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:22,920
Speaker 1: but in the differing percentages of the gases, and owing

713
00:41:22,920 --> 00:41:27,560
Speaker 1: to differences in intestinal bacteria, half the population produced no methane.

714
00:41:27,640 --> 00:41:30,160
Speaker 1: No methane, Yeah, no methane. And this so this would

715
00:41:30,200 --> 00:41:33,160
Speaker 1: make them attractive as astronauts. But I can also see

716
00:41:33,239 --> 00:41:36,000
Speaker 1: this can make them a target of chauvinistic attitudes about

717
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:40,920
Speaker 1: how real farts contain methane. True, but Murphy even reported

718
00:41:41,320 --> 00:41:44,240
Speaker 1: that he had found an individual who was flate as free.

719
00:41:44,880 --> 00:41:48,120
Speaker 1: So here's a quote. I don't believe that you, Oh, well,

720
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:51,120
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's it's it's a tough pill to swallow.

721
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:55,360
Speaker 1: But here's the quote of special of special interest for

722
00:41:55,440 --> 00:41:59,640
Speaker 1: further research was the subject who produced essentially no flateus

723
00:41:59,680 --> 00:42:02,799
Speaker 1: on one hundred grams dry weight of beans. So he

724
00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:06,319
Speaker 1: suggested that the astronauts be selected from quote that part

725
00:42:06,320 --> 00:42:10,840
Speaker 1: of our population producing little or no methane or hydrogen. Now, also,

726
00:42:11,200 --> 00:42:14,799
Speaker 1: it's it's worth noting that NASA used to keep our

727
00:42:14,920 --> 00:42:18,920
Speaker 1: flatest expert and again future Nobel Prize winner biophysicist Michael

728
00:42:19,239 --> 00:42:23,279
Speaker 1: Levitt on retainer as a consultant, and he ruled that

729
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,319
Speaker 1: the capsules uh that they were using at the time

730
00:42:26,400 --> 00:42:29,920
Speaker 1: were large enough and and well circulated enough to prevent

731
00:42:29,960 --> 00:42:33,640
Speaker 1: the dangerous concentrations of gas from building up. God, can

732
00:42:33,680 --> 00:42:37,480
Speaker 1: you imagine that being the requirement? Though? That shut you

733
00:42:37,560 --> 00:42:40,399
Speaker 1: down to become an astronaut. So it's like you've ever

734
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:44,400
Speaker 1: since your little kid, you've trained, you've worked hard in school,

735
00:42:44,560 --> 00:42:46,880
Speaker 1: you've worked hard to stay fit. You you're ready to

736
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:49,480
Speaker 1: go to space. You're in perfect shape, you know all

737
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:52,960
Speaker 1: the astrophysics, you've been a test pilot, god knows what else,

738
00:42:53,160 --> 00:42:55,439
Speaker 1: and you're ready to be an astronaut. And they put

739
00:42:55,480 --> 00:42:58,480
Speaker 1: a rectal tube in you and they say, I'm sorry,

740
00:42:58,800 --> 00:43:02,480
Speaker 1: you produced too much late us. You can't go to Mars. Yeah.

741
00:43:02,480 --> 00:43:05,160
Speaker 1: It's like you're super qualified, but your farts are weird.

742
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:07,399
Speaker 1: I'm sorry now, you know. In the past, we've we've

743
00:43:07,400 --> 00:43:11,759
Speaker 1: talked about the prospect of genetically engineering astronauts, and of

744
00:43:11,800 --> 00:43:14,600
Speaker 1: course the main objectives here would be, uh, you know,

745
00:43:14,680 --> 00:43:18,080
Speaker 1: to to make them more resistant to uh, solar and

746
00:43:18,120 --> 00:43:22,960
Speaker 1: cosmic radiation, or or make them resistant to micro gravity

747
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:26,279
Speaker 1: bone loss. But perhaps we also want to ensure a

748
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:31,680
Speaker 1: fart free space faring human uh, either via genetic changed

749
00:43:31,680 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: in the individual or manipulation or genetic engineering of gut

750
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:37,839
Speaker 1: flora itself. Oh, yeah, that that could be a thing.

751
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:40,239
Speaker 1: I mean, I wonder if one way to do that

752
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:43,600
Speaker 1: would be not so much through genetic engineering from birth,

753
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:47,759
Speaker 1: but through say like fecal transplants, Yeah, to change the

754
00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:50,960
Speaker 1: gut flora profile. Yeah, I mean really, there's there's so

755
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 1: much left to learn about the the connection between our

756
00:43:56,719 --> 00:44:00,040
Speaker 1: gut flora, uh, and other aspects of our health, not

757
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:03,319
Speaker 1: only physical health, but even mental health. I believe we've

758
00:44:03,360 --> 00:44:05,759
Speaker 1: talked about this on the show before, the idea that

759
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:10,080
Speaker 1: in the future, one of the treatments for certain cases

760
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:14,880
Speaker 1: of say, depression, might be treatable via something like a

761
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:19,279
Speaker 1: fecal transplant. Yes, some of the amazing implications of gut

762
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,200
Speaker 1: flora for all kinds of body health up and down

763
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:25,719
Speaker 1: the line are discussed in that great book I recommended

764
00:44:25,760 --> 00:44:28,719
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, Ed Young's I Contain Multitudes,

765
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:32,799
Speaker 1: which is all about the It's about microbes and the microbiome,

766
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:37,200
Speaker 1: and it's just fascinating. I mean, the dimensions of ramifications

767
00:44:37,800 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: posed by gut flora within humans specifically, but microbes all

768
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:45,880
Speaker 1: around us generally are are just unbelievable. Alright, Well, on

769
00:44:45,920 --> 00:44:47,600
Speaker 1: that note, we're going to take another break, and when

770
00:44:47,640 --> 00:44:51,280
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to discuss some of the

771
00:44:51,360 --> 00:44:56,920
Speaker 1: notable toots of the Animal Kingdom. Thank thank Alright, we're

772
00:44:56,960 --> 00:44:59,759
Speaker 1: back now, Robert. There is a book that I know

773
00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:02,359
Speaker 1: you have been super psyched about ever since we got

774
00:45:02,360 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 1: a copy. Yes, uh, and I've actually just in the

775
00:45:05,440 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 1: past couple of days we decided to do this episode first,

776
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:10,960
Speaker 1: But since then I've noticed in the past couple of

777
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:14,239
Speaker 1: days on the Internet other people are catching onto this book. Yes,

778
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:17,200
Speaker 1: it's making a buzz, that's right. The name of the

779
00:45:17,239 --> 00:45:21,640
Speaker 1: book is Does It Fart? The Definitive Field Guide to

780
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: Animal Flatulence by Nick Caruso and Danny Rabbiotti, illustrated by

781
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:30,840
Speaker 1: Ethan co Chak. It's uh, it's been a bit of

782
00:45:30,840 --> 00:45:33,799
Speaker 1: a hit in my household thus far as you can.

783
00:45:33,880 --> 00:45:35,080
Speaker 1: This is one of those books that you can just

784
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:38,640
Speaker 1: flip through it land on any particular page and there'll

785
00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:42,359
Speaker 1: be a profile of a specific animal. It's it's very

786
00:45:42,400 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 1: easily digestible, Yes, very easily digestible. It has some just

787
00:45:46,760 --> 00:45:51,239
Speaker 1: delightful illustrations. Uh. And I've been reading sections of it

788
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:55,120
Speaker 1: to my wife, to my five year old son, to myself,

789
00:45:55,400 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 1: and it's it's tremendous fun. So I highly recommend getting

790
00:45:59,080 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 1: a copy of this. I'll make or there's a link

791
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:02,080
Speaker 1: to it on the landing page for this episode is

792
00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:04,000
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com. Well, let's talk

793
00:46:04,000 --> 00:46:07,200
Speaker 1: about a few examples, all right. Well first, uh, yeah,

794
00:46:07,200 --> 00:46:11,759
Speaker 1: a few examples of just exceptional tutors in the animal Kingdom. Uh.

795
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:13,719
Speaker 1: The first one I want to profile here is that

796
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:17,560
Speaker 1: the West Indian manateee. I was really impressed with this

797
00:46:17,600 --> 00:46:20,600
Speaker 1: one because we've discussed manatees a couple of times on

798
00:46:20,640 --> 00:46:24,160
Speaker 1: the podcast this year, and I've I've recently got to

799
00:46:24,200 --> 00:46:26,400
Speaker 1: see some both in the wild and and in an

800
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 1: aquarium setting, but I had not heard this particular tidbit.

801
00:46:30,800 --> 00:46:33,880
Speaker 1: The authors point out that quote, the manatees and testines

802
00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:38,279
Speaker 1: have small pouches throughout that allow for gas storage. This

803
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:42,399
Speaker 1: unusual anatomy allows the West Indian manateee to manipulate its

804
00:46:42,440 --> 00:46:46,759
Speaker 1: farts as a mechanism for buoyancy. By storing gas within

805
00:46:46,880 --> 00:46:50,760
Speaker 1: specific areas of their intestines, manatees can make their bodies

806
00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:54,839
Speaker 1: more buoyant and float towards the surface, while the compression

807
00:46:54,880 --> 00:46:59,400
Speaker 1: and release of flatulence makes these animals sink. Amazing. Yeah,

808
00:46:59,400 --> 00:47:02,279
Speaker 1: so they're they're it's it's almost like they're these these

809
00:47:02,320 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 1: fart powered blimps flying through the ocean. Uh. And they

810
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:10,520
Speaker 1: point out that in fact, if if a manity is constipated,

811
00:47:10,840 --> 00:47:13,239
Speaker 1: it screws everything up and will often float with their

812
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:16,719
Speaker 1: tail too high because there's too much gas built up there.

813
00:47:16,800 --> 00:47:18,960
Speaker 1: Throws off the blancy. You know, I was flipping through

814
00:47:19,040 --> 00:47:21,919
Speaker 1: this morning and I found a section on iguanas, and

815
00:47:22,000 --> 00:47:26,080
Speaker 1: so I was that that intrigued me Iguanas. Sometimes they've

816
00:47:26,120 --> 00:47:30,640
Speaker 1: got this look in their face like I don't fart,

817
00:47:30,719 --> 00:47:34,200
Speaker 1: look a little proud. Yeah. Yeah, but they're they're lying.

818
00:47:34,480 --> 00:47:37,080
Speaker 1: They're lying to you, because iguanas do fart, like geckos

819
00:47:37,120 --> 00:47:42,040
Speaker 1: and other lizards, they fart. The Rhinoceros iguana or Cyclora cornuda,

820
00:47:42,520 --> 00:47:46,959
Speaker 1: they apparently tend to produce quote wet sounding farts, uh,

821
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 1: and they fart more when they have high fiber diets

822
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:55,440
Speaker 1: that makes sense, or lots of parasitic infestation. Green iguanas,

823
00:47:55,480 --> 00:47:58,880
Speaker 1: which are popular pets, are herbivorous, which means more farts,

824
00:47:59,200 --> 00:48:02,200
Speaker 1: and iguana owners have actually commented pretty often that their

825
00:48:02,239 --> 00:48:07,560
Speaker 1: lizards produce loud fart steering defecation. One that I found

826
00:48:07,600 --> 00:48:10,799
Speaker 1: interesting was the termite. You don't they might not think

827
00:48:10,840 --> 00:48:14,279
Speaker 1: about farting termites, but here's the thing. They're kind of

828
00:48:14,320 --> 00:48:17,160
Speaker 1: super farters and according to the authors here, they produced

829
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:21,279
Speaker 1: five to nineteen percent of global methane emissions. Yeah, is

830
00:48:21,320 --> 00:48:27,319
Speaker 1: that possible? Or point to seven percent of greenhouse emissions. Termites, Yeah, amazing. Yeah,

831
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:32,120
Speaker 1: just in there, munch in wood and tuting. Now they

832
00:48:32,120 --> 00:48:36,680
Speaker 1: also get into dinosaurs a little bit, specifically talking about sauropods.

833
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:41,080
Speaker 1: So as we'll discuss, birds do not fart, so it's

834
00:48:41,080 --> 00:48:45,080
Speaker 1: possible that they're dino ancestors did not either. But sara pods, however,

835
00:48:45,160 --> 00:48:48,640
Speaker 1: these are the you know, the gigantic uh plant eating

836
00:48:48,719 --> 00:48:54,480
Speaker 1: engines of of prehistoric times. They likely depended on hindgut

837
00:48:54,600 --> 00:48:58,760
Speaker 1: fermentation to break down those massive meals, resulting in quite

838
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:01,760
Speaker 1: a bit of gas. The author's point to one studies

839
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:05,920
Speaker 1: estimate of one point nine kilograms of methane per sauropod

840
00:49:06,080 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 1: per day. Now, speaking of methane producing herbivores, I think

841
00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:12,360
Speaker 1: we should look at the cow. There's actually a section

842
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:14,640
Speaker 1: on the cow in this book, but I also did

843
00:49:14,680 --> 00:49:18,320
Speaker 1: some extra research on the cow because obviously the cow farts.

844
00:49:18,640 --> 00:49:21,400
Speaker 1: But you might be surprised to find out how because

845
00:49:21,560 --> 00:49:23,880
Speaker 1: you might have heard that, for example, cows are a

846
00:49:23,920 --> 00:49:28,400
Speaker 1: major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and whether that's true defend,

847
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 1: depends on how you define major. But it is true

848
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:34,480
Speaker 1: that methane and other gas emissions do contribute to climate change.

849
00:49:34,520 --> 00:49:37,400
Speaker 1: There was a report produced by the UN Food and

850
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:41,600
Speaker 1: Agriculture Organization, and it estimated that in two thousand eleven,

851
00:49:41,760 --> 00:49:46,200
Speaker 1: methane emissions from livestock accounted for thirty nine percent of

852
00:49:46,360 --> 00:49:50,919
Speaker 1: all greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. Now that's from agriculture,

853
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:54,520
Speaker 1: not thirty nine of total emissions from all sources. And

854
00:49:54,560 --> 00:49:56,960
Speaker 1: just to put that in context, according to an analysis

855
00:49:56,960 --> 00:49:59,319
Speaker 1: by the U s d a UH, they estimated that

856
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:02,960
Speaker 1: agricultu sure accounts for about ten percent of US greenhouse

857
00:50:02,960 --> 00:50:07,280
Speaker 1: gas emissions, So that'd bet of ten percent. And among

858
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:10,719
Speaker 1: that thirty nine percent of agricultural emissions produced by livestock,

859
00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:14,160
Speaker 1: a full seventy four percent came from cattle. There was

860
00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 1: from beef cattle, and nineteen percent from dairy cattle, and

861
00:50:18,080 --> 00:50:22,120
Speaker 1: the rest were from things like buffalo and sheep and goats. Now,

862
00:50:22,160 --> 00:50:24,080
Speaker 1: a lot of this gas production comes down to the

863
00:50:24,120 --> 00:50:28,719
Speaker 1: cows herbivorous diet and digestion method which Caruso and Rabbiati

864
00:50:29,160 --> 00:50:32,239
Speaker 1: say can produce between a hundred and two hundreds of

865
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:37,000
Speaker 1: methane emissions per cow per year. And when you're measuring

866
00:50:37,000 --> 00:50:39,520
Speaker 1: in kilograms, you're you're thinking about a gas, So it's

867
00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:42,480
Speaker 1: like that much gas weighing that much. It's kind of

868
00:50:42,480 --> 00:50:45,839
Speaker 1: hard to fathom. But you might have often heard this

869
00:50:46,520 --> 00:50:50,200
Speaker 1: idea or this line of thinking summarized as, Wow, cow

870
00:50:50,320 --> 00:50:55,160
Speaker 1: farts are really contributing to climate change. Although cows do fart,

871
00:50:55,280 --> 00:50:58,919
Speaker 1: the majority of their emissions comes here's the kicker, not

872
00:50:59,120 --> 00:51:01,920
Speaker 1: from farts, but through the other end of the cow,

873
00:51:02,440 --> 00:51:05,439
Speaker 1: straight out the mouth. So cows expel a great deal

874
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:08,960
Speaker 1: of methane through burps and through simple exhalation when they

875
00:51:08,960 --> 00:51:12,360
Speaker 1: were when they're breathing. And some researchers think cow emissions

876
00:51:12,360 --> 00:51:15,200
Speaker 1: can be curbed by altering their diet in targeted ways,

877
00:51:15,440 --> 00:51:17,920
Speaker 1: such as like feeding them different types of seaweed that

878
00:51:18,000 --> 00:51:20,759
Speaker 1: inhibit the production of gut methane. But they've got this

879
00:51:20,880 --> 00:51:23,920
Speaker 1: ruminant digestion method right, and so they end up just

880
00:51:24,040 --> 00:51:27,400
Speaker 1: spitting out a lot of carbon dioxide, methane and greenhouse

881
00:51:27,400 --> 00:51:30,880
Speaker 1: gasses from the mouth. Well, you know that leads in

882
00:51:31,040 --> 00:51:35,120
Speaker 1: nicely to the first of a few notable abstainers we're

883
00:51:35,160 --> 00:51:37,960
Speaker 1: going to mention here from the book, Does it fart?

884
00:51:38,120 --> 00:51:40,879
Speaker 1: You mean animals that do not fart? Yeah, or may

885
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:44,359
Speaker 1: not fart in some cases that the science is still out.

886
00:51:44,480 --> 00:51:49,479
Speaker 1: But the first is the sloth. So sloth, I don't

887
00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:52,200
Speaker 1: believe it. Slots must fart. You just look into their

888
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:55,319
Speaker 1: sort of lazy eyes and you just assume that there's

889
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:58,720
Speaker 1: some farts going on. My ignorant intuition trumps any science

890
00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:01,319
Speaker 1: on this matter. I know sloths fart, all right. Well,

891
00:52:01,360 --> 00:52:03,600
Speaker 1: here's the thing. According to the author's sloths, of course,

892
00:52:03,600 --> 00:52:07,319
Speaker 1: are famously slow, and they boast incredibly slow digestion, As

893
00:52:07,320 --> 00:52:11,200
Speaker 1: many as five days can pass between their poops, at

894
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:13,400
Speaker 1: which time, of course, they often climbed down from the

895
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 1: tree print canopy to do their defecation. And they have

896
00:52:17,320 --> 00:52:21,720
Speaker 1: an incredibly leafy diet as well, and simplified gut flora

897
00:52:21,800 --> 00:52:25,800
Speaker 1: that doesn't produce flatus, it produces methane, but the methane

898
00:52:25,880 --> 00:52:29,759
Speaker 1: is absorbed in the sloth's blood and is breathed out. Wow.

899
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:34,240
Speaker 1: So the takeaways here, Uh, sloths maybe the only mammals

900
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 1: that don't fart. We'll discuss another possible mammal or variety

901
00:52:38,200 --> 00:52:40,400
Speaker 1: of mammal in a second. And it also gives me

902
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:45,560
Speaker 1: hope that the giant sloth megathereum breathed fire oh along

903
00:52:45,560 --> 00:52:48,200
Speaker 1: the lines of the dead snake. Yeah, like maybe it was.

904
00:52:48,480 --> 00:52:50,160
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how it would get that spark. The

905
00:52:50,160 --> 00:52:52,239
Speaker 1: spark is the hard part. But if you have a

906
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:55,120
Speaker 1: giant sloth breathing out a bunch of methane, then there's

907
00:52:55,200 --> 00:52:58,279
Speaker 1: there's hope for fire breathing. I'm trying to imagine how

908
00:52:58,280 --> 00:52:59,759
Speaker 1: it would happen. What would you have, Like you'd have

909
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:03,560
Speaker 1: a megatherium who had a symbiotic relationship with some kind

910
00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:08,000
Speaker 1: of commensile bombardier beetle. Maybe that like spits some kind

911
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:11,160
Speaker 1: of hot compound in front of its mouth right as

912
00:53:11,200 --> 00:53:14,120
Speaker 1: it was exhaling, and then you got the fire coming out. Yeah,

913
00:53:14,239 --> 00:53:16,600
Speaker 1: I'm trying, yeah, or I don't know, some sort of

914
00:53:17,239 --> 00:53:21,000
Speaker 1: like uh, you know, flint based like scraping of rocks.

915
00:53:21,480 --> 00:53:23,879
Speaker 1: I get carries them around in its mouth. But we're

916
00:53:23,880 --> 00:53:27,200
Speaker 1: getting into dragon territory on this. Well, you mentioned another

917
00:53:27,239 --> 00:53:30,440
Speaker 1: mammal doesn't fart, or at least possibly doesn't fart. I

918
00:53:30,480 --> 00:53:32,359
Speaker 1: want to know what that is, all right, Well, yeah,

919
00:53:32,400 --> 00:53:35,480
Speaker 1: this would be and that this is an open question.

920
00:53:35,640 --> 00:53:40,640
Speaker 1: But possibly the bat so their mammals, and so they

921
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:44,600
Speaker 1: have the right gut bacteria to produce flatus, but their

922
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:48,120
Speaker 1: digestion is rather speedy to cut down on weight for flight.

923
00:53:48,920 --> 00:53:51,919
Speaker 1: The authors point out that even the largest species of bat,

924
00:53:52,000 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 1: the so called flying fox fruit bat, has a mouth

925
00:53:55,120 --> 00:53:58,480
Speaker 1: to anus digestion time of twelve to thirty four minutes.

926
00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 1: That's crazy that that is fast. And also, if you've

927
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:05,359
Speaker 1: never seen what a flying fox fruit bat looks like,

928
00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:07,520
Speaker 1: just look up a flying fox. These things are too

929
00:54:07,560 --> 00:54:10,320
Speaker 1: big to have wings, or at least too big to

930
00:54:10,360 --> 00:54:11,960
Speaker 1: be mammals to have wings. I guess there might be

931
00:54:12,000 --> 00:54:15,759
Speaker 1: bigger birds. I don't know. They're huge. They are very

932
00:54:15,800 --> 00:54:18,799
Speaker 1: sizeable creatures. And the idea that they're digesting their food

933
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:22,279
Speaker 1: and around thirty minutes or less is incredible. One. When

934
00:54:22,320 --> 00:54:25,480
Speaker 1: you see a flying fox hanging upside down, you're kind

935
00:54:25,520 --> 00:54:27,799
Speaker 1: of tempted to think that this could be the inspiration

936
00:54:27,920 --> 00:54:30,640
Speaker 1: for like the idea of bats's vampires, because they don't

937
00:54:30,640 --> 00:54:32,759
Speaker 1: they look kind of like people. Yeah, they have this

938
00:54:32,840 --> 00:54:37,919
Speaker 1: like humanoid like, like a loupine appearance. Now, the other

939
00:54:37,960 --> 00:54:42,080
Speaker 1: major category of note here are the birds. Birds don't fart.

940
00:54:42,760 --> 00:54:45,560
Speaker 1: They have all the right, you know, bits of their anatomy,

941
00:54:45,600 --> 00:54:48,840
Speaker 1: but they lack the gut bacteria to produce the gas.

942
00:54:49,520 --> 00:54:52,440
Speaker 1: So the authors of does It Fart? They mentioned a

943
00:54:52,600 --> 00:54:56,160
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three observation by a Cornell graduate student by

944
00:54:56,160 --> 00:54:59,800
Speaker 1: the name of Alan Richard vice Broad, who described a

945
00:55:00,040 --> 00:55:03,640
Speaker 1: quote small puff of whitish gas uh during a blue

946
00:55:03,719 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 1: jay's defecation, but experts later that they argue that, like,

947
00:55:08,040 --> 00:55:10,920
Speaker 1: you were basically just observing warm water vapor in the

948
00:55:10,960 --> 00:55:12,920
Speaker 1: cool air, and this was not a fart. It's like

949
00:55:12,920 --> 00:55:16,000
Speaker 1: when you can see your breath, right, that's not a fart. Yeah,

950
00:55:16,040 --> 00:55:17,880
Speaker 1: I mean really, when you come down to the like

951
00:55:18,120 --> 00:55:21,680
Speaker 1: the scientific observation of farts, like that's how do you

952
00:55:21,760 --> 00:55:23,239
Speaker 1: how do you see that? It's kind of like trying

953
00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:24,920
Speaker 1: to see a ghost. That's why you have to have

954
00:55:24,960 --> 00:55:27,600
Speaker 1: rectal tubes and whatnot. I mean, is there really a

955
00:55:27,680 --> 00:55:31,040
Speaker 1: reason to inflict rectal tubes on blue jays? No? I mean,

956
00:55:31,360 --> 00:55:35,040
Speaker 1: especially since everyone seems to agree that birds do not fart,

957
00:55:35,080 --> 00:55:37,560
Speaker 1: So let's not go inserting any tubes that aren't strictly

958
00:55:37,600 --> 00:55:41,600
Speaker 1: necessary for science. Robert, this has been such a wonderful exploration.

959
00:55:42,080 --> 00:55:43,960
Speaker 1: It has. This has been a fun one. We got

960
00:55:43,960 --> 00:55:47,200
Speaker 1: from demons to jesters to sloths. I don't know how

961
00:55:47,239 --> 00:55:52,120
Speaker 1: this happened, but it happened. And here we are closing

962
00:55:52,800 --> 00:55:57,040
Speaker 1: the fabled fartonomicon at least for now. Uh, we would

963
00:55:57,080 --> 00:56:00,160
Speaker 1: ask our listeners, Hey, would you like to hear more

964
00:56:00,200 --> 00:56:04,040
Speaker 1: about the science of farts? Uh than let us know?

965
00:56:04,200 --> 00:56:07,440
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe there's more. I'm sure there's more, A deeper

966
00:56:07,480 --> 00:56:11,640
Speaker 1: dive into a medieval fart literature perhaps, uh. And also,

967
00:56:11,680 --> 00:56:14,839
Speaker 1: I'd love to hear from any of those nearer toothless

968
00:56:15,000 --> 00:56:17,920
Speaker 1: individuals that we referenced earlier. Are you one of those

969
00:56:18,000 --> 00:56:21,360
Speaker 1: rare individuals who produces a little or no uh um,

970
00:56:21,480 --> 00:56:24,680
Speaker 1: hydrogen or methane in your flatus? Are you in space

971
00:56:24,800 --> 00:56:26,920
Speaker 1: right now? Let us know we would love to hear

972
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:29,640
Speaker 1: from you. We're just inviting people to lie to us. Yeah,

973
00:56:29,680 --> 00:56:33,319
Speaker 1: I don't fart. Yeah, I wonder how much lying is

974
00:56:33,360 --> 00:56:36,360
Speaker 1: perpetrated around flash lens. It has to be one of

975
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:41,120
Speaker 1: the major contributors, surely. Yeah. Yeah. So Hey. In the meantime,

976
00:56:41,239 --> 00:56:42,839
Speaker 1: go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's

977
00:56:42,880 --> 00:56:46,000
Speaker 1: where you'll find all the episodes of the podcast, including

978
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:48,799
Speaker 1: this one, with links to some of these books we

979
00:56:48,800 --> 00:56:52,239
Speaker 1: were referencing. Uh. Also, I'm going to try and put

980
00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:54,719
Speaker 1: together some sort of a gallery to go along with

981
00:56:54,800 --> 00:56:58,359
Speaker 1: this episode, because we've referenced some fabulous works of art here.

982
00:56:58,760 --> 00:57:01,600
Speaker 1: Maybe I can collect a few examples for you, uh

983
00:57:01,640 --> 00:57:03,200
Speaker 1: and hey, it's stuff to blow your mind dot com.

984
00:57:03,200 --> 00:57:06,120
Speaker 1: You will also find links going out to our various

985
00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:10,640
Speaker 1: social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et CETERA.

986
00:57:11,000 --> 00:57:13,920
Speaker 1: Huge thank you as always to our wonderful audio producers

987
00:57:13,920 --> 00:57:16,840
Speaker 1: Alex Williams and Tory Harrison. If you would like to

988
00:57:16,840 --> 00:57:18,680
Speaker 1: get in touch with us to let us know your

989
00:57:18,680 --> 00:57:21,120
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, or do you

990
00:57:21,160 --> 00:57:23,400
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for a future show, or just to

991
00:57:23,480 --> 00:57:26,280
Speaker 1: say hi, you can always email us at blow the

992
00:57:26,360 --> 00:57:38,360
Speaker 1: Mind at how stuff works dot com for more on

993
00:57:38,440 --> 00:57:40,880
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Does it how stuff

994
00:57:40,920 --> 00:58:10,840
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hear ye, Great demons of Hell, watch

995
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:15,400
Speaker 1: over us, your disciples. We dedicate ourselves to your service

996
00:58:15,840 --> 00:58:19,360
Speaker 1: and accept your might and dominion. We call upon your

997
00:58:19,400 --> 00:58:26,640
Speaker 1: infernal names Satan, Beelzebub, fld Astok, Fartha, met Toots for

998
00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:31,880
Speaker 1: Real Zies, Barbara Rigmus, Crepitus, rip One and Toots offer

999
00:58:32,800 --> 00:58:36,400
Speaker 1: arise from the depths of thy cosmic privy and give

1000
00:58:36,520 --> 00:58:38,880
Speaker 1: us a sign of thy power.