Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is the always
Speaker 1: lovely and effervescent Charles W. Bryant. I have on shorts today.
Speaker 1: Do you do you look like you're ready to go
Speaker 1: to the beach or play basketball or play beach at
Speaker 1: the basketball and I'm at the opposite of that. Play
Speaker 1: basketball the beach. Yeah, you can do that in southern California, buddy,
Speaker 1: You can do anything in southern California. Show us what
Speaker 1: I hear? Yeah, I can do anything because my wife's
Speaker 1: side of town. I know. Chuck's a bachelor today, batching
Speaker 1: it as we say. He looks terrible. He's dressed shabbily,
Speaker 1: clearly hasn't showered, food stuff staying down in the front
Speaker 1: of his shirts. Steak in his beard. That's a big
Speaker 1: hunk of steak on your beard? Is so? Chuck? How
Speaker 1: you feeling? I feel a little tired and under the
Speaker 1: weather because of my bachelor experiences, but I am ready
Speaker 1: to go. Are you you're bringing it? Yes? So Chuck
Speaker 1: Um you know how neurotic I am right like, right now,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about what you're really thinking about me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're a little neurotic. I wouldn't say hugely neurotic. I'm
Speaker 1: definitely not Woody Allen neurotic. No, no, no, But things
Speaker 1: like gil self doubt. Um uh what was the third one?
Speaker 1: Self doubt? You always think you stink on the show,
Speaker 1: which is just ridiculous. Oh I do, because you're good regardless.
Speaker 1: These things drive me right. Um so yeah, I would
Speaker 1: consider myself fairly neurotic. And I recently found out Chuck
Speaker 1: um actually thanks to a new show that has inspired
Speaker 1: this podcast and the next one. We're doing a pair
Speaker 1: of them on parasites. It's an Animal Planet show actually
Speaker 1: called Monsters Inside of Me. Yes, and the staff is
Speaker 1: parasite crazy right now. It's all over the blogs that
Speaker 1: blogs are lousy with parasites, lousy with parasites because it's
Speaker 1: a really cool show. Have you seen aunt, I've seen
Speaker 1: parts of it. Yeah, it is wicked. Yeah, I like it.
Speaker 1: I think it's cool, mainly though, because it relieves me
Speaker 1: from any responsibility from my own personality and own horrible, disappointing, obnoxious,
Speaker 1: personality actually probably is the result of a latent infection
Speaker 1: by a little thing called toxoplasma Gandhi T, gandhi gandhi.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna call it taxo. You can call
Speaker 1: it T, you can call it T. I'll call it taxo, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just for ease of pronunciation. But yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a parasite. It's a zootic disease, which means we catch
Speaker 1: it from animals. Right, It's a relative of malaria, it is.
Speaker 1: But this thing is possibly running the world. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: This is a little disturbing. I gotta tell you a
Speaker 1: ted bit. So so let's talk about T. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about taxo. Yeah. Uh it is a parasite, as we said,
Speaker 1: as a complex life cycle. Like most parasites, uh, and
Speaker 1: the life cycle is has a purpose to get into
Speaker 1: its final host. And that word just creeps me out,
Speaker 1: the host or definitive host. Yeah, yeah, and um, this
Speaker 1: one is unusual because it it completes this life cycle
Speaker 1: in one place, in one place only, and that is
Speaker 1: inside of a cat. A cat's and a guts that
Speaker 1: cats gut. Yeah, this is where uh T wants to
Speaker 1: be because this is where it gets it on and
Speaker 1: reproduces everywhere else it does. It goes to incredible lengths
Speaker 1: to get back into the cat gut. Yeah, it's crazy,
Speaker 1: like like really honestly, we haven't we haven't gotten into
Speaker 1: this yet, but this is this is like master Blaster
Speaker 1: from from Thunderdome. It's like the little guy like just
Speaker 1: running things in and making whatever it needs to carry
Speaker 1: it to the cat gut, do whatever it wants to
Speaker 1: get it into the cat gut. Right and uh, toxoplasma
Speaker 1: is actually um really common. Estimates run into as much
Speaker 1: as eight percent of the world population is infected has
Speaker 1: latent infection with toxoplasma, right, um, sixty seven percent of
Speaker 1: Brazilians alone. Yeah, but then on the other side, seven
Speaker 1: percent of the UK is infected. So yeah, it's lopsided. Um.
Speaker 1: And this may sound familiar already because for many, many
Speaker 1: years we've known that pregnant women should stay away from
Speaker 1: cat feces to pick up the infection. Go ahead and
Speaker 1: say that our guest producer. We have a guest producer
Speaker 1: this week. Oh yeah, hey, Lizzie Lovely in Fetching Lizzie.
Speaker 1: She thought I was kidding with her when I told
Speaker 1: her that, Oh, really, I think pregnant women can't clean
Speaker 1: out the cat box. She thought I was pulling her
Speaker 1: leg and I was gonna like pull one on her.
Speaker 1: That was actually like the first public health warning I
Speaker 1: have I ever came across. I've known that since I
Speaker 1: was you know, kneehi to a grasshopper. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: that phrase. Yeah. So yeah, you you're not allowed. You're
Speaker 1: not allowed. You're not so post to um the police
Speaker 1: cat box, police wire can be you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: clean out the cat box if you're with child, because, uh,
Speaker 1: fetus is one of the ways one of the things
Speaker 1: that can be harmed. Yeah, effects like serious birth defects. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you are, if your lady is pregnant, you want
Speaker 1: to go ahead and take care of cleaning out the
Speaker 1: cat box during that nine months, because that's how toxoplasma
Speaker 1: infections result from handling cat feces or more specifically, and
Speaker 1: I got the impression that it's much more virulent when
Speaker 1: cat feces mixes with soil, right, it has much more
Speaker 1: staying power, that kind of thing. So, if you have
Speaker 1: a cat that likes to poop in your garden and
Speaker 1: you're a big gardener, you're gonna want to murder your
Speaker 1: cat and uh get rid of all of your top
Speaker 1: soil and start over again, right. Uh. I imagine you
Speaker 1: could also get it from eating a rat, because rats
Speaker 1: and mice tend to get it as well. But you
Speaker 1: can also very easily get it from eating undercooked livestock,
Speaker 1: especially that has been around cat feces. I mean, how
Speaker 1: many farms have cats on them? Quite a few outs.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the life cycle of this because
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting that you mentioned rats or mice, because
Speaker 1: these things are under arguably the most control of tea.
Speaker 1: You know that confuses me because I had a car
Speaker 1: named T so all right, i'll call it Taxo. Alright,
Speaker 1: a car named Taxo as well? Man, did you have
Speaker 1: one named T Gandhi? Okay, well I'll go with that one, thanks, Chuck.
Speaker 1: You know I have a speech impediment. We'll go with Taxo. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Taxo gets into the soil. Let's say your little kid,
Speaker 1: he goes and poops outside, and mouse passes by the soil,
Speaker 1: passes over, it eats, it, rolls around in, it plays
Speaker 1: with it, makes a little clay sculpture out of it.
Speaker 1: And that's his friend um, and the rats infected. So
Speaker 1: this parasite actually goes through the bloodstream and travels to
Speaker 1: the brain where all sorts of freaky freaky off start
Speaker 1: happening to the rats behavior rat or mouse. And that's
Speaker 1: slightly alarming to us because, as everyone knows, which is
Speaker 1: why we use lab rats, we have very similar brains
Speaker 1: to rats. Yeah, chemically the way it's put together the
Speaker 1: whole deal, which I've always thought was interesting. Well, let's
Speaker 1: talk about rats as the intermediate host. So now a
Speaker 1: rat is infected with toxoplasmosis. Gross. Uh, it's brain is
Speaker 1: being taken over. What are some of the weird things
Speaker 1: that begin happening. Well, one thing that I thought was
Speaker 1: most disturbing was they actually become fond of cat urine.
Speaker 1: They do, they're attracted to the scent. And they did
Speaker 1: a test opposite of what's supposed to happen. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: did a test where they did you see the one
Speaker 1: with a little sleeping they made the little beds for
Speaker 1: the rats, and that one of them was soaked in
Speaker 1: cat urine, and they would actually go for that bed.
Speaker 1: They prefer that bedding over their normal bedding. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: which is really weird, really weird. I wrote of another
Speaker 1: study that found that these these rats were actually attracted
Speaker 1: to cat your not just cent of it. They would
Speaker 1: go and investigate cat urine and they they investigated the
Speaker 1: brains of these rats, meaning they chopped their heads off
Speaker 1: and cut their from them open and um. They didn't
Speaker 1: just ask some questions. Although they did do studies, um like,
Speaker 1: they did different trials, and what they found essentially was
Speaker 1: that the rats are rodents lose specifically their fear of
Speaker 1: cat urine. Okay, that's it. Everything else remains intact. All
Speaker 1: other innate fears that they have, that that all rats
Speaker 1: and mice display remain intact. It's just their fear of
Speaker 1: cat urine. So they're attracted to cat urine. Plus also, uh,
Speaker 1: toxo has an effect on your motor reflexes, so you're
Speaker 1: not quite as fast as you used to be. Right.
Speaker 1: So these two things together in attraction to cat urine,
Speaker 1: the scent of cat urine and slow reflex time. That
Speaker 1: means that you can get eaten by a cat, and
Speaker 1: that means you get into your final host. Right. That
Speaker 1: means the toxoplasmas, the toxoplasma has made its way back
Speaker 1: into its definitive host, the guts of the cat, the
Speaker 1: brain of the rodent. It is the coolest, most frightening
Speaker 1: thing I've ever heard of in my entire life. It
Speaker 1: really is, because, like you said, Chuck, like, rodent brains
Speaker 1: are very similar to humans in composition, at least chemically, right.
Speaker 1: That's why we're always experimenting on rodents um to find out,
Speaker 1: you know, how we can treat schizophrenia, that kind of thing. So,
Speaker 1: which leads us to since of the human population is
Speaker 1: infected with a latent toxoplasma infection, is it having an
Speaker 1: effect on us? It looks like yes, well yeah, For
Speaker 1: many many years they always said, oh, so many people
Speaker 1: have it, but it's really not the big of a
Speaker 1: deal because once it enters the human body, it's kind
Speaker 1: of uh, we're not gonna get eaten by a cat
Speaker 1: anymore like a lion or a tiger. So not only
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter once we're infected, they go and inform
Speaker 1: resistant cysts. Basically just hide and then say it. They
Speaker 1: don't do anything. They set up camping your body, right,
Speaker 1: but that's that. That generally, that's it, unless you have
Speaker 1: AIDS or another repressed immune system disease or that's when
Speaker 1: it can, right, but it's gonna just sit there because
Speaker 1: we have anybodies that can you know, keep them in check.
Speaker 1: But that's what we thought exactly. But around I think
Speaker 1: is when they really started to begin to look to
Speaker 1: see what kind of behavioral changes toxoplasmosis might cause in humans.
Speaker 1: And we started to find some startling results like that
Speaker 1: lowered um motor reflex time. Right. They did some tests that,
Speaker 1: uh that I know that. They did a couple one
Speaker 1: where they were supposed to stroke a specific keystroke on
Speaker 1: the keyboard in a certain amount of time. In another way,
Speaker 1: they showed a white recognition test where they showed like
Speaker 1: a white square on the screen and you were supposed
Speaker 1: to react when you saw the white square. And they
Speaker 1: found that people that had the latent toxoplasmosis would, uh
Speaker 1: there was a lag that were definitely behind the rest
Speaker 1: of the crowd and recognizing these things. Right, you know
Speaker 1: to that study, your buddy, a guy named Dr Yaroslav Flag.
Speaker 1: You just talked to him. I just talked to the
Speaker 1: guy on the phone. This guy is arguably the pre
Speaker 1: eminent expert. He's a parasitologist out of Charles university in Prague.
Speaker 1: Did you call Prague? Just now? No way, And I
Speaker 1: need to expense that because I did it on my
Speaker 1: cell phone because you know, I'm not comfortable talking about
Speaker 1: my desk because I'm neurotic because I have tlaxo plasmosis.
Speaker 1: Paying right, So this uh Dr flager Um, who is arguably, uh,
Speaker 1: the the foremost authority toxoplasmosis um. He conducted that study
Speaker 1: Uh anymore? Right? He? I think he conducted eleven and
Speaker 1: in nine of the eleven studies, Uh, there was a
Speaker 1: significant difference between people who are infected with taxoplasmosis and
Speaker 1: people who weren't. In humans, there's actually an equal and
Speaker 1: opposite effect defined by gender. This is what I thought
Speaker 1: was really interesting. It's odd, it was almost dead opposite
Speaker 1: the way men and women were affected by this thing. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: and women just kind of got kind of got out
Speaker 1: of head in this deal. Yeah when you say so,
Speaker 1: these are the women we love that toxoplasmos has infected women.
Speaker 1: That's my favorite women who have who have are t
Speaker 1: infected and not Chuck's car, but the other kind. Uh.
Speaker 1: They tend to be a warmhearted, outgoing, conscientious, moralistic. These
Speaker 1: are wonderful women, the salt of the earth. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: also outgoing, you know, I mean like everybody loves a
Speaker 1: gal who's willing to just try anything. And um, you
Speaker 1: know is is but it also has a line which
Speaker 1: is moralistic. So yeah, men, though men got the bat
Speaker 1: into the stick, we did. We tended to be uh,
Speaker 1: stupid er but more loyal? Is stupid or a word?
Speaker 1: Are you toxoplasmatic? I am less intelligent, more loyal, frugal,
Speaker 1: which was interesting, and mild tempered and dogmatic. Did you
Speaker 1: say dogmatic? I did not, so dogmatic meaning inflexible basically,
Speaker 1: but they're both basically Guys who are infected with toxo
Speaker 1: plasmosis are jerks and women who are infected are cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're both neurotic. That was the one shared trait, right,
Speaker 1: And so I talked to Dr Flagger and I was asking,
Speaker 1: you know, where are we as far as understanding how
Speaker 1: toxo plasmois could affect us physiologically our brain? And um,
Speaker 1: one thing I saw that kept coming up as neurotransmitters.
Speaker 1: He said. The likeliest candidate is dopamine, or dopamine as
Speaker 1: he put it. He said, it increases levels UM. And
Speaker 1: he also has found that there are increased levels of
Speaker 1: UM testosterone and men lowered levels of testosterone and women
Speaker 1: who are infected with toxoplasmosis. So he he said in
Speaker 1: his opinion, that would account for it. Again, he's he's
Speaker 1: a stickler and pointing out um correlation not causation. We
Speaker 1: are definitely at the correlation stage and understand absolutely plasmosis
Speaker 1: can affect human behavior. But he's finding some really cool stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's interesting about the It kind of makes sense with
Speaker 1: the testosterone levels because they found that, like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: sixty seven percent of Brazilians are infected with this stuff. Uh,
Speaker 1: and countries they found where uh, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of people infected with this or more likely to have
Speaker 1: masculine sex roles or more divergent gender roles are more
Speaker 1: pronounced distinction among exactly, Like the men go out and
Speaker 1: their masculine they do the hard work, and the women
Speaker 1: they work inflexibly exactly. Yeah, and the women are just
Speaker 1: like that's my man. Yeah, I felt very interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean think about it. If the population is infected
Speaker 1: with a latent toxic with latent toxoplasmosis, then yeah, this
Speaker 1: would conceivably alter cultures. Still a little hinky if you
Speaker 1: ask me, I don't know, man, it's still it's still
Speaker 1: new research. But I'm thinking it's to look like this
Speaker 1: parasite rules the world. Well it could because we rule
Speaker 1: the world, were ruled by toxoplasma. Ergo oxo plasma rules
Speaker 1: the world. I think it's a bunch of factors. That's me,
Speaker 1: that's my camp, so you know. UM Flagger also conducted
Speaker 1: us study back in two thousand two, UM in Prague
Speaker 1: where he is, the driving test he I think it
Speaker 1: was a hundred and sixties seven people who were identified
Speaker 1: as the causes of car accidents, either as pedestrians or drivers,
Speaker 1: which I thought was also interesting. And um he found
Speaker 1: that people with toxo plasmosis are two point six five
Speaker 1: times more likely it's almost three times it's likely to
Speaker 1: be involved in a car accident. Is someone who's not infected.
Speaker 1: I think that goes back to the latent reaction time.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't you think it could be the delayed reaction Again
Speaker 1: though there's there's well yeah, yeah, the are motor skillsops right,
Speaker 1: crash sure, um, or if it makes us more reckless,
Speaker 1: like if you're a man, right, because we said that
Speaker 1: that you're more willing to break rules if if you're
Speaker 1: a man infective with taxola lights screw it exactly. Or
Speaker 1: this Carl stopped for me if I went in front
Speaker 1: of it, that kind of thing. But again we're we're
Speaker 1: at the cause where the correlation not causation stage, so
Speaker 1: everyone points that out. It's entirely possible that people in
Speaker 1: Prague who have cats and would be more likely to
Speaker 1: be infected with taxoplasmosis are also more likely to um
Speaker 1: zone out while driving thinking about how Princess Lady would
Speaker 1: look really good in a little cattre that you saw
Speaker 1: inline that morning, And they said it could be a
Speaker 1: personality thing, which I thought that was a little hanky too.
Speaker 1: But there's also a correlation between schizophrenia and toxoplasmosis. Not hanky, No,
Speaker 1: this is a there's a there's a definite link. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there's also a neurotransmitter called nitric oxide. This is
Speaker 1: not flagger. Flager actually said that he had not done
Speaker 1: much research on nitric oxide or nitric oxide as he
Speaker 1: called it. But actually, some guys from Toledo, my hometown,
Speaker 1: some psychiatrists have been researching into it and there are
Speaker 1: increased levels of nitric oxide in schizophrenics and uh toxoplasmatics
Speaker 1: and schizophrenics or or more likely to own cats, which
Speaker 1: I thought was odd. So says the University of Maryland, right,
Speaker 1: they own cats because the taxoplasmosis and the neighbor's dog
Speaker 1: tell them to write. Actually, not University of Maryland, sorry,
Speaker 1: Stanley Medical Research Center in Maryland. I just want to
Speaker 1: clear that up. So, Chuck, what do you think? You
Speaker 1: think it's still hinky? I think it's slightly hinky. I
Speaker 1: think there's something to it, but I think it's um.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I think it's one of many factors. Probably.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can chock up the machismo of
Speaker 1: the Brazilian man to cat boo just yet. So that's taxoplasmosis.
Speaker 1: But um, if you are into parasites or this podcast
Speaker 1: has piqued your interest, Chuck and I would both strongly
Speaker 1: recommend that you watch that new show Monsters Inside of
Speaker 1: Me on Animal Planet. What is it Wednesdays at nine?
Speaker 1: Wednesdays at nine. It's cool show. Yeah, cool graphics like
Speaker 1: CG They get inside your body. Isn't like as if
Speaker 1: you were a parasite. It's yeah, our parent company, Discovery
Speaker 1: definitely threw some money at this one. It looks very cool, definitely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so check that out. And we also have tons of
Speaker 1: cool stuff. You can also check out the Monsters inside
Speaker 1: of Me website. Yeah, Robert Lamb, Robert Lamb wrote some
Speaker 1: ki cool stuff and actually we have to give him
Speaker 1: a big thanks for pointing us, uh the in the
Speaker 1: right direction for research on this this particular podcast. He
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing. He's parasitastic. And of course, um,
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works dot Com has tons of stuff on it,
Speaker 1: and if you're interested, you can also read all of
Speaker 1: our blog posts on it. There's like five million of
Speaker 1: them and each one's better than the last. Yeah. That's
Speaker 1: it for plugging, isn't it. So yeah, plug heavy, which
Speaker 1: means buddy, it is time for a listener mayo. So, Josh,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna call this, uh, we're awesome because we
Speaker 1: saved a woman's life. Yeah, this is crazy. It is
Speaker 1: slightly hanky, but I'll take I'll take credit. Uh. Bonnie
Speaker 1: from Boulder, Colorado wrote in, and Bonnie says, this, Hi, guys,
Speaker 1: stuff you should know just saved my life. The facts
Speaker 1: for these. I was driving home and had just finished
Speaker 1: listening to your hyper Miling podcast. As a result, I
Speaker 1: was only going forty miles per hour on a stretch
Speaker 1: of highway where I usually go sixty. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there was a pair of headlights right in front of me.
Speaker 1: Some genius was going the wrong way in the same
Speaker 1: lane of the highway as me. Short story even shorter.
Speaker 1: I ended up facing the wrong way on the highway
Speaker 1: thanks to some recent rain and some awful skidding and sliding,
Speaker 1: But due to the late hour, lack of other cars,
Speaker 1: and my slow speed, I avoided hitting anything. Who knows
Speaker 1: if I would have had a head on collision if
Speaker 1: I had been going my normal speed, But I do
Speaker 1: know that thanks to YouTube and you're always enlightening podcasts,
Speaker 1: I will never have to night. Many thanks. You're immensely
Speaker 1: appreciative listener and fan. Bonnie of Boulder, Colorado, Thank you, Bonnie. Awesome. Honestly,
Speaker 1: what if she would have been going twenty miles an
Speaker 1: hour that could have made all the difference? Oh yeah, definitely,
Speaker 1: even if it was just a fluke thing, I'll take credit.
Speaker 1: Even if it wasn't fluke, we still picked up an
Speaker 1: indentured servant for a lot. Yeah, and I personally I
Speaker 1: think we should get a key to the city of
Speaker 1: Boulder show. Yeah, I've always I've been England for one
Speaker 1: of those for a long time. Key to any city,
Speaker 1: No Boulder, Okay, Yeah, I think this is this is
Speaker 1: our end for sure. Maybe a T shirt even sure? Yeah,
Speaker 1: life and all I got is this lousy T shirt.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. If you have any good T
Speaker 1: shirt ideas or any instances of how Chuck and I
Speaker 1: saved your life, you can send them in an email
Speaker 1: to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
Speaker 1: check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
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