Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Julie Douglas. You know, Julie,
Speaker 1: I I found out very recently, after almost three years
Speaker 1: working here, that there's a shower, like a full bathroom
Speaker 1: and shower on this floor. Yes, yeah, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's of course a high ranking official. We cannot disclose
Speaker 1: the person's name, but yeah, they have a shower. And
Speaker 1: now that person is no longer in that area. And
Speaker 1: I think all of this riff raff have taken it
Speaker 1: over well not well, last I checked, maybe you have
Speaker 1: a shower shower you. I don't think anybody can get
Speaker 1: into the actual executive bathroom, but unless you have a
Speaker 1: special key, yeah, the executive and somebody may have it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Somebody's done from it instead of using
Speaker 1: the public squalor toilet, so the rest of us used.
Speaker 1: But it makes you think it's like cleanliness, right, is
Speaker 1: next to godliness? That's the old old thing. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: if you are a high ranking executive, then you're a
Speaker 1: little closer to godliness and the corporate ladder of things
Speaker 1: and Therefore, you get to bathe as much as you want.
Speaker 1: Like you can have like a morning meeting, take a shower,
Speaker 1: get out, dry off, have another conference call, than another meeting,
Speaker 1: than another shower. You can get up to like five
Speaker 1: showers a day. Okay, So sure, you're you're that executive.
Speaker 1: You're very clean, you have a lot of Lamborghinis and
Speaker 1: nice income. You have many choices of mustaches that you
Speaker 1: could wear. I'm assuming this is like a luxe thing, right,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming this is every executive has this kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but here's a little something to throw down there that
Speaker 1: you don't have. What's that You probably don't have good bacteria.
Speaker 1: And that's how it is. Sometimes it doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: you have all the money in the world. If you
Speaker 1: don't have good bacteria, you ain't got nothing. So this
Speaker 1: this comes under the idea that that maybe on one
Speaker 1: hand you have the the the clean cut executives and
Speaker 1: the other the dirty hippies. Yes, and then maybe the
Speaker 1: dirty hippies, um, who not only don't have a shower
Speaker 1: at work, might not even be using their shower at
Speaker 1: home every day. Um that they may have the right
Speaker 1: philosophy here. They may have the correct way of life
Speaker 1: and this culture war of bathing. Well, okay, we talked
Speaker 1: a little bit. Uh you know, we talked about this
Speaker 1: in the in the podcast about as your Gut to Genius,
Speaker 1: we talked about all the bacteria in your gut and
Speaker 1: what's going on there. Similarly, scientists researchers are starting to
Speaker 1: look at the bacteria in our skin and say, who
Speaker 1: wall hold on a second, there's a lot more going
Speaker 1: on here at skin deep level than we knew about before.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's not a good idea to wash away a
Speaker 1: lot of good bacteria. And in fact, there's something called
Speaker 1: the Human Microbiome Project which is essentially mapping the skins
Speaker 1: ecosystem and the Yeah, they're calling the skins ecosystem, which
Speaker 1: was really cool. And they're even saying that it's it's
Speaker 1: a lot like a zoo and that there's much more
Speaker 1: diversity or maybe even like a rainforest. Um. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: they're saying that the human body is resembling a super organism. Okay,
Speaker 1: so my body, my my skin rather is a jungle,
Speaker 1: and I should maybe not get up every morning and
Speaker 1: slash and burn it in the shower exactly exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: And I'm like Okay, I'm gonna say this. I don't
Speaker 1: know what everybody's uh jungles are like with their armpits,
Speaker 1: so I'm not suggesting that people don't bathe. However, we
Speaker 1: do have good data that perhaps it's not as necessary
Speaker 1: as before. This sort of American ideal of cleanliness and
Speaker 1: godliness isn't exactly the right path, right. Well, the connection
Speaker 1: between cleanliness and godliness is really fascinating and pretty much
Speaker 1: spans the entire length of human history. There's a great
Speaker 1: book out there called Clean A History of Personal Hygiene
Speaker 1: Impurity by Virginia Smith, and I highly recommend picking this
Speaker 1: up if anybody's really interests in it, because it basically
Speaker 1: she exhaustively analyzes the the emergence and UH and an
Speaker 1: advancement of On one hand, hygiene, which is my body
Speaker 1: needs to be cleaned sometimes because it gets dirty, and
Speaker 1: if it gets to dirty, there's a problem. And then
Speaker 1: the idea of purity, the idea that yes, exactly that
Speaker 1: my my soul is pure, that that there's a connection
Speaker 1: but in between physical and spiritual purity or mental purity,
Speaker 1: and these two issues become intertwined throughout human history. So
Speaker 1: suddenly we have situations where it's like, oh, I'm going
Speaker 1: into the sauna to sweat out my illness and also
Speaker 1: maybe a tone for sins and just it just gets
Speaker 1: just complicated and intertwined throughout history. So we have this thing,
Speaker 1: this cleanliness and godliness that if I can, if I
Speaker 1: can scrub it out, then that I'm going to be
Speaker 1: better in the long run. Right, Yeah, we have that.
Speaker 1: So we've got that that sort of um, you know,
Speaker 1: altross of history, honest, right, that has colored our perception
Speaker 1: of bathing and hygiene. And then we also have the
Speaker 1: American Civil War in which Frederick law Homestead if it
Speaker 1: sounds familiar, he was the guy who um created Central
Speaker 1: Parker was the architecture. Yeah, but he was actually on
Speaker 1: the Union side. He created a big sanitation campaign and
Speaker 1: he basically said, look, um, let's, you know, for all
Speaker 1: the soldiers coming in off warfield. You know, if they're
Speaker 1: if they're even if they're just hanging out let alone,
Speaker 1: they've got some sort of wound. Let's make sure that
Speaker 1: they're cleaned regularly. But their linens are clean regularly, and
Speaker 1: that the walls and you know, the hospitals and whatnot
Speaker 1: are all cleaned and they found that that greatly decreased
Speaker 1: disease and illness. So all of a sudden, people have
Speaker 1: that aha moment and we're like, oh, yeah, we should
Speaker 1: probably do this all the time, which has led to
Speaker 1: our obsession with bathing. Well. I also have to say,
Speaker 1: as a I'll admit that I am sometimes a maybe
Speaker 1: not compulsive, but I I love a good shower, you know.
Speaker 1: I Mean it's like I get up in the morning
Speaker 1: and on one level, yes, I want to feel clean um.
Speaker 1: On another level, I want my hair to not stand
Speaker 1: straight up. Yeah. But then also it's just like you're
Speaker 1: you're hit with all this hot water. It wakes you up,
Speaker 1: it refreshes you, it it's just you know, you're you're
Speaker 1: living completely in the moment while that water is on
Speaker 1: your face, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's the
Speaker 1: soap thing. Yes, well it becomes problematic if you do
Speaker 1: it all the time, right. I mean, I'm like, one
Speaker 1: level of that is the whole No Pooh movement, which
Speaker 1: isn't quite as strange as it sounds, because when I
Speaker 1: first a friend of mine was like, yeah, I'm doing
Speaker 1: this no Pooh thing, and I'm like, WHOA, I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's possible. I think, Yeah, I'm still hoping.
Speaker 1: What is shampoo? Okay, all right, well you know I
Speaker 1: mean for me, that's chologically, it's just I'm going to
Speaker 1: go there. Well yeah, when I first I was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's if that's possible, I'm I'm on board. No, No,
Speaker 1: it's actually with the the shampoo thing, it is actually
Speaker 1: really good for I was talking about not pooing ever
Speaker 1: again like that's that's also good for me. But but
Speaker 1: I'm not using shampoo, and the idea of being that
Speaker 1: you're hair is gonna be better off in the long
Speaker 1: run if you're not either, the more extreme version being
Speaker 1: that you're not using all these harsh soaps, right, The
Speaker 1: idea is to distribute the oils rather than strip them
Speaker 1: a wet. The same thing with the skin though, So, um,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but this is
Speaker 1: so crazy. There are ten bacterial cells for every one
Speaker 1: human cell. So you know, if they had a quorum,
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't even have a vote there, right, basically, um,
Speaker 1: and then although some of the bacteria on our skin
Speaker 1: is is foreign and can make a sick, most of
Speaker 1: it is harmless and a lot of it is beneficial.
Speaker 1: So there's this a great New York Times UM article
Speaker 1: called The Grid Unwashed, and in that article they say
Speaker 1: that good bacteria are educating your own skin cells to
Speaker 1: make your own antibiotics. Says Dr Richard Gallo when that's
Speaker 1: he's the chief of Dermatology Division at the University of California,
Speaker 1: San Diego, so we know what he's talking about. And
Speaker 1: so they essentially produced their own antibotics that kill off
Speaker 1: bad bacteria. So if you're showering three times a day,
Speaker 1: then you're probably gonna have a real problem in terms
Speaker 1: of that good bacteria that you're stripping off, and you're
Speaker 1: actually gonna be damaging your skin cells and making it
Speaker 1: more apt perhaps to actually have that bad bacteria gualm
Speaker 1: onto it. Yeah, the US Centers for Disease Control and
Speaker 1: Prevention actually warns that UM that that Washington scrubbing um
Speaker 1: excessively or in an environment like a hospital where you're
Speaker 1: you're constantly using these anti bacterials and you're wearing gloves,
Speaker 1: that you can get irritant contact dermatitis, which is uh
Speaker 1: actually an occupational risk for health care professionals. And UH
Speaker 1: also excessive scrubbing can wear away the stratum corneum, which
Speaker 1: is the utmost skin barrier, so that you know, if
Speaker 1: you're regularly breaching this drying it out, it's getting irritated
Speaker 1: and cracked. Like you said, it's gonna be um more
Speaker 1: susceptible to pathogens. It's like cleaning out a neighborhood, like
Speaker 1: you know, everybody gets for closed on suddenly all these
Speaker 1: empty houses and less reputable things, and people may move
Speaker 1: into those homes. You know, you clean out the natural
Speaker 1: environment of bacteria. You know, who knows what the what
Speaker 1: the next tenants are going. You're saying behind my ear
Speaker 1: might become a crack den, Yes, a crack den of
Speaker 1: bacterial may am okay, I thought that might be the case. Um,
Speaker 1: this is actually interesting to the places on the human
Speaker 1: body where there are different types of diversity, because again,
Speaker 1: remember you've got all that bacteria, and it's not just
Speaker 1: one kind of bacteria. There's actually read somewhere there's like
Speaker 1: a thousand different type of bacteria on your skin at
Speaker 1: this very moment um. Scientists actually expected to find the
Speaker 1: most bacteria and the most diversity in moist, dark environments
Speaker 1: such as our under arms, between our toes um. How
Speaker 1: do I say this delicately. Are our Crecus buddcus? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's the Latin here, Yes, But it was
Speaker 1: actually the forearms that have the most bacterial diversity, like
Speaker 1: the inside of the forearm. Well that they didn't say exactly.
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna guess it's on the inside, just
Speaker 1: because you know your your arm is going up and
Speaker 1: down and perhaps and I don't know, this is Julie's
Speaker 1: like flimsy theory, and you might might have more uh
Speaker 1: contact with your other skin right right, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but actually the forum has forty four bacteria species on average.
Speaker 1: By comparison, the behind the ear only saw nineteen bacteria species. Wow,
Speaker 1: so like the worst like instead of like thinking about
Speaker 1: like spitting on somebody, if you're really mad at somebody,
Speaker 1: come to them and just start rubbing your forearms against
Speaker 1: their face, just like when I'm both side up and
Speaker 1: down against their cheeks. Yeah. And then also the crease
Speaker 1: of the arm right, um, So you know that's that
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense because that's sort of a waste
Speaker 1: area that really, So that I found that really interesting
Speaker 1: because a lot of times when I'm on the Marta,
Speaker 1: the public transportation train here, we have in Atlanta. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just it's just like uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's just like the London tube, except smaller and
Speaker 1: less efficient. Um mind the gap. Yeah it's uh, but
Speaker 1: but I'm generally reluctant to actually touch surfaces with my fingers,
Speaker 1: so I will wrap my arm around it and actually
Speaker 1: end up clutching the bar with that area right below
Speaker 1: the what are we calling it, the opposite of the elbow,
Speaker 1: the inner elbow, the increase of your your arm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm I'm doing I'm I thought I was doing
Speaker 1: a good thing. I'm actually doing my part to dirty
Speaker 1: up part up all funky. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's
Speaker 1: the whole thing where they say, you know, of course
Speaker 1: cover your mouth when you sneeze or but people have
Speaker 1: been encouraging to use as to use the vampire or
Speaker 1: the Dracula method right where you bring it up and
Speaker 1: you cover your nose and mouth with the the crook
Speaker 1: of your elbow there the crook and uh and that
Speaker 1: sounded great. It's like, okay, I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: you know, using that for anything. I'm not you know,
Speaker 1: putting my food there and eating out of it. So
Speaker 1: but it but it turns out it's like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: I might be getting a little sick here. Let me
Speaker 1: press my face to pick up against the dirtiest, most
Speaker 1: bacterial populated part of my body. Let me blow this possible,
Speaker 1: you know, virus now into the crook of my elbow
Speaker 1: with the forty four bacteria, and see if I can
Speaker 1: create my little peatree dish and then rub it on
Speaker 1: some mass transportation like pole and yeah, you look down
Speaker 1: and they're like their little cities emerging there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the little skyscrapers. This presentation is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Intel Sponsors of Tomorrow. But that's a Again, that's the
Speaker 1: surprise of all of this is that, you know, from
Speaker 1: what I could tell and the research, it wasn't until
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven that people actually started to look
Speaker 1: at the skin and say, what about the bacteria there? Um.
Speaker 1: And another really cool stat that that we found is
Speaker 1: that the most stable skin sites look more similar across
Speaker 1: different people than separate skin sites on one person. So
Speaker 1: that means that strangers often share the same bacteria living
Speaker 1: on their under arms, even as two separate sites on
Speaker 1: the same person contained wild different bacteria. So if you
Speaker 1: ever like you know, you feel really separate from humanity.
Speaker 1: Just think about that. Just think about your your armpits
Speaker 1: uniting all of us. It's a beautiful thought, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's and I mean, it's just you know, thinking about
Speaker 1: it's like it's only been since the forties and fifties
Speaker 1: that that we've really gotten into the whole like must
Speaker 1: bathe every day kind of thing and modern convenience for
Speaker 1: modern conveniences, everybody suddenly has a bathroom. Um, it's why
Speaker 1: if you you stay at older hotels, you frequently find
Speaker 1: the whole exterior bathroom thing and you're you're, you're like, WHOA,
Speaker 1: I can't believe I'm playing X amount of night and
Speaker 1: I've got to walk out in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night to go pee. But that's just part of it.
Speaker 1: But but, but the core here is that long before this,
Speaker 1: for millions of years before this, we were not taking
Speaker 1: baths every day. It's just it's a part of our
Speaker 1: development that we were a dirtier people. Well, and they
Speaker 1: also are funkier people. We were a funkier people, and
Speaker 1: technology has changed with so much. I mean, even if
Speaker 1: you're a armor today, you're probably still not um in
Speaker 1: the soil quite as much as you were before, right,
Speaker 1: because we have machines that are taking care of things,
Speaker 1: so we're not getting as so crazy dirty as we
Speaker 1: were before, to the point where you come home from
Speaker 1: your job and it's just like you've got hold dust,
Speaker 1: you know, under your your nail bed. I mean, it
Speaker 1: still happens, right, but it's just not as frequent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I I don't take a shower when I come
Speaker 1: in in the afternoon from work because that would be
Speaker 1: a little silly since I generally don't break a sweat
Speaker 1: in the course of the day, and unless well maybe
Speaker 1: I should sometimes with Allen Marta and it's maybe you're
Speaker 1: just trying to slough all that those e pollutants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true from your computer E pollutants and then just
Speaker 1: sort of smig and exhaust and all that. Okay, so
Speaker 1: maybe maybe I should take a shower when I get home.
Speaker 1: But but the point being, I'm not toiling in the mud.
Speaker 1: I'm not, you know, I'm not returning home like streaked
Speaker 1: in the excrement of various farm animals. Most days. That's beautiful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not like the Black Plague era, right,
Speaker 1: Like they're there's not urine hopefully um in the streets
Speaker 1: and in feces and so on and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's also even if I am breaking a sweat,
Speaker 1: it's uh like sweat in and of itself. It is
Speaker 1: not like stink juice coming out of your body. It's uh.
Speaker 1: Now you let sweat set, you let it go on
Speaker 1: unwashed than uh, than things can get a little extra funky,
Speaker 1: I guess. But I mean sweat is not the enemy, actually, right,
Speaker 1: that's not the funk causing um active ingredient here, right,
Speaker 1: And in fact, i've heard um actually from There was
Speaker 1: a this American life that several years back for some
Speaker 1: guys intentionally went I became homeless. They were kind of
Speaker 1: down on their luck, and they're like, hey, it would
Speaker 1: be easier if we just went ahead and became homeless,
Speaker 1: lived on the streets in New York where there are
Speaker 1: a lot of you know, so we won't have to
Speaker 1: worry about going hungry because we know where to hit
Speaker 1: and where to go. Um. But but early on in
Speaker 1: the process they were very into like, all right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna but we're gonna avoid falling into these into the
Speaker 1: trap of being like stinky bums and One of the
Speaker 1: things they advocated was was washing the socks was just
Speaker 1: vital and there they said that if you ever like
Speaker 1: smell somebody on public transportations down on their their luck
Speaker 1: and kind of grimy and there's just they're reeking, there's
Speaker 1: a good chance it's sock funk that's going on socks
Speaker 1: just you know completely, you know, they soak with sweat,
Speaker 1: et cetera, and then they just stuff starts growing. I
Speaker 1: mean that, yeah, that makes sense, right, you're just you've
Speaker 1: got your own little ecosystem in your shoes. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: nobody's making the argument the dirty hippies. I mean they
Speaker 1: generally don't even wear socks, right, No, no, just yeah,
Speaker 1: see again they're that is like sort of I think
Speaker 1: the higher coal type of footwear that's worn by hippies. Um.
Speaker 1: But also the other thing here is the African glands.
Speaker 1: And these are glands that are found in the breast
Speaker 1: general area. Eyelids aren't pits and ear and in the breast.
Speaker 1: They if you're wondering, like why are they in the breast, Uh,
Speaker 1: they actually secrete fat droplets into the breast milk. They're
Speaker 1: not making smelly breasts or anything. Um. And in the
Speaker 1: ear they helped form earwax. So again that's the culprit here.
Speaker 1: It's not the fact that you actually sweat. And I've
Speaker 1: also read before to the diet can obviously give you
Speaker 1: a funk. Yeah yeah, Like if you're eating nothing but
Speaker 1: garlic and onions every day, day and day out broad
Speaker 1: chicken like four seven. Yeah, if your diet is nothing
Speaker 1: but fast food fried foods, then then yeah it might
Speaker 1: it might have an effect on the waist you smell yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So you know, with all that in mind, still I
Speaker 1: think that what's interesting about all of this is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got the discovery that there's good bacterial in the skin,
Speaker 1: and yet we have this very robust antibacterial soap market
Speaker 1: that's in everything. It seems like it maybe has cooled
Speaker 1: off a little bit in the last year, but I
Speaker 1: mean I were seeing it in body wash and so
Speaker 1: on and so forth, and actually it's not ideal at
Speaker 1: all to be using antibacterial wash, at least the stuff
Speaker 1: that's used um commercially. There's a place for it in
Speaker 1: hospitals obviously, yeah, or you know, it's like maybe you
Speaker 1: keep it around for for times when yes, some antibacterial
Speaker 1: soap would be a good idea, right, Like you're doing
Speaker 1: something particularly dirty, or you accidentally stick your hand in
Speaker 1: cat feces. I don't know, um accidentally, Yeah, every placing
Speaker 1: dozy dough with the polls on mass transit, right, so
Speaker 1: you might want a little pure l. Yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: like you just ate dinner and you got a little
Speaker 1: grease on your your fingers. Maybe not a good time
Speaker 1: to actually just scour the bacteria from your hands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there are plenty of studies out there that have
Speaker 1: looked at the effectiveness of antibacterial step and they're essentially
Speaker 1: saying that that just the normal soaping, counting the your A,
Speaker 1: B c's, you know, I think it's like under two
Speaker 1: minutes or something. Um, washing your hands for two minutes
Speaker 1: with just regular soap is much more effective than the
Speaker 1: antibacterial soap because the antibacterial soup is actually stripping away
Speaker 1: the good bacteria along with the bad bacteria. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes there's a sense with with washing hands though, that
Speaker 1: it's it's kind of like bacteria and these these deadly
Speaker 1: things that can get into it's all these germs that
Speaker 1: they're kind of magic and and therefore you're gonna need
Speaker 1: something equally magical to get rid of it. I don't
Speaker 1: know that that that really makes sense. Like I like,
Speaker 1: I I know on a on a scientific level what's
Speaker 1: going on with germs, But but still there's this sense
Speaker 1: like like like there are germs everywhere and uh, and
Speaker 1: they're these kind of magical unseen things, and so you're
Speaker 1: gonna need something with a little magical potency to it
Speaker 1: to take it out, and not just something that kind
Speaker 1: of smells nice. It's m M. You're saying, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like it's kind of crazy, I admit, but I
Speaker 1: mean I feel like a lot of people must see
Speaker 1: it that way, you know, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean we are we talking about, like like I
Speaker 1: used to use antibacterial stops a lot more until my
Speaker 1: my wife convinced me not to so, and I think
Speaker 1: part of it when I was using it all all
Speaker 1: the all the time, it was like I'm gonna wash
Speaker 1: my hands, it's gonna be as clean as possible, and
Speaker 1: then they're gonna if there's any risk of germs getting
Speaker 1: on my hand, I'm gonna go ahead nip that in
Speaker 1: the butt because it could be these these hidden and visit.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like putting some sort of magic token
Speaker 1: up on the door to keep ghosts out, all right,
Speaker 1: So it's like a talisman. Yeah, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: weirdly like, yeah, a talisman like science looping back around
Speaker 1: and becoming fault pale all in the course of your handwashing. Well, actually,
Speaker 1: all that handwashing with antibacterial soap has given rise to
Speaker 1: something called the hygiene hypothesis, which is actually really interesting because,
Speaker 1: as we all know, there's been a huge up tech
Speaker 1: analogies with children, and so the hygiene hypothesis says basically
Speaker 1: that our super clean world is depriving our children's immune
Speaker 1: system system of developing properly. So instead of doing what
Speaker 1: it's supposed to do, which is to fight off bacteria,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really have that bacteria anymore really to fight off.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of the mother boy effect, right where
Speaker 1: them like motherboy, like you're you're the codl child, Mama's boy. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that that is protected from all the hart realities
Speaker 1: of the era of the world, and then therefore can
Speaker 1: never really um survive unattended because they just have no defenses.
Speaker 1: Right let out into the wild it's it's then um
Speaker 1: ravaged by a pack of lions essentially, you know, like Buster, Yeah,
Speaker 1: except for the pack of lions is actually your own
Speaker 1: immune system. Because the immune system is looking for something
Speaker 1: to attack, right, and if there's no good or bad
Speaker 1: bacteria going on, or if there's very little bacteria that
Speaker 1: would normally be there, uh, then it would essentially turned
Speaker 1: to the person, right and begin attacking the person. So
Speaker 1: it's and that's what you see with some of the
Speaker 1: autoimmune systems diseases today, right, or even like something as
Speaker 1: simple as exzema flare ups. I mean that there's a
Speaker 1: good theory there that says that those flare ups happen
Speaker 1: when the bad bacteria is stripped off, So that's where
Speaker 1: all these allergies start to kick in. It also reminds
Speaker 1: one of some of these pages from the history books
Speaker 1: of of ancient empires and the idea that you want
Speaker 1: to keep the army away invading people and and causing
Speaker 1: termel term elsewhere, because God help us if they come
Speaker 1: back to the city, yes, because then they're just gonna
Speaker 1: turn on us and turn on themselves. I know it's
Speaker 1: gonna it's gonna be like Shakespeare play at least the ending. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: well with a wedding, oh, this usually a wedding or
Speaker 1: death or I went dark, you went dark? I thought
Speaker 1: your wedding. No, no, I was thinking, you know, poison
Speaker 1: flasks hemlock. Yeah, the like gotcha. Well there you go.
Speaker 1: I mean that's that's why that that's the case for
Speaker 1: being a dirty hippie. Really yeah, I'm still not completely convinced.
Speaker 1: H You know, I'm not going to give up showering.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I really like some hot water splash
Speaker 1: in my face in the morning. However, I have um
Speaker 1: force myself to not wash my hair every day. Um based.
Speaker 1: I mean I've been hearing it for a while, but
Speaker 1: then like the last dude to cut my hairs, like
Speaker 1: like yeah, yeah, you should just make maybe just wash
Speaker 1: it every other day. So I'm trying that you should
Speaker 1: seriously what okay, not that everybody wanted some sort of
Speaker 1: like tips on this, but this is what everyone wanted
Speaker 1: tips on hair care. But really, if you massage your
Speaker 1: scalp and you redistribute the oils, then you're not going
Speaker 1: to have slick looking hair. I will tell you this
Speaker 1: because I did not that I want to reveal this
Speaker 1: but I just washed my hair after seven days, yeah,
Speaker 1: this morning, and it was not It wasn't slick at all.
Speaker 1: Of course you didn't see me before that, so you
Speaker 1: can't verify, but trust me, that's what you do. Wait,
Speaker 1: so your hair is better for having like we were, okay,
Speaker 1: day day seven. Wish your hair better before you washed
Speaker 1: it or after? Well, I mean it was starting to
Speaker 1: get a little funky because it's been seven days before
Speaker 1: i'd actually put shampoo on it. But my point is
Speaker 1: is that it looked quite lovely. Maybe you know, of
Speaker 1: course days one through five, six and seven looking a
Speaker 1: little bit funky. But it wasn't like an oil slick
Speaker 1: or anything. And it's not like you you get up
Speaker 1: the more the next morning you have and taking a shot.
Speaker 1: You haven't washed your hair rather in a day, and
Speaker 1: then it's suddenly chaos, it's suddenly bad. Right. The key
Speaker 1: is you have to massage of scalp redistribute oil. Massage
Speaker 1: scalp redistribute oils. That's your takeaway. I did want to
Speaker 1: mention that, uh, the author of Dirt Unclean, uh, Katherine Ashenberg,
Speaker 1: has a lot of really great information about this sort
Speaker 1: of the history of funk and history of cleanliness, so
Speaker 1: you guys might want to check that out as well. Well. Hey,
Speaker 1: I've got just one quick listener mail here. Um, hey,
Speaker 1: listened by the name of Billy writes, then, with the
Speaker 1: little contemplation about the role of robots in our future,
Speaker 1: says greetings, I was listening to Love Hayden robots. You
Speaker 1: mentioned the love bots, like the one you called Roxy,
Speaker 1: and that's with three xes. I am very constrict myself,
Speaker 1: but with this the adultery, it's it is not a
Speaker 1: living being. It would only be able to work outside
Speaker 1: of parameter setting. However, physically it would resemble a human. Also, um,
Speaker 1: what would happen if you had had a sex spot
Speaker 1: and it downloaded a virus on the servo net? Okay,
Speaker 1: some interesting thoughts there, But indeed, what would it be
Speaker 1: adultery if one started seeing a robot on the side.
Speaker 1: I don't know what if you saw one robot and
Speaker 1: then you were seeing another robot. I'm still intrigued by
Speaker 1: the idea of robot STDs, just essentially what he's talking about. Yeah, which,
Speaker 1: there's actually that case where the guy gave himself. It
Speaker 1: wasn't sexually transmitted. It was a computer transmitted virus in
Speaker 1: his body. That's right. He had a r f I
Speaker 1: D chip implanted and he gave himself a virus on
Speaker 1: that chip. So I don't know what the future holds there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll be interesting. So hey, have you have some interesting
Speaker 1: tidbits share of this or just some contemplative ideas. You
Speaker 1: can share them with us on Twitter or Facebook we
Speaker 1: or blow the mind on both of those. And you know,
Speaker 1: I want to mention that you know they have the
Speaker 1: pashtags on Twitter. If you use Twitter, you are glow
Speaker 1: aware of this. They're often used for bad humor. But
Speaker 1: there's one particular hashtag that that I have been following
Speaker 1: because the hashtag is blew my mind. One word that's
Speaker 1: hashtag that the hash sign blew my mind. And I'm
Speaker 1: interested because I'm like, I wonder what's blowing everybody's mind
Speaker 1: on Twitter. It turns out very inane stuff. It's blowing
Speaker 1: people's minds. Couple example, Yes, some of them are so
Speaker 1: bad I can't actually read them um in the podcast.
Speaker 1: But like here's one I don't know is it biber
Speaker 1: for Bieber? One? Is is at justin Bieber Bieber? I
Speaker 1: just saw your movie with my best friend, because there's
Speaker 1: several ds, and then something that resembles like a smiley
Speaker 1: faced but facing a different direction than I'm used to.
Speaker 1: And then they add the hashtag blew my mind. And
Speaker 1: then there's a heart thing, Uh, please follow me back,
Speaker 1: it will make my Friday. And then some other strange
Speaker 1: emoticon that I've that I'm apparently too old to understand,
Speaker 1: but okay, so that this person was blown up. Their
Speaker 1: mind is blown by this. Then there's another one. I
Speaker 1: think that's the first time in my life I've put
Speaker 1: on pants left leg, right leg blew my mind or
Speaker 1: and then somebody just watched The sixth Sense, So I
Speaker 1: think we can do better. Listeners. Um, if you encounter
Speaker 1: some cool bit of science, if we um, you know,
Speaker 1: I dare I say we blow your mind with some
Speaker 1: cool bit of of science or or just a cool
Speaker 1: idea or a contemplation on the world around us, share
Speaker 1: it on Twitter, throw on that hashtag, and let's uh,
Speaker 1: let's reclaim the blew my mind hashtag from the people
Speaker 1: are are large There's some there's some good boasts out there,
Speaker 1: but but from the largely the people who are misusing
Speaker 1: it on doll things, Yeah, I like that. Let's reclaim it. Uh,
Speaker 1: Let's let's give some justice to blew my mind. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And hey, if you have any thoughts that you would
Speaker 1: like to share with us, please do so at Blow
Speaker 1: the Mind at how stuff works dot com. For more
Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click
Speaker 1: on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of
Speaker 1: our homepage. The House stuff Works iPhone app has a RYE.
Speaker 1: Download it today on iTunes, m