WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Interior World 0:00:05.720 --> 0:00:07.840 Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:10.520 is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it is 0:00:10.520 --> 0:00:13.000 not Saturday, but it is time for a vault episode. 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:17.560 This episode originally aired on August eleven, and it was 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:22.160 about the life indoors. Yeah, this was a MASDA sponsored episode, 0:00:22.239 --> 0:00:25.400 and I believe that the genesis for the idea was simply, Hey, 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:28.680 we've been spending a lot of time indoors, you know, 0:00:28.760 --> 0:00:32.839 several months into the pandemic. Uh, what is that? Like? 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:35.639 What is the interial interior world? What is the inside 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.920 environment that we have created for ourselves. I remember enjoying 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:40.760 this one. I think I recall it made me look 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:44.280 at the door frames inside my house in a different way. Yeah, 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:46.440 I have not looked at my door frames the same 0:00:46.440 --> 0:00:52.400 way since. Let's jump right in Welcome to Stuff to 0:00:52.440 --> 0:01:02.000 Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome 0:01:02.040 --> 0:01:03.920 to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert 0:01:04.000 --> 0:01:06.640 Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're gonna be 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:11.119 taking a look at interior spaces. Yeah. Year certainly brings 0:01:11.120 --> 0:01:13.560 to mind the old curse. May you live in interesting times? 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:16.600 And one of the factors here has of course been 0:01:16.800 --> 0:01:21.200 the coronavirus COVID nineteen pandemic, and in an effort to 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:23.960 fight the spread of the illness, save lives, and prevent 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:26.480 overwhelming our hospitals, we've made a lot of changes to 0:01:26.520 --> 0:01:29.240 our lives, and these range from the simple such as 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:32.160 just wearing a mask when you're out in public and 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:35.040 you can't social distance from people, to the harder choices 0:01:35.080 --> 0:01:39.160 about employment and UH. In life choices, we've all been 0:01:39.280 --> 0:01:43.679 social distancing and stay at home orders, teleworking and quarantine 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:46.360 have meant that we've all been spending a lot more 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.440 time at home. Now. Depending on your home, this could 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:51.680 mean a lot of things, but we wanted to explore 0:01:51.960 --> 0:01:55.600 what this means from a biological UH standpoint. For the 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.240 most part here now now. Make no mistakes, spending more 0:01:58.280 --> 0:02:01.600 time at home has absolutely been the right move. But 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:04.360 just as it's forced you to focus more on, say 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:07.160 that weird staying on your ceiling, we wanted to focus 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:10.800 on the other often unseen aspects of life in the 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:13.720 home right much the same way that being, say, on 0:02:13.760 --> 0:02:16.120 a Spanish galleon out in the middle of the ocean 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:18.760 might have made you pay much more attention to the 0:02:18.760 --> 0:02:22.760 biology and behavior of of ship rats than you ever 0:02:22.800 --> 0:02:26.400 would have otherwise. I think being at home more and 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:28.919 more is forcing all of us to turn our eyes 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:32.560 and maybe our microscopes and magnifying glasses to the corners 0:02:32.600 --> 0:02:35.240 and the cornices, and the shower heads and the drain 0:02:35.360 --> 0:02:38.240 traps and all of the wonderful places in our house 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:42.400 where life dwells. Yeah, we're gonna really get into the 0:02:42.440 --> 0:02:45.960 difference really between the natural world outside of our homes 0:02:46.040 --> 0:02:49.320 and the unnatural world inside, and get into some ideas 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:53.919 about how how we could perhaps enable our interior world 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:57.560 to be a little more on the natural side of things. 0:02:57.600 --> 0:02:59.880 But before we get into all that, I wanted to 0:03:00.160 --> 0:03:02.400 take a moment here just to discuss the history of 0:03:02.480 --> 0:03:04.960 houses in general, you know, just to get into the 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:09.480 concept of what a house is our our first and 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:15.360 still most important interior artificial environment. So you can certainly 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:18.000 look at a home as an artificial cave to a 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:21.079 certain extent. And indeed we have lots of early evidence 0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:24.360 that early hominants sought out shelter in caves in the 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:27.840 same way that many other animals do. Uh. These can 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:31.560 shelter one against the elements and against predators, and as 0:03:31.639 --> 0:03:34.560 recently as a hundred and thirty thousand years ago, cave 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:39.680 dwellers were already augmenting these natural interior environments with things 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:43.080 like rough stone walls. They were using timbers so um. 0:03:44.000 --> 0:03:46.040 So you know, even a hundred thirty thousand years ago, 0:03:46.040 --> 0:03:50.160 we were taking naturally occurring interior spaces and making them 0:03:50.200 --> 0:03:53.080 a little less natural. Um. And of course, on top 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:55.200 of just the shelter that caves can provide, it also 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:58.920 seems that caves had a strong sacred meaning to many 0:03:58.960 --> 0:04:02.680 of these uh phistoric people's. Those might be important, but 0:04:02.880 --> 0:04:08.000 ultimately proximity to water is far more important. Thus, as 0:04:08.320 --> 0:04:11.520 Kate Spence and Brian and Fagan point out in UH 0:04:11.560 --> 0:04:14.440 in the a section of the seventy Grade Inventions of 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:18.480 the Ancient World about homes, most early hominids lived out 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:22.400 in the open, near streams and lakes. They built temporary structures, 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:25.039 and most of this has been lost to time, but 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:28.159 some of the earliest evidence of potential structures for homes 0:04:28.160 --> 0:04:32.160 goes back one point seven two point seven million years 0:04:32.200 --> 0:04:35.800 ago with homo erective sites in southern Africa, and these 0:04:35.839 --> 0:04:40.040 were potentially contemporary with the domestication of fire um and 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:43.320 these would have been temporary tents, but but they still 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:48.040 would have been artificial interior environments. Now more secure evidence 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:51.640 comes from the Ukraine roughly forty four thousand years ago, 0:04:52.360 --> 0:04:56.960 the mammoth bone structures from Maladova, which we recently discussed 0:04:56.960 --> 0:04:59.360 on the show. Actually, yeah, we did uh talking about 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:02.960 these uh. That would have been structures in one of 0:05:03.000 --> 0:05:06.840 the northernmost habitable regions of the Earth at the time, 0:05:06.839 --> 0:05:09.800 because this was during a time of glacial advance where 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:12.200 the polar ice caps from the north were coming deep 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.760 down into Europe and Asia and uh, and so this 0:05:15.800 --> 0:05:18.440 would have been far far north, way up among the 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:22.520 ice and for some reason humans were building these structures 0:05:22.520 --> 0:05:24.720 out of the bones of mammoth And we don't know that. 0:05:24.760 --> 0:05:27.159 There's still things we don't know about those structures, like 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:31.080 how how consistently they were inhabited and for how long 0:05:31.160 --> 0:05:34.440 and so forth. Right now, beyond this, the history of 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:37.800 human homes is is largely dictated by local resources and 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.080 a local climate. A long process of trial and air 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.080 ends up leading to the development of regional and cultural 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:48.640 building forms construction methods. But before nine thousand b C. 0:05:49.120 --> 0:05:52.000 We see evidence of clay houses in Palestine, what is 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:57.280 today Palestine, and before seven thousand BC we see rectangular 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:01.040 dwellings in Anatolia. But but home is far more than 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:04.159 just a shelter. As the authors here point out, houses 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.920 became key to social structure as well. They point out 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:13.200 that ethnographic studies in West Africa reveal complex and layered 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.840 symbolic associations and rituals in the context of dwelling. And 0:06:18.040 --> 0:06:20.599 this is a you know, it shows a clear role 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:25.560 of physically structuring and expressing the relationship between different members 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:27.760 of the household. And we see this of course in 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:31.359 um and cultures, you know, throughout history and throughout the world. 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:35.560 There's this physical shape of the place. Uh, and then 0:06:35.800 --> 0:06:39.800 that ends up defining or influencing like that, there's this 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:42.400 this feedback between the two. It goes both ways, right, 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:44.840 It's kind of like pouring a liquid into a container. 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:47.920 Oh of course. And this actually got me thinking about 0:06:48.000 --> 0:06:52.320 how having permanent, constructed dwellings must have changed the way 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.200 that power and hierarchy are expressed in social groups. And 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:59.080 of course this is true with normal social status. You know, 0:06:59.160 --> 0:07:02.040 it's it's stake out through displays of wealth. There certain 0:07:02.120 --> 0:07:05.520 kinds of taste or aesthetics in your house, your apartment, 0:07:05.600 --> 0:07:08.080 you're you know, you're living space. But this also made 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:11.400 me think about the way that for many leadership positions, 0:07:11.840 --> 0:07:14.840 there is a special house, there's a special dwelling place 0:07:14.920 --> 0:07:18.400 that comes with the job, rather than belonging to an individual. 0:07:18.880 --> 0:07:21.720 So here in Georgia we have the Governor's mansion, there 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.200 is the White House there, you know, the palace that 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.640 the king stays at in many cultures, and there's a 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:31.600 there's a strange metonomy that derives from this. Often the 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:35.240 house identified with the position of power is used as 0:07:35.280 --> 0:07:38.320 a metaphorical stand in for the person. You know, like 0:07:38.400 --> 0:07:42.160 today the White House said such that, like the permanent 0:07:42.200 --> 0:07:45.920 dwelling place is actually almost the source of the power, 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:49.000 and there just happens to be a particular person living 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:51.640 there right now. Yeah, it's weird. We get so used 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:54.400 to it because it's just part of our daily, um 0:07:55.280 --> 0:07:58.240 daily you know, linguistic world. You know, you can you 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:00.840 read the news, you read about these very as locations, 0:08:01.200 --> 0:08:03.640 these houses, and it's almost as if they have some 0:08:03.720 --> 0:08:06.520 sort of intrinsic power to them, right, I mean, if 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:09.200 you weren't familiar with their cultures, you would read this then, 0:08:09.320 --> 0:08:12.360 and people might think, oh, well, they they clearly thought 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:16.760 that this big white house had some sort of magical powers, 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:19.440 and whoever was allowed to go inside it became the 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.360 ruler of a country and got to do whatever they want. Yeah, 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:24.720 and it's funny that it's so normalized for us, like 0:08:24.720 --> 0:08:27.280 we've forgotten to notice that that's weird that like the 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:31.680 power is somehow linked to the house itself. Um. But 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:34.120 it also makes me wonder, you know, did we think 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:38.640 about power differently before living in artificially built environments? Yeah? 0:08:38.880 --> 0:08:42.080 To what extent did we? Um? Did we end up 0:08:42.160 --> 0:08:45.839 yet changing the way we live our lives by altering 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:48.120 this physical environment which we live. I mean, it makes sense, 0:08:48.200 --> 0:08:51.040 right because so much of what we do, you know, 0:08:51.120 --> 0:08:55.559 it's dictated by the environments that we evolved to thrive in. Right. 0:08:55.920 --> 0:08:57.720 So anyway, I don't think we need to remind everyone 0:08:57.720 --> 0:08:59.640 about the value of a home. Housing tends to be 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:02.280 one of, if not the most expensive parts of your life. 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:05.360 But it's it's interesting to think about them not simply 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.280 as this valuable thing in your life, for a valuable 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.400 location where your life takes place. The basic idea of 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:13.920 the house may be as old as our mastery of fire, 0:09:14.400 --> 0:09:18.480 and it forms out of and forms ideas of who 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:21.360 and what we are, and of course it may do 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:24.040 so in more and more powerful ways every year, as 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:29.080 humanity slowly transitions to become a more indoors e on 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:32.680 average species. All the time, I was reading some interesting 0:09:32.720 --> 0:09:35.720 figures about this trend in a book by the science 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:38.480 writer Emily and thus Uh And the book is called 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:42.280 The Great Indoors The Surprising Science of How Buildings shape 0:09:42.280 --> 0:09:45.520 our behavior, health, and happiness. This is a really interesting 0:09:45.559 --> 0:09:47.480 book and I'm going to refer to it throughout this 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:50.480 episode because she has an early chapter that's very good 0:09:50.520 --> 0:09:54.800 about the microbial ecology of indoor spaces. But she also 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:58.480 gets into some interesting territory about the trends in how 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:03.480 much built environment ment and floor space we're actually creating. Obviously, 0:10:03.520 --> 0:10:06.320 this currently varies a lot by culture and climate, but 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:09.720 in some parts of the world human kind is transitioned 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:14.240 to an almost entirely indoor existence. And this really shows 0:10:14.240 --> 0:10:17.360 in the way we've transformed our environments to convert to 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:21.280 this largely indoor existence. Anti writes, quote, the island of 0:10:21.360 --> 0:10:25.000 Manhattan is only twenty three square miles in size, but 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:30.360 has three times that much indoor floor space. And furthermore, 0:10:30.400 --> 0:10:33.320 she refers to a report put together by a United 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:38.200 Nations commission in which concluded that over the next forty years, 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:42.439 humankind is going to roughly double the amount of indoor 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:46.000 floor space that exists currently. And the way this works 0:10:46.000 --> 0:10:49.400 out is quote those additions are equivalent to building the 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:54.320 current floor area of Japan every single year from now 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:58.520 until that much floor is going to take a lot 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:02.640 of pin sall. Yeah, I mean it is crazy to 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:06.920 think about how certainly during pre pandemic times, you know, 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:10.360 you would you had this home, this interior space that 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:13.280 you live in, you sleep in, you bathe in, you 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:16.720 spend time in, and then uh, and it is, you know, 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:19.400 very much like the center of your life. And then 0:11:19.559 --> 0:11:23.000 you're getting into another interior space which happens to be 0:11:23.080 --> 0:11:26.800 motorized and on wheels, and use that to travel then 0:11:27.320 --> 0:11:31.120 a certain distance to another interior space that you'll go 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:33.880 into to work either set at a desk or you know, 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.520 work with some sort of machinery or what have you. Uh, 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:39.800 and then at the end of the day back into 0:11:39.920 --> 0:11:43.520 this motorized interior space and then return to the one 0:11:43.520 --> 0:11:47.440 in which you live it's worth remembering yet again, biologically speaking, 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:50.319 this is not normal. This is not like what our 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:54.480 bodies are naturally adapted to. Spending this much time indoors 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:59.720 is still fairly historically novel, and it is very weird. Yes. 0:12:00.480 --> 0:12:02.520 But the other big thing this is going to be 0:12:02.559 --> 0:12:04.960 a recurring theme throughout the rest of the episode, is 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:10.520 that these artificial spaces that we made, they are they're 0:12:10.559 --> 0:12:14.640 not completely alien, you know, they're they're constructed all of 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:17.920 the natural world. They're not the natural environment, but they 0:12:17.920 --> 0:12:20.840 are made out of it. And uh and and much 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:25.199 of the natural world is still present, just in um 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:30.560 rebalanced and unbalanced ways. Uh So that that is going 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:32.320 to be what we're going to really get into, Like 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:36.119 what in creating these interior spaces, what sort of environments 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:39.880 have we created? Right? Indoor spaces are not unnatural, and 0:12:40.000 --> 0:12:42.960 that they're completely separate from the rest of the world, 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:46.000 but they're also not just like outdoor spaces. They're kind 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:49.480 of like a special niche environment, like a like a 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:51.920 cliff face or an island. You know, it's a place 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:55.640 where you have to investigate. Okay, what kinds of life 0:12:55.880 --> 0:13:00.600 from around and other places are going to colonize this space. Yeah, 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:03.880 and and who are your roommates? Who are your inhuman 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.280 roommates in this space where you've been trapped uh these 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:09.840 past several months. Well, maybe we should take a break 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:11.360 and then when we come back we can start talking 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:18.559 about those in human roommates. Than alright, we're back, so U. 0:13:19.040 --> 0:13:23.120 Rob Donne, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina 0:13:23.120 --> 0:13:27.040 State University and Raleigh, wrote an excellent book titled Never 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:31.520 Home Alone. From Microbes to Millipedes, camel, crickets and honey bees, 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:34.600 then natural History of where we Live. That's a nice 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:36.800 long title. I know you'll be like those those long 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:40.679 colond titles. I want like a whole paragraph after the colon. 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:44.280 But it's it's as hard as I go. It's pretty 0:13:44.280 --> 0:13:47.120 good title. Anyway. It came out last October and it's 0:13:47.280 --> 0:13:49.719 currently available in all four mats. So however, you read 0:13:49.760 --> 0:13:52.400 your books. But I remember hearing an interview with the 0:13:52.440 --> 0:13:55.160 author around the time that came out, and I picked 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:57.400 it up for this episode because it's a yeah, it's 0:13:57.440 --> 0:13:59.640 it's it's just a very well written book and it 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:04.280 really gets into some just crazy mind bending facts about 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:06.960 these artificial environments, most of which we won't even really 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:09.280 be able to get into in this episode, but we 0:14:09.320 --> 0:14:11.960 wanted to touch on it. So if you look around 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:15.360 it's science papers, you'll find Dunn's name um all over 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:19.440 the place when it comes to this area of microbial life. 0:14:19.880 --> 0:14:21.840 For instance, he's the co author on a two thousand 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:26.480 eighteen paper that found that chimpanzee treetop beds, which are 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:31.080 like a daily affair, contained fewer microbes and arthropods than 0:14:31.240 --> 0:14:35.360 human beds, which is not shocking given again the the idea, 0:14:35.400 --> 0:14:38.600 there are beds that are kind of like set in place. Um, 0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:40.680 you know, we will change the sheets, but it's not 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.720 every night probably, whereas the chimps are going to be 0:14:43.760 --> 0:14:48.760 refreshing things a bit more. Also, of the bacteria in 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:52.360 human beds stem from our own bodies and includes fecal, oral, 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:54.800 and skin bacteria. Yeah. The way I heard it put, 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:57.080 because this is covered in anthesis book too, is that 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:00.760 with the with the human bed basic you're just gonna 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:04.000 find tons of human type stuff in it. But for 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:07.800 a chimpanzees bed, you will find you know, bugs, arthur 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:11.000 pods and microbes in in this bed, but they're almost 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:14.120 all from the surrounding environment. Uh, The way it was 0:15:14.120 --> 0:15:16.520 put was that you might not be able to tell 0:15:16.600 --> 0:15:20.800 that a chimpanzee had ever been there. Right, very strange. 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:24.200 But from anthesis book, there's uh So, there's a chapter 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:26.440 that discusses a lot of the work of the same researcher, 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.440 robbed On, the the ecologist at North Carolina State, but 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:32.560 also a researcher that he's collaborated with a lot named 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:37.120 Noah Fierre, who's a microbiologist at u C Boulder, And 0:15:37.360 --> 0:15:40.240 there's a part where it talks about a survey that 0:15:40.320 --> 0:15:44.160 they tried to conduct called the Wildlife of Our Homes Project. 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:47.280 There was a pilot study they started in North Carolina, 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:49.880 and so what they would do was they would get 0:15:49.920 --> 0:15:54.040 a bunch of families to take cotton swab samples of 0:15:54.120 --> 0:15:56.760 seven different surfaces from inside their homes. And this would 0:15:56.760 --> 0:16:00.480 include a countertop, a cutting board, a refrigerator or shelf, 0:16:00.640 --> 0:16:04.480 a pillow case, a toilet seat, a TV screen, and 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:09.400 then the trim around an interior doorway. And the results 0:16:09.400 --> 0:16:12.960 were interesting. They found more than two thousand types of 0:16:13.000 --> 0:16:17.480 microbes in these samples, and there were distinct microbial habitats 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:21.160 within the house. So perhaps on surprisingly kitchens would have 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:24.240 a lot of bacteria that are naturally associated with food 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:26.680 that might be you know, found on food or aid 0:16:26.720 --> 0:16:30.880 in the decomposition of food. Meanwhile, doorways would have a 0:16:30.880 --> 0:16:34.520 lot of environmental species stuff you might find outside the house, 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:36.560 you know, things you would find on plant leaves and 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:39.360 in the soil. But then this was the quote that 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.200 really stuck with me. And this writes quote from a 0:16:42.240 --> 0:16:47.840 microbiological perspective, toilet seats and pillow cases looked strikingly similar. 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:51.520 Both were dominated by bacteria that typically live on our 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:54.800 skin and in our mouths. All right, So that's that's 0:16:54.880 --> 0:16:57.400 kind of a shocking sounding statement. They might make you 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.320 want to instantly go and wash your pillow case and 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.480 maybe your toilet seat too. But but but hold on, 0:17:03.520 --> 0:17:05.600 wait till we get through the whole episode, because I 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.159 think one of the big take comes here is like, 0:17:08.200 --> 0:17:10.199 if you think that your pillow is going to be 0:17:10.680 --> 0:17:16.040 a microbial sterile um experience, you know you should think again, 0:17:16.160 --> 0:17:19.240 likewise with the toilet seat, likewise with anything in the house. 0:17:19.760 --> 0:17:21.640 So in Dunn's book, one of one of the things 0:17:21.680 --> 0:17:24.160 he drives home is that again our our house environments 0:17:24.200 --> 0:17:27.080 are again not natural environments, but they are made out 0:17:27.200 --> 0:17:30.120 of the natural environment, and they are not cut off 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:32.320 from the natural environment. So what we end up with 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:35.040 is an artificial environment that kind of mashes up all 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:39.640 of these various environmental parameters, sometimes in surprising ways, especially 0:17:39.640 --> 0:17:42.600 when it comes to microbes, because if we as we've 0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:45.280 discussed on the show plenty of times before, there is 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:48.840 no microbe free living. Our bodies, independent of anything else, 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.399 are home to multitudes of microbes. To come back to 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:54.800 a quote that we've pulled up on the show in 0:17:54.840 --> 0:17:57.960 discussion in the past, in a Life in a World 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:01.600 without Microbes by Gilbert and Newfeld bushed in Plist biology, 0:18:01.640 --> 0:18:04.280 the authors contend that quote it would be false to 0:18:04.320 --> 0:18:08.800 claim that macroscopic life cannot exist without microbes. However, although 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:11.520 life would persist in the absence of microbes, both the 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:15.840 quantity and quality of life would be reduced drastically. So 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:18.439 Done points out that even the outer layer of our 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:22.959 skin is just this rich microbial environment. Our armpit bacteria 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:27.760 are essentially fed by glands, nurturing what has likely been 0:18:27.960 --> 0:18:32.399 an historically important microbe passenger, and we can we can 0:18:32.440 --> 0:18:34.199 look at this as an example of the sort of 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:37.320 microbe that then thrives in our creative environments. We tend 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:41.520 to find the same bacteria that that that thrives in 0:18:41.520 --> 0:18:45.040 our under arms living in our homes, especially homes where 0:18:45.080 --> 0:18:48.199 males live. If there's like a predominantly male population of 0:18:48.200 --> 0:18:51.320 a household, you will find this particular bacterium. I believe 0:18:51.320 --> 0:18:58.160 it's uh corn a bacterium, just thriving Coriina bacterium, Corina bacterium. Yes. Yeah, 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:01.320 So this thing about the sex composition of the household 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:05.240 versus the household microbiome was also mentioned in anthesis book, 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:08.719 and it's very interesting. So, just as you say, homes 0:19:08.720 --> 0:19:12.159 with more male residents tend to have higher counts of 0:19:12.600 --> 0:19:16.720 bacteria such as Rosa burria and this is commonly a 0:19:16.760 --> 0:19:21.359 gut bacteria, as well as Karina bacterium and Derma bacter 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:24.200 and uh at. This points out that these are most 0:19:24.240 --> 0:19:27.960 common on the skin. Now, Coarina Bacterium is often found 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:30.159 in the armpit. As you say, it is a contributor 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:32.760 to body odor. But also it's been found that just 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:36.280 on average, men tend to have more Coarina bacteria on 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:39.720 their skin than women do, and men tend to shed 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.640 more skin microbes into the environment than women do. And 0:19:43.680 --> 0:19:46.439 then on the other hand, households that have more women 0:19:46.480 --> 0:19:49.600 living in them tend to have higher counts of Lactobacillus, 0:19:49.720 --> 0:19:52.960 which is our old friend from the fermentation episode. I 0:19:53.040 --> 0:19:56.240 don't know if this translates to a workable difference, maybe not, 0:19:56.480 --> 0:19:59.000 but it makes me wonder if it's possible that houses 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:01.760 occupied by high a numbers of women might be a 0:20:01.800 --> 0:20:05.960 better place to make sauerkraut. Interesting to some to think about, 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:08.680 but sort of what this suggests is that humans are 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:13.840 walking fountains of microbes. We we shed our microbial passengers 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:16.800 everywhere we go, and it turns out this can be 0:20:16.880 --> 0:20:21.720 kind of quantified to creepy levels. So consider this. No 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:26.480 two people's microbiomes are exactly the same. Each person is 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:30.359 a unique ecosystem. So if everybody has their own unique 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:35.000 profile of microbiota, and everybody is shedding microbial life all 0:20:35.080 --> 0:20:39.720 the time, are we essentially leaving identifiable microbial evidence of 0:20:39.720 --> 0:20:42.320 our presence everywhere we go, you know, kind of the 0:20:42.920 --> 0:20:47.520 slug trail of our microbiome all over the place. And 0:20:47.560 --> 0:20:50.359 the answer appears to be kind of yeah. And this 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:53.200 reports one study led by Jack Gilbert at the University 0:20:53.200 --> 0:20:55.159 of Chicago. I think that might be the Gilbert of 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:58.600 the Gilbert and Neufeld study that you mentioned a minute ago. 0:20:59.359 --> 0:21:02.760 But it follows three families that were in the process 0:21:02.800 --> 0:21:06.000 of moving into new homes. And what Gilbert and colleagues 0:21:06.040 --> 0:21:11.560 found was that each family began to colonize the new 0:21:11.560 --> 0:21:16.480 house with their microbes within just hours of arriving there. Uh. 0:21:16.520 --> 0:21:20.400 And that the researchers quote could even detect the individual 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:25.440 microbial contributions of each family member. Uh. And then Gilbert says, 0:21:25.760 --> 0:21:28.960 people who spent more time in the kitchen, their microbiome 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:32.360 dominated that space. People who spent more time in the bedroom, 0:21:32.560 --> 0:21:37.280 their microbiome dominated there. You could start to forensically identify 0:21:37.440 --> 0:21:44.240 their movement. Oh wow, So this makes one try to 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:50.639 imagine like lawne order microbiology. Yes, surveillance biotech. But to 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:54.400 come back to to Rob Dunn's example about Corina bacteria 0:21:54.480 --> 0:21:57.320 in homes, especially where males live. You you had an 0:21:57.320 --> 0:22:01.400 interesting thing about that. Yeah, he brings up a very 0:22:01.400 --> 0:22:05.880 curious case of an interior environment intier home that had 0:22:05.920 --> 0:22:09.000 a predominantly certainly at the time of the study, had 0:22:09.000 --> 0:22:14.200 a predominantly male um population. And that is the international 0:22:14.320 --> 0:22:18.439 Space Station. So this was basically there was a study 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:23.040 of the micro buyouta one finds inside the I S S. 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:26.240 This was conducted in two thousand thirteen by Jonathan I. Sen, 0:22:26.400 --> 0:22:30.080 a microbiologist at U C. Davis. So the the I 0:22:30.320 --> 0:22:33.080 S S, done rights, is very much like a house 0:22:33.119 --> 0:22:36.560 on Earth. Quote, in nearly every way, the bacteria of 0:22:36.600 --> 0:22:38.760 the I S S are the sorts of bacteria we 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:41.119 would expect in a house on Earth if all the 0:22:41.240 --> 0:22:44.720 environmental influences were removed. I S S is what you 0:22:44.840 --> 0:22:47.920 get when you scrub and scrub and close the windows, 0:22:47.960 --> 0:22:50.679 doors and hatches. So the I S S might be 0:22:50.760 --> 0:22:53.600 kind of like a very well scrub department in a 0:22:53.720 --> 0:22:56.600 high rise in a big city. Yeah, I mean there's 0:22:56.640 --> 0:23:01.320 there's no outside to get inside, right, UM mean immediately, 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:04.480 so obviously, um stuff can be brought up. But anyway, 0:23:05.160 --> 0:23:09.080 Done also points out that in this study of ISS microbes, quote, 0:23:09.280 --> 0:23:14.080 everything was everywhere, the interior was just coded in human 0:23:14.080 --> 0:23:17.639 bacteria and nothing from outside was getting in. Obviously. He 0:23:17.720 --> 0:23:20.480 points out that in a small traditional home made out 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:23.600