Speaker 1: Hey everyone, it's Mango here. With summer winding down, we
Speaker 1: are taking a little break, but we will be back
Speaker 1: with brand new episodes starting September ninth, and we have
Speaker 1: been working hard on so many fun episodes this summer.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait for you to listen to them. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, we are re airing our countdown of the
Speaker 1: twenty five greatest science ideas of the past twenty five years.
Speaker 1: This list was so joyous to make. Mary and Gabe
Speaker 1: did all this extra research for it. We pulled in
Speaker 1: contributors for various places. We got incredible songs written for
Speaker 1: the show. The whole thing is bizarre and delightful and
Speaker 1: fascinating and joyous, and honestly, I just hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: it half as much as we enjoyed making it. Let's
Speaker 1: dig in. You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production
Speaker 1: of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2: What's that? Mango.
Speaker 1: We've been counting down the twenty five best science ideas
Speaker 1: of the past twenty five years, and today is exact phonology.
Speaker 2: This is it.
Speaker 3: We have four stories left, which makes me feel a
Speaker 3: little weird that we didn't do exactly five in every episode.
Speaker 2: But I've somehow moved on from that, and.
Speaker 3: To give you a sense of what's coming today, let's
Speaker 3: say that you'll never look at a mosquito, a mushroom,
Speaker 3: or a wet.
Speaker 2: Book the same way.
Speaker 3: Again, you thought you were always going to look at
Speaker 3: those things the same way. And if you're unlucky enough
Speaker 3: to have a roommate or a partner who snores, guess what,
Speaker 3: we have found a way to fix that.
Speaker 1: Amazing, So I hope you guys are as excited as
Speaker 1: we are. Let's dive in.
Speaker 3: Hey, their podcast listener is welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 3: I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my
Speaker 3: good friend Mangesh hot Ticketter.
Speaker 2: And over there in the booth icing an enormous cake.
Speaker 2: Like enormous, does it even do it justice?
Speaker 3: It is a gigantic That is our palain producer Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 2: I had no idea Dylan was a pastry.
Speaker 1: Chef for me either, but that is one beautiful cake.
Speaker 1: There's writing on it too, It says make sure you're
Speaker 1: subscribed to Part Time Genius on your favorite podcast app
Speaker 1: and if you like the show, please leave us a
Speaker 1: five star rating and review. Yeah, which is impressible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it looks I think it says Johnyus part time Johnnius. Anyways,
Speaker 3: close enough. We appreciate the gesture there. Wrote it all
Speaker 3: in frosting wine.
Speaker 1: No, Paul Hollywood could never.
Speaker 3: All right, Mango, be honest. Have you ever spilled something
Speaker 3: on a book or an important document?
Speaker 4: Not?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I was hoping for you to say yes
Speaker 2: at some.
Speaker 3: Point, But you've never spilled coffee or like wine on
Speaker 3: a book or something like that.
Speaker 1: No, I am one, I'm not really that clumsy. But two,
Speaker 1: I'm actually super paranoid about that type of thing. So
Speaker 1: like when I have a glass, I tend to keep
Speaker 1: my books and my liquid separate. My kids and my
Speaker 1: wife do spill a lot of things, so I am
Speaker 1: cleaning up a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: Okay, Okay, Well, our next great idea will definitely help
Speaker 3: you out in those situations as well. As librarians are
Speaker 3: conservators who have had to rescue water logged materials, And
Speaker 3: is there a.
Speaker 2: Lot of that? More than you'd imagine.
Speaker 3: Actually, I think of burst pipes or flooding or damage
Speaker 3: caused by sprinklers, if there's a fire in the building,
Speaker 3: and wet paper is really hard to dry out. You
Speaker 3: can blot it, you can freeze dried, you can put
Speaker 3: it in front of fans. But these techniques are time
Speaker 3: consuming and laborious, and so if you're not careful, you
Speaker 3: can wind up with mildew or pages that end up rippling.
Speaker 1: And so someone came up with a better way to
Speaker 1: dry these books.
Speaker 3: Actually, someone came up with the best way to drive books.
Speaker 2: His name is Nicky Jaeger, and he is a.
Speaker 3: Rare books librarian, a conservator, and an artist who's had
Speaker 3: a long and colorful career in the world of papers.
Speaker 3: So back in two thousand and two, a friend put
Speaker 3: him in touch with a woman named Kate Hayes, who
Speaker 3: was an information specialist with the USDA's National Agricultural Library.
Speaker 3: She'd been thinking about soggy paper ever since she'd heard
Speaker 3: that millions of Pentagon documents got soaked on nine to
Speaker 3: eleven when all the sprinkler systems turned on, and she
Speaker 3: remember the substance that was used in agriculture to help
Speaker 3: seeds germinate in dry soil. It's a cornstarch based polymer
Speaker 3: called and I'm not making this up, super Slurper and
Speaker 3: this stuff holds five hundred times its weight and water,
Speaker 3: so it could dry anything out right. She just needed
Speaker 3: someone with a conservation expertise to figure out how it
Speaker 3: could be applied to paper. So we talked to Nicky
Speaker 3: on the phone and he told us that he was
Speaker 3: intrigued by the idea. So we asked Kate Hayes to
Speaker 3: mail him some super slurper, which looked a lot like sawdust,
Speaker 3: and when it arrived, she gave him a call and
Speaker 3: he tested it out while they were talking.
Speaker 4: So I walk over to the sink and put a
Speaker 4: book under the faucet soak about fifty sixty seventy pages.
Speaker 4: I take a handful of this flake and I throw
Speaker 4: it into the middle of the wettest part of the book.
Speaker 4: Close the book, put it in the screw press, and
Speaker 4: talk for another minute. Pull it out, and twenty pages
Speaker 4: on either side of it or bone dry. I mean,
Speaker 4: they're not like humid, they're dry. And that's what five
Speaker 4: hundred times is waiting water will do. I'm like, this
Speaker 4: stuff is amazing. We got to do something.
Speaker 3: Kate agreed to help NICKI get a federal research agreement
Speaker 3: to turn super Slurper into a viable paper conservation product.
Speaker 2: But right away there were challenges.
Speaker 3: For one thing, the super Slurper turned into a goo
Speaker 3: in the crevices of wet books, and the sawdust like
Speaker 3: flakes made dense in the paper as it dried. So
Speaker 3: he solved that first problem by just sandwiching a layer
Speaker 3: of the polymer between sheets of lab grade filtration paper,
Speaker 3: and after destroying a coffee grinder trying to turn the
Speaker 3: flakes into dust, he tracked down a manufacturer that sold
Speaker 3: a powdered.
Speaker 2: Version of the super Slurper.
Speaker 3: But then the question was how do you keep this
Speaker 3: fine powder contained in its envelope of filter paper?
Speaker 4: And somebody eventually said something about diapers, and I went, oh, yeah.
Speaker 3: Nikki checked out some diaper making equipment, but he realized
Speaker 3: that diapers are engineered to hold liquid in without ever
Speaker 3: letting it out. They use an adhesive that lets the
Speaker 3: absorbent filling blow up when it gets wet, and then
Speaker 3: it stays puffy. Super Slurper couldn't do that. It had
Speaker 3: to dry flat so it wouldn't damage book spines. Eventually,
Speaker 3: after a ton of trial and error, he figured out
Speaker 3: how to assemble sheets of super Slurper designed for rescuing
Speaker 3: wet books. He used the jury rigged silk screen to
Speaker 3: distribute the powder on the envelopes of filter paper coated
Speaker 3: with an industrial adhesive that allowed the stuff to swell
Speaker 3: up just enough to hold water before going flat as
Speaker 3: it dried. Plus, he left a precise border at the
Speaker 3: edge of the paper so the slurper wouldn't ooze out,
Speaker 3: sort of like an over stuffed PBNJ.
Speaker 1: I mean this all sounds so time consuming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is taking years. He's bouncing around rented
Speaker 3: commercial workspaces and USDA research labs, getting by with small grants.
Speaker 3: It was slow going, but he was homing in on
Speaker 3: the details that would make his product, which he decided
Speaker 3: to call zorbiks, work just right now. The problem now
Speaker 3: was finding a way to manufacture this stuff instead of
Speaker 3: pasting it together by hand. But the industrial experts he
Speaker 3: spoke with didn't understand the science of zorbis or books
Speaker 3: the way Nikki did.
Speaker 4: Every engineer I spoke to for ten years kept trying
Speaker 4: to re engineer it to their standards. No one was
Speaker 4: able to comprehend all of my very specific needs and challenges,
Speaker 4: and in answering their questions, I was learning myself what
Speaker 4: the form had to be and why it had to
Speaker 4: be the way it was. So during that period I
Speaker 4: also figured out that if I put the sheets of
Speaker 4: zorbis about every twenty or thirty pages, then I'm not
Speaker 4: swelling the spine of the book. I'm not increasing the
Speaker 4: books interior space such that it ruins the spine.
Speaker 2: Now, the other problem was money.
Speaker 3: So by two thousand and nine he'd built up a
Speaker 3: small customer base of librarians and conservation experts. People in
Speaker 3: the book business knew the value of zorbix, but finance
Speaker 3: guys couldn't quite get it.
Speaker 4: I'd managed to get a couple of people investing in this.
Speaker 4: I was able to manufacture small batches of it by hand,
Speaker 4: and whenever any library saw this stuff, they loved it.
Speaker 4: They were like, this stuff is great, But I had
Speaker 4: a hard time describing how it was useful. Like I
Speaker 4: tried to go in front of Angel investors, but Northern
Speaker 4: California is a high tech industry and this is essentially
Speaker 4: below tech, and nobody understood the importance. So I'd done
Speaker 4: research on how many books get wet in a year.
Speaker 4: There's over two million books a year in libraries that
Speaker 4: get wet from non catastrophic floods, water breaks, leaking roof,
Speaker 4: spilling coffee, whatever. Went to these investors and they were like, well,
Speaker 4: that's two million books, that's not that big a deal.
Speaker 3: He ended up having to take a warehouse job to
Speaker 3: support himself while he continued looking for ways to mass
Speaker 3: produce sorbis, all while keeping up with the orders he
Speaker 3: was getting from librarians. By twenty fifteen, he had hit
Speaker 3: a wall.
Speaker 4: I called all of my investor and I said, I'm done.
Speaker 4: It's you know, it's from two thousand and two to
Speaker 4: twenty fifteen. I just I can't do this anymore. And
Speaker 4: they went, yeah, well, you prove feasibility, you got a mark,
Speaker 4: you built the machine, you wrote the patent, you got
Speaker 4: a market. It just didn't succeed financially, but just suceeded
Speaker 4: in every other way. So I said, all right, I'm
Speaker 4: going to celebrate my failure and I went on a
Speaker 4: motorcycle trip around the country.
Speaker 3: On his way through ann Arbor, he stopped to say
Speaker 3: hi to one of his longtime customers, Shannon Zachary, the
Speaker 3: head of conservation and book repair at the University of Michigan,
Speaker 3: and he told her about his decision.
Speaker 4: She goes, what, He goes, see the stack of book series? Yeah,
Speaker 4: she said, we had a flood in our rare book vault.
Speaker 4: It was a water leak and we had all of
Speaker 4: this mostly nineteenth and twenty a century kind of avant
Speaker 4: garde types of materials. They couldn't freeze dry and they
Speaker 4: had to be flat. She goes, that stack is the
Speaker 4: last stack of these, you know, seven hundred books or
Speaker 4: whatever it was. And we used zorbis and was great.
Speaker 4: I said I can't keep going. I need ten grand
Speaker 4: just to buy a paper. She goes, oh, well, you
Speaker 4: can't go out of business.
Speaker 3: Shannon rallied the conservation community to place ten thousand dollars
Speaker 3: worth of orders back home in California. Nicky got to
Speaker 3: work fulfilling them by hand. He plugged away in a
Speaker 3: Bay Area industrial building with no heat, sharing the space
Speaker 3: with a bunch of burning Man fans who were there
Speaker 3: building art carts for the plyout, and he set up
Speaker 3: his fourteen foot modified screen printing system, his racks, his
Speaker 3: stock of filter paper, and powdered super slurper. He covered
Speaker 3: it all with plastic sheeting because the roof was leaking.
Speaker 3: No but he was still no closer to getting Zorbis
Speaker 3: into a proper manufacturing system. After a while, he looked
Speaker 3: around and was like, why am I still doing this?
Speaker 3: You can imagine the frustration.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Do you know what the difference between being stubborn and
Speaker 4: perseverant is? Well, stubborn is what they say about you
Speaker 4: when you're doing something and it doesn't look like it's
Speaker 4: going anywhere. When they write about it after you succeeded,
Speaker 4: they say you were perseverant, and I just said I'm stubborn.
Speaker 4: Time to quit?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess that is part of science, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes the world just doesn't make space for great ideas.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty much how Nickki felt. So he called
Speaker 3: up an old friend from the book world who agreed
Speaker 3: to buy the business, but that guy got busy with
Speaker 3: other projects. So Zorbix, this incredibly complicated, beautifully simple way
Speaker 3: to save what books, was put on the back burner.
Speaker 3: That means it's been a long time since any Zorbis
Speaker 3: was produced, but since it's reusable, it is actually still
Speaker 3: out there. So we heard from one conservator who's hung
Speaker 3: onto her sheets for years because she says it's just
Speaker 3: so good at what it does. It's pretty amazing. So
Speaker 3: where does this all stand now? Well, there may end
Speaker 3: up being a happy ending to this story. So right
Speaker 3: before we recorded episode, actually got an email from Nikki
Speaker 3: who said that talking to us reignited his passion for
Speaker 3: the project. He's decided to start writing the story of
Speaker 3: Zorbis for his blog and put some demos on YouTube
Speaker 3: so more people can see how it works. He's thinking
Speaker 3: maybe it can turn into sort of an open source effort.
Speaker 3: And here's some even more good news. He was kind
Speaker 3: enough to mail us some sheets of zorbix from his
Speaker 3: personal stash and we're giving them away today on Instagram.
Speaker 3: So people are going to go start spelling stuff in
Speaker 3: order to be able to use it day right, So
Speaker 3: go follow us at Part Time Genius and find out
Speaker 3: how you can win some zorbis.
Speaker 1: That is pretty cool. Hey, listeners, do not go anywhere.
Speaker 1: We've got to pause for a quick break. But there
Speaker 1: is so much weird science waiting on the other side.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about
Speaker 1: the twenty five greatest science ideas of the last twenty
Speaker 1: five years. If you've ever gone hiking or camping in
Speaker 1: the US or even if you've just tried to enjoy
Speaker 1: a nightcap on your Porsche, chances are you've had an
Speaker 1: annoying encounter with a mosquito. But that's usually all it is,
Speaker 1: an annoyance. Now, in other parts of the world, mosquitoes
Speaker 1: are a serious health risk. In fact, the CDC calls
Speaker 1: them the world's deadliest animal. About a million people die
Speaker 1: for mosquito born illnesses each year. For example, despite all
Speaker 1: the progress we've made with malaria, the WHO reports that
Speaker 1: there were two hundred and sixty three million cases and
Speaker 1: five hundred and ninety seven thousand deaths in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: Then there are diseases like Dengey, which are not often
Speaker 1: lethal but can make you really really ill. Actually, when
Speaker 1: I was recording my other podcast, Cal and Drive, my
Speaker 1: aunt and uncle in India caught it and it truly
Speaker 1: sounded miserable. But the worst part is mosquito borne illness
Speaker 1: is on the rise worldwide, and here in the US
Speaker 1: we're actually starting to see more cases of West Nile
Speaker 1: virus zeka and denke. So why is this problem getting worse?
Speaker 1: Climate change is a big part of it, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: as temperatures rise and places get more humid, it's a
Speaker 1: literal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Also the lack of adequate
Speaker 1: healthcare infrastructure in many parts of the world as a factor.
Speaker 1: But the other problem is money. Like in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: the WHO and it's partners set a target of eight
Speaker 1: point three billion to battle malaria around the globe, but
Speaker 1: total investment only reached about four billions, so partners on
Speaker 1: the ground couldn't buy enough essential gear like things that
Speaker 1: are pretty simple like mosquito nets, also medicines and insecticides,
Speaker 1: which is why the next breakthrough is both hilarious and exciting.
Speaker 1: So in twenty nineteen, a multinational team of researchers from Malaysia, Thailand, Japan,
Speaker 1: and Indonesia discovered that exposing mosquitoes to music can disorient
Speaker 1: them enough to attack less and breathe less too.
Speaker 3: So you just crank up the tunes and the mosquitoes
Speaker 3: kind of freak out and people are less likely to
Speaker 3: get bitten or how does it work?
Speaker 1: Yes, so, I mean the study puts it in much
Speaker 1: more official scientific terms, but yeah, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 3: So is there is there a type of music that's
Speaker 3: more effective than another?
Speaker 1: In fact, will there was a particular song that they used.
Speaker 1: This study used the twenty ten dubstuff Smash Scary Monsters
Speaker 1: and nice sprites by scrilling cryllics.
Speaker 2: Right, that's a scrillics hit.
Speaker 1: Here is a little reminder of what it sounds like,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure takes you back to your MySpace days, right.
Speaker 1: But for mosquitos, there's no nostalgia, just confusion. So here's
Speaker 1: how the experiment worked. The researchers restrained a hamster in
Speaker 1: a mesh cage, then unleashed ten hungry mosquitoes, and they
Speaker 1: used the stopwat to track how long it took the
Speaker 1: bugs to start biting and how many times they bit
Speaker 1: the hamster. So, when Scrillis wasn't playing, some of the
Speaker 1: mosquitos started biting just after twenty one seconds in the cage,
Speaker 1: and individual mosquitos bit the hamster as many as eleven
Speaker 1: times and ten minutes. But when the music was playing,
Speaker 1: they didn't start biting until at least sixty nine seconds
Speaker 1: had passed, and the highest number of bites from a
Speaker 1: single mosquito was seven. They also found that mosquitos exposed
Speaker 1: to the song were slower to initiate mating.
Speaker 2: Wow, so what do we think is the science behind
Speaker 2: all of this.
Speaker 1: Research suggests that noise causes stress in insects, like enough
Speaker 1: to change their normal behavior. The other thing that might
Speaker 1: be causing delayed biting is the vibration from the sound. Now,
Speaker 1: in the scrillics study, the scientists were careful to set
Speaker 1: up their equipment so the speaker wasn't touching the cage.
Speaker 1: But all sound is vibration, right, And it turns out
Speaker 1: that the mosquitoes have to make a whole series of
Speaker 1: super precise calculations before they suck your blood. First, they
Speaker 1: need to locate you, then they robe for a suitable
Speaker 1: blood vessel. Then they insert their style it which is
Speaker 1: actually what it's called, and grip your skin while they feed.
Speaker 1: And it seems like consistent vibration. So the kind you
Speaker 1: might experience in the twenty ten Dubsteps Smash scary monsters
Speaker 1: and nice sprites can really throw these calculations off. There
Speaker 1: was another study in twenty eighteen where some researchers played
Speaker 1: acdc's back in black to a group of beetles and
Speaker 1: it reduced their feeding as well.
Speaker 3: And when you say group of beetles, I assume you're
Speaker 3: talking about insects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think ACDC would stop Ringo and Paul
Speaker 1: from eating their dinners, But at any rate, it's amazing
Speaker 1: to think that blasting music could someday be part of
Speaker 1: an affordable and effective global mosquito control strategy.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, at the risk of branding myself as
Speaker 3: the fungus guy, and I'm always nervous about this, I'm
Speaker 3: championing another fungal breakthrough for our accountant. H huh, and
Speaker 3: this one has to do with their eating habits. So
Speaker 3: for a long time now, we've known that fungi are
Speaker 3: basically the garbage disposals of the natural world, eli practically
Speaker 3: anything from the wood of a violin to asbestos to
Speaker 3: even jet fuel, which is super weird. In fact, there
Speaker 3: are now at least four different species of marine fungus
Speaker 3: that can even break down carbon based polyethylene, the most
Speaker 3: pervasive form of plastic waste in the Earth's oceans.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome.
Speaker 2: But as helpful as all.
Speaker 3: Of this is from a human perspective, there is one
Speaker 3: dish on the fungal menu whose consumption stands to benefit
Speaker 3: us the most, and that's actually radiation.
Speaker 1: I feel like I've heard about this, right, it's some
Speaker 1: kind of black fungus at Chernobyl.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: And years after the nineteen eighty six meltdown, scientists discovered
Speaker 3: patches of black fungus growing on the walls of the
Speaker 3: Number four reactor. Surprisingly, the fungi seemed to be growing
Speaker 3: toward the various sources of radiation, and as later studies showed,
Speaker 3: it actually thrived the most where the radiation was highest. Now,
Speaker 3: for a long time, nobody knew how the fungus had
Speaker 3: managed to survive much less flourish, But in two thousand
Speaker 3: and seven, two researchers at New York's Albert Einstein College
Speaker 3: of Medicine shed some light on the subject. The study
Speaker 3: revealed that the fungus had not only adapted to what
Speaker 3: would normally be seen as a lethal level of radiation,
Speaker 3: it also developed a way to feed on the radiation
Speaker 3: as a way to fuel its own growth, kind of
Speaker 3: like the fungal equivalent of photosynthesis. The fungus absorbed the
Speaker 3: radiation and then processed it harmlessly to produce usable energy,
Speaker 3: just like a plant does with sunlight.
Speaker 1: That's pretty amazing, So so what's their trick?
Speaker 3: Well, the secret turned out to be the fung guy's
Speaker 3: melanin content, the pigment responsible for its dark coloring. These
Speaker 3: researchers that I mentioned, Ekaterina Dottakova and Arturo Castovol, discovered
Speaker 3: that exposure to radiation had changed the shape of the
Speaker 3: black fung guiy's melanin molecule, making it much more effective
Speaker 3: at processing radiation than fungal strains that don't contain melanin.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. We've talked about melanin twice on this yeah,
Speaker 1: this series. So does that adaptation exist in other strains
Speaker 1: of black fungi or is it just the one that's
Speaker 1: found at Chernobyl. Now we actually know of a few
Speaker 1: different strains that can do this. Now they're called radiotrophic fungi,
Speaker 1: and the hope is that we can use them to
Speaker 1: help contain and possibly reduce radiation levels and other contaminated
Speaker 1: sites around the world. Now, to be clear, the fungi's
Speaker 1: abilities could have useful applications in far less extreme places
Speaker 1: than nuclear disaster sites. For example, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of medical and manufacturing devices that safely use smaller levels
Speaker 1: of radiation. These can be treated with radiotrophic fungus to
Speaker 1: further protect workers from ambient radiation, or maybe help to
Speaker 1: power them, since the fungus produces energy. There's also a
Speaker 1: chance that we could someday harness the genes possible for
Speaker 1: the fungi's resilience to radiation, and then use them to
Speaker 1: create other materials with the same ability. In the meantime, though,
Speaker 1: NASA scientists have already fast tracked another important use for
Speaker 1: the black fungus protecting astronauts from cosmic radiation. That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I sometimes forget. In addition to the lack of oxygen,
Speaker 1: spaces radioactive. So you know, whether you're walking out in
Speaker 1: a spacesuit or chilling inside the rocket, you're being hit
Speaker 1: with some level of radiation.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, it's not exactly a hospitable environment for humans
Speaker 3: up there. And the same strain found that Chernobyl was
Speaker 3: sent to the International Space Station back in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: and the experiment conducted with it showed that the fungus
Speaker 3: was able to block some of the incoming radiation. The
Speaker 3: finding could have major implications for future missions, including long
Speaker 3: term voyages in a deep space where radiation levels could
Speaker 3: be much higher. If further studies pan out, astronauts could
Speaker 3: soon be wearing suits and living in habitats shielded with
Speaker 3: the layer of this protective fungus.
Speaker 1: That's really an incredible journey from like the soil to
Speaker 1: chernobyl to outer space. Like it's a pretty huge evolution. Okay, listeners,
Speaker 1: you've got to pay for the show with some ads,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back after this quick break. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking the twenty
Speaker 1: five greatest science ideas of the last twenty five years,
Speaker 1: and we're up to number what, Well, this is it
Speaker 1: our last story of the countdown, Dylan, can we get
Speaker 1: a drum roll for lease?
Speaker 2: All right, let's do it, mango.
Speaker 3: What is the number one best science idea of the
Speaker 3: past twenty five years?
Speaker 1: So this comes from a two thousand and six study
Speaker 1: published in the British Medical Journal concerning the treatment of
Speaker 1: obstructive sleep apnea or OSA. And this is a huge deal.
Speaker 1: According to the National Council on Aging, nearly a billion
Speaker 1: adults worldwide are thought to have at least a mild
Speaker 1: case of OSA.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I know most of us have heard of
Speaker 3: sleep apnea, but let's take a minute just remind me
Speaker 3: what it does exactly.
Speaker 1: The condition occurs when the upper airway in the throat
Speaker 1: collapses during sleep, and this blocks the sleeper's airflow and
Speaker 1: causes their breathing to repeatedly stop and start. So you know,
Speaker 1: it results in like snoring, gasping, sometimes choking. Not to
Speaker 1: mention sleep deprivation and not getting enough sleep really has
Speaker 1: serious health consequences. Lack of sleep is linked to diabetes,
Speaker 1: heart disease, plus mental health problems like brain fog, irritability, anxiety,
Speaker 1: and even depression. But luckily, a team of Swiss researchers
Speaker 1: came up with a treatment for sleep apnea that is
Speaker 1: totally safe and proven to work. It involves a medical
Speaker 1: device that produces a very distinctive sound. So I just
Speaker 1: want to play a clip of it for you in
Speaker 1: your headphones and see if you can place it.
Speaker 2: Wait, is that a digital?
Speaker 1: Do? I mean? What else could it be? That one
Speaker 1: of a kind drone sound right there is pretty incredible?
Speaker 3: All right, So that's cool and all, But how does
Speaker 3: listening to it help with sleep apnea?
Speaker 1: Listening to it probably won't help. The sound has been
Speaker 1: found to promote relaxation and reduce stress in sight people.
Speaker 1: But the real medical marvel comes from playing the instrument. Now,
Speaker 1: according to this two thousand and six study, the airway
Speaker 1: collapses associated with sleep apnea can be caused by a
Speaker 1: variety of factors, ranging from obesity, to alcohol consumption to
Speaker 1: simply having a large tongue. But whatever the case, the
Speaker 1: key to treating them is to find a way to
Speaker 1: keep that airway open at all times. Now, the traditional
Speaker 1: way to do that is with a seapat machine. This
Speaker 1: treatment uses a machine to deliver a steady stream of
Speaker 1: air pressure through a mask so that the soft tissues
Speaker 1: and the wearer's throat won't close in and block the airway.
Speaker 3: I guess that's kind of like one of those inflatable
Speaker 3: tube guys at the car dealerships right picture those.
Speaker 1: I guess so. But the problem is seapap machines are expensive,
Speaker 1: they're bulky, they're cumbersome, and nearly half of all people
Speaker 1: prescribe these machines by their doctors eventually quit using them. Plus,
Speaker 1: the machines make a worrying white and ie sound, which
Speaker 1: some people will find soothing but would drive me nuts.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's not nearly as soothing as a digital do Well.
Speaker 1: Again, listening to a digitido will not help you. But
Speaker 1: these Swiss researchers found that playing the digitaldoo or the
Speaker 1: ditch as those of us in the no Call, it
Speaker 1: is actually a great way to strenthen the muscles of
Speaker 1: the upper airway. And the key to that is the
Speaker 1: circular breathing technique used by wind instrumentalists. This allows them
Speaker 1: to create a continuous, uninterrupted tone by inhaling through the
Speaker 1: nose while maintaining airflow through the instrument. Now, this is
Speaker 1: a tricky technique to master because you kind of have
Speaker 1: to alternate back and forth between stored air in your
Speaker 1: cheeks and air brought into the lungs through the nose. Amazingly,
Speaker 1: it's actually how the wrapper black thought from the roots
Speaker 1: can wrap like ten minutes straight without sounding like he's
Speaker 1: taking a big gas for air, and he has like
Speaker 1: a steady flow. But once you've mastered the method through
Speaker 1: daily practice, the muscles in your tongue and throat will
Speaker 1: be much stronger and your upper airway will be much
Speaker 1: less likely to collapse.
Speaker 3: It's super interesting, but I'm curious that, like, how do
Speaker 3: the researchers figure this out? Like what made them think
Speaker 3: that digidoo might have an effect on sleep apnea.
Speaker 1: So according to the study, they were tipped off by
Speaker 1: a dijidoo instructor who happened to suffer from sleep apne himself,
Speaker 1: and he reported that he and a few of his
Speaker 1: students snored less and weren't as tired during the daytime
Speaker 1: after practicing with the instrument for several months, and that
Speaker 1: convinced the team to take a closer look. So they
Speaker 1: recruited twenty five people, all of whom had a moderate
Speaker 1: sleep apnea, gave them several weeks of lessons on how
Speaker 1: to play, and then had them commit to practicing daily
Speaker 1: for about four months. And so, how could they tell
Speaker 1: whether it was working? So they used several different measures
Speaker 1: to gauge the results, but the primary outcome was something
Speaker 1: called the Epworth scale, which measures daytime sleepiness from zero
Speaker 1: to twenty four. Now, the average Epworth score at the
Speaker 1: start of the trial was eleven point eight, so pretty
Speaker 1: much in the middle between zero and twenty four. But
Speaker 1: after practicing dijidoo for about twenty five minutes a day,
Speaker 1: six days a week for several months, the test subject's
Speaker 1: average score dropped to seven point point four, so almost
Speaker 1: a four and a half point difference. In addition, the
Speaker 1: partners of the participants reported far less sleep disturbance from
Speaker 1: snoring during the same period, suggesting that the collapsibility of
Speaker 1: the upper airway really had been reduced by playing this digitidoo.
Speaker 3: And I'm curious how did those improvements stack up against
Speaker 3: the SEAPAP machine.
Speaker 1: So overall, the effect of the Digirado was slightly smaller
Speaker 1: than the typical results of SEAPAP therapy. But as the
Speaker 1: authors noted, one of the major hurdles with SEPAP is
Speaker 1: no one really likes using them right, and that leads
Speaker 1: to poor compliance. But that wasn't the case with the
Speaker 1: digital do Like the people who participated were super into
Speaker 1: it and even practiced more often than the researchers had
Speaker 1: asked them to, so in the long run, the ditch
Speaker 1: might be the better choice for some patients. Also, while
Speaker 1: we're talking about the digiti do, did you know the
Speaker 1: name is an automotopia?
Speaker 3: I did not, actually just I don't know what I
Speaker 3: thought the origins were. I just assumed it was an
Speaker 3: Australian Aboriginal word.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually thought the same thing, But it turned
Speaker 1: the word doesn't exist in any of the local languages like,
Speaker 1: they've got their own names for it. They call it
Speaker 1: the yadaki or the mago. So while the instrument itself
Speaker 1: is thought to be one of the oldest on the planet,
Speaker 1: the name dijidoo was likely coined by Europeans who settled
Speaker 1: around the turn of the twentieth century, and they called
Speaker 1: it that to mimic the rhythmic sounds it produces. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I was so curious if there was any sort of
Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence to back this up, so I went on
Speaker 1: the sleep Apnea subreddit and sure enough, there are a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of posts from people who report improved sleep
Speaker 1: after learning how to play the digradoo.
Speaker 2: There's just one drawback, and what would that be?
Speaker 1: The digardoo sound is loud, So it's true, while your
Speaker 1: sleep might be getting better, your relationship with your neighbors
Speaker 1: might get worse.
Speaker 3: Oh you know, Mega, We've been doing an Instagram contest
Speaker 3: every day of this countdown, and I already mentioned that
Speaker 3: we're giving away sheets of Zorbix today, but since this
Speaker 3: is the grand finale, we're also going to give away
Speaker 3: a digitaldoo. Sleep Apnea kit comes with everything you need
Speaker 3: to become a well rested digital player.
Speaker 2: Buy our neighbors Samir Plugs.
Speaker 3: Go to our Instagram at part Time Genius to get
Speaker 3: all the contest details.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been really fun doing these contests and maybe
Speaker 1: we'll do more of them in the future. But that
Speaker 1: brings us to the end of our great science ideas countdown.
Speaker 1: We really hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Speaker 1: And in addition to Gabe, Mary and Dylan, a shout
Speaker 1: out to Lucas Riley, who also helped us research a
Speaker 1: ons of this. Calypso Rales is mailing out all the
Speaker 1: gifts and helping us with social media. And we also
Speaker 1: want to thank all the inventors and scientists we spoke
Speaker 1: with for helping us make this happen. But from Will
Speaker 1: and myself, thank you to all those folks, and thank
Speaker 1: you to you. We feel so lucky that we get
Speaker 1: to make this show and we're really thrilled here listening.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongas
Speaker 1: Chatikler and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was engineered and produced by the Wonderful Dylan Fagan,
Speaker 1: with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
Speaker 1: for iHeart by Katrina Norvell and Ali Perry, with social
Speaker 1: media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.