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 lamp and I'm Julie Douglas, and
Speaker 1: we're gonna kick right in on a topic we've talked
Speaker 1: about before, about the microbial legions that live inside us,
Speaker 1: about our growing revelation that it's not just us versus bacteria.
Speaker 1: It's us and bacteria it's not and and then you
Speaker 1: even get into this weird area where it's really hard
Speaker 1: to define what us really is. Yeah. Actually, there have
Speaker 1: been a bunch of articles that have come out to
Speaker 1: talk about this idea, and we've we've discussed this as well.
Speaker 1: We've talked about more specifics. Yeah, we discussed this in
Speaker 1: the the kids, Uh, Stuff to blow your kid's mind. Boy,
Speaker 1: it's early. I can't remembering the things that we did.
Speaker 1: We we talked about bacteria all the time, is what
Speaker 1: you're saying, but more specific to um, you know, perhaps
Speaker 1: diseases or the gut and how it affects our moods. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's been a bunch of data that has
Speaker 1: come out, UM. And this is out of something called
Speaker 1: the Human Microbiome Project, which is very similar to the
Speaker 1: Human Genome project, and we're gonna talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about that. But there's this idea that bacteria just
Speaker 1: isn't getting the respect that it deserves, that that it
Speaker 1: is more like a micro um biome organ like we
Speaker 1: should look at this as an organ in our body,
Speaker 1: This this team um of bacteria that lives within us,
Speaker 1: as opposed to like, oh yeah, we've got some bacteria
Speaker 1: on us. It's it's witching a ride. And then and
Speaker 1: so far studies have have more or less fallen in
Speaker 1: line with that line of thinking because like previously, we
Speaker 1: just we didn't give it bacteria much thought, and then
Speaker 1: we thought, oh, bacterious the enemy. And then we started
Speaker 1: looking a little closer at saying, well, let's look at
Speaker 1: at fecal bacteria and uh, and in with the hope
Speaker 1: of understand better understanding various intestinal situations, let's look at
Speaker 1: um that the mouth bacteria of a normal person. But there,
Speaker 1: but there hasn't been until now this, uh, this real
Speaker 1: effort to understand our micro geom as as a whole.
Speaker 1: It's to really understand the the micro's inside us. Like
Speaker 1: you say, as this this entity right that that is
Speaker 1: doing so much more than we ever could have imagined.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about it first as as the enemy,
Speaker 1: because this has really been our history with bacteria, at
Speaker 1: least in the modern world. Yeah. This, Um, we we
Speaker 1: get into this this area where all right, we recognize
Speaker 1: that bacteria can and does do destructive things to the
Speaker 1: human body, So we need a weapon to fight it, right,
Speaker 1: So we end up using this thing called trickle sand,
Speaker 1: which is pretty crazy, created more than forty years ago
Speaker 1: surgical scrub for hospitals, so heavy duty stuff, right, But
Speaker 1: then it shows up in a range of consumer products,
Speaker 1: everything from liquid soap to bars up to toothpaste to
Speaker 1: acne ointments, deodorant, mouthwatch, you name it pretty much any
Speaker 1: socksy what's doing in fox? Uh, it's it's everywhere, to
Speaker 1: the point to the point that the Center for Disease
Speaker 1: Control and Prevention found that the chemical is present in
Speaker 1: the urine of seventy of Americans over the age of five.
Speaker 1: So we're such as our obsession with cleanliness. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like we're fighting the war so enthusiastically that we do.
Speaker 1: We've just saturated our bodies with this, uh, with this substance. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there have been a couple of studies that show
Speaker 1: that trick lesson may alter hormone regulation in lab animals
Speaker 1: at least or cause antibiotic resistance. And that's the big
Speaker 1: problem we have right because we've got superbugs emerging like
Speaker 1: uh Clostium cliffs Clostridium deficially, which is a superbug that
Speaker 1: is in hospitals and unfortunately a lot of people who
Speaker 1: go in for procedures sometimes to be confused with Chuck
Speaker 1: Australian which is UM. But that that's actually something that's
Speaker 1: extremely debilitating and um, people really suffer for years and
Speaker 1: years afterward. I mean, if if you happen to be
Speaker 1: very elderly or very young, there's possibility that you could
Speaker 1: die from it. And but just to bring in bacteria
Speaker 1: back into the fold here, um, I think if everybody
Speaker 1: remembers we talked about something called fecal transplants which actually
Speaker 1: are helping people we see diff um that they contracted
Speaker 1: in the hospital and replenishing their their bad or their
Speaker 1: worn out gut floora with really good bacteria. UM. So
Speaker 1: we've had clues along the way that bacteria isn't you know,
Speaker 1: And just a rehash on that every everyone has probably
Speaker 1: wanted at one point another. What is poop? Right? What
Speaker 1: is it? What is poop? And as it turns out
Speaker 1: that a lot of poop is is actually bacteria. It's
Speaker 1: not food or food waste particularly as much as it
Speaker 1: is bacteria. Yeah. So the idea here as you you
Speaker 1: end up with an imbalance in the bacterial uh population
Speaker 1: inside your intestines, and to to set things right, you
Speaker 1: get some get a nice healthy stool sample. Inject that
Speaker 1: into your system, uh, specifically into your intestines, not just anywhere,
Speaker 1: but don't try to at home on your own by
Speaker 1: the way, I have it professionally done. Um and only
Speaker 1: if if needed. Uh. But the ideas you get some
Speaker 1: healthy fecal matter in there to restore equilibrium with that
Speaker 1: bacterial population, right, because it turns out the gut is
Speaker 1: really stuffed with a ton of bacteria and adults actually
Speaker 1: carry two to five pounds of bacteria. Did you know that,
Speaker 1: Like your weight is made up of two to five
Speaker 1: pounds of bacteria. Like you can think of it in
Speaker 1: terms of like I think of in terms of, say
Speaker 1: the population in a in a wooded area. All right, um, oh, well,
Speaker 1: we don't like, we don't like coyotes. Coyotes are bad,
Speaker 1: so we wipe out a whole bunch of coyotes. Now
Speaker 1: there's nothing to eat the animal that the kind of
Speaker 1: these are a good example. Let's say wolves. Wolves are bad,
Speaker 1: They're gonna eat our livestock. Let's to wipe out the wolves,
Speaker 1: all right. Now what's gonna eat? Say the deer. Now
Speaker 1: they're deer everywhere, deer showing up in our yards and
Speaker 1: running into our cars. What are gonna do about the deer?
Speaker 1: That things get out of balance with these Uh, these
Speaker 1: carefully maintained and evolved environments. Uh, that contain multiple players,
Speaker 1: that's right, And and things began to behave differently. And uh,
Speaker 1: you can look at that sort of analogy within your
Speaker 1: own microbiome, right, because each of us, it turns out,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit more about these revelations
Speaker 1: that have come from this biome microbiome project, but each
Speaker 1: of us has our very own particular sort of set
Speaker 1: of bacteria. Yes, this this really blew my mind a
Speaker 1: bit because we've discussed in the past, how if you
Speaker 1: look at the the the micro environment of say a
Speaker 1: Japanese individual versus like especially a typical American individual, like
Speaker 1: a typical Japanese um individuals is eating a lot of seafood.
Speaker 1: They're having a lot of a lot of seaweed, and
Speaker 1: so they have this this environment inside of them that
Speaker 1: is the result of that, that is that is patterned
Speaker 1: to to roll with that. And then the average American
Speaker 1: of course is eating um, cheeseburgers, and it's a cheeseburger
Speaker 1: gut bacteria, right, and and so meant to break that
Speaker 1: down specifically. Yes, So we knew already that that if
Speaker 1: you put these two environments side by side, you were
Speaker 1: going to see some significant differences. But it turns out
Speaker 1: it's even more widespread than that. Everyone's um bacterial environment
Speaker 1: is like a snowflake or like a fingerprint. Each one
Speaker 1: is different. So yours is different from mine, and mine
Speaker 1: from from you listening, Which makes sense because everyone's everyone's
Speaker 1: personal history is a little bit different. Everyone's diet is
Speaker 1: a little bit different, Like even within households where two
Speaker 1: individuals share the same diet, they're gonna be other factors
Speaker 1: that askew things. Yeah, and just to let's do a
Speaker 1: quick review two of what beneficial bacteria is and how
Speaker 1: we really are outnumbered U. We're talking about one hundred
Speaker 1: trillion good bacteria that is dwelling within dwelling inside of us.
Speaker 1: And we are really just the rappers for the contents. Yeah, rappers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we are rappers, but uh, but really mean
Speaker 1: we're just the rappers for this content, bacterial content. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we are outnumbered our own cells that you know,
Speaker 1: we're born with ten to one when it comes to
Speaker 1: bacterial cells. Yeah, this, it was, it was crazy. I
Speaker 1: think it was the New York Times article we were
Speaker 1: looking at where they quoted a scientists where they were
Speaker 1: they said, we'll go from the bacterious point of view,
Speaker 1: were just the rappers for their Yeah, and so we're
Speaker 1: kind of these from that that point of view, we're
Speaker 1: we're kind of the parasite in a sense. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the table has been turned when you look
Speaker 1: at it that way. And and there was another researcher
Speaker 1: that said, you know, when you look in the mirror,
Speaker 1: what you're seeing is a bacterial composition. Really because kind
Speaker 1: of pretty as what you said, Yeah, like it's a
Speaker 1: bacterial composition, should not just stay. But I guess in
Speaker 1: reality is a little a little more pollock, uh Jackson
Speaker 1: Pollock than anything I don't know, I've seen point till
Speaker 1: is um there yeah, um, but yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: this idea that what you're looking at in the mirror
Speaker 1: is largely bacterial and not what you think of as
Speaker 1: your own. So again this makes this sort of step
Speaker 1: back and say, well, what is let's let's redefine this
Speaker 1: relationship we have to bacteria. We know that it helps
Speaker 1: to keep us healthy. Um, yeah, we know that it
Speaker 1: helps to break down food, helps to inspire our immune system.
Speaker 1: But there's plenty of food we just would not be
Speaker 1: able to eat if we did not have this bacterial environment, right,
Speaker 1: But the finding and findings of this microbiome project seem
Speaker 1: to point to a much more important function for our body.
Speaker 1: In fact, the evidence is mounting that we've just truly
Speaker 1: could not exist without all of the s bacteria teaming
Speaker 1: within us. It is a symbiotic relationship then yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we we discussed some of this in our our
Speaker 1: Stuffable your Kid's Mind video about the microbes that live
Speaker 1: inside is um because you you get into looking at
Speaker 1: like the symbiotic relationships, all right, So they are all
Speaker 1: these tiny little players that, when working together in harmony,
Speaker 1: allow for this greater picture of of uh to to
Speaker 1: rise to the surface. And you compare that to the
Speaker 1: human body itself, in which you have all these tiny
Speaker 1: players working in in even greater unity two produce the
Speaker 1: life form that we experience every day. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: mean we talked about it to use just other examples
Speaker 1: like that, You've got shrimp that have you know, this
Speaker 1: bacteria that basically helps to like a car wash for
Speaker 1: the shrimp, which is great because it keeps, you know,
Speaker 1: the shrimp from getting any sort of other diseases. Bacteria
Speaker 1: keeps the shrimp nice and clean, and you know, then
Speaker 1: the bacteria gets something scrumptious to eat off the shrimps back.
Speaker 1: Presumably they really are they they should have their own podcast.
Speaker 1: Radio added a recent episode on Colors that I recommend
Speaker 1: everyone listen to, and there's a section on the mantis
Speaker 1: shrimp and it's amazing eyes. Okay, I was I was
Speaker 1: thinking that it was more about how it affects coloration
Speaker 1: of birds when they eat shrimp, or even there there
Speaker 1: people matter, There's there's that they're they're all sorts of weird,
Speaker 1: like we think of shrimp is other. It's they're the
Speaker 1: thing that shows up on the barbecue. You know, you
Speaker 1: think this passive little creature the bottom dwellers, but they're
Speaker 1: a ferocious shrimp out there with like like built in
Speaker 1: sonic boxing gloves there anyway. That don't get me started
Speaker 1: on shrimp. Yeah, back back to the bacteria. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about this project as microbiome project. We're talking about a
Speaker 1: five year study basically UM with two hundred scientists at
Speaker 1: eighty different institutions. This is a tremendous effort um. They're
Speaker 1: all pulling together to try to map bacterial genes and
Speaker 1: individuals using some of the same technology that the Human
Speaker 1: Genome Project used. And what they're trying to do here,
Speaker 1: or what they've begun to do, is to find a
Speaker 1: baseline of healthy bacteria and individuals because in the past
Speaker 1: we have looked at veterian individuals a bit more related
Speaker 1: to as you had pointed out, like Chron's disease or
Speaker 1: other UM diseases, in which they were trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how this bacteria was working. Right. Yeah, we've we've
Speaker 1: initiated these studies with it with a certain particular UM
Speaker 1: topic in mind. But their idea was, well, what is
Speaker 1: it supposed to look like in a healthy individual. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's not just instead of feeling one portion of the elephant,
Speaker 1: let's try and trying to guess what it is. Let's
Speaker 1: let's look at the elephant. Yeah. And so initially they
Speaker 1: had six hundred subjects that they were going to try
Speaker 1: to run through this process, ages eighteen to forty, and
Speaker 1: they had everyone from densist to gynecologists checking out six
Speaker 1: people probing you name it, yeah, because I mean, it
Speaker 1: turns out it's actually kind of hard to find someone
Speaker 1: who has quote unquote perfectly healthy. I mean not to
Speaker 1: you know, to get all Gothic on everybody. If you know,
Speaker 1: the second you're born, you start to fall apart. So
Speaker 1: how do you find somebody who has who is you
Speaker 1: still has it to some degree altogether? Robert bummer, lamb um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it got the the sample um of of
Speaker 1: people actually got whittled down to two two And this
Speaker 1: is what I thought was amazing. Of these two forty
Speaker 1: two people of them still had to be treated for
Speaker 1: either gum disease or cavities. So as you say not,
Speaker 1: you know, you just kind of you know, start to
Speaker 1: follow up and to quote Tina fe the mouth dies first.
Speaker 1: So yes, yes, uh uh So in addition to stool
Speaker 1: samples and saliva, of these two forty two people, women
Speaker 1: were swapped in eighteen different places on their bodies, while
Speaker 1: men were swapped in fifteen. And we're talking the crook
Speaker 1: of the arm, folds in the ear, uh, for vagina,
Speaker 1: for vaginas for women, their vaginas like three different places.
Speaker 1: And this is really important because it turns out that
Speaker 1: the bacteria in um and the vagina is probably some
Speaker 1: of the most powerful in terms of the immune system
Speaker 1: and immune functions. And we'll talk about that later, but yeah,
Speaker 1: head to toe, these people were wobbed so that they
Speaker 1: could get this complete picture of what bacteria looks like
Speaker 1: in a person. And so they end up with about
Speaker 1: three point five terra bases of data to examine, lots
Speaker 1: and lots of data. Yeah, and a terror base is
Speaker 1: one trillion subunits of DNA, so we're talking about a
Speaker 1: mountain here. Uh. They had something like eleven thousand or
Speaker 1: more than eleven thousand samples and they ended up, i believe,
Speaker 1: running about five thousand samples through which took about two
Speaker 1: million computer hours to to run these data sets. Um.
Speaker 1: And just to give everybody a scope of what a
Speaker 1: huge project. This This is a hundred and seventy three
Speaker 1: million dollar project. And what they're trying to do is
Speaker 1: they they teased apart bacterial genes from human genes and
Speaker 1: then they could really get into the specifics of what
Speaker 1: they were seeing. So they really set out to justify
Speaker 1: the ways of bacteria Toman really to get all miltony
Speaker 1: on it. Yes, yes, I believe that was actually in
Speaker 1: their abstract. Yeah, um, all right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we get back, we're going to
Speaker 1: tell you some amazing things about the bacteria that is
Speaker 1: dwelling inside you. Right now, all right, we're back. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of bacteria living inside each of us,
Speaker 1: to the point where it's it even gets a little
Speaker 1: tricky to say it's living inside us. It is living
Speaker 1: with us, part of us, it's part of us, it's
Speaker 1: a it's in a a symbiotic state, it is enmeshed
Speaker 1: part to say where we end and it begins exactly exactly,
Speaker 1: it's ten thousand species of microbes and each of us.
Speaker 1: That is what they discovered. One of the discoveries from
Speaker 1: this project, which again is lending credence to this idea
Speaker 1: that it's a microbial organ within us, and we should
Speaker 1: start to look at it as that, as opposed to, oh,
Speaker 1: there's much there's bacteria jump on us and it's just
Speaker 1: hitching a ride. Um. It is. It is acting on
Speaker 1: us and within us. Um. And as you say, it
Speaker 1: is a very symbiotic process. Yeah, you have twenty two
Speaker 1: thousand human genes, eight million back real genes, and it's
Speaker 1: and its specialized in the area resides in. So you
Speaker 1: have like the Queen's bacteria is gonna gonna really roll
Speaker 1: with its the particular neighborhood, whereas the Bronx bacteria is
Speaker 1: a lightly different thing. You can't take one for the
Speaker 1: from the other switch places and expect h them to
Speaker 1: just fit right in well. And the other analogies have
Speaker 1: been like, you know, one part of you could be
Speaker 1: more like a Amazon rainforest, while the other is like,
Speaker 1: you know, an ocean or even another Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: the Sahara desert. Um and I had talked about the
Speaker 1: bacteria swamps that were taken from the vagina, and it
Speaker 1: turns out that that bacteria in there is is very
Speaker 1: very active. And in fact, it turns um the vagina
Speaker 1: is the jungle in this scenario then, yeah, or the
Speaker 1: rainforest perhaps UM it turns conditions a bit acidic um
Speaker 1: and its environment, and the idea is that that kind
Speaker 1: of keeps other foreign bacteria out. And that would make
Speaker 1: sense because this is you know, this is an area
Speaker 1: of the body that UM that could cultivate bad bacteria.
Speaker 1: I'm putting that uh really easily right. It's damp, moist, yeah,
Speaker 1: easy to fuester in. And it's also the first bacterial
Speaker 1: environment that a newborn, at least a newborn and experiences.
Speaker 1: Vaginal birth is exposed to. It's like a and it
Speaker 1: is we discuss this little in the video for kids,
Speaker 1: of course, but when the vagina talk. Yeah, but when
Speaker 1: a child is born, the vaginal birth, it is it's
Speaker 1: basically a baptism of bacteria. They are they they're going
Speaker 1: from this clean, pristine environment where they're this single creature,
Speaker 1: and then they are just bombarded with this bacterial invasion. Okay,
Speaker 1: and check this out. When a woman becomes pregnant, the
Speaker 1: bacteria in her vagina changes, presumably um in anticipation of
Speaker 1: this child that will be going through the canal and
Speaker 1: getting this beneficial bacteria to begin life with. So it
Speaker 1: is That's when I start to say, this is far
Speaker 1: more ingrained than our thoughts said. WHOA, it just helps
Speaker 1: is to break down food. It's like, no, that's actually
Speaker 1: it's playing a vital role. Yeah, this is a part
Speaker 1: of the blueprint. And so when a child is not
Speaker 1: a woman born, when when a child is born via
Speaker 1: since arian section, you have a slightly different scenario going on, Right,
Speaker 1: you end up with a rather different bacterial baptism. Right,
Speaker 1: And that's one of the things that scientists want to
Speaker 1: try to answer. If if you are born via caesarean
Speaker 1: and you have a different microbiome, how does that affect
Speaker 1: you or does it affect you in your adult years?
Speaker 1: Do you have a different way of fighting, um, disease
Speaker 1: or illness? Are you more likely to flaming bath that
Speaker 1: kind of thing? Yes, yeah, that is also in the abstract. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: so this is really I think, very amazing information to
Speaker 1: know that that that bacteria is acting on this level. Um.
Speaker 1: Here's another thing that that came out of this is
Speaker 1: that researchers found genetic signatures of disease causing bacterial straints
Speaker 1: in everyone's micro biome. So what I say, what I'm
Speaker 1: saying here is and we've all known, um to some
Speaker 1: degree that but that we all carry staff for instance,
Speaker 1: or as some of us carry staff. UM, but we're
Speaker 1: we're perfectly fine. We're hanging out with it. And then
Speaker 1: some other people can come into contact with us, and
Speaker 1: then they get a staff infection. So um that that
Speaker 1: is no secret. But the extent of some of these
Speaker 1: disease causing bacteria that dwells within us that was not
Speaker 1: really known. So you have this idea of all this good,
Speaker 1: beneficial bacteria within us hanging out with a bad bacteria,
Speaker 1: presumably camping it down. It's a difference between saying, oh,
Speaker 1: occasionally a a murderer appears in society, UH towards the
Speaker 1: difference between that and saying, oh, well they're in they're
Speaker 1: a numeral potential murders. They just don't pop up that
Speaker 1: are that are somehow kept in check by other UH
Speaker 1: forces in society and culture. And UH I draw comparison
Speaker 1: here because it's UH the idea that we have a
Speaker 1: lot of these harmful bacteria in us, but if things
Speaker 1: are in the right balance, then they're not going to
Speaker 1: be an issue. It's when things get out of balance
Speaker 1: or or systems are are disrupted, that things can get
Speaker 1: a little hairy. And that's why, UH, researcher, scientists, doctors
Speaker 1: from every discipline are really kind of backing up and
Speaker 1: looking at this data and reconstructing their ideas based on it.
Speaker 1: And of course, as we go more and more through
Speaker 1: the data and find more things to substantiate some of
Speaker 1: perhaps theories or hunches will probably find out how bacteria
Speaker 1: is actually affecting us. But as you say, um, me,
Speaker 1: on this one level, it's it begins to look like, uh,
Speaker 1: that it's not actually pathogens that are creating illness and disease,
Speaker 1: but with perhaps something like diabetes, it could be a
Speaker 1: miscommunication with the bacteria. So normally our bacteria, we begin
Speaker 1: to think of this is really um, you know, communicating
Speaker 1: with our cells and keeping us healthy. It could be
Speaker 1: that there is this miscommunication with bacteria that, instead of
Speaker 1: defending it against the pathogen, allows the cells that make
Speaker 1: insulin in the body to be killed. Um. And that
Speaker 1: really kind of makes you back up and go, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: let's think about antibiotics. We know that it can wipe
Speaker 1: out your gut flora at least presumably the rest of
Speaker 1: your body too. Um And there's some reports you can
Speaker 1: take a while for you to recover years four years
Speaker 1: to build up your good flora. So then you have
Speaker 1: this idea of like, what are these other agents that
Speaker 1: are acting honest that are disturbing this balance, as you say,
Speaker 1: of good bacteria, and this idea that that balance or
Speaker 1: the imbalance that could be creating disease within us. So
Speaker 1: we're going forward, we could reach the point where we
Speaker 1: look back on our use of of antibiotics and it'll
Speaker 1: it'll basically be the equivalent of say, carpet bombing a
Speaker 1: city that may have uh insurgents in it or or
Speaker 1: some sort of terrorist activity, and it versus the idea
Speaker 1: of using a much more targeted method of removing a
Speaker 1: a hostile bacteria. Yeah, carpet bomb versus drone right, Um,
Speaker 1: not the drone is completely horked out exactly, but still
Speaker 1: the the the the comparison holds true. Yeah. Uh So
Speaker 1: this this gets this idea that perhaps this sort of knowledge,
Speaker 1: this and again we're at the tip of iceberg here
Speaker 1: under this huge data mountain. Um this knowledge could help
Speaker 1: us to perhaps curb debilitating diseases before they happen. But
Speaker 1: that's one of the hopes, um, and then it will
Speaker 1: answer some of these questions of why some of us
Speaker 1: are more susceptible to disease while others, um just seemed
Speaker 1: to be able to really ride things out, or you know,
Speaker 1: are much more healthier when it comes to being bombarded
Speaker 1: by pathogens. Yeah. Again, I think I brought this up
Speaker 1: the last time we discuss stuff micro I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it was actually with parasites. But I'm reminded of
Speaker 1: the episode of the American version of the Office where
Speaker 1: Dwight is fired or Dwight quits, and then all the
Speaker 1: plants in the die because no one realized that Dwight
Speaker 1: was the one watering them all. And uh. And so
Speaker 1: you look at these examples where people are realizing, oh, well,
Speaker 1: this thing that we thought was the parasite was really
Speaker 1: more of a had more of a symbiotic relationship with us.
Speaker 1: This bacteria that we thought was bad. Turns out it's
Speaker 1: part of a careful balance that that that is built
Speaker 1: up over millions of years. Um. So yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: we should respect that the Dwights within us. Yeah. UM.
Speaker 1: What I think is really interesting about this is the
Speaker 1: potential to for for further study because what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Here are two hundred forty two individuals who largely Caucasian,
Speaker 1: coming from two cities St. Louis and Houston, I believe.
Speaker 1: So you know that's some cheeseburger eaters, right, there's some
Speaker 1: cheeseburger eaters. Um, what if you could get a sample
Speaker 1: across all cultures across the world. Of course, we're talking
Speaker 1: about an insane amount of data that probably wouldn't we
Speaker 1: couldn't go through in our lifetime. But what if you
Speaker 1: could start to really map this out in earnest across
Speaker 1: the world and begin to really see a picture, a
Speaker 1: better picture of what it is to be human, what
Speaker 1: it is to be someone who is battling disease. I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's exciting speaking of microbes and cheeseburgers and
Speaker 1: the gut Uh. There's a there's a restaurant in Atlanta
Speaker 1: called Gutbusters. Are you familiar with this? And they have
Speaker 1: they have this grotesque sign. Um, it's like hand painted
Speaker 1: or hand airbrush or something like this guy eating this
Speaker 1: big grotesque sandwich. But that would be interesting to study
Speaker 1: individuals who eat gut Busters, which I think is some
Speaker 1: sort of Philly cheese steak. Thing with cheese whizz on it. Um.
Speaker 1: I did a little research. I'm not a Philly cheese
Speaker 1: steak guy, but have I ever ran it about this before?
Speaker 1: I feel like I have some sort of memory for
Speaker 1: a fully cheese steaks. Well. Hating this, you tune into
Speaker 1: these various food shows, and a lot of them are
Speaker 1: like that. You know, they asked these food uh, these
Speaker 1: foodies and chefs like what's your favorite meal in this city,
Speaker 1: in the city, in the city, And a lot of
Speaker 1: the times they end up narrowing in on a particular
Speaker 1: Philly cheese steak or Philly cheese steakes style sandwich and
Speaker 1: a given city some sort of kind of gross looking
Speaker 1: meat and cheese sandwich. And it's not the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that appeals to me. But a lot of people
Speaker 1: are really militant about their their Philly cheese steak sandwiches,
Speaker 1: and some people are really militant about the necessity of
Speaker 1: having cheese with on there. Um. Anyway, I'm just what
Speaker 1: does that do to the the interview and it's the
Speaker 1: gut buster? Um moniker? Is that? Does that? Is that real?
Speaker 1: Is it actually bust your gut? Does it? Does it
Speaker 1: somehow invade your gut with even more microbes than before.
Speaker 1: I don't know, or maybe well, okay, well, the pessimists
Speaker 1: in me too thinks like, once we get the information
Speaker 1: about how the food is truly affecting us and this
Speaker 1: bacterial colony within us, that we're not really going to
Speaker 1: change our ways. What's going to happen is that you're
Speaker 1: gonna get some sort of crazy probiotic milkshake to go
Speaker 1: with it, to break it down better. You know, it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: five thousand strains of microbes. Nine, you get your gap
Speaker 1: buster and your biotic shake. There you go. The future. Well,
Speaker 1: speaking of the future, let's call the robot over and
Speaker 1: get a little listener mail here. Um. So we heard
Speaker 1: from our listener Jeffrey, and he was writing in about
Speaker 1: the the Aquatic Sounds episode that we did, and he
Speaker 1: wanted to share his own experiences with listening to things
Speaker 1: in the swimming pool. UM, particularly on to what degree
Speaker 1: sound is muffled and what degree it's clear. Um. Because
Speaker 1: we were discussed in that podcast that there there are
Speaker 1: underwater hearings for humans is different, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: slightly different thing there. So some sounds are going to
Speaker 1: be aren't going to sound muffled, and they're not getting
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be able to hear things underwater quite
Speaker 1: like you hear above water. But other sounds are gonna
Speaker 1: be very sharp. So Jeffrey writes in and says, the
Speaker 1: mid range is muffled. That is far is what's going
Speaker 1: on in the water. You can hear some things more crisply.
Speaker 1: When I'm resting on my back in the pool at
Speaker 1: the gym, I can hear every pop of every knee
Speaker 1: and joint here and far. The longer I lay there
Speaker 1: after a swim watching the clouds go by. I hope
Speaker 1: he means the clouds in the sky, because when I
Speaker 1: swim laugh, I see clouds and strings of things that
Speaker 1: I don't like to think about floating through the water. Um.
Speaker 1: So hopefully yeah, atmospheric clouds, nuts snot cloud um. Watching
Speaker 1: the clouds go by, the more I hear the pops
Speaker 1: of joints, until it sounds like twenty people constantly breaking
Speaker 1: match sticks with the with the with the sound turned up.
Speaker 1: In fact, not only can I clearly hear the clicks,
Speaker 1: I can clearly hear the echo. I know that out
Speaker 1: of the water I wouldn't hear this even in the
Speaker 1: most quiet room. If that Olympic sized pool were empty
Speaker 1: and I were laying there, there is no way I
Speaker 1: could hear a woman's leg or arm or spine pop
Speaker 1: from thirty ft away, unlike seven hours ago. Um, so
Speaker 1: there you go. Well even hours ago was he said
Speaker 1: this on Facebook? So in fact, maybe I cut that off. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we got to the need of what Jeffrey had to say.
Speaker 1: It's like an aquatic mesophonia. Yeah. Yeah, So for anybody
Speaker 1: who does have mesophonia, don't swim in a gym pool
Speaker 1: that is uh at the rush hour. Yeah. And the
Speaker 1: other interesting thing about about that is if you were
Speaker 1: to were to swim and you did not like the
Speaker 1: sounds you were hearing, good luck shutting it off because
Speaker 1: it's not You can't just stick some your plugs in
Speaker 1: because you're hearing with your skull. It's a bone connectivity hearing.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's an entirely different scenario. Although they
Speaker 1: are underwater empty three players there are, but that would
Speaker 1: be your best bet is to somehow block it out.
Speaker 1: It's still the sound. We are just going to hit
Speaker 1: your skull and rebate, reverbate no matter what HiT's look
Speaker 1: at this other email. This one is from Lizzie, and
Speaker 1: this was pretty exciting because we just did this episode
Speaker 1: The Horror where we talked. We talked about the science
Speaker 1: of of being afraid, of being frightened, and then why
Speaker 1: we like it when we get addicted to it in
Speaker 1: many cases, and we talked a little bit about things
Speaker 1: that we find scary um chlorophobia or fear of plants,
Speaker 1: fear of clowns. Yes, yes, you you we brought it.
Speaker 1: You brought up the fear of clowns. And I kind
Speaker 1: of defended clowns to a certain point. Uh and and
Speaker 1: cold and uh and they at least offended some of them.
Speaker 1: And you brought up hobo's yeah, like clowns people. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so we actually heard from a listener who is
Speaker 1: a clown um literally, and Lizzie writes and says, I'm
Speaker 1: writing to defend clowns in your horror podcast. I am
Speaker 1: a clown and I'm not scary at all. Actually, I
Speaker 1: think of myself as adorable. And indeed, she sent a
Speaker 1: photo and you have to admit, she's a pretty adorable
Speaker 1: clown with makeup. Um, she says. And it's funny to
Speaker 1: me that all these kids say that clowns are scary,
Speaker 1: because I've had quite the opposite experience. I have been
Speaker 1: in nanny for the last two years, and the girls
Speaker 1: I watch absolutely love that I'm a clown. The oldest
Speaker 1: one would brag to her friends. So when I went
Speaker 1: to drop her off and picked and pick her up,
Speaker 1: kids were asking me to do tricks or do some
Speaker 1: clowney and I would do a small impromptu performance on
Speaker 1: the playground and it was fun and I've never made
Speaker 1: a kid cry to this day. I even did a
Speaker 1: performance at one of the girl's birthdays parties. Uh, in
Speaker 1: costume and with a clown nose on. However, some kids
Speaker 1: cried when the dad dressed up his illow and came
Speaker 1: out to terrify the children. Uh. Well, that wasn't his intent,
Speaker 1: but that's what happened. Also, here's a video of one
Speaker 1: of the best clowns in the country, Avner the Eccentric,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't have any clown makeup on it all
Speaker 1: and he's fantastic. Um And indeed, I watched the did
Speaker 1: you watch this clip? I didn't have time to this morning,
Speaker 1: but you described it to me. Yeah. He it's really
Speaker 1: interesting because he has kind of Uh, he's like an
Speaker 1: older dude and he has as a big bushy beard
Speaker 1: and uh a little bit he looks like the who
Speaker 1: was it? Was it? Red Green? The Red Green Show?
Speaker 1: The Canadian Show? I thought the that was on PBS.
Speaker 1: Kind of that kind of mentality, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: a prospect you're looking. Beard does not have clown makeup on,
Speaker 1: like she says, and his act reminds me like a
Speaker 1: little bit of like an EMT Kelly kind of hobo
Speaker 1: clown kind of thing. A lot of his materials seemed
Speaker 1: to revolve around eating, but then there's also a miming
Speaker 1: kind of Charlie Chaplin vibe to what he's doing. So
Speaker 1: I found it really interesting because it seemed like maybe
Speaker 1: it's avice into a certain extent. It's like clowns reclaiming
Speaker 1: their territory. Okay, but there's no grease paint, is when
Speaker 1: I'm caring. There's no grease paint, but that he doesn't need.
Speaker 1: It's in a way it's kind of big shoes. Um,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. I don't know if I could see
Speaker 1: his feet, but a lot of napkin eating. Okay, alright,
Speaker 1: So so Julia is still not convent but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: check it out. We can we can talk about in
Speaker 1: the next podcast. But I do I like this idea that, um,
Speaker 1: maybe there's this return to this original sense of what
Speaker 1: it is to clown and take it out of this
Speaker 1: other darker realm that I seem to think of, take
Speaker 1: it back to we were talking earlier about Comedia dell arte.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, there's some rich roots to client. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should actually do an episode on clowning. I don't
Speaker 1: know how we get into the science all that much,
Speaker 1: but uh, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks Lizzy for letting us know about that. If any
Speaker 1: of you would like to pow wow with us and
Speaker 1: share some inside on underwater sounds on clowning on the
Speaker 1: back curia that live inside your gut, uh, let us
Speaker 1: know about it. You can connect with us on Facebook
Speaker 1: by just typing and stuff to blow your mind. You'll
Speaker 1: find us there, um if you if you haven't looked
Speaker 1: us up there, look us up, give us a like.
Speaker 1: The more fans we have, the more people we can reach,
Speaker 1: and we try and update that with you know, not
Speaker 1: just shills for stuff that we've done and stuff we're doing,
Speaker 1: but like just cool links that we come across, videos
Speaker 1: that are you know, doing it for us, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. And you can also find us on Twitter
Speaker 1: where our handle is blow the Mind. And we'll actually
Speaker 1: try to post that video to bet Lizzie sign yes
Speaker 1: so everybody can weigh in on fasically. I'll try and
Speaker 1: put that on the Facebook for sure, yeah. Um, And
Speaker 1: you can always drop us a line at blow the
Speaker 1: Mind at discovery dot com.