WEBVTT - The Interior World 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.560 Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:17.160 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:21.000 today we're gonna be taking a look at interior spaces. Yeah, 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:23.560 the year certainly brings to mind the old curse, May 0:00:23.600 --> 0:00:26.880 you live in interesting times? And one of the factors 0:00:26.880 --> 0:00:31.080 here has of course been the coronavirus COVID nineteen pandemic, 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.240 and in an effort to fight the spread of the illness, 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.239 save lives, and prevent overwhelming our hospitals, we've made a 0:00:37.240 --> 0:00:39.320 lot of changes to our lives and these range from 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:42.440 the simple such as just wearing a mask when you're 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:45.080 out in public and you can't social distance from people, 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:49.360 to the harder choices about employment and uh in life choices, 0:00:49.960 --> 0:00:53.840 we've all been social distancing and stay at home orders, 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.160 teleworking and quarantine have meant that we've all been spending 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:00.440 a lot more time at home now. Depending on your home, 0:01:00.520 --> 0:01:02.560 this could mean a lot of things, but we wanted 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:06.959 to explore what this means from a biological standpoint for 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:09.520 the most part here now now, make no mistakes, spending 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:12.160 more time at home has absolutely been the right move. 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.440 But just as it's forced you to focus more on, 0:01:15.560 --> 0:01:18.240 say that weird staying on your ceiling, we wanted to 0:01:18.280 --> 0:01:22.120 focus on the other, often unseen aspects of life in 0:01:22.200 --> 0:01:25.120 the home right much the same way that being say 0:01:25.160 --> 0:01:27.200 on a Spanish galleon out in the middle of the 0:01:27.240 --> 0:01:30.080 ocean might have made you pay much more attention to 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:33.880 the biology and behavior of of ship rats than you 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:37.720 ever would have otherwise. I think being at home more 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:40.039 and more is forcing all of us to turn our 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:43.400 eyes and maybe our microscopes and magnifying glasses to the 0:01:43.440 --> 0:01:46.360 corners and the cornices, and the shower heads and the 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.400 drain traps and all of the wonderful places in our 0:01:49.440 --> 0:01:53.440 house where life dwells. Yeah, we're gonna really get into 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:57.040 the difference really between the natural world outside of our 0:01:57.040 --> 0:02:00.360 homes and the unnatural world inside, and get into some 0:02:00.440 --> 0:02:05.040 ideas about how how we could perhaps enable our interior 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:07.840 world to be a little more on the natural side 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:11.000 of things. But before we get into all that, I 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.400 wanted to take a moment here just to discuss the 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:16.120 history of houses in general, you know, just to get 0:02:16.160 --> 0:02:20.000 into the concept of what a house is. Our our 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:26.200 first and still most important interior artificial environment. So you 0:02:26.240 --> 0:02:29.240 can certainly look at a home as an artificial cave 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:31.800 to a certain extent. And indeed, we have lots of 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:35.640 early evidence that early hominids sought out shelter in caves 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.880 in the same way that many other animals do. UH. 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:42.280 These can shelter one against the elements and against predators, 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:45.680 And as recently as a hundred and thirty thousand years ago, 0:02:45.840 --> 0:02:50.639 cave dwellers were already augmenting these natural interior environments with 0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.880 things like rough stone walls. They were using timbers so um. 0:02:55.480 --> 0:02:57.480 So you know, even a hundred thirty thousand years ago, 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:01.440 we were taking naturally occurring interior space paces and making 0:03:01.480 --> 0:03:04.320 them a little less natural. Um. And of course, on 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:06.440 top of just the shelter that caves can provide, it 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:09.799 also seems that caves had a strong sacred meaning to 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:13.959 many of these UH prehistoric peoples. Those might be important, 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:19.240 but ultimately proximity to water is far more important. Thus, 0:03:19.280 --> 0:03:22.040 as Kate Spence and Brian M. Fagan point out in 0:03:22.200 --> 0:03:25.880 UH in the section of the seventy Grade Inventions of 0:03:25.919 --> 0:03:29.960 the Ancient World about homes, most early hominids lived out 0:03:30.120 --> 0:03:33.880 in the open near streams and lakes, they built temporary structures, 0:03:34.160 --> 0:03:36.520 and most of this has been lost to time, but 0:03:36.680 --> 0:03:39.640 some of the earliest evidence of potential structures for homes 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:43.600 goes back one point seven two point seven million years 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:47.280 ago with Homo erectus sites in southern Africa, and these 0:03:47.320 --> 0:03:51.560 were potentially contemporary with the domestication of fire um and 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:54.800 these would have been temporary tents, but but they still 0:03:54.840 --> 0:03:59.520 would have been artificial interior environments. Now more secure evidence 0:03:59.760 --> 0:04:03.040 come from the Ukraine roughly forty four thousand years ago, 0:04:03.840 --> 0:04:08.440 the mammoth bone structures from Maladova, which we recently discussed 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:10.840 on the show. Actually, yeah, we did uh talking about 0:04:10.880 --> 0:04:14.440 these uh. That would have been structures in one of 0:04:14.480 --> 0:04:18.279 the northernmost habitable regions of the Earth at the time, 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:21.279 because this was during a time of glacial advance where 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:23.640 the polar ice caps from the north were coming deep 0:04:23.720 --> 0:04:27.240 down into Europe and Asia and uh and so this 0:04:27.240 --> 0:04:29.920 would have been far far north, way up among the 0:04:29.960 --> 0:04:33.960 ice and for some reason humans were building these structures 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:36.200 out of the bones of mammoth and we don't know that. 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:38.640 There's still things we don't know about those structures, like 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:42.560 how how consistently they were inhabited and for how long 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:45.919 and so forth. Right Now, beyond this, the history of 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:49.279 human homes is is largely dictated by local resources and 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.560 a local climate. A long process of trial and air 0:04:52.960 --> 0:04:55.520 ends up leading to the development of regional and cultural 0:04:55.600 --> 0:05:00.680 building forms construction methods. But before nine tho see we 0:05:00.720 --> 0:05:03.479 see evidence of clay houses in Palestine and what is 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:07.960 today Palestine, and before seven thousand b C. We see 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:12.080 rectangular dwellings in Anatolia. But but at home is far 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:14.880 more than just a shelter. As the authors here point out, 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:19.200 houses became key to social structure as well. They point 0:05:19.200 --> 0:05:23.800 out that the ethnographic studies in West Africa reveal complex 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:28.600 and layered symbolic associations and rituals in the context of dwelling, 0:05:29.200 --> 0:05:32.040 and that this is it shows that a clear role 0:05:32.680 --> 0:05:37.080 of physically structuring and expressing the relationship between different members 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:39.200 of the household. And we see this of course in 0:05:39.400 --> 0:05:42.839 um and cultures. You know, throughout history and throughout the world. 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:47.039 There's this physical shape of the place, uh, and then 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:51.279 that ends up defining or influencing like that, there's this 0:05:51.400 --> 0:05:53.840 this feedback between the two. It goes both ways. Right, 0:05:54.040 --> 0:05:56.720 it's kind of like pouring a liquid into a container. Oh, 0:05:56.760 --> 0:06:00.000 of course. And this actually got me thinking about how 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.840 having permanent, constructed dwellings must have changed the way that 0:06:03.920 --> 0:06:06.800 power and hierarchy are expressed in social groups. And of 0:06:06.800 --> 0:06:10.560 course this is true with normal social status. You know, 0:06:10.640 --> 0:06:13.520 it's it's staked out through displays of wealth. There certain 0:06:13.600 --> 0:06:17.000 kinds of taste or aesthetics in your house, your apartment, 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:19.560 your you know, your living space. But this also made 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.880 me think about the way that for many leadership positions, 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:26.320 there is a special house, there's a special dwelling place 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:29.880 that comes with the job, rather than belonging to an individual. 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.160 So here in Georgia we have the governor's mansion. There 0:06:33.279 --> 0:06:35.680 is the White House there, you know, the palace that 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:39.120 the king stays at in many cultures, and there's a 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:43.039 there's a strange metonomy that derives from this. Often the 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.720 house identified with the position of power is used as 0:06:46.760 --> 0:06:49.800 a metaphorical stand in for the person, you know, like 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:53.599 today the white House said such that, like, the permanent 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:57.360 dwelling place is actually almost the source of the power, 0:06:57.880 --> 0:07:00.480 and there just happens to be a particular person living 0:07:00.520 --> 0:07:03.120 there right now. Yeah, it's weird. We get so used 0:07:03.120 --> 0:07:05.840 to it because it's just part of our daily um, 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.200 you know, our daily you know linguistic world. You know, 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.640 you can read the news, you read about these various locations, 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:15.080 these houses, and it's almost as if they have some 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:18.000 sort of intrinsic power to them, right, I mean, if 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:20.400 you weren't familiar with their cultures, you would read this 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.560 then and people might think, oh, well, they they clearly 0:07:23.600 --> 0:07:27.120 thought that this big, white um house had some sort 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.000 of magical powers and whoever was allowed to go inside 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:32.280 it became the ruler of a country and got to 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:34.840 do whatever they want. Yeah, And it's funny that it's 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:37.560 so normalized for us, like we've forgotten to notice that 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.920 that's weird that like the power is somehow linked to 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.679 the house itself. Um. But it also makes me wonder, 0:07:44.760 --> 0:07:47.679 you know, did we think about power differently before living 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:52.320 in artificially built environments? Yeah? To what extent did we? Um? 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:55.000 Did we end up yet changing the way we live 0:07:55.040 --> 0:07:58.840 our lives by altering this physical environment which we live? 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:00.800 I mean it makes sense, right, because so much of 0:08:00.960 --> 0:08:04.520 what we do, you know, it's dictated by the environments 0:08:04.560 --> 0:08:07.840 that we evolve to thrive in right. So anyway, I 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:09.880 don't think we need to remind everyone about the value 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:11.720 of a home. Housing tends to be one of, if 0:08:11.720 --> 0:08:14.400 not the most expensive parts of your life, but it's 0:08:14.400 --> 0:08:17.400 it's interesting to think about them not simply as this 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:20.680 valuable thing in your life, for a valuable location where 0:08:20.680 --> 0:08:23.240 your life takes place. The basic idea of the house 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:26.000 may be as old as our mastery of fire, and 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:30.080 it forms out of and forms ideas of who and 0:08:30.160 --> 0:08:33.120 what we are, and of course it may do so 0:08:33.200 --> 0:08:36.200 in more and more powerful ways every year, as humanity 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:41.800 slowly transitions to become a more indoors e on average species. 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.880 All the time, I was reading some interesting figures about 0:08:45.000 --> 0:08:47.880 this trend in a book by the science writer Emily 0:08:47.960 --> 0:08:50.679 and This uh in the book is called The Great 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:54.800 Indoors The Surprising Science of How Buildings shape our behavior, health, 0:08:54.840 --> 0:08:57.800 and happiness. This is a really interesting book and I'm 0:08:57.800 --> 0:08:59.720 going to refer to it throughout this episode because she 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.720 has an early chapter that's very good about the microbial 0:09:03.760 --> 0:09:07.000 ecology of indoor spaces. But she also gets into some 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:11.599 interesting territory about the trends in how much built environment 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:16.000 and floor space we're actually creating. Obviously, this currently varies 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:18.640 a lot by culture and climate, but in some parts 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:22.000 of the world human kind is transitioned to an almost 0:09:22.320 --> 0:09:26.120 entirely indoor existence. And this really shows in the way 0:09:26.160 --> 0:09:30.439 we've transformed our environments to convert to this largely indoor existence. 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:34.240 Uh Anthes writes, quote, the island of Manhattan is only 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:38.000 twenty three square miles in size, but has three times 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:42.560 that much indoor floor space. And furthermore, she refers to 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:45.800 a report put together by a United Nations commission in 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.959 which concluded that over the next forty years, humankind is 0:09:51.000 --> 0:09:54.720 going to roughly double the amount of indoor floor space 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:57.839 that exists currently. And the way this works out is 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.880 quote those additions are equivalent to building the current floor 0:10:01.920 --> 0:10:07.760 area of Japan every single year from now until Wow. 0:10:08.480 --> 0:10:10.120 That much floor is going to take a lot of 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:14.319 pine sawl Yeah. I mean it is crazy to think 0:10:14.320 --> 0:10:18.480 about how certainly during pre pandemic times, you know, you 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:21.960 would you had this home, this interior space that you 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.400 live in, you sleep in, you bathe in, you spend 0:10:25.440 --> 0:10:28.160 time in, and then uh and it is you know, 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:30.880 very much like the center of your life. And then 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:34.440 you're getting into another interior space, which happens to be 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:38.280 motorized and on wheels, and use that to travel then 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:42.600 a certain distance to another interior space that you'll go 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:45.360 into to work, either set at a desk or you know, 0:10:45.400 --> 0:10:49.000 work with some sort of machinery or what have you. Uh, 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:51.280 and then at the end of the day back into 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.800 this uh, motorized interior space and then return to the 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:57.559 one in which you live. It's worth remembering yet again, 0:10:57.640 --> 0:11:01.440 biologically speaking, this is not normal. This is not like 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:05.120 what our bodies are naturally adapted to. Spending this much 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:09.440 time indoors is still fairly historically novel, and it is 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:13.560 very weird. Yes. But the other big thing, and this 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:15.600 is going to be a recurring theme throughout the rest 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:20.000 of the episode, is that these artificial spaces that we made, 0:11:20.720 --> 0:11:25.160 they are they're not completely alien, you know, they're they're 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.959 constructed all of the natural world. They're not the natural environment, 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:31.880 but they are made out of it. And uh and 0:11:31.880 --> 0:11:35.240 and much of the natural world is still present, just 0:11:35.480 --> 0:11:41.800 in um rebalanced and unbalanced ways. Uh. So that that 0:11:41.880 --> 0:11:43.800 is going to be what we're going to really get into, Like, 0:11:43.880 --> 0:11:47.599 what in creating these interior spaces, what sort of environments 0:11:47.600 --> 0:11:51.400 have we created? Right, Indoor spaces are not unnatural in 0:11:51.440 --> 0:11:54.440 that they're completely separate from the rest of the world, 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:57.480 but they're also not just like outdoor spaces. They're kind 0:11:57.480 --> 0:12:00.920 of like a special niche environment, like a like a 0:12:00.960 --> 0:12:03.400 cliff face or an island. You know, it's a place 0:12:03.400 --> 0:12:07.120 where you have to investigate. Okay, what kinds of life 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:12.079 from around and other places are going to colonize this space? Yeah? 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:15.360 And and who are your roommates? Who are your inhuman 0:12:15.480 --> 0:12:18.720 roommates in this space where you've been trapped? Uh these 0:12:18.960 --> 0:12:21.320 past several months. Well, maybe we should take a break 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:22.800 and then when we come back, we can start talking 0:12:22.840 --> 0:12:30.080 about those in human roommates. All right, we're back, so uh. 0:12:30.520 --> 0:12:34.600 Rob Donne, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:38.520 State University and Raleigh, wrote an excellent book titled Never 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:43.040 Home Alone. From Microbes to Millipedes, camel, crickets and honey bees, 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:46.120 then Natural History of Where We Live. That's a nice 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:48.280 long title. I know you'd be like those those long 0:12:48.400 --> 0:12:52.120 coland titles, want like a whole paragraph after the colon, 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:55.760 but it's it's it's hard as they go. It's pretty 0:12:55.760 --> 0:12:58.600 good title. Anyway, it came out last October and it's 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:01.680 currently available in all format. So however, you read your books. 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:04.720 But I remember hearing an interview with the author around 0:13:04.760 --> 0:13:06.880 the time that came out, and I picked it up 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.560 for this episode because it's, yeah, it's it's it's just 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:11.960 a very well written book and it really gets into 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:17.280 some just crazy, uh mind bending facts about these artificial environments, 0:13:17.280 --> 0:13:18.760 most of which we won't even really be able to 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:21.720 get into in this episode, but we wanted to touch 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:24.320 on it. So if you look around its science papers, 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:27.880 you'll find Dunn's name um all over the place when 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.840 it comes to this area of microbial life. For instance, 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:34.080 he's the co author on a two thousand eighteen paper 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:38.160 that found that chimpanzee tree top beds, which are like 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:42.559 a daily affair, contained fewer microbes and Arthur pods than 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:46.520 human beds, which is not shocking given again the the 0:13:46.559 --> 0:13:48.520 idea that ore beds that are kind of like set 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:51.640 in place, Um, you know, we will change the sheets, 0:13:51.640 --> 0:13:54.839 but it's not every night probably, whereas the chimps are 0:13:54.840 --> 0:13:58.520 going to be refreshing things a bit more. Also, thirty 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:01.840 of the bacteria in human beds stem from our own 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.439 bodies and includes fecal, oral, and skin bacteria. Yeah. The 0:14:05.480 --> 0:14:07.120 way I heard it put, because this is covered in 0:14:07.160 --> 0:14:10.600 Anthesis book too, is that with the with the human bed, 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:14.320 basically you're just gonna find tons of human type stuff 0:14:14.360 --> 0:14:17.520 in it. But for a chimpanzees bed, you will find 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:21.320 you know, bugs, arthur pods, and microbes in in this bed, 0:14:21.720 --> 0:14:25.200 but they're almost all from the surrounding environment. Uh. The 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:27.280 way it was put was that you might not be 0:14:27.360 --> 0:14:30.560 able to tell that a chimpanzee had ever been there. Right, 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:35.240 very strange. But from Anthesis book there's uh So there's 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:37.080 a chapter that discusses a lot of the work of 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.800 the same researcher, robbed On, the the ecologist at North 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:43.280 Carolina State, but also a researcher that he's collaborated with 0:14:43.320 --> 0:14:47.560 a lot named Noah Fierre, who's a microbiologist at u C. Boulder, 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:51.600 And there's a part where it talks about a survey 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:54.600 that they tried to conduct called the Wildlife of Our 0:14:54.640 --> 0:14:57.840 Homes Project. There was a pilot study they started in 0:14:57.920 --> 0:15:01.040 North Carolina, and so they would do was they would 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:05.400 get a bunch of families to take cotton swab samples 0:15:05.400 --> 0:15:07.960 of seven different surfaces from inside their homes, and this 0:15:08.000 --> 0:15:12.040 would include a countertop, a cutting board, a refrigerator shelf, 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:15.960 a pillow case, a toilet seat, a TV screen, and 0:15:16.000 --> 0:15:20.880 then the trim around an interior doorway. And the results 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:24.440 were interesting. They found more than two thousand types of 0:15:24.480 --> 0:15:28.960 microbes in these samples, and there were distinct microbial habitats 0:15:29.040 --> 0:15:32.600 within the house. So perhaps on surprisingly, kitchens would have 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:35.720 a lot of bacteria that are naturally associated with food 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.120 that might be you know, found on food or aid 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:42.360 in the decomposition of food. Meanwhile, doorways would have a 0:15:42.360 --> 0:15:46.000 lot of environmental species stuff you might find outside the house, 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:48.040 you know, things you would find on plant leaves and 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:50.840 in the soil. But then this was the quote that 0:15:50.920 --> 0:15:53.680 really stuck with me, And this writes quote from a 0:15:53.720 --> 0:15:59.200 microbiological perspective, toilet seats and pillow cases looked strikingly similar. 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:03.000 But we're dominated by bacteria that typically live on our 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:06.280 skin and in our mouths. All right, So that's that's 0:16:06.360 --> 0:16:08.880 kind of a shocking sounding statement that might make you 0:16:08.920 --> 0:16:12.080 want to instantly go and wash your pillowcase and maybe 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:15.200 your toilet seat too. But but but hold on, wait 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:17.280 till we get through the whole episode, because I think 0:16:17.320 --> 0:16:19.960 one of the big tacomes here is like, if you 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:23.080 think that your pillow is going to be a microbial 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:28.040 sterile um experience, you know you should think again, likewise 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:30.720 with the toilet seat, likewise with anything in the house. 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:33.160 So in Dunn's book, one of one of the things 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:35.640 he drives home is that again our our house environments 0:16:35.640 --> 0:16:38.560 are again not natural environments, but they are made out 0:16:38.680 --> 0:16:41.600 of the natural environment, and they are not cut off 0:16:41.640 --> 0:16:43.760 from the natural environment. So what we end up with 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:46.520 is an artificial environment that kind of mashes up all 0:16:46.520 --> 0:16:51.120 of these various environmental parameters, sometimes in surprising ways, especially 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.040 when it comes to microbes, because if we as we've 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:56.760 discussed on the show plenty of times before, there is 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:00.320 no microbe free living our bodies, independent of anything else, 0:17:00.480 --> 0:17:03.880 our home to multitudes of microbes. To come back to 0:17:03.920 --> 0:17:06.280 a quote that we've pulled up on the show in 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:09.480 discussion in the past. In a Life in a World 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:13.080 without Microbes by Gilbert and Newfeld published in PRST Biology, 0:17:13.119 --> 0:17:15.760 the authors contend that quote it would be false to 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:20.280 claim that macroscopic life cannot exist without microbes. However, although 0:17:20.320 --> 0:17:23.000 life would persist in the absence of microbes, both the 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:27.320 quantity and quality of life would be reduced drastically. So 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:29.919 Done points out that even the outer layer of our 0:17:29.960 --> 0:17:34.439 skin is just this rich microbial environment. Our armpit bacteria 0:17:34.520 --> 0:17:39.240 are essentially fed by glands nurturing what has likely been 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:43.840 an historically important microbe passenger. And we can we can 0:17:43.880 --> 0:17:45.679 look at this as an example of the sort of 0:17:45.720 --> 0:17:48.840 microbe that then thrives in our creative environments. We tend 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:52.880 to find the same bacteria uh that that that thrives 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:56.000 in our under arms living in our homes, especially homes 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.560 where males live. If there's like a predominantly male population 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:02.440 of a house sold, you will find this particular bacterium. 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:07.560 I believe it's uh corn a bacterium just thriving Coarina bacterium, 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:11.480 Coarina bacterium. Yes. Yeah, So this thing about the sex 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:15.399 composition of the household versus the household microbiome was also 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:19.080 mentioned in anthesis book, and it's very interesting. So just 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.480 as you say, homes with more male residents tend to 0:18:22.520 --> 0:18:27.080 have higher counts of bacteria such as Rosa burria and 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:30.760 this is commonly a gut bacteria, as well as Karina 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:34.840 bacterium and Derma bacter and uh at this points out 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:37.959 that these are most common on the skin. Now, Coarina 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:40.680 bacterium is often found in the armpit. As you say, 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:43.520 it is a contributor to body odor. But also it's 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:46.000 been found that just on average, men tend to have 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.720 more Coarina bacteria on their skin than women do, and 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:53.600 men tend to shed more skin microbes into the environment 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:56.880 than women do. And then on the other hand, households 0:18:56.920 --> 0:18:59.119 that have more women living in them tend to have 0:18:59.240 --> 0:19:02.359 higher counts of Lactobacillus, which is our old friend from 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:05.919 the fermentation episode. I don't know if this translates to 0:19:06.119 --> 0:19:09.080 a workable difference, maybe not, but it makes me wonder 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:12.119 if it's possible that houses occupied by higher numbers of 0:19:12.119 --> 0:19:16.159 women might be a better place to make sauerkraut. Interesting, 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:18.520 just some to think about, but sort of. What this 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:23.000 suggests is that humans are walking fountains of microbes. We 0:19:23.000 --> 0:19:27.280 we shed our microbial passengers everywhere we go, and it 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:31.120 turns out this can be kind of quantified to creepy levels. 0:19:32.000 --> 0:19:36.240 So consider this. No two people's microbiomes are exactly the same. 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:41.000 Each person is a unique ecosystem. So if everybody has 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:45.200 their own unique profile of microbiota, and everybody is shedding 0:19:45.280 --> 0:19:49.760 microbial life all the time, are we essentially leaving identifiable 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:53.399 microbial evidence of our presence everywhere we go, you know, 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:57.840 kind of the slug trail of our microbiome all over 0:19:57.880 --> 0:20:01.480 the place. And the answer appears to be kind of yeah. 0:20:01.520 --> 0:20:04.080 At this reports one study led by Jack Gilbert at 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:06.000 the University of Chicago. I think that might be the 0:20:06.000 --> 0:20:09.560 Gilbert of the Gilbert and Neufeld study that you mentioned 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.960 a minute ago. But it followed three families that were 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:16.560 in the process of moving into new homes. And what 0:20:16.600 --> 0:20:20.600 Gilbert and colleagues found was that each family began to 0:20:21.560 --> 0:20:25.520 colonize the new house with their microbes within just hours 0:20:25.600 --> 0:20:30.240 of arriving there. Uh. And that the researchers quote could 0:20:30.280 --> 0:20:35.760 even detect the individual microbial contributions of each family member. Uh. 0:20:35.760 --> 0:20:38.560 And then Gilbert says, people who spent more time in 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:42.680 the kitchen, their microbiome dominated that space. People who spent 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:46.439 more time in the bedroom, their microbiome dominated there. You 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:53.159 could start to forensically identify their movement. Oh wow, So 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:56.720 this this makes one try to imagine like law and 0:20:56.960 --> 0:21:02.520 order microbiology, yes, surveillance biotech. Yeah. But to come back 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:06.439 to to Rob Dunn's example about Corina bacteria in homes, 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:09.440 especially where males live. You you had an interesting thing 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:13.320 about that, Yeah, because he brings up a very curious 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:16.840 case of of an interior environment in interier home that 0:21:17.160 --> 0:21:20.359 had a predominantly certainly at the time of the study, 0:21:20.359 --> 0:21:24.800 had a predominantly male um population, and that is the 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:29.439 International Space Station. So this was basically there was a 0:21:29.560 --> 0:21:34.000 study of the micro buyouta one finds inside the I 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:36.320 S S. This was conducted in two thousand thirteen by 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:41.400 Jonathan Ien, a microbiologist at u C. Davis. So, the 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:43.959 the I S S done rights, is very much like 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.199 a house on Earth. Quote, in nearly every way, the 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:49.600 bacteria of the I S S are the sorts of 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.200 bacteria we would expect in a house on Earth if 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:55.879 all the environmental influences were removed. I S S is 0:21:55.920 --> 0:21:58.720 what you get when you scrub and scrub and close 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:01.840 the windows, doors and hatches. So the I S S 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:04.840 might be kind of like a very well scrub department 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:07.840 in a high rise in a big city. Yeah, I mean, 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:11.480 there's there's no outside to get inside, right, Um, I 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:15.280 mean immediately so obviously, um, stuff can be brought up, 0:22:15.320 --> 0:22:19.000 but anyway, done also points out that in this study 0:22:19.000 --> 0:22:24.480 of iss microbes, quote, everything was everywhere. The interior was 0:22:24.520 --> 0:22:28.000 just codd in human bacteria, and nothing from outside was 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:30.600 getting in. Obviously. He points out that in a small 0:22:30.640 --> 0:22:34.520 traditional home made out of mud and leaves, which would 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:37.120 have been you know, the normal for the vast uh, 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:40.480 you know, the vast majority of human existence, everything would 0:22:40.520 --> 0:22:44.320 be everywhere as well, but environmental microbes would be everywhere. 0:22:44.760 --> 0:22:47.400 What's outside would be inside. But for the I s 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:49.240 s there there is no outside. Really, it is a 0:22:49.400 --> 0:22:51.719 you know, this sterile environment that is then inhabited by 0:22:51.800 --> 0:22:56.720 human beings certainly, but then inhabited populated by human microbes. 0:22:57.160 --> 0:23:02.200 So so environmentally sterile, but heavily colonized by what the 0:23:02.320 --> 0:23:05.480 humans bring with them, right, He writes, quote, if you 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:07.840 scrub and scrub your home, this is what you may 0:23:07.880 --> 0:23:10.720 achieve too. It is not unlike what we see in 0:23:10.800 --> 0:23:13.800