Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 3: in our series about the winners of the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five ig Nobel Prizes. This is something we cover almost
Speaker 3: every year here on the show, though of course we're
Speaker 3: not affiliated with the prizes in anyway. It's just something
Speaker 3: we like to talk about. The Ignobels are given out
Speaker 3: usually in September of each year by a scientific humor
Speaker 3: journal called the Annals of Improbable Research, edited for many
Speaker 3: years by Mark Abrahams, and the state admission of the
Speaker 3: Ignobel Prizes is to honor achievements that first make people
Speaker 3: laugh and then make them think. If you haven't listened
Speaker 3: to part one yet, you can go back and check
Speaker 3: that one out first. But for a brief recap. In
Speaker 3: the last episode, we talked about the twenty two twenty
Speaker 3: five prize in nutrition, which went to a team who
Speaker 3: studied lizards eating pizza. The prize for psychology for a
Speaker 3: paper that looked at whether people become more narcissistic when
Speaker 3: you tell them that they're really smart. And the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five Prize for Aviation, which went to a study
Speaker 3: on whether fruit bats become worse at flying when they
Speaker 3: get drunk. Is that about right, Rob, Yes, and they do.
Speaker 3: And we're back today to talk about more.
Speaker 2: All right. Just a reminder again, we're not covering all
Speaker 2: the winners. We're just doing two helpings, really, each of
Speaker 2: us going in and grabbing some stuff, discussing the studies
Speaker 2: we want to talk about, papers we want to talk about,
Speaker 2: but by all means, go to the website improbable dot
Speaker 2: com and you can learn more about this year's winners,
Speaker 2: last year's winners. They have one of these great like
Speaker 2: single page readouts where you can just scan through everything
Speaker 2: that they've covered over the years. A rarity in today's
Speaker 2: web space.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a great thing to send to your office printer
Speaker 3: and just get again.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the first award that I wanted to talk
Speaker 3: about today is the twenty twenty five Biology Prize, which
Speaker 3: was presented to and there's a long list of names here.
Speaker 3: As always, apologies for any mispronunciations, but the team was
Speaker 3: Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Yasushi Matsubara, Yuki Uchiyama, Yoshihiko Fukushima,
Speaker 3: Naoto Aoki, say Sato, Tatsuaki Masuda, Junichi Yueida, hiro Yuki Hiruka,
Speaker 3: and Katsutoshi Kino, and then to quote the prize language
Speaker 3: for their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra
Speaker 3: like striping can avoid being bitten by flies? Yes, that
Speaker 3: said painted. So the question is can you keep parasitic
Speaker 3: insects off your cows by just painting some zebra stripes
Speaker 3: on them? The paper in question was published in twenty
Speaker 3: nineteen in the journal plus one, and it was called
Speaker 3: Cows painted with zebra like striping can avoid biting fly attacks.
Speaker 3: It kind of gives away the result there. But the
Speaker 3: funny thing about this study is that this is actually
Speaker 3: not the first time, not this paper in particular, but
Speaker 3: research on this general subject has come up on the show.
Speaker 3: We talked about this in a listener Mail episode last year,
Speaker 3: which was was from August twenty twenty four. Rob, Was
Speaker 3: this an episode that I did solo or were you
Speaker 3: on this episode with me?
Speaker 2: I don't recall. This is one of those areas that
Speaker 2: I feel like I have podcasted on before, but I'm
Speaker 2: not sure how recently, you know, getting into the coloration
Speaker 2: of zebras and so forth, and you know the evolved
Speaker 2: reason for the stripes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so maybe this was a solo listener mail episode
Speaker 3: that I did. Anyway, the context in which this came
Speaker 3: up was a message from our listener Jeremy, who at
Speaker 3: the time had written into the show address that's contact
Speaker 3: at stuff to Blow your mind dot com, asking for
Speaker 3: our thoughts on an attached photo which was of a
Speaker 3: horse grazing in a fenced pasture draped in a cloth
Speaker 3: with black and white zebra print. Which is funny already
Speaker 3: because I think, not knowing the reason for this, a
Speaker 3: lot of people's first assumption might be that this is
Speaker 3: just a horse somebody has dressed up in a zebra
Speaker 3: costume for esthetic reasons, maybe Halloween unclear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean somebody's pasture poodle. So maybe they just
Speaker 2: have a jazzy outfit.
Speaker 3: On, right, So Jeremy asked if the purpose was actually
Speaker 3: to repel biting flies, since there is some evidence that
Speaker 3: zebra stripes may work to keep flies off the skin.
Speaker 3: I looked into this a little bit, and I concluded
Speaker 3: at the time that the horse in the picture was
Speaker 3: wearing what's called a fly sheet. I had no previous
Speaker 3: knowledge of this at all, but I assume most horse
Speaker 3: owners and farmers and ranchers will be quite familiar with
Speaker 3: this kind of product. So fly sheets are lightweight bankets,
Speaker 3: usually made out of some kind of mesh fabric that
Speaker 3: you drape over a horse to keep flies and other
Speaker 3: insects from biting the horse. And if you google these products,
Speaker 3: you'll find that other uses are advertised as well, like
Speaker 3: protecting animals from UV radiation. From what I'm reading, these
Speaker 3: things work pretty well at their main job. But that
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that you can just protect all your horses
Speaker 3: permanently by dressing them in fly sheets and then just
Speaker 3: leaving them on all the time. Apparently, some horses do
Speaker 3: not like the sheets. They find them irritating and they
Speaker 3: try to shake them or rub them off, which could
Speaker 3: lead to injury. Also, there is some injury risk just
Speaker 3: from the horse knocking it part way off and then
Speaker 3: getting it tangled on something. And also you can't leave
Speaker 3: it on forever for the same reason that you shouldn't
Speaker 3: leave the same piece of human clothing on forever. Eventually
Speaker 3: it gets dirty and damp and hot, and it irritates
Speaker 3: the skin, possibly leading to overheating or to skin infections.
Speaker 3: So fly sheets can protect your horse from fly bites
Speaker 3: to some extent, but you've got to balance the pros
Speaker 3: and cons, and even for horses that tolerate them, well,
Speaker 3: it's not just a putg it on once and forget
Speaker 3: about it solution. But the thing I wondered about in
Speaker 3: this image was if the fly sheet is itself a
Speaker 3: physical barrier against fly bytes, what would be the additional benefit,
Speaker 3: if anything, of having an insect repelling pattern printed on
Speaker 3: the fly sheet? If that is indeed what zebra stripes
Speaker 3: even do. We'll explore that question more in a minute.
Speaker 3: But wouldn't the sheet itself provide the protection whether it
Speaker 3: was printed with zebra stripes or leopard print or you
Speaker 3: know whatever individual frames from the Boxer's omen just like
Speaker 3: the whole movie on the side of the horse. Maybe
Speaker 3: maybe there is an additional benefit, but I'm skeptical.
Speaker 2: I mean, that would have venture to guess. Maybe it
Speaker 2: would be a situation where the stripes would keep flies
Speaker 2: potentially away from the uncovered portions of the horse as well,
Speaker 2: Like the flies in question would be like, oh, there's
Speaker 2: a zebra colored horse over there. I'm going to ignore
Speaker 2: this horse entirely, even the parts that aren't zebra e
Speaker 2: And I'm just going to go check out this other
Speaker 2: certified non zebra.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that is a totally reasonable thing to wonder,
Speaker 3: except I think in at least one of the studies
Speaker 3: we're about to look at, it mentions that when supplemental
Speaker 3: zebra stripes are given to some animals, they still got
Speaker 3: bitten on the parts that weren't covered.
Speaker 2: So okay, well, there you go.
Speaker 3: But I don't know. Maybe it reduces the bites on
Speaker 3: the uncovered parts even though it doesn't totally eliminate them.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but anyway, so questions. I don't know
Speaker 3: whether that would be beneficial or not. Now. In that
Speaker 3: listener mail episode, I talked about a different study on
Speaker 3: zebra stripes and biting insects, also from twenty nineteen, also
Speaker 3: in the Journal plus one, so same journal and year
Speaker 3: as the Ignobel Prize winning study here. That paper was
Speaker 3: called Benefits of Zebra stripes Behavior of Tabinid flies around
Speaker 3: zebras and horses. That was by Caro at All short
Speaker 3: summary of that one. Over the years, researchers have proposed
Speaker 3: a lot of different evolutionary reasons that zebras might have stripes.
Speaker 3: Maybe the stripes somehow regulate body temperature, for example, maybe
Speaker 3: they helped the zebra avoid overheating in the sun somehow,
Speaker 3: maybe they are a type of visual camouflage confusing predators.
Speaker 3: But a very promising idea is that somehow the stripes
Speaker 3: protect zebras against ectoparasitic insects like biting flies quote quoting
Speaker 3: the authors. Here, we examined the behavior of tabanids, horseflies
Speaker 3: in the vicinity of captive planes, zebras, and uniformly colored
Speaker 3: domestic horses living on a horse farm in Britain. Observations
Speaker 3: showed that fewer tabanids landed on zebras than on horses
Speaker 3: per unit time, although rates of tabanids circling around or
Speaker 3: briefly touching zebra and horse pillage did not differ. So
Speaker 3: interesting finding. The horses and zebra has had equal numbers
Speaker 3: of flies swarming around them, but the flies successfully landed
Speaker 3: on the zebras less often, which presumably means they were
Speaker 3: able to bite the zebras less often. And in a
Speaker 3: secondary experiment, the authors found that if you placed a
Speaker 3: zebra patterned coat on a horse compared to coats of
Speaker 3: solid white or solid black, it reduced the number of
Speaker 3: tabinid flies that landed on the horse. The horseflies still
Speaker 3: landed on and bit like exposed unpatterned parts of the
Speaker 3: horse's bodies, like the head. So the question is if
Speaker 3: zebra stripes prevent flies or help help reduce the amount
Speaker 3: that flies land on you, how do they do that?
Speaker 3: The author's right quote. In separate detailed video analyzes, tabanids
Speaker 3: approached zebras faster and failed to decelerate before contacting zebras,
Speaker 3: and proportionately more tabinids simply touched rather than landed on
Speaker 3: zebra pelage in comparison to horses. So, according to this
Speaker 3: other research, when you have zebra stripes, biting flies have
Speaker 3: a harder time slowing down their flight and landing correctly
Speaker 3: on your skin, and they're more likely to kind of
Speaker 3: fly into you at higher speed and bounce off without landing.
Speaker 3: That's kind of interesting. It's like putting some kind of
Speaker 3: dazzle your on your airport runway. You know, it makes
Speaker 3: it hard to land the plane.
Speaker 2: Now you're messing with the fly maneuverability and landing ability. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also note that when I looked into this last year,
Speaker 3: I read some coverage, including an article in the BBC
Speaker 3: that quoted other scientists in the field who were not
Speaker 3: fully convinced that they that fly repellent properties were the
Speaker 3: main evolutionary reason for zebra stripes. A few reasons for
Speaker 3: doubt they're a major one being are biting flies really
Speaker 3: a primary fitness concern for wild zebras. Some researchers were
Speaker 3: skeptical that they were, so this is not a full
Speaker 3: settled issue. But that brings us to the Ignobel prize
Speaker 3: winning paper on this topic. Again, that's the Kojima at
Speaker 3: All paper from twenty nineteen. To summarize this one, the
Speaker 3: authors cite the previous research showing that zebra stripes seem
Speaker 3: to reduce attacks by biting flies, and however much this
Speaker 3: is or is not really a major fitness concern for
Speaker 3: zebras in the wild, the authors argued that it is
Speaker 3: of major significance to people who raise domestic animals like cattle.
Speaker 3: They write, quote, biting flies are serious pests of livestock
Speaker 3: that cause economic losses in animal production. Now you might think, like,
Speaker 3: how do fly bytes cause those losses. Well, they actually explain.
Speaker 3: They say, cattle find these biting flies really annoying, and
Speaker 3: they change their behavior to try to protect themselves from
Speaker 3: fly bites. So cattle that are bothered by biting flies
Speaker 3: spend less time feeding and grazing, they spend less time
Speaker 3: bedding down, and they also engage in direct defensive behaviors.
Speaker 3: These defensive behaviors can involve a lot of violent body movements,
Speaker 3: maybe flicking the tail, stomping around, shaking their heads, and
Speaker 3: twitching the muscles on the skin. Cattle will also crowd
Speaker 3: their bodies together to decrease their surface area and protect
Speaker 3: themselves from flies. And the authors argue that all of
Speaker 3: these behaviors cause economic losses since the cattle expend energy
Speaker 3: doing this stuff, they eat and they rest less, and
Speaker 3: crowding or bunching together in particular, seems bad. Quote. Bunching
Speaker 3: increases heat, stress and risk of injury as animals jostle
Speaker 3: for a better position to avoid biting flies, and this
Speaker 3: can reduce weight gains in feed lot beef cattle and
Speaker 3: milk yield in dairy cows. So this doesn't necessarily prove it,
Speaker 3: but I think it's a reasonable inference that if if
Speaker 3: biting flies cause these measurable economic losses for domestic cattle owners,
Speaker 3: they might well translate to similar evolutionary losses for animals
Speaker 3: in nature. We don't know for sure, but it seems
Speaker 3: quite possible.
Speaker 2: It sounds reasonable anyway.
Speaker 3: So, building on the previous findings that biting flies either
Speaker 3: avoid or have trouble landing on zebra stripes versus on
Speaker 3: like a solid black or white surface, the authors ask
Speaker 3: what happens if you just paint a solid colored cow
Speaker 3: with zebra stripes? Will that keep the biting flies away?
Speaker 3: And if you wonder if there's a picture, Yes, there
Speaker 3: is a picture, Rob, I've got it for you to
Speaker 3: look at. Here. So this is a black cow that
Speaker 3: has been painted with white zebra stripes on the sides,
Speaker 3: like the flanks, not the head, but everywhere except the head,
Speaker 3: the flanks and the legs going all the way to
Speaker 3: the rear end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this picture alone answers the question why is this funny?
Speaker 2: This is just in and of itself, laughter inducing to
Speaker 2: see this cow that has been painted up like a
Speaker 2: zebra like. Somehow, it's more hilarious, obviously than a horse
Speaker 2: being painted like a zebra. Maybe because like, you're not
Speaker 2: fooling anybody, Like I can't help but think this cow
Speaker 2: wants to be mistaken for a zebra and we're just
Speaker 2: not buying it.
Speaker 3: I'm not insulting anybody here, but it is funny that
Speaker 3: this picture has has labels for body and leg. Actually,
Speaker 3: maybe there's a good reason for this, Like maybe if
Speaker 3: they're if they're documenting where on the body the biting
Speaker 3: flies that were seen landing landed, you know, you want
Speaker 3: to note exactly where the boundaries are as you're considering. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that makes more sense. But the label of body
Speaker 3: is really got me going. Which part is the head?
Speaker 3: So the authors they described their small experiment as follows quote.
Speaker 3: Six Japanese black cows were assigned to treatments using a
Speaker 3: three by three Latin square design. The treatments were black
Speaker 3: and white painted stripes, black painted stripes and no stripes,
Speaker 3: meaning an all black body surface. Recorded fly repelling behaviors
Speaker 3: were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and
Speaker 3: tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each
Speaker 3: cow were taken using a commercial digital camera after every observation,
Speaker 3: and biting flies on the body and each leg were
Speaker 3: counted from the photo images. Okay, so maybe that's why
Speaker 3: it's important to know exactly where the boundaries are here.
Speaker 3: We showed that the numbers of biting flies on Japanese
Speaker 3: black cows painted with black and white stripes were significantly
Speaker 3: lower than those on non painted cows and cows painted
Speaker 3: only with black stripes. The frequencies of fly repelling behaviors
Speaker 3: in cows painted with black and white stripes were also
Speaker 3: lower than those in the non painted and black striped cows.
Speaker 3: So again, in other words, compared to cows without stripes
Speaker 3: and black cows painted with blacks, black cows painted with
Speaker 3: black and white stripes had fewer biting flies land on
Speaker 3: them and also showed fewer fly repelling behaviors, all the
Speaker 3: different kinds of you know, the shoe fly dance. The
Speaker 3: authors say that based on these results, it may be
Speaker 3: the case that painting zebra stripes on solid colored livestock
Speaker 3: can reduce the burden from biting flies without resorting to
Speaker 3: other interventions like applying pesticides to livestock, which can also
Speaker 3: be effective, but that comes with downside such as contributing
Speaker 3: to long term pesticide resistance in the environment.
Speaker 2: So if true. It's one of those things where you
Speaker 2: might say, well, it doesn't cost that much to paint
Speaker 2: the cows, let's go ahead and do it regularly. Do
Speaker 2: it and if it's working a little bit, great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, seems like it. Now. One thing to note here
Speaker 3: is again this was a small experiment. There were just
Speaker 3: six cows here, so we should not draw like hugely
Speaker 3: firm conclusions based on it, and more of a pilot
Speaker 3: to open the way to more highly powered research.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as is often the case.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Well, let's move on to the next one. This is
Speaker 2: we want to highlight the chemistry prize. This one went
Speaker 2: to a twenty sixteen US Israeli paper titled Polytetraflora ethylene
Speaker 2: ingestion as a way to increase food volume and hint
Speaker 2: society without increasing calorie content, published in Obesity Technology, written
Speaker 2: by Neftalovich, Neftalovich and Greenway.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, PTFE ingestion as a way to increase
Speaker 3: food volume.
Speaker 2: Exactly, Yes, And this is one of those selections where
Speaker 2: you can see why it is funny right at the
Speaker 2: front end of things, because PTFE is also known by
Speaker 2: the brand name Tefline. This is what John Gotti's teflon
Speaker 2: don nickname was about because one of its uses is
Speaker 2: in nonstick pans, right, so nothing sticks to it. Nothing
Speaker 2: stuck to John Gotti at least for a while that situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's not just used in cookwaar.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: Yeah, PTFE is a nonstick coating has like industrial and
Speaker 3: medical uses as well, and you find it in all
Speaker 3: kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2: That's right. It's a synthetic fluoropolymer discovered in nineteen thirty eight, discovered,
Speaker 2: invented however you want to look at it. It's commonly
Speaker 2: used in nonstick coating for cookwaar, but it's also used
Speaker 2: in wiring insulation, chemical resistance, lining coatings, and medical devices.
Speaker 2: As an electronic insulator. It's used in stain repellent fabrics
Speaker 2: and also in aerospace parts. So the funny part here is,
Speaker 2: obviously the authors are suggesting a brand new use for PTFE,
Speaker 2: and that is what if we ate it as a
Speaker 2: food additive.
Speaker 3: So it's just like you add a little bit of
Speaker 3: salt and pepper tear meal and you also sprinkle in
Speaker 3: some teflon.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think it would be more than sprinkling. What
Speaker 2: they're bulozing. Would be bulking it up like it would
Speaker 2: be like a smoothie powder that gets added to your food.
Speaker 2: And yeah, this paper boldly begins with the following quote,
Speaker 2: civilization has zero calorie drinks, but we have not yet
Speaker 2: made the leap into the realm of zero calorie foods.
Speaker 2: The first step toward achieving this goal is the ability
Speaker 2: to increase the volume of food without adding calories, the
Speaker 2: final frontier, if you will, of eating zero calorie polymers.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be a know it all, but
Speaker 3: there there are not quite zero calorie bulking items, but
Speaker 3: there are well known ways of bulking up food without
Speaker 3: massively increasing the amount of calorie. A big one is fiber.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah, but I guess part of it here
Speaker 2: is that there are and is that this would be
Speaker 2: mainly used to treat a obesity as the main factory here.
Speaker 2: But yes, it also raises a number of questions what
Speaker 2: we'll get to including you know, first of all, can
Speaker 2: we do this? But also should we do this? And
Speaker 2: indeed are there perhaps other things like fiber that maybe
Speaker 2: we should be putting in the end of the diet instead.
Speaker 2: Reading this study reminded me of a gag on thirty
Speaker 2: Rock where Jenna is on a diet and she says
Speaker 2: it's the Japanese paper diet, where she says I can
Speaker 2: only eat paper, but I can eat all the paper
Speaker 2: I want. Perfect Yeah, I mean to be clear, the
Speaker 2: idea of eating paper as a diet. Yeah, eating paper
Speaker 2: I think would technically net you zero calories because your
Speaker 2: digestive system can't break down the cellulose, the main component
Speaker 2: of paper or most paper anyway. But this is not
Speaker 2: recommended as it's not good for your digestion, and that's
Speaker 2: before you even consider potential chemical additives, and also the
Speaker 2: ink that may be on the paper. Though there are
Speaker 2: edible wrappings and even mediums for printing, I'm not sure
Speaker 2: you could really make a diet out of those either.
Speaker 2: But yeah, just the idea of eating paper for your diet.
Speaker 2: It works for a joke, I don't think it would
Speaker 2: work in real life. So back to consuming non flavored
Speaker 2: ptfes as part of your diet. To be fair, the
Speaker 2: proposal is a little more complicated than Hey, it has
Speaker 2: zero calories, so why don't we eat it? First of all,
Speaker 2: the general proposal is that it would be some sort
Speaker 2: of additive again, perhaps like a smoothie powder to bulk
Speaker 2: up actual food. You'd eat this food, but then a
Speaker 2: percentage of the food volume would be indigestible. It cannot
Speaker 2: be metabolized, so it just passes through, taking up space,
Speaker 2: giving you the feeling of being full without itself metabolizing.
Speaker 2: The rest of your meal would though. According to the paper,
Speaker 2: they present this as a quote non metabolized food volume
Speaker 2: bulking agent, and they charge that indeed PTFE is ideal
Speaker 2: for this because it's quote widely considered to be the
Speaker 2: most inert material known and is extremely stable. They also
Speaker 2: add that it succeeds in being quote inert safe, resistant
Speaker 2: to stomach acid, lax taste, available in powder form, smooth,
Speaker 2: resistant to heat, and also cost effective.
Speaker 3: Well, I think it's supposed to be resistant to heat
Speaker 3: up to a point, right, There is a point in
Speaker 3: which it becomes not resistant to heat, right right.
Speaker 2: I mean, anyone who's ever looked into ptf E coated cookware,
Speaker 2: there is a threshold beyond which you're not supposed to
Speaker 2: heat it because then there can be health concerns with
Speaker 2: you know, how things break down and what's released and
Speaker 2: so forth. I guess they're arguing that within the human body,
Speaker 2: you wouldn't reach that threshold, which well, thank you say,
Speaker 2: I mean, if you reach like five hundred degrees fahrenheit
Speaker 2: within the body, something terrible has gone wrong. And just
Speaker 2: speaking to the idea of PTF he's heating up in
Speaker 2: the body, not to any other potential health ramifications here,
Speaker 2: which again I think this obviously raises a ton of
Speaker 2: questions that are not necessarily addressed in this paper or
Speaker 2: would need to be addressed in follow up papers if
Speaker 2: there was like really a huge drive to get ptfees
Speaker 2: deliberately into food. But you know, that doesn't stop them
Speaker 2: from presenting some evidence. They point to some studies that
Speaker 2: claim that, and they claim that quote animal feeding trials
Speaker 2: showed that rats fed a diet of twenty five percent
Speaker 2: PTFE for ninety days had no signs of toxicity and
Speaker 2: that the rats lost weight. And then they go on
Speaker 2: to suggest a possible human consumption ratio of three parts
Speaker 2: food to one part PTFE by volume, and again their
Speaker 2: idea is this would be for therapeutic use in weight loss.
Speaker 2: But I just want to really stress here that this
Speaker 2: is absolutely not something that anyone out there should now
Speaker 2: go out and line up for themselves. Don't try and
Speaker 2: cook this up for yourself either. Don't develop your own
Speaker 2: diet based on hearing about this study. This particular idea
Speaker 2: doesn't seem to be picking up a lot of steam.
Speaker 3: It's not getting a lot of takers in the nutrition community.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Again, I think part of it comes down
Speaker 2: to is this really necessary? Are there perhaps better options?
Speaker 2: And you know, and I think there's a strong case
Speaker 2: to be made. Also, Again, this paper is nearly a
Speaker 2: decade old at this point, and I think the proposal
Speaker 2: feels more dare we say horrific Given concern in recent
Speaker 2: years over so called forever chemicals and microplastics finding their
Speaker 2: way into our bodies so obesity and weight loss, there are
Speaker 2: certainly vowed concerns. But should we necessarily be looking for
Speaker 2: all new reasons to produce these chemicals and to intentionally
Speaker 2: ingest them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, as far as the safety of PTFI goes,
Speaker 3: my memory of it is that generally PTFE itself seems
Speaker 3: to be mostly safe within the temperature ranges, or is
Speaker 3: thought to be based on what we know, But there
Speaker 3: are legitimate questions about health effects arising from its manufacture
Speaker 3: and from associated chemicals that could be brought along with.
Speaker 2: It, right, right, So that's my understanding as well. So
Speaker 2: I guess I come back coming back to this paper specifically,
Speaker 2: like if everything in the paper is just one hundred
Speaker 2: percent correct and it is perfectly safe to consume some
Speaker 2: sort of hypothetical Again, this doesn't I think, really exist yet,
Speaker 2: some hypothetical human grade ptf E food additive, would it
Speaker 2: still be the thing we want to do and need
Speaker 2: to do? But then again, I mean that's kind of
Speaker 2: the beautiful thing about science, right, is sometimes you do
Speaker 2: explore these big sort of what ifs, what is this
Speaker 2: a potential solution? And you know, maybe one paper leans
Speaker 2: a little more positive and if it's necessary for follow up,
Speaker 2: there will be some more negative considerations as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I certainly don't want to
Speaker 3: be like snarky and dismissive. I mean, I try to
Speaker 3: be open minded about things. But I will just let
Speaker 3: me come back on the other side and advocate fiber.
Speaker 3: I mean, fiber is great. It's like that's a common
Speaker 3: thing found in many foods. You can get a you know,
Speaker 3: like high fiber foods are a great way to bulk
Speaker 3: up and feel more full from your meals. And without
Speaker 3: adding a lot of unnecessary, unnecessary calories.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I think this solution that is presented here
Speaker 2: feels a little bit too dystopian and apocalyptic. And the
Speaker 2: best food for humans to eat remains food, or that's
Speaker 2: what I prefer anyway, with the possible exception of certain
Speaker 2: candies feel very far removed from food, and I still
Speaker 2: eat those, but I'm not fooling myself into thinking that
Speaker 2: I'm getting anything out of them on a health level.
Speaker 3: Just wait until you hear about the proposal to bulk
Speaker 3: all of our meals with Twizzlers.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, that's exactly the candy I was thinking of
Speaker 2: when when I'm eating it, I feel like it's plastic,
Speaker 2: But it's a plastic I'm really into eating now, maybe
Speaker 2: like once or twice a year.
Speaker 4: Did you get your daily essential Twizzlers?
Speaker 2: So yeah, in summary, I would say that one made
Speaker 2: me laugh, made me think, and then made me frown
Speaker 2: a little bit. But how about you, Joe, what's your
Speaker 2: your next selection?
Speaker 3: Okay, my next one's also about food, not ptfe for food.
Speaker 3: So I'm going to talk about the twenty twenty five
Speaker 3: Physics Prize presented to and once again long list of names.
Speaker 3: I apologize for any mispronunciations. Jacquomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello,
Speaker 3: Matteo chi Arci, Alberto Cordicelli, Ivan di Terlisi, Fabrizio Olmeida
Speaker 3: da Vida Ravignez, and Vincenzo Maria Schimenti. Four quote discoveries
Speaker 3: about the physics of pasta sauce, especially the phase transition
Speaker 3: that can lead to clumping, which can be a cause
Speaker 3: of unpleasantness. The vapor in question was called phase behavior
Speaker 3: of Cachiae pep bee sauce, published in the journal Physics
Speaker 3: of Fluids in twenty twenty five. So a very recent one.
Speaker 2: This is a great chaser after we're just talking about
Speaker 2: potentially eating taflon and they were just like, you know,
Speaker 2: when you have lumps and pasta sauce unpleasant?
Speaker 3: It's true, Well, it is true. I don't like those lumps.
Speaker 2: I don't mean, I mean, what's the substance of the lump?
Speaker 2: Are we talking like a chunk of tomato? No?
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no no no. This is a broken
Speaker 3: cheese sauce. Who likes a broken cheese sauce? H yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: all right, yes, you've read Okay, so why is this funny.
Speaker 3: I think it's funny because it's a paper in a
Speaker 3: physics journal that's focused on how to make cheese sauce
Speaker 3: like and on your base level. Also, it's just like cheese.
Speaker 3: Cheese is a funny word and a funny substance. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: as any toddler can tell you, you make a toddler
Speaker 3: laugh by inserting cheese as like the wrong noun in
Speaker 3: a sentence, any other noun. Instead substitute cheese, they will
Speaker 3: lose their minds. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: But yeah, absolutely, cheese in and of itself funny word,
Speaker 2: funny subject.
Speaker 3: I think secondarily in the selection here there might be
Speaker 3: a little bit of light cultural humor in the idea
Speaker 3: that Italians can be so serious about pasta cooking technique
Speaker 3: that they will explore it on the level of fluid
Speaker 3: physics and the phase transition of matter. So the recipe
Speaker 3: in question here is a great Italian classic. It's kachioe pepe,
Speaker 3: which is pasta with cheese and pepper. Rob if you
Speaker 3: ever made this one, you make caachio pepe at home.
Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know that I have. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is certainly the type of dish that I might do
Speaker 2: as part of like a box meal. But maybe if
Speaker 2: I've done it, it's been like so westernized that I'm
Speaker 2: not recognizing it as such.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a delightful dish. I have made a
Speaker 3: version of it many, many times, more times than I
Speaker 3: can count. Though, if you're talking to one of the
Speaker 3: real witchfinder witchfinder generals, or would it be Witchfinders General,
Speaker 3: is it like attorney's General. Yeah, I guess one of
Speaker 3: the real witchfinders general. Of like traditional pasta technique, I
Speaker 3: think my renditions of it are all blasphemous in one
Speaker 3: way or another, because sometimes I add another source of fat,
Speaker 3: like butter or olive oil, like so you make it
Speaker 3: with black pepper in it, and I like toasting some
Speaker 3: of the black pepper and olive oil. I think that's nice.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I have used a mixture of cheeses in it,
Speaker 3: or I have used parmesano reggiano instead of pecorino romano.
Speaker 3: I think all of these things are not technically cachaae
Speaker 3: pepe certainly not the traditional version, but some variation on
Speaker 3: the theme.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is not macaroni and cheese.
Speaker 3: I mean it's the same idea, but no, it's a
Speaker 3: different thing. So here I'll describe what it is. Traditional
Speaker 3: cachao pepe like, you know, the kind they say that
Speaker 3: a grandmother in Rome would make. Has no butter, no
Speaker 3: olive oil, no other cheeses. It has exactly three ingredients.
Speaker 3: It is pasta, peccorino, romano, cheese, and ground black pepper,
Speaker 3: and I guess also water and salt. But for some
Speaker 3: reason people don't usually count those as ingredients. Why not,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but they're absolutely necessary. You need those
Speaker 3: as well. Anyway. You might think, based on the fact
Speaker 3: that there are only three ingredients, that this would be
Speaker 3: a very easy dish to make, but as the authors
Speaker 3: of this paper point out, classic catchaway peppe is notoriously
Speaker 3: difficult to get just right, especially for beginners who haven't
Speaker 3: made it a million times and gotten this intuitive feel
Speaker 3: for it. The really difficult part to do perfectly is
Speaker 3: achieving the right sauce consistency, which I would also argue
Speaker 3: is the most difficult part of you know, from like
Speaker 3: what you brought up American recipes like macaroni and cheese.
Speaker 3: You know, the hardest part to get right is just
Speaker 3: the right smoothness of the sauce in the finished product.
Speaker 2: If you don't mix the cheese powder up enough.
Speaker 3: So well, I mean, if you use the powder, you're
Speaker 3: using the magic of chemistry there in a way that
Speaker 3: really gives you a leg up. I'll get into that
Speaker 3: in just a minute. So the classic technique is, you know,
Speaker 3: you grind your pepper and you grate your peccorino romano cheese.
Speaker 3: You do those ahead of time. Pecorino romano by the way,
Speaker 3: if you don't know it, it's kind of a it's
Speaker 3: a dry cheese. It's a salty, sharp, slightly gamy tasting
Speaker 3: hard cheese made from sheep's milk. You boil pasta in
Speaker 3: slightly salted water, and while the pasta boils, some starch
Speaker 3: will leach out from the pasta and that gets gelatinized
Speaker 3: in the cooking water. This is true anytime you make pasta,
Speaker 3: and you reserve at least some of this starchy pasta
Speaker 3: water to help build your cheese sauce. Of course, outside
Speaker 3: of Cachawa peppe, starchy pasta water is an important ingredient
Speaker 3: in building many pasta sauces and just generally in finishing
Speaker 3: pasta dishes. So you to finish the dish, you melt
Speaker 3: your grated pecorian omano cheese in some of the starchy
Speaker 3: cooking water while mixing it up with the pasta. And
Speaker 3: this is where a lot of things can go wrong.
Speaker 3: If it is too hot, your cheese will not melt
Speaker 3: smoothly and it will form these unappetizing lumps, the broken
Speaker 3: cheese sauce thing where it's like got these rubbery little
Speaker 3: protein clumps in it. If it's not hot enough, your
Speaker 3: cheese will not melt fully into the water and it
Speaker 3: will not form a sauce. If there is not enough
Speaker 3: starch in your pasta cooking water, the melted cheese will
Speaker 3: not emulsify, and once again you get the rubbery little
Speaker 3: protein clumps. If there is too much starch, the sauce
Speaker 3: loses its sauciness and it becomes stiff and unappetizing in
Speaker 3: a different way. It's not really saucy. It's more kind
Speaker 3: of like a meala or something.
Speaker 2: Okay, I have to ask here again. Most of everything
Speaker 2: that I know about cooking I learned from following box meals,
Speaker 2: and so my wife taught me. So you frequently reached
Speaker 2: that step where the instructions say save a little pot
Speaker 2: water for later and at times. It often feels to
Speaker 2: me like it's almost a magical exercise, Like, no.
Speaker 3: It's really that really does something. Yes, yeah, okay, right,
Speaker 3: absolutely does something and does and is more important in
Speaker 3: some recipes than others. But yeah, you save a bit
Speaker 3: of the pasta cooking water number one, just you have
Speaker 3: this hot water on hand, maybe to help thin out
Speaker 3: a sauce as you're finishing a pasta in the pan.
Speaker 3: But also, it's not just water. It is water that
Speaker 3: I mean. For one thing, it's a little bit seasoned
Speaker 3: because you salted your cooking water. But more importantly, it
Speaker 3: has starch from the pasta in it, which means it's
Speaker 3: a little bit thicker than normal water. It has this
Speaker 3: thickness and emulsifying capability that starchy water does.
Speaker 2: Oh that's awesome. I had no idea. I just assumed
Speaker 2: it was We saved it because it was hot and
Speaker 2: it was salty, and maybe there was a little magic
Speaker 2: to it. But there is a perfect sense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely a little bit of magic, and it's the starch.
Speaker 3: So that's what I'm about to explain. So why does
Speaker 3: starch in the water make the cheese sauce smooth instead
Speaker 3: of broken and clumpy? It's because cheese contains both fats
Speaker 3: and proteins mixed together with some water content as well.
Speaker 3: It's basically a matrix of proteins that holds little droplets
Speaker 3: of fat dispersed pretty evenly throughout. And when cheese melts,
Speaker 3: one thing that happens is that the proteins in the
Speaker 3: fats separate. And this is why if you like melt
Speaker 3: a piece of cheese in the microwave, you can create
Speaker 3: an oily grease slick. The proteins and the fats that
Speaker 3: are in you know, when the cheese is not melted,
Speaker 3: they're all mixed together. When you melt it, this the
Speaker 3: fat separates and it forms this oil slick. And so
Speaker 3: this is the fat content separating from the protein matrix.
Speaker 3: When cheese is melted in a liquid like water, this
Speaker 3: gross clumping can happen because the protein matrix, and this
Speaker 3: is going to be mainly the protein casin in a
Speaker 3: dairy base, you know, in things like cheese, the proteins,
Speaker 3: all the casin proteins, come apart from their matrix and
Speaker 3: then the loose proteins begin to bond to each other
Speaker 3: and form these rubbery globs of protein. Also in this process.
Speaker 3: Of course, the fat leaks out, it gets squeezed out
Speaker 3: as the proteins you know, clump together, and it goes
Speaker 3: its own way. If it's in water, this will mean
Speaker 3: floating and pooling on the top of the water. This
Speaker 3: is what you don't want to happen to your cheese sauce.
Speaker 3: This is a broken sauce. So when you add starch
Speaker 3: to boiling water, the starch gelatinizes and it thickens the water,
Speaker 3: making it more viscous than just water on its own.
Speaker 3: The thickness of the starchy water prevents the proteins and
Speaker 3: fat in melting cheese each from aggregating and sticking to themselves.
Speaker 3: So you end up with a smoother sauce with the
Speaker 3: fat and the protein distributed more evenly throughout, instead of
Speaker 3: rubbery casin clumps where all the proteins are sticking together
Speaker 3: and a grease slick floating on top where all the
Speaker 3: fat is separate and sticking to itself. But the way
Speaker 3: I describe this here is like it is order of
Speaker 3: operation sensitive. This is why you can't save an already
Speaker 3: broken sauce by adding starch. Once the damage is done,
Speaker 3: the starch is not gonna fix it. Starch only protects,
Speaker 3: it does not repair. Also, the presence of starch can
Speaker 3: only protect the cheese so much. Even in starchy water.
Speaker 3: If you overheat the cheese, it will still be torn
Speaker 3: asunder and the fats in proteins will separate. So starch
Speaker 3: provides some heat protection, but not invincibility to heat. And
Speaker 3: this is why the heat in making the cheese sauces
Speaker 3: is so important. If you get it too hot, it's
Speaker 3: gonna clump up and split no matter what you do.
Speaker 2: This is a stressful recipe.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, exactly. So it's a simple dish in terms
Speaker 3: of ingredients, has got three ingredients apart from the salt
Speaker 3: in the water. But getting this desirable smooth sauce in
Speaker 3: the end is tricky and it takes a lot of experience.
Speaker 3: You know. It's it's something that people make a million times.
Speaker 3: You know, they make it over and over and they
Speaker 3: get a feel for how it works. You are able
Speaker 3: to kind of look at it and feel it as
Speaker 3: you're stirring it around and know how much of everything
Speaker 3: you need. But what if you don't have that feel? Well,
Speaker 3: the authors of this paper examine the whole process in
Speaker 3: a much more granular and quantitative way, and they come
Speaker 3: up with like specific numerical and chemical recommendations to help
Speaker 3: people achieve perfect catchioy pepe if they don't know what
Speaker 3: they're doing quote. We identify starch concentration as the key
Speaker 3: factor influencing sauce stability with direct implications for practical cooking. Specifically,
Speaker 3: we delineate a regime where starch concentrations below one percent
Speaker 3: relative to cheese maas lead to the formation of system
Speaker 3: wide clumps, a condition determining what we term the mozzarella phase.
Speaker 3: That's a bad thing. You don't want your cheese sauce
Speaker 3: to turn into mozzarella clumps and corresponding to an unpleasant
Speaker 3: and separated sauce. Additionally, we examine the impact of cheese
Speaker 3: concentration relative to water at a fixed starch level, observing
Speaker 3: a lower critical solution temperature that we theoretically rationalized by
Speaker 3: means of a minimal effective free energy model. We further
Speaker 3: analyze the effect of a less traditional stabilizer tri sodium citrate,
Speaker 3: and observe a sharp transition from the mozzarella phase to
Speaker 3: a completely smooth and stable sauce in contrast to starch
Speaker 3: stabilized mixtures where the transition is more gradual. Finally, we
Speaker 3: present a scientifically optimized recipe based on our findings, enabling
Speaker 3: a consistently flawless execution of this classic dish. So they've
Speaker 3: got a fool proof method. Now I want to add
Speaker 3: that they talk about the alternate method, where instead of starts,
Speaker 3: you go with tri sodium citrate. I think a lot
Speaker 3: of Italian cooking purists would rebel at the idea of
Speaker 3: using sodium citrate to emulsify their cheese sauce, but in
Speaker 3: the world of industrial food products, this is one of
Speaker 3: the most used additives to ensure a stable emulsion and
Speaker 3: to prevent sauces from splitting. Tri sodium citrate is one
Speaker 3: of the key ingredients in cheese products that are made
Speaker 3: explicitly for melting, things like Velveta and American cheese. Why
Speaker 3: do they stay so creamy and not split when they
Speaker 3: melt is because they have tri sodium citrate, this emulsifying agent,
Speaker 3: which works in part, by the way, by helping prevent
Speaker 3: the casin proteins from bonding together in the first place,
Speaker 3: so that it like chemically sort of prevents them from clumping.
Speaker 2: Okay, so use velvita when making this dish.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's how to get the common section happy. Now,
Speaker 3: assuming you don't go with sodium CITRATEE and you're relying
Speaker 3: on starch in the pasta water to keep the cheese
Speaker 3: sauce smooth, you want to aim, they say, for a
Speaker 3: concentration that is between two and three percent of the
Speaker 3: cheese weight that you're using. Reading from the paper here quote.
Speaker 3: If the starch content is less than one percent of
Speaker 3: the cheese weight, the sauce is prone to separating into
Speaker 3: unpleasant system sized clumps, corresponding to the mod cyrilla phase
Speaker 3: and Figures one and two. On the other hand, exceeding
Speaker 3: four percent of starch results in a sauce that becomes
Speaker 3: stiff and unappetizing as it cools. Rob This is it's
Speaker 3: kind of hard to describe this if I don't know
Speaker 3: if you've ever made an over starched pasta, but it
Speaker 3: starts to become not really saucy and more like it's
Speaker 3: kind of held together by a glue, sort of an
Speaker 3: unpleasant gluy texture in between the.
Speaker 2: Noodles, like would maybe begin to feel more like a
Speaker 2: cheese dip as opposed to a pasta dish.
Speaker 3: Is well, yeah, I mean just it would be too
Speaker 3: too sticky and too doughey. Almost in the saw it
Speaker 3: becomes less like a sauce and more like a batter.
Speaker 2: Okay, I see what you mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Then they finally say the ideal range is confirmed
Speaker 3: by both taste and texture tests, lies between two and
Speaker 3: three percent, ensuring stability and a pleasant consistency. So, for example,
Speaker 3: they give exact ratios. They say, you want to make
Speaker 3: two servings of catchaway pepe, you would start with three
Speaker 3: hundred grams of dried pasta, two hundred grams of cheese,
Speaker 3: and then four that two hundred grams of cheese. You
Speaker 3: would want five grams of starch in about fifty grams
Speaker 3: of water, so you could use a starch like five
Speaker 3: grams of corn starch or potato starch dissolved in fifty
Speaker 3: grams of water. Traditionally, you get the right amount of
Speaker 3: starch here by using feel and by using the pasta
Speaker 3: cooking water, sometimes concentrating the starch content by boiling it
Speaker 3: down a little bit extra so you concentrate it. This
Speaker 3: is called resotata. But this still requires some guesswork. You
Speaker 3: just got to like kind of look at it and
Speaker 3: know what you're looking for, because obviously you can't practically
Speaker 3: measure the starch content of the water once it's already dissolved.
Speaker 3: So they say, if you're really looking for an easy shortcut,
Speaker 3: you just make your sauce by dissolving five grams of
Speaker 3: corn starch or potato starch and fifty grams of water,
Speaker 3: heating it gently until it gelatinizes, then melting the cheese
Speaker 3: into this mixture to make your sauce. I again, I
Speaker 3: don't know if the pasta witch finder would approve, but
Speaker 3: that's what they say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Like can you imagine the chefs on the
Speaker 2: bear doing it? Yeah, fine, that makes sense. They might
Speaker 2: do something kind of like sciencey like that. But can
Speaker 2: you imagine like stereotypical Italian grandma cooking this way?
Speaker 3: Maybe not right? And once again there you're just getting
Speaker 3: into somebody who's done this so many times. They know
Speaker 3: it by feel. You don't have to really think about.
Speaker 3: You're not measuring out things by weight, You just you
Speaker 3: just eyeball it and it comes out right.
Speaker 2: Well, now I'm beginning to understand why I've maybe not
Speaker 2: cooked this before and it's maybe not been included in
Speaker 2: some of the box meals that I've I've gotten over
Speaker 2: the years, and maybe it's just a little too complex.
Speaker 3: Rob, I'd say give it a try, try and make
Speaker 3: catchaway Pepe. It's delicious. And you know, the worst scenario
Speaker 3: is just like you accidentally overheat it and it gets
Speaker 3: a little clumpy and it's like, well that batch wasn't great,
Speaker 3: you know, no big loss.
Speaker 2: All right, maybe maybe it is worth the journey. All right,
Speaker 2: We're gonna look at one more here fittingly, we're gonna
Speaker 2: go from cheese to shoes. This one, this one was
Speaker 2: a lot of fun. This one was what made me
Speaker 2: smile and then think and then legitimately laugh. It is
Speaker 2: the Engineer Design Prize. This prize went to Vikash Kumar
Speaker 2: and Sathak Mittal for Smelly Shoes an Opportunity for Shoe
Speaker 2: rack Redesign. From the proceedings of the HWWE. I'm to
Speaker 2: understand this is the Annual Conference of Indian of the
Speaker 2: Indian Society of Ergonomics from and this was a twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen presentation. So on the surface, yes, this paper is
Speaker 2: funny because it is about smelly shoes, which this is
Speaker 2: always going to be a funny concept so long as
Speaker 2: you're not around the smelly shoes in question. Smelly shoes
Speaker 2: become less funny if you were wearing them, or you're
Speaker 2: having to put up with someone in else's smelly shoes.
Speaker 3: Obviously it's even funnier though, if you're imagining smelling them
Speaker 3: without knowing whether they are shoes or cheese. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there have been some fun experiments along those lines.
Speaker 2: I think we've looked that over in the past. You know,
Speaker 2: it depends on the context. If you were expecting to
Speaker 2: smell cheese and you smell shoe, you know, then perhaps
Speaker 2: you're okay with it. If you're expecting to smell a
Speaker 2: shoe and you smell cheese, maybe not so. Context and
Speaker 2: smells is extremely important. I think I've gone in this
Speaker 2: rant before, but that's my take on the Durian fruit.
Speaker 2: The Durian fruit pretty strong smells involved there. But I
Speaker 2: think sometimes if one approaches if you approach the Durian
Speaker 2: expecting a cheese, thinking of it as kind of a
Speaker 2: cheese as fruit or a fruit as cheese, whichever way
Speaker 2: it goes, then it makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 3: Well, take it up with the Lord of Darkness in
Speaker 3: the Boxer's omen universe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did like their Durian. So in this paper,
Speaker 2: the authors present everything rather matter of factly. I think
Speaker 2: they say, Okay, India can be a hot, sweaty place,
Speaker 2: and as with pretty much everywhere else, we may regularly
Speaker 2: wash our bodies, and we may regularly wash our clothing,
Speaker 2: but not necessarily our shoes, you know, And I think
Speaker 2: this holds true. Shoes are sometimes made of leather, or
Speaker 2: they're in one way or another a little more complex
Speaker 2: in their design. You can't necessarily throw them in the washer,
Speaker 2: and then you can't really throw them in the dryer either,
Speaker 2: because you know it'll clog up and make that awful
Speaker 2: racket and potentially destroy your dryer. So, yeah, we don't
Speaker 2: always give the shoe our shoes the same attention we
Speaker 2: give our bodies in our clothing.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna admit I am guilty of this. I am
Speaker 3: a very hygiene conscious person in terms of body and clothes,
Speaker 3: but I do not think enough about keeping shoes clean
Speaker 3: same same.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like shoes are just gonna do what
Speaker 2: they're gonna do. I have no control over it personally, right,
Speaker 2: And so they established this, and okay, all right, we're
Speaker 2: all on board with this, we kind of recognize the
Speaker 2: universality of this. But their focus then kind of switches
Speaker 2: to the use of shoe racks upon entrance to certain
Speaker 2: interior spaces, and mainly they're talking about the home and
Speaker 2: about you know, shoes off homes in India. I'm also
Speaker 2: to understand religious spaces and certain shops and restaurants you know,
Speaker 2: may also have these expectations in place, while larger Western
Speaker 2: nine space western nized spaces are not going to have that.
Speaker 2: I'd be interested to hear from folks out there who
Speaker 2: are in India or have been to India. I've never been,
Speaker 2: but I have visited countries where there's certainly more of
Speaker 2: a custom of shoe removal, and and that's also the
Speaker 2: way we do it in our house. We're generally a
Speaker 2: shoes off household. And I really loved going to Japan,
Speaker 2: where there's a lot of shoes off and pretty much
Speaker 2: everywhere has a shoehorn handy, and that spoiled me. Once
Speaker 2: I came back, It's like, why are there not shoehorns everywhere?
Speaker 2: So now I have like one by the door that
Speaker 2: I use, and I'm a little bit offended anywhere I
Speaker 2: go that doesn't have a shoehorn.
Speaker 3: The long kind or the short kind.
Speaker 2: Oh, the long kind.
Speaker 3: There's the long kind.
Speaker 2: Luxurious. I mean, it is one of ages. I guess too,
Speaker 2: it makes more sense. But yeah, it's just it feels classy.
Speaker 3: I remember when I was a kid discovering my late
Speaker 3: grandfather's long goal themed shoehorn, which was like on this
Speaker 3: piece of cane and add a shoehorn on one hand
Speaker 3: and like a golf ball grip on the other.
Speaker 2: Nice. Yeah, mine's just plain wood that. I still like it.
Speaker 2: It's still rather fond of it. So anyway, we've established okay,
Speaker 2: we have scenarios where people are wearing shoes to a
Speaker 2: house and then upon arrival at the house, they are
Speaker 2: taking shoes off, and then where do shoes go, Well,
Speaker 2: they go on some sort of a shoe rack, and
Speaker 2: they point out they're like numerous different like common designs
Speaker 2: for the shoe rack. And once we're into talking about
Speaker 2: the design of an item, we're potentially talking about ergonomics,
Speaker 2: we're talking about human efficiency and design, and they point
Speaker 2: out that generally when we're talking about this, we're talking
Speaker 2: about like the physical aspects of the device or a
Speaker 2: device or structure. You know, there are so many different
Speaker 2: ways to approach ergonomics, and you know, we've all had
Speaker 2: some experience with ergonomic design or a lack of ergonomic design,
Speaker 2: with everything from like a computer mouse to a doorframe.
Speaker 2: Right like, we be designing things that meet us at
Speaker 2: least halfway, and we that are that don't force us
Speaker 2: to become less human in order to interact with them.
Speaker 2: So fair enough, But then they point out that, Okay,
Speaker 2: we tend to focus on the physicality of all this,
Speaker 2: but we don't think about things like scent, and they
Speaker 2: say that we should, and that concerns the shoe rack.
Speaker 2: What can we be doing about the design of a
Speaker 2: shoe rack, the kind of shoe rack that would be
Speaker 2: in the immediate interior of one's home or just outside
Speaker 2: one's door, or however it is arranged. What could we
Speaker 2: do with the design here to make shoes less pungent?
Speaker 3: A noble goal? It is, yeah, it is, it's.
Speaker 2: It's I mean, it's pretty matter of fact. And they
Speaker 2: they point out there, at least as of this publication,
Speaker 2: there wasn't really anything in the market like this, So
Speaker 2: they ultimately landed on this recommendation a shoe rack that
Speaker 2: is fitted with a UVC tube light, with the UV
Speaker 2: lighting here targeting the bacteria on and in the shoes
Speaker 2: responsible for the shoe odor.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm following you.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, and they and they ultimately even arrive at
Speaker 2: exactly what kind of exposure they're looking at. They're looking
Speaker 2: at about two to three minutes of exposure to the UV
Speaker 2: treatment and this would sufficiently eliminate a lot of the
Speaker 2: odor associated with the shoe rack, which would then make
Speaker 2: interacting with the shoe rack a more pleasant experience, and therefore,
Speaker 2: I guess you could say interacting with the home itself
Speaker 2: a more pleasant experience. Again, this seems perfectly reasonable. Yeah only,
Speaker 2: and only mildly funny. But what I found really hilarious
Speaker 2: was the chart on their experimentation with the UV lighting
Speaker 2: on the shoe rack. And to be clear, I'm not
Speaker 2: making fun of the research or the researchers here, but
Speaker 2: just the mental imagery of this legitimate experiment makes me giggle.
Speaker 2: So I included the table here for you Joe's Table two.
Speaker 2: Exposure time of UVC tube light and odor observed. And
Speaker 2: so we get we get exposure in minutes from zero
Speaker 2: minutes to fifteen minutes. And then we also have the
Speaker 2: foulness of the shoe smell rated as well, and then
Speaker 2: the smell doe to UV treatment.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a trade off, yeah.
Speaker 2: And then the observations of what's happening.
Speaker 3: Okay, So how's it go?
Speaker 2: Okay, So I'm not going to just roll through every
Speaker 2: detail of it, but let's start it at the on
Speaker 2: one side of the chart and then get to the other.
Speaker 2: So zero minute exposure, the foul smell on the shoes
Speaker 2: is three point five, which for this table, that's maximum.
Speaker 2: That's just maximum. Shoe funk smell due to UV treatment
Speaker 2: itself is zero, of course, because you haven't done anything
Speaker 2: to it. And the observation strong pungent smell, rotten cheese
Speaker 2: like smell.
Speaker 3: Whose shoes were these?
Speaker 2: I mean, there's just shoes, all right, So let's go
Speaker 2: ahead and crank it up. They crank it up to
Speaker 2: two minute minutes of exposure. That reduces the foul smell
Speaker 2: of the shoes to point five. So there's a little
Speaker 2: bit of funk, but it's greatly reduced from three point five.
Speaker 2: And the smell due to UV treatment is zero. And
Speaker 2: they say that you just have an extremely low foul
Speaker 2: smell and just a mild burnt rubber smell. Okay, And
Speaker 2: from here this is where the burnt rubber smell cranks up,
Speaker 2: because the next exposure thresholds are four minutes, six minutes,
Speaker 2: ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and then the foul smell from
Speaker 2: the shoes remains zero throughout, but the smell due to
Speaker 2: the UV treatment increases, so eventually you're getting to a
Speaker 2: fifteen minute exposure zero foul smell from the shoes, but
Speaker 2: a four rating for smell due to UV treatment. And
Speaker 2: then they add very strong burnt rubber smell shoe hot
Speaker 2: ins extreme In this experiment, they found yes, if you
Speaker 2: if you cook the shoes too much, they will no
Speaker 2: longer smell a foot funk, but they will be hot
Speaker 2: shoes that smell like burning rubber.
Speaker 3: And thirty minutes your shoes become doctor Manhattan exactly.
Speaker 2: So this this certainly made me laugh a bit, but
Speaker 2: you know this, the experiment serves the purpose of them
Speaker 2: figuring out, Okay, two to three minutes is really all
Speaker 2: we need to sufficiently kill the bacteria and cure the
Speaker 2: foul smell that is occurring with the shoes.
Speaker 3: I find this inspiring.
Speaker 2: It is it's inspiring. I mean it also outlines some
Speaker 2: like additional design challenges here, right, how do you design
Speaker 2: a UV powered shoe rack that is going to give
Speaker 2: the appropriate amount of UV treatment to any given pair
Speaker 2: of shoes without cooking them? And people coming back putting
Speaker 2: on their hot shoes on a hot summer day and
Speaker 2: their shoes smell like burnt rubber. Obviously they don't want
Speaker 2: that either. So you know there's almost a poetry to it.
Speaker 2: Too little attention and you have a stinky situation. Too
Speaker 2: much attention and you have a different but even more
Speaker 2: stinky situation. So you have to find that perfect balance
Speaker 2: between the two. Bravo to the authors, absolutely, all right.
Speaker 3: Does that do it for our coverage of the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five Ignobel Prizes?
Speaker 2: I think so. I think we're going to go and
Speaker 2: close the book on the Ignobels for this year. But yeah,
Speaker 2: hopefully they'll do it again next year and we'll be
Speaker 2: back to talk about all new winners around the same time.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we cover them, as we did this year, right
Speaker 2: after they occur. Other times we come back after on
Speaker 2: Cober and cover them a little late after things have
Speaker 2: cooled off a little bit because, as is often the case,
Speaker 2: the studies that are honored, they often get a lot
Speaker 2: of additional circulation and say like the late night comedy
Speaker 2: press and so forth. All right, as always, will remind
Speaker 2: everyone out there that Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
Speaker 2: We set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: Would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 3: on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
Speaker 3: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 3: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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