Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: First of all, before I get going, I apologized my
Speaker 1: voice sounds a little weird on this particular episode. I
Speaker 1: recently had some oral surgery to get some losing teeth out,
Speaker 1: so I found a little mealy. Now that's why, Julie
Speaker 1: tell me this. Have you seen a little movie called
Speaker 1: The Blob? Oh, my goodness, very long time ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had the classic black and white. No, I guess
Speaker 1: it was in color the Virgin I saw his color
Speaker 1: as anyway. Steve McQueen in an early role acting, yeah,
Speaker 1: acting opposite a little ball of interstellar good that falls
Speaker 1: to Earth. Inside of this meat cute little meteorite, an
Speaker 1: old man pokes it with a stick, cracks up in
Speaker 1: like an egg, and then he pokes it with a stick,
Speaker 1: of course, because that's what you do when you encounter
Speaker 1: potentially volatile substances from another world. We can't help ourselves.
Speaker 1: We need to know. So it crawled down his arm
Speaker 1: and starts eating it, and then it eats more and more,
Speaker 1: and it just grows and grows into this colossal life
Speaker 1: form that everyone has to deal with. And if you
Speaker 1: haven't seen it, do check it out. Awesome the music
Speaker 1: by Bob bat I believe, are you kidding? Buck Rat
Speaker 1: did that? Yeah? Yeah, it's a nice little gem of
Speaker 1: the turn. When you do that, I feel like I
Speaker 1: need a martini. Yeah, it is definitely a Martini worthy
Speaker 1: that of music. But the idea of this movie that
Speaker 1: is central to what we're gonna talk about here, and
Speaker 1: they're not central, but you know, we're kicking off with
Speaker 1: the idea that life could come here sort of accidentally
Speaker 1: from another world and then grow into something big. And
Speaker 1: we have talked about this in roundabout ways. We talked
Speaker 1: about what happens when a star dies, right, and we
Speaker 1: talked about star dust all this stuff that rejects into
Speaker 1: the universe and how those are the building box. But
Speaker 1: what remains is this question of how exactly here on
Speaker 1: Earth did these chemicals become complex organisms. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk a little bit today about this. And there's a
Speaker 1: great article by Andrew Grant and I believe it's called
Speaker 1: Cosmic Blueprint for Life that details some of what we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about today. So let's fast forward back
Speaker 1: to the star way before we even get to the
Speaker 1: blob days and the old man Uh losing his arm
Speaker 1: to space Shelley distantly both in time and space. A
Speaker 1: star dies, Okay, it runs out of its nuclear fuel
Speaker 1: and it becomes unstable. All right, there's no longer enough
Speaker 1: fuel to keep up this colossal creation that is a star.
Speaker 1: It's this enormous engine, and if it doesn't have fuel
Speaker 1: to burn, it becomes unstable and it collapses or it explodes.
Speaker 1: This is where we get things like black holes, but
Speaker 1: it's also where we get supernovous So in this case,
Speaker 1: the star explodes, and when it does, it expels a
Speaker 1: shell of stearing hot atoms. This includes things like hydrogen, carbon, oxygen,
Speaker 1: and some of those rogue atoms float into nearby gas
Speaker 1: clouds and they stick to the fine grains of dust there.
Speaker 1: Now it's very cold here, we're talking negative degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 1: and there this process called acretion begins to take place.
Speaker 1: I think we've discussed this before, and we definitely discuss
Speaker 1: it in one of our Stuff to Blay your Kid's
Speaker 1: Mind episodes we did. We talk about gravity and how
Speaker 1: it stirs things to lie. So you have these particles,
Speaker 1: they float around, They float around and onto each other,
Speaker 1: and it's like a snowball rolling down a mountain. Two
Speaker 1: particles come together to form a slightly bigger particle, and
Speaker 1: then they pull in other particles. Their mass is growing,
Speaker 1: their gravitational pull is growing, and eventually we end up
Speaker 1: with a very young star that is being born out
Speaker 1: of this ejected material. So the simple items of hydrogen, carbon,
Speaker 1: and oxygen become complex organic molecules, and it's these carbon
Speaker 1: bearing compounds that become the raw material for life, and
Speaker 1: planets eventually actually form from these materials. We say all
Speaker 1: of this because again we're trying to get to well,
Speaker 1: how exactly then did life on Earth here occur? Because
Speaker 1: we understand how the planets formed, but us sitting here
Speaker 1: as crazy complex beings that came from these rudimentary, single
Speaker 1: bacterial cells. How did this happen? So this brings us
Speaker 1: to a little concept called panspermia, which is ja, yeah,
Speaker 1: in a nutshell, we're talking about the blob scenario, the
Speaker 1: idea that life could travel to another planet in the
Speaker 1: form of say, a meteorite. So we can thank Fred
Speaker 1: Hoyle for this. He was a British cosmologist, and he
Speaker 1: actually wrote in nine fifty seven science fiction novel called
Speaker 1: The Black Cloud Right which actually informed his ideas on spermia.
Speaker 1: The novel which I haven't read, but it's a great
Speaker 1: example of great scientific minds are very much have science
Speaker 1: fiction on their minds, and it dealt with intelligent dust
Speaker 1: clouds in space. He ends up forming this idea of
Speaker 1: pan spermia. Starting in the nineteen sixties, he writes a
Speaker 1: series of academic papers describing how bacterial cells could make
Speaker 1: their way from interstellar dust grains to comets and eventually
Speaker 1: down to planet spike Earth. Okay, so it's the sixties.
Speaker 1: People think he's nuts because nobody thought that pre bike
Speaker 1: molecules or microbes could survive in the harsh vacuum of space.
Speaker 1: You know, it was assumed that space was too cold
Speaker 1: and too low density for any sort of molecule to form.
Speaker 1: But now we know that's not the case. We know
Speaker 1: that it's possible. For instance, the nine two pound meteorite
Speaker 1: hurtled to the ground in Australia and they did some
Speaker 1: analysis on it, and they found that the rock containing
Speaker 1: millions of organic compounds, including amino acids a nucleo basis,
Speaker 1: which we'll talk about in a little while. I don't
Speaker 1: want to jump the gun there, but that's really exciting information.
Speaker 1: And similar meteorites like the one that crashed landed on
Speaker 1: Australia and comments would have blanketed the Earth with organic
Speaker 1: chemicals from the time the Earth was born about four
Speaker 1: point five billion years ago until the era when life
Speaker 1: appeared a few hundred million years later. Okay, So for
Speaker 1: everybody listening out there, the idea again is that this
Speaker 1: material is hitching a ride on a comet or a meeting.
Speaker 1: All right, crash landing on Earth and boom, we start
Speaker 1: to get a proliferation of life. But there is another theory,
Speaker 1: and that talks about how life could organically just or
Speaker 1: spontaneously I suppose you could say, happen here on Earth.
Speaker 1: And for this we need to turn to Stanley Miller
Speaker 1: and Herald Urray. That's right. These are researchers who prepared
Speaker 1: a closed system of glass flasks and tubes and injected
Speaker 1: a gaseous mixture of methane, ammonia, hydrogen, water. And now
Speaker 1: these are four basic compounds that were thought to be
Speaker 1: abundant in Earth's primitive atmosphere, and then they applied an
Speaker 1: electric current to simulate a lightning strike that would have
Speaker 1: occurred on Earth in those primitive days as well, and
Speaker 1: lo and behold, within a week they have produced several
Speaker 1: prebiotic compounds which then produced amino acids. So this is
Speaker 1: the same concept that we discussed in our Stuff of
Speaker 1: Your Kid's Mind episode. We're talking about this early ancient ocean.
Speaker 1: And then you have volcanic activity which is stirring electrical
Speaker 1: activity in the atmosphere, lightning strike, life begins to bubble, right,
Speaker 1: and there's like a little pool of water around that volcano, right,
Speaker 1: frankenste scenario exactly exactly, which I love. So here's the
Speaker 1: great thing. It produces amino acids and these are fundamental
Speaker 1: units of proteins, really important, right if you want to
Speaker 1: create some life. But it did not produce nucleo bases,
Speaker 1: which we talked about being present on that comet in Australia.
Speaker 1: These are the molecular building box of DNA and RNA.
Speaker 1: This is the stuff that gets passed on the genetic
Speaker 1: information to help propagate life. Also, the researchers simulating early
Speaker 1: atmosphere with gases containing hydrogen. They used hydrogen, which reacts
Speaker 1: easily as opposed to carbon dioxide, a gas that's far
Speaker 1: less reactive but was probably much more plentiful at the time.
Speaker 1: So people kind of said, I'm not sure, this is
Speaker 1: a really interesting experiment, but it doesn't quite stimulate the
Speaker 1: actual conditions of Earth, what we think what was going
Speaker 1: on in primitive Earth at that time. So we end
Speaker 1: up looking outward again for potential signs how life ends
Speaker 1: up coming to be. In this case, let's look to
Speaker 1: astronomer Loose Snyder. Now, Snyder knew that the chemical compounds
Speaker 1: are die polar. They have a positively charged side and
Speaker 1: they have a negatively charged side, and these charged particles
Speaker 1: in motion release energy. So he theorized that some of
Speaker 1: these would spin like batons and create a faint radio
Speaker 1: wave signal, and that this would be perceivable from Earth
Speaker 1: with the right equipment. This is such a cool idea
Speaker 1: that someone seized on. This I think is just amazing
Speaker 1: because this is a way to actually measure your model right.
Speaker 1: And you also, I believe, said that each type of
Speaker 1: molecule should have its own unique energy signature, broadcasting a
Speaker 1: specific set of frequencies that could be detected and identified
Speaker 1: by astronomers. So within a few years they identified dozens
Speaker 1: of these things. They discovered interstellar formaldehyde in ninety nine,
Speaker 1: and since that point astronomers have identified more than one
Speaker 1: and fifty molecules in deep space, mostly by using radio telescopes,
Speaker 1: and this is interesting to space. Chemicals that were found
Speaker 1: just the past few years include the sweet which is
Speaker 1: a sugar glycoli hide which I just fluttered but to
Speaker 1: get the idea, the fragrant which is ethel formate which
Speaker 1: smells like rum, and the explosive fulminic acid. Use some
Speaker 1: debtonators and weirdly enough gold flagger. I don't know how
Speaker 1: that worked out there, right, do you where? Okay? So
Speaker 1: this is just really interesting that they figured out these
Speaker 1: energy signatures and they were able to pinpoint all of
Speaker 1: these different molecules. The whole field of astrochemistry kind of
Speaker 1: rises from this, right. And so then there's another astronomer.
Speaker 1: His name is Jay Mayo Greenberg of the University of
Speaker 1: Leiden in the Netherlands, and he found that there weren't
Speaker 1: just free floating gas molecules in space as they had
Speaker 1: observed in the nebula. The reason why we're talking about
Speaker 1: this too, is because we're trying to get to this
Speaker 1: idea of where again are these compounds beginning and how
Speaker 1: are they getting to the Earth. So if you look
Speaker 1: at the nebula and you say, well, here are these
Speaker 1: chemicals that some of which can create the building block
Speaker 1: here on Earth, how is that actually happening? What sort
Speaker 1: of interplay? It's one thing they have to figure out
Speaker 1: how they hits the ride here, but where did they
Speaker 1: come from to begin with? Right, So you're thinking about
Speaker 1: these floating gas molecules in space, and then he begins
Speaker 1: to ponder the dust and the nebulas, as well as
Speaker 1: the microscopic grains of carbon and silicon, and then he says,
Speaker 1: what would happen if interstellar gas molecules like from Aldehad
Speaker 1: collided with frigid grains of dust. They'd freeze their instantly,
Speaker 1: he decided, and they'd create another kind of environment which
Speaker 1: there would be chemical reactions. Again, these chemical reactions are
Speaker 1: really important, okay, because this is what's happening. This is
Speaker 1: that Frankenstein moment to a certain degree that's creating life.
Speaker 1: And he's thinking about the starlight also interacting with this,
Speaker 1: and he begins to think infrared telescopes could help us
Speaker 1: with this, and he was thinking, Okay, let's point them
Speaker 1: at some dust clouds, and he actually finds dips at
Speaker 1: specific frequencies corresponding to molecules including methanol, ammonia, and water ice.
Speaker 1: So what we need here is an experiment, right, what
Speaker 1: we need here is a in a box. And I'm
Speaker 1: surprised we didn't do this one for stuff to blow
Speaker 1: your kid's mind. It sounds so easy. He turns to
Speaker 1: a man by the name of Lewis Alamandalo. He is
Speaker 1: a Berkeley PhD Graduate in low temperature chemistry, so perfect
Speaker 1: person to turn into this. And Almondalo recreates the kinds
Speaker 1: of reactions that might take place and with these microscopic
Speaker 1: icy grains, and this Zali does it. First of all,
Speaker 1: he gets the equipment together to chill a shoebox sized
Speaker 1: chamber in a near vacuum, so he pressurizes it to
Speaker 1: within several degrees of absolute zero, so vacuumized as cold
Speaker 1: as possible. Then he uses a plasma lamp to fire
Speaker 1: beams of ultra violent light into that chamber, and this
Speaker 1: is supposed to mimic the radiation that's present in a
Speaker 1: planet or star forming region of a dust cloud. And
Speaker 1: then he adds a gases mixture of simple molecules to
Speaker 1: mimic the same composition that you would see in those
Speaker 1: interstellar clouds. Then he sets back and he watches the
Speaker 1: magic happen, or the science as it were. That's right.
Speaker 1: What does reveal is that not only that some chemicals
Speaker 1: reactions really do occur, it's extremely low temperatures because again
Speaker 1: remember back to the nineteen sixties people five, it's way
Speaker 1: too cold for anything really to be happening. So he
Speaker 1: plays out this idea that yes, actually chemical reactions can
Speaker 1: occur at extremely light temperatures minus fo degrees fahrenheit, but
Speaker 1: also that these reactions produce other reactive chemicals, thereby providing
Speaker 1: the spark really important for molecular hookups here. So this
Speaker 1: nebula in the box experiment has been done over and
Speaker 1: over again and recently has yielded intricate molecular rings containing carbon, nitrogen,
Speaker 1: and hydrogen fatty acid like molecules that's so cool that
Speaker 1: look and behave like the membranes protecting living cells and
Speaker 1: nucleic acids or nucleotides. The primary components of RNA in DNA.
Speaker 1: So again we're getting back to this idea of chicken
Speaker 1: and egg, although in this case it's more like, is
Speaker 1: that the nebula is that the comet? Or did it
Speaker 1: happen here on Earth? Could these reactions be happening in
Speaker 1: these interstellar us clouds and these very chilling environments, right,
Speaker 1: and being ejected out in the form of a comet
Speaker 1: in landing here on Earth sort of kind of ready made,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of like your microwave meal ready for
Speaker 1: Earth out of the box. In a way, this kind
Speaker 1: of drives with the blob because at the end of
Speaker 1: the blob they learned that they can't quite actually kill
Speaker 1: the blob, but what they can do is that they
Speaker 1: can freeze it with I think they were using fire extinguishers,
Speaker 1: which was weird. No, surely not, that wouldn't make scientific sense.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, they chill this thing down. They
Speaker 1: strapped to a helicopter and they take it to the
Speaker 1: North Pole. But he does not kill it. It just
Speaker 1: preserves it. So even here we see the idea that
Speaker 1: the life interstellar life would be able to sustain very
Speaker 1: low temperatures. Well, and there's an Emory University astro chemist
Speaker 1: by the name of Susannah Witticus Weaver, and she threw
Speaker 1: a series of models and experiments has demonstrated that ultra
Speaker 1: violet radiation can break chemical bonds and split molecules into
Speaker 1: highly reactive fragments called radicals. And this is important because
Speaker 1: again in this nebula, you're seeing the possibility that these
Speaker 1: more complex chemical reactions can be happening. And there's a
Speaker 1: possibility that again, is that this is the spark of
Speaker 1: life happening. All right, we're gonna take a quick break
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna get back to all this. So
Speaker 1: hanging there one second and we're back. The realmifications here
Speaker 1: are not all just either far off in time or
Speaker 1: far off in space. For instance, we can look at
Speaker 1: the moon Titan, one of the Saturn's moons, and here
Speaker 1: we see the based on some of the research, we
Speaker 1: definitely see the potential for these organic compounds. Is this
Speaker 1: the one that has the atmosphere that is similar to
Speaker 1: the Earth, but it's like in slow mo Yeah, it
Speaker 1: has a thick methane tinged atmosphere and it's reminiscent in
Speaker 1: early from early Earth atmosphere and it has pools of
Speaker 1: hydrocarbons on its surface, the only known bodies of liquid
Speaker 1: on any other world than our own. So astrobiologists and
Speaker 1: astro chemists have been very interested in Titan for some
Speaker 1: time now. Yeah, because the idea again is that this
Speaker 1: is a snapshot of what the Earth may have looked
Speaker 1: like billions of years ago, and that we can begin
Speaker 1: to observe, although slow mo, these reactions, and this is
Speaker 1: what they're trying to get at. They want to know
Speaker 1: what's going on four billion years ago. That's why they're
Speaker 1: creating a nebulent a box, and they want to know
Speaker 1: where did this material come from. We know that some
Speaker 1: meteorites contain a menial acids in nucleo bases, But the
Speaker 1: idea is did they get scooped up those molecules from
Speaker 1: dust clouds and then created them later on their interplanetary course,
Speaker 1: or were they again ready made out of the box
Speaker 1: as soon as they landed here, Which leads to this question,
Speaker 1: how common could life in the university. That's what we
Speaker 1: really want to get to, right, Yeah, that's the big question.
Speaker 1: It's life. Is it just a sort of a one
Speaker 1: in a billion fluke? Is there a higher potential for
Speaker 1: life on other worlds as we continue to expand out
Speaker 1: into the galaxy, are we going to be surprised or
Speaker 1: are we going to be disappointed by the presence of life? Well,
Speaker 1: and Andrew Grant says that if meteorites create most of
Speaker 1: the direct chemical precursors of life are still or system
Speaker 1: might be an unusual case if we're dependent on the
Speaker 1: meteorites for really creating the chemical reactions. Right, but but
Speaker 1: but but if dust clouds can manufacture these molecules on
Speaker 1: their own, and we know these dust clouds are all
Speaker 1: over the place in space, right, then life should be
Speaker 1: prevalent throughout the universe. I mean that kind of racks
Speaker 1: my world right there. Yeah, who knows how complex life
Speaker 1: we're talking about the world like Titan. Things are going
Speaker 1: to develop at a much slower pace on a world
Speaker 1: like that, And certainly not every world is going to
Speaker 1: have the Goldilocks type conditions that would be present for
Speaker 1: life to develop. And then too cold, too hot just
Speaker 1: right where also you have to factory in issues of
Speaker 1: electromagnetic shielding, how long a window are you looking at
Speaker 1: for life to develop without a catastrophic impact event occurring? Right? So,
Speaker 1: assuming that your planet had a nice position with a son, right,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about the Earth, but a planet, and
Speaker 1: you had everything sort of in place. The idea is
Speaker 1: that any one of these dust clouds out there could
Speaker 1: give you the material to create life on one of
Speaker 1: those planets, if it has the correct conditions to support it.
Speaker 1: We come from a carbon based bias, so that's a
Speaker 1: whole other issue. Okay, So we should know more about this,
Speaker 1: I would say probably within the next decade. There's the
Speaker 1: Atacama Large Millimeter sub Millimeter Array that's short ALMA in Chile,
Speaker 1: and that's a network of sixties six radio dishes that
Speaker 1: will provide unprecedented resolution and sensitivity when it becomes fully
Speaker 1: operational later this year. There are two space based infrared observatories.
Speaker 1: There's the European Space Agencies Herschel Space Observatory and NASA's
Speaker 1: James Webb Telescope scheduled to launch in So that should
Speaker 1: allow astronomers a better way to peer into these nebula
Speaker 1: and try to figure out what's going on. Yeah, especially
Speaker 1: the gold Schlager nebula. Very interested. You want that you
Speaker 1: have that little smile in your face on newcent was
Speaker 1: coming up there but these radicals that we were discovered,
Speaker 1: just to see how those little dudes are actually acting
Speaker 1: out the ability to like take a much closer look
Speaker 1: at this and get closer to this answer about how
Speaker 1: life came to be here on earth. Pretty cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mind blowing stuff to be sure. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 1: call over the robot and see what kind of listener
Speaker 1: mail we have for today. Here's one from Andy Andy
Speaker 1: Writson and says, Hi, Robert and Julie, and he's responding
Speaker 1: to our Lucid Dreaming episode, which we've received a ton
Speaker 1: of comments from. And he says, I wanted to tell
Speaker 1: you that the night after I listened to the episode
Speaker 1: about Lucid Dreaming, I did, in fact Lucid dream It
Speaker 1: was a fantastic moment for me, since I've always been
Speaker 1: utterly fascinated by Lucid dreaming, but it never seriously attempted
Speaker 1: any technique. In the dream, I realized I was dreaming
Speaker 1: and had to concentrate to not wake up. I told
Speaker 1: my friend in the dream that this was a dream,
Speaker 1: and then demonstrated by making a little red ball appear
Speaker 1: and disappear in my hand. I don't remember what happened afterwards,
Speaker 1: but it was still a fantastic feeling. I'm gonna credit
Speaker 1: you guys for that, so thanks all the best. Andy, Well,
Speaker 1: that is awesome. I still have not lucid dreamed my
Speaker 1: knowledge that I can remain member, and it didn't occur
Speaker 1: after we did the podcast either. So the idea that
Speaker 1: we could cover this topic and maybe grease the wheels
Speaker 1: a little for someone else to experience lucid dreaming, I
Speaker 1: think that's awesome. Yeah, we have gotten so many cool
Speaker 1: Lucid dreaming emails, a lot of them having to deal
Speaker 1: with flying and how to control I mean for someone
Speaker 1: who lucid dreams like myself. I've just been like wow
Speaker 1: that there's so many different issues that are being brought
Speaker 1: up that we'd probably do separate podcasts on I don't
Speaker 1: know that people would want exclusively a podcast about flying
Speaker 1: and lucid dreams, but it's it's pretty fascinating stuff. And
Speaker 1: then here's another one from Debbie. Debbie writes them about
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming and she says, Hi, Robert Knejulye, first off,
Speaker 1: I love your podcast. Being a psych undergrad, I really
Speaker 1: get a kick out of all the brain related podcasts.
Speaker 1: So Thanks for being so entertaining. Second, I just listened
Speaker 1: to Lucid Dreaming podcasts and that was great. It brought
Speaker 1: up a question that I've never really thought of before.
Speaker 1: While researchers are still pretty up in the air to
Speaker 1: the exact purpose of dreaming, there has been some pretty
Speaker 1: interesting studies that suggests that it may be a way
Speaker 1: to consolidate our daily activities and help to either build
Speaker 1: memories both somatic and century, and or to deal with
Speaker 1: emotional distress strain. We discussed this in a in an episode.
Speaker 1: I just wondered if all these lucid dreaming advocates who
Speaker 1: want us to stop wasting our dream time by using
Speaker 1: it for virtual reality entertainment could lead to us losing
Speaker 1: something that we need and use to help our memories consolidate.
Speaker 1: Just an idea that popped into my head while listening.
Speaker 1: It made me think of the scene from Donnie Darko
Speaker 1: where Donnie and Gretchen present the glasses that show a
Speaker 1: baby beautiful pictures when they sleep so they aren't exposed
Speaker 1: to darkness, to which the teacher asked them if they
Speaker 1: don't think the darkness is there for a reason. Thanks
Speaker 1: again for the total brain trip. Of a podcast, keep
Speaker 1: up the great work, guys, and Debby, by the way,
Speaker 1: is one of our many Australian listeners, so that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: And finally a little bit of listener mail related to
Speaker 1: one of the episodes we did about toilets and uh,
Speaker 1: toilets of the future. Yeah, toilets of the future, I believe,
Speaker 1: and we were able to participate in a mystery here,
Speaker 1: so him who's also from Australia, another one of our
Speaker 1: awesome Australian listeners, Wrightson and says, Dear Robert and Julie,
Speaker 1: I just finished listening to your podcast about toilets, and
Speaker 1: i'd like to thank you both for answering a toilet
Speaker 1: related mystery that I have been carrying around with me
Speaker 1: for fifteen years. I used to work at a place
Speaker 1: where a half a dozen males shared one bathroom cubicle,
Speaker 1: always a tough situation. There was one particular work colleague
Speaker 1: that would leave behind shoeprints on the toilet seat and
Speaker 1: I could never work out whine. My theory at the
Speaker 1: time was that he was smoking in the cubicle and
Speaker 1: standing on the seat to surreptitiously blow the smoke out
Speaker 1: of an air evant. However, I was never satisfied with
Speaker 1: this theory, as the prince consistently faced away from the
Speaker 1: cistern in the opposite direction of the air pant. Having
Speaker 1: listened to your podcast and remembering my colleague was Vietnamese,
Speaker 1: it now occurred to me that he was probably squatting
Speaker 1: on the top of the bowl. Mental case closed, Tim Australia.
Speaker 1: I love that. That's great that we helped solve a mystery,
Speaker 1: and also I do love the idea of squat toileting.
Speaker 1: I think we yeah, yeah, I don't know that we
Speaker 1: did a whole punk us on that, but you talked
Speaker 1: about how in the West we're pretty much doing it wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of innovation going into toilets. We
Speaker 1: kind of got to a certain point. We have this
Speaker 1: elaborate throne that we sit on that makes no sense
Speaker 1: from an evolutionary standpoint, and we're like, it works good enough.
Speaker 1: We'll tinker with water management later on. But for the
Speaker 1: most part, this is good. But in many other cultures
Speaker 1: they're still very much in a squat based system where
Speaker 1: they're they're squatting and you know, if your boys are
Speaker 1: pushing it on your gut, which is supposedly giving you
Speaker 1: more support. There's less straining, and they think medical problems
Speaker 1: that result from the way we sit on the phone
Speaker 1: in the West because there is straining. So yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes more sense to do the squat squad and that's
Speaker 1: why you see some very very low billets in many
Speaker 1: Eastern countries. There are also some seats that we I
Speaker 1: think we discussed in this podcast where it's like a
Speaker 1: Western South toilet seat, but with optional foot rests. Right,
Speaker 1: you can get a platform. This I think is so great.
Speaker 1: Didn't you say you tried to introduce this to I
Speaker 1: really like. I sent this article to my family and I
Speaker 1: I was like, this is that we ever everbody needs
Speaker 1: to get a platform on them tolilet and got crickets back.
Speaker 1: We bought into it. One day it'll come and then
Speaker 1: they'll all be saying, oh, we should have listened to Juli. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I should leave the charge by actually getting a
Speaker 1: platform on It's a good idea. I could try it out.
Speaker 1: So there you have it. If you would like to
Speaker 1: reach out to us and let us know what you
Speaker 1: think about this or any other topic, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. You can find us on Facebook, where
Speaker 1: we are Stuff to Blow Your Mind. You can find
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