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