Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. This
Speaker 1: is Alson Adama, like the science editor at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science rider
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. Yeah. Have you ever
Speaker 1: thrown a party? I have certainly helped throw some parties. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Used to. When I first moved to Atlanta, I lived
Speaker 1: in this house with the two other people, and it
Speaker 1: was it was kind of a party house. Tell me
Speaker 1: about it, Well, it was. It's interesting because it's like
Speaker 1: in a really nice neighborhood in Atlanta. Um. And but
Speaker 1: it was like the one house on the street that
Speaker 1: it wasn't really that well kept up and didn't have
Speaker 1: like a you know, a nice family living in it.
Speaker 1: You know, the neighbors would cross the street when they
Speaker 1: were walking their dogs. Yeah, it was like the it
Speaker 1: was you know, every street has that one house, and
Speaker 1: this was that one house. Um. And it's just because
Speaker 1: like some dude, don't you know, the dud who owned
Speaker 1: it was like too lazy to fix it up and
Speaker 1: sell it. So it's like I can just rent it out,
Speaker 1: like you know, by the month to these people. So
Speaker 1: for for you. For years, it was like everybody who
Speaker 1: lived in it, like new people who had lived in
Speaker 1: it before, and it just continually amassed more and more
Speaker 1: used tup aware and kitchen items in the pantry um
Speaker 1: and none of the type of head tops. Well there
Speaker 1: were tops in there, but you know, God bless anybody
Speaker 1: who could actually line everything up and you know, reuse it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, we'd have have parties um and and yeah,
Speaker 1: like like we're saying, it's like parties tend to start
Speaker 1: off with, you know, versus the people getting ready for
Speaker 1: the party, right, and then the people who annoyingly show
Speaker 1: up early to attend the party but don't want to
Speaker 1: actually help you set up, so they're like they're like
Speaker 1: one of them. Yeah, they're like asking for a drink,
Speaker 1: or they're eating snacks while you're still setting up the
Speaker 1: snacks and you're like, what are you doing? You know,
Speaker 1: So then more people show up, and then you maybe
Speaker 1: you start cranking the music a little right, the party
Speaker 1: builds momentum, but it's like you know, when that first
Speaker 1: sky or gal comes, you don't want to put everything
Speaker 1: out right away. You don't want to put your best
Speaker 1: or dirbs that you slaved over you don't want to
Speaker 1: put maybe the micro brew that you're kind of keeping
Speaker 1: for a little bit later, yeah, or be like, all right,
Speaker 1: let's dance, you know, the three of us here. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: you gotta save the good music for a little later.
Speaker 1: When the party achieves that tipping point, yeah, that point
Speaker 1: at which the person starts doing the worm on the floor,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody you know retires to a corner, maybe
Speaker 1: to to do a little closing up to one another
Speaker 1: hook up. The guy falls off the roof. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that happened at this house. Yeah, are you serious? Some
Speaker 1: dude like climb up on the roof and fell off
Speaker 1: in the He was fine, because the kind of person
Speaker 1: who crawls up on the top of the roof and
Speaker 1: falls off during the course of a party tends to
Speaker 1: be fine afterwards because he's probably done it before. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing happens, right, So today we're talking
Speaker 1: about that seems sort of thing only in bacteria bacteria
Speaker 1: party if you will party, which which sounds like, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of slanderous term you throw it like, you know,
Speaker 1: your least favorite restaurant. It's a bacteria part right, So specifically,
Speaker 1: we're talking about quorum sensing, which is how a bacteria communicate.
Speaker 1: But first a little background. So bacteria, you guys are
Speaker 1: going to remember just a simple, single celled organism doesn't
Speaker 1: have a nucleus, lacks organ elles, you know, those tiny
Speaker 1: specialized organs within the cellule membrane, like a mitochondria or
Speaker 1: something like that, and your bacteria is going to be
Speaker 1: probably round, spiral or road shaped, maybe Gram positive, maybe
Speaker 1: Graham negative, and they're gonna fall under the domain bacteria. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's kind of an overview of factoria, just in
Speaker 1: case you needed to jog your memory a bit. And
Speaker 1: it's easy to fall into the trap though thinking of
Speaker 1: these as simple, like simple organisms in the sense that
Speaker 1: it's kind of like they evolve to a point and
Speaker 1: just stopped where they you know, where they kind of
Speaker 1: like they never got out of the first grade or
Speaker 1: second grade, but it's more like they reached the second
Speaker 1: grade and just became like really awesome that being a
Speaker 1: second grade like in ways that we typically don't give
Speaker 1: them credit for, right, So they're pretty complex organisms and
Speaker 1: clever organisms. Consider this story. Back in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: a couple of researchers noticed that bacteria known as Vibrio
Speaker 1: fishery uh displayed more luminescence as the bacterial population group.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, it's kind of hard to glow.
Speaker 1: It takes a lot of energy. So scientists determined that
Speaker 1: the bacteria were able to preserve their energy until they realize, hey,
Speaker 1: this is the right moment, let's make a really good glow.
Speaker 1: There are enough of us here to really make an impression.
Speaker 1: So a lot of times you could see that good
Speaker 1: glow in the liquid organ of a deep sea creature,
Speaker 1: like you know, a squid, and it was really fascinating
Speaker 1: stuff because these bacteria were living symbiotically um with the
Speaker 1: squid or whatever creature they happened to inhabit, and the
Speaker 1: light the bioluminescent bacteria would become the light structure for
Speaker 1: the eye. It was so interesting. So it's like if
Speaker 1: you had like a giant monster that coded itself with
Speaker 1: like rab kids with like little blow sticks, and then
Speaker 1: like you get enough of them together, like one ravor
Speaker 1: kid with a glow sticks, and that can really produce
Speaker 1: a lot. But it gets a lot of them together,
Speaker 1: except yeah, except they they get these things end up
Speaker 1: gathering together and then they produce glow more glowing right
Speaker 1: right right, like the Ravor kids, no doubt, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the giant squid um. So the point of this is
Speaker 1: that the population reaches has to reach a sufficient size
Speaker 1: to emanate that killer glow. Again, like the party, you
Speaker 1: have to get a certain number of people together before
Speaker 1: the party really starts kicking, as they say. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: that's an example of quorum sensing. It's it's really just
Speaker 1: how bacteria communicate. It's used. It's usually used to tell
Speaker 1: other bacteria, Hey, there are enough of us here out.
Speaker 1: Let's let's get down to the bacterial business. And there's
Speaker 1: some other organisms capable of mimicking quorum sensing, like I
Speaker 1: saw some research on plants and algae and insects, possibly
Speaker 1: to like honey bees. I guess insects might use it
Speaker 1: to figure out where they're going to plant their next colony.
Speaker 1: Interesting anyway, So the name, as you guys can imagine,
Speaker 1: comes from quorum or just them and already of people
Speaker 1: from some particular group that you need to achieve for
Speaker 1: like a vote or a political action to occur. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you're always hearing it down the news, like, oh,
Speaker 1: they have to get a quorum, and they have to
Speaker 1: form a quorum on a particular talk topic before you know,
Speaker 1: this legislation can pass or this rule can you know,
Speaker 1: be passed up in accompanying, etcetera. Yeah, example, how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com couldn't pass that sweet new motion for
Speaker 1: a four day work week because a quorum wasn't achieved.
Speaker 1: I miss, I didn't get the email on that. Neither
Speaker 1: did I if only it had gone out. I don't
Speaker 1: know a four day work because then then you're just
Speaker 1: gonna have like ten day workdays, right, work? Yeah, ten
Speaker 1: day workdays? Whatever? What am I talking? Ten hour workdays? Right? Gotcha? Um?
Speaker 1: I guess, I guess you could bump it up. What
Speaker 1: did the French people do? Oh? Well, that's a whole
Speaker 1: another issue. But so let's talk about coreum sensing. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about how bacteria reached that critical capacity to communicate.
Speaker 1: So the mechanism here that you're really going to want
Speaker 1: to concentrate on is auto inducers. Bacteria produced, they give
Speaker 1: off these auto inducers and there they function is signaling molecules,
Speaker 1: kind of like pheromones. So the concentration of autoinducers in
Speaker 1: any given area is going to correspond with the size
Speaker 1: of the bacterial population, like to bring this to a party.
Speaker 1: You know how when people come to a party, they
Speaker 1: never stick with this one cup for their beverage. They
Speaker 1: end up with like leaving several around, like laying on
Speaker 1: coffee tables and bookshelves. I see so number of cups
Speaker 1: laying around as a indicator of how good the party is, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you have two cups lying around, that means
Speaker 1: you have fifty people there, right. So similarly, of course,
Speaker 1: a high concentration of auto inducers is going to tell
Speaker 1: you that a lot of bacteria present. So once you
Speaker 1: get enough bacteria coming to the party, they're going to
Speaker 1: start producing the molecules that are so toxic to their hosts.
Speaker 1: They may even form a biofilm, which is just a
Speaker 1: massive group of bacteria that may form a coating like
Speaker 1: on a mossy rock you were talking about in a
Speaker 1: dog bowl. Yeah, more if you feel like a film
Speaker 1: on your teeth, uh yeah, or a medical device. They're
Speaker 1: pretty common on medical devices like a catheter, prosthetic device,
Speaker 1: or heart implant valve. So this is the tipping point, right,
Speaker 1: This is kind of like when the party gets off
Speaker 1: the chain as they say, you know when the guy
Speaker 1: falls off that you're so full of these party expressions. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that this is when, this is when things
Speaker 1: start happening and and and that's the issue here, right,
Speaker 1: is is what happens when the when the bacteria actually
Speaker 1: form a quorum and start doing the sometimes dangerous things
Speaker 1: that bacteria do. Right, So this would be when they
Speaker 1: they mobile us they decided to start infecting the host
Speaker 1: generally speaking, right, Yeah, that that being the prime thing
Speaker 1: that we're interested in, like the dangerous stuff. So just
Speaker 1: to remind you, a quorum seuching drug would stop the communication,
Speaker 1: whereas a regular antibiotic kills bacteria, it stops the targeted
Speaker 1: bacteria from growing and then of course allowing the development
Speaker 1: of resistant mutan bacteria. Yeah. It basically we're talking about
Speaker 1: cutting off the communication, like they'll be however many bacteria.
Speaker 1: However many bacteria get in a room, but they don't
Speaker 1: know all the other guys are really there. There's not
Speaker 1: enough communication to get the party started. You know. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like if you feel he's trying to have
Speaker 1: a party with a bunch of lane people, you know,
Speaker 1: and they're just they're not they're gonna understanding around. My
Speaker 1: husband has a name for this. He calls it a
Speaker 1: lights on sit down party, lights on sit down part,
Speaker 1: which I think is pretty apropos Well, if they're board games,
Speaker 1: you know sometimes that you know, sometimes just you know,
Speaker 1: scrabble is a good level of off the chain, you know, yeah, indeed, right,
Speaker 1: especially if you allow like creative spelling, you know, then
Speaker 1: it's whoa, and here's something else. Bacteria don't just communicate
Speaker 1: with their own kind, right, They don't just communicate with
Speaker 1: the people at the party. They may have receptors for
Speaker 1: species specific auto inducers as well as receptors for signals
Speaker 1: and up by all other kinds of bacteria. So there,
Speaker 1: so there could be like party crashers and the bacteria
Speaker 1: community indeed, indeed, right, So this would indicate, you know,
Speaker 1: in the case of our bioluminescent ones, that not just
Speaker 1: the bioluminescent ones are are communicating, but you know, they
Speaker 1: may be communicating with other bacteria that are just floating
Speaker 1: in the sea water chatting it up. So why does
Speaker 1: it matter? Why do we care if bacteria are communicating? Well,
Speaker 1: it really never hurts to have new tricks up our
Speaker 1: sleep when we're dealing with bacteria, and and and again
Speaker 1: that's the key thing here is that when bacteria form
Speaker 1: a quorum, a lot of times you're gonna do something
Speaker 1: deadly or at least unhealthy to the host. Right, So
Speaker 1: let's take it in the hospital. Um, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a pretty common bacteria called Pseudomonas aruginosa. You're smiling because
Speaker 1: you want to make a food joke about how that's
Speaker 1: now I did that, lad, I did that last week. Uh.
Speaker 1: Simon is a gram negative bacteria behind an infection that
Speaker 1: strikes and often kills people with cystic fibrosis and other
Speaker 1: immunocompromised people. This is going to be like people AIDS patients,
Speaker 1: or maybe people are seeming chemotherapy or people with burns,
Speaker 1: and it's again it's really common in hospitals, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't affect healthy people. So a couple of scientists from
Speaker 1: the University at Buffalo were able to inhibit the master
Speaker 1: regulatory gene behind coreum sensing. So that's effectively how we
Speaker 1: are stopping bacteria from communicating, by the way, is by
Speaker 1: regulating gene expression to get into the actual mechanics of it.
Speaker 1: And so these these scientists were able to do that,
Speaker 1: and it's pretty cool when you consider that a lot
Speaker 1: of strains of P. Aruginosa are resistant to antibiotics. So again,
Speaker 1: it kind of comes back to having more than one
Speaker 1: way to skin the cat, or stop the bacteria from
Speaker 1: chatting with one another in this case and mobilize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and another thing that this is the thing that I
Speaker 1: thought was really cool is um as an idea that's
Speaker 1: been put forth by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine,
Speaker 1: and that's that these could be basically quote everlasting antibiotics.
Speaker 1: And basically the principle here is, you know, we've all
Speaker 1: heard of like antibiotic resistant drugs and like antibotic resistant bacteria, illnesses,
Speaker 1: et cetera. You know, the idea is that by creating
Speaker 1: like pulling out antibiotics, were pushing against them, and then
Speaker 1: they're gonna push back, they're gonna, you know, they're gonna
Speaker 1: evolve a resistance to something and suddenly you have to
Speaker 1: change your you know, it's you have to change your
Speaker 1: offense to meet their defense. But if you're if you
Speaker 1: by creating like a quorum sensing drug according sensing drum
Speaker 1: draw antiquorum sensing drug. You are You're you're messing with
Speaker 1: their communication. You know, you're you're not um, you're not
Speaker 1: really pushing them, You're just sort of breaking them up, right,
Speaker 1: You're not sparking resistance. Yeah, and so they found that
Speaker 1: like in like twenty six successive generations of different bacterial species, uh,
Speaker 1: that generation was still as sensitive as the first one was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not like learning to the fight back against it,
Speaker 1: which is awesome because then it could conceivably last forever.
Speaker 1: It could be like a permanent cure. I mean, I
Speaker 1: feel like everlasting is a little optimistic when it comes
Speaker 1: to an organisms as long lasting and as adaptable as
Speaker 1: a bacteria have have proven to be. But still it's
Speaker 1: an intriguing concept. It's a little boastful. But then again,
Speaker 1: if you want, you know, you want to get picked
Speaker 1: up by the media, and you want to you know,
Speaker 1: if you study funded to say everlasting treatment for this,
Speaker 1: and like whoa, I'll fund that. There are doctors using
Speaker 1: quorum sensing or rather anti worm sensing drugs to fight
Speaker 1: bacterial infections. Now that's probably what you guys are wondering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not really, You're right, not so much, except possibly in
Speaker 1: some like traditional medicine practices. Um, there's an interesting article. Um,
Speaker 1: what publication was that in, Well, it wasn't in a publication.
Speaker 1: It was a clinical trial. The clinical trial website you
Speaker 1: can check out all the clinical trials they've got going
Speaker 1: on for for different things in the United States. And
Speaker 1: there's a two thousand eight study that was investigating a
Speaker 1: zithromycin as a potential drug and they were using it
Speaker 1: to battle again Pseudomonas arugonosa ventilator associated pneumonia. And the
Speaker 1: study did, in fact me to phase tube. It was
Speaker 1: terminated because of financial issues, so we never got a
Speaker 1: chance to see how this was going to turn out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the article I was thinking of was actually in Gizmodo,
Speaker 1: and it was about John mccafee, he of the Security computer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so apparently he was like, I've learned how to tackle um,
Speaker 1: you know, computer viruses, I'm going to go after the
Speaker 1: real thing. And he's down in Belize, like checking in
Speaker 1: with like like traditional um like herbal practices and seeing
Speaker 1: and U and looking into the possibility of like quorm
Speaker 1: sensing um antiquorm sensing drug potential in those uh you know,
Speaker 1: those those herbal remedies. So it's pretty cool. Yeah, pretty interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: interesting to read that. I thought that the author Juel
Speaker 1: Johnson had to had a good take on in It's
Speaker 1: all there to bring a little bit of skepticism to
Speaker 1: to this, especially since Bailes doesn't necessarily have the vetting
Speaker 1: system that we do for do drugs. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: were looking to uh in us the help of quorum
Speaker 1: sensing for um all sorts of stuff like ear infections
Speaker 1: and ulcers, biofilms on your teeth. I think they're looking
Speaker 1: into a health wash, which would be handy. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the dental Headgennis would you. I don't know
Speaker 1: how they would feel about that, because what would they
Speaker 1: do if we didn't have biofilms on our teeth anymore? Oh,
Speaker 1: I think we'd still figure out a way to mess
Speaker 1: up our teeth pretty bad. Have confidence in our junk
Speaker 1: food eating ability. Okay, Well, so, apart from what they're
Speaker 1: doing in Bailie's, there are some issues with developing these
Speaker 1: kind of drugs elsewhere, and some of the issues have
Speaker 1: concerned the molecules being toxic to humans. According to a
Speaker 1: related Scientific American article I was reading. In addition, they've
Speaker 1: been having some troubles developing disruptors that work against many
Speaker 1: different species of bacteria. Yeah, like they'll only it'll only
Speaker 1: be good to cut off like one type of bacterious communication,
Speaker 1: right right, Yeah, which might be good in the case
Speaker 1: of a bacteria that's a prevalent, like the aforementioned Pseudomonis organosa,
Speaker 1: but it prevents you from having like a general sort
Speaker 1: of antiquorum cure all right. Also, some of these have
Speaker 1: like there's some issues with the shelf life, like getting
Speaker 1: it to where you could actually like get it out
Speaker 1: there and stores and have it like be an ode
Speaker 1: for the counter thing and not a you know, harvested
Speaker 1: on the site type of deal. And there's also a
Speaker 1: really interesting study that came out of the University of Edinburgh,
Speaker 1: and a couple of biologists there were saying, we'll hold
Speaker 1: on a second here, like we were saying before, bacteria
Speaker 1: that's simple. In fact, they may not even communicate in
Speaker 1: the same way within a particular population. Yeah. And another
Speaker 1: interesting fact comes from some research from the University of Edinburgh,
Speaker 1: and that's that bacteria, like humans. As with humans, some
Speaker 1: of them are better communicators than others. So if you
Speaker 1: end up if you were able to encourage more of
Speaker 1: the poor communicating um bacteria. This is actually beneficial. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is beneficial because then the other guys can't get
Speaker 1: a word in edgewise and really get going with their
Speaker 1: with their quorum. It's kind of like if you didn't
Speaker 1: want your part need to get off the hook. So
Speaker 1: you like you invited mostly agoraphobic. Uh, you know people
Speaker 1: that are just going to stand there, you know, looking
Speaker 1: into their drinks. A lot of social anxiety. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's so that's that's pretty cool in another way that
Speaker 1: you could sort of you know, use this for your
Speaker 1: to your benefit. Yeah. So that about it wraps it
Speaker 1: up on talking to bacteria or bacteria talking with each other. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was really surprised by it, um, because you just
Speaker 1: don't think of all, right, I don't think of bacteria
Speaker 1: speaking to each other, you know, or in any way communicating.
Speaker 1: It just I tend to without thinking about it, you know,
Speaker 1: view them as this very simple organism that kind of
Speaker 1: works like like a very simple machine, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not the case. They have proved us wrong once again.
Speaker 1: So if you guys want to send us any of
Speaker 1: your thoughts on bacteria or bacteria communicating or just tell
Speaker 1: us how much of a good communicator you are. Send
Speaker 1: us an email science stuff at how Separate dot com.
Speaker 1: I have to admit when you first mentioned quorum sensing
Speaker 1: drugs to me, I thought it was something like out
Speaker 1: of Dune or like some sci fi novel where there's
Speaker 1: like a crazy sci fi drug. No. No, not like
Speaker 1: the case. Um, hey, do you want to do listener mail? Yeah?
Speaker 1: We actually got some awesome listener mail in just today,
Speaker 1: not only male but package Yes, our very first factor,
Speaker 1: which is super exciting from Australia. Yeah. I was worried
Speaker 1: at first because one of the reasons we received some
Speaker 1: of our fan mail from Australia is because we made
Speaker 1: some comments about there being a lot of venomous creatures there,
Speaker 1: and then people were some people were like, it's not
Speaker 1: really that bad. It's like, you know, so there's kind
Speaker 1: of a dialogue back and forth, and then there's a
Speaker 1: comment on a comment. Do you remember that? That's very exciting?
Speaker 1: So I went first, I'm like, oh my goodness, like
Speaker 1: somebody's like mailed as a snake or a scorpion or something,
Speaker 1: you know. Um, But as it turned out not, it's
Speaker 1: actually two adorable little pretreated creatures. I got a Rodicent
Speaker 1: bridge back with a bandanna, which is so cute. Dogs
Speaker 1: your favorite animal. And I received a Lambergeyer, which is uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the big majestic looking bird that's in the
Speaker 1: Life series that drops bones from a great height and
Speaker 1: then goes down and each the shattered remains. So they're
Speaker 1: really cute. And they came with a letter. Yeah they
Speaker 1: do the letter. Hi, Allison and Robert, good day from Australia.
Speaker 1: UM for hosting such an awesome podcast that makes my
Speaker 1: commute so much more bearable. I need to do some presents.
Speaker 1: Here's a Rhodesian ridge back for Allison and a lambur
Speaker 1: guy for Robert. If they behave perhaps they might you
Speaker 1: might allow them to play with Katie's narwhale and Sarah's
Speaker 1: awful lot that those guys. Thank you for a great
Speaker 1: show and keep up the fantastic work. Best CC, Melbourne, Australia. PS.
Speaker 1: How about a podcast on the Higgs Boson We might
Speaker 1: find it soon? Excellent, Thank you very much. These are
Speaker 1: really super cute. Yeah, we took up took a photograph
Speaker 1: of and I'll see if I can't throw that up
Speaker 1: on the Facebook and the lamber guy is going to
Speaker 1: go up on the shelf next to Gamera. Hey. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we've received a lot of of a really good listener
Speaker 1: email lately, so we're going to go through some of
Speaker 1: them today and we're pretty psyched that you guys are
Speaker 1: written in. First up is Abdullah s and he wrote
Speaker 1: in with his very first email to an HSW podcast,
Speaker 1: and we are honored. So here's what he had to say.
Speaker 1: He wanted to give us a little info on how
Speaker 1: to pronounce the Burgh Khalifa, the tallest tower that we
Speaker 1: mentioned in our Space Elevator podcast. Remember talking about that, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the one in Space Elevators. Yes, yes, this
Speaker 1: was the one in Space Elevators. Indeed, Robert Um. So
Speaker 1: he told us the correct pronunciation and he then he
Speaker 1: was talking about how the tower was named and burge
Speaker 1: actually means tower and Khalifa is the name of the
Speaker 1: current president and it literally translates to tower of Khalifa.
Speaker 1: So thanks, Abdullah, appreciate the info. We have a ton
Speaker 1: of emails from lefties or lefty wanna bees, shall I say?
Speaker 1: A lot of people wrote in to talk about this
Speaker 1: whole left handed guitarist thing that we got to in
Speaker 1: our podcast, we received some I think they're some left
Speaker 1: you want to be. I'm just going to put that
Speaker 1: out there. That's because you're righty. Yeah, but I don't
Speaker 1: want to be a lefty. Well you should, because we're awesome.
Speaker 1: So after our podcast on lefties, a couple of guys
Speaker 1: wrote in to tell us that lefties are the only
Speaker 1: ones in the right minds. Yes, indeed we are, and
Speaker 1: to tell us to your take on left hand guitarists.
Speaker 1: So here's what listener Jake had to say. Although right handed,
Speaker 1: I do know that if you're lefty guitarist, you have
Speaker 1: to use your left hand to strump and right hand
Speaker 1: to hold down the courts. So lefties hold the guitar
Speaker 1: upside down. Jake also told us that Paul McCartney, the
Speaker 1: famous Beetles star, is a lefty and he had trouble
Speaker 1: learning guitar until he looked at another lefty guitarist and
Speaker 1: saw the strings strong upside down. That's pretty interesting. So
Speaker 1: even more, this turned out to help Paul McCartney when
Speaker 1: he met John Lennon, because it meant that they could
Speaker 1: sit across from each other and see a mirror image
Speaker 1: and learned songs that way. It's pretty interesting. Andrew wrote
Speaker 1: in something along the same lens. He also brought up
Speaker 1: Phil Collins, and he was saying that there are no
Speaker 1: other left handed instruments that he could think of other
Speaker 1: than the southpaw guitars. And I really do think you
Speaker 1: might have just wanted to bring up Phil Collins. Wait,
Speaker 1: I thought Phil Collins played the drums. Well, so Phil
Speaker 1: Collins plays the drums. But he was saying that drummers
Speaker 1: um set up their drump kit in a mirror image
Speaker 1: of the usual way, so a special lefty way if
Speaker 1: you will. Yeah. William wrote in to tell us that
Speaker 1: aside from left handed guitars, um firearms are something that
Speaker 1: are left handed designed. And this is pretty critical because
Speaker 1: when you consider a firearm, if you have a lefty
Speaker 1: using a firearm designed for righty, then you can wind
Speaker 1: up with shells being ejected. Oh yeah, man, I never
Speaker 1: thought of that. Yeah, you don't want to have shells
Speaker 1: ejecting in your face every time you fire the gun.
Speaker 1: That's design for Yeah, William tells us you definitely don't
Speaker 1: want this in a firefight. So I totally trust William
Speaker 1: on that. Garrett is now frightened of his left handed
Speaker 1: girlfriend should she ever decide to fight him. Yeah, she's
Speaker 1: got the advantage. And Jim from New Jersey's fledged fencing
Speaker 1: career may have been cut short due to some tricky
Speaker 1: lefties in his college phizzed class. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: took a fencing in college and yeah, were you any good?
Speaker 1: I don't think I went up against Jim because I
Speaker 1: went to an old girls school, but I might have
Speaker 1: been okay. Yeah, And Val, our friendly neighborhood maker of
Speaker 1: prosthetic devices, brot in again to talk about her left handedness,
Speaker 1: and she was mentioning um the whole care car thing
Speaker 1: from Scottish history. Apparently there's a clan called the care
Speaker 1: Clan or car Clan, depending on how you want to
Speaker 1: spell it k E R R R c A R
Speaker 1: and they're known for being left handed, so much so
Speaker 1: that the care castle Um built its spiral staircases backwards
Speaker 1: so that they could have that fighting advantage that we
Speaker 1: were talking about the robber and I we're mentioning and
Speaker 1: Val asked where some of my family was from, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we do have a little Scottish in them, so I
Speaker 1: don't know whether it's care car, but so wow, some
Speaker 1: of your ancestors may have built a crazy staircase designed
Speaker 1: to fight on. Maybe that explains when my dad always
Speaker 1: wears a kilt, does he? Oh yeah, yeah, sorry dad.
Speaker 1: And on an unrelated note, Richard wrote in to tell
Speaker 1: us that he's fit, he's small, and the mosquitoes love him,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't sure why. I think it may be
Speaker 1: because you're irresistible, Richard, So thanks for that. You guys
Speaker 1: have any what we're gonna say? I was gonna say
Speaker 1: at the point, we received a lot of comments about
Speaker 1: left lefties and guitars and all, but but nobody was
Speaker 1: able to really answer the like, how do how do
Speaker 1: lefties use guitar teaching as a seduction tool? You know? Yeah,
Speaker 1: We're gonna leave that one outstanding for you guys, So
Speaker 1: sind us the answer. We're looking for it. Science stuff
Speaker 1: at hustak dot com or hook up with us on Facebook. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On Facebook we're stuff in the science lab and on
Speaker 1: Twitter we're lab stuff. So check us out. All right,
Speaker 1: that's all I got, Thanks for listening, guys for more
Speaker 1: on this and thou sins of other topics because it
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com? Want more how stuff Works.
Speaker 1: Check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com home page.