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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hi

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Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren bog o Bam here with another classic

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Speaker 1: episode from our archives. One of the things I love

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Speaker 1: about this podcast is that we get to cover some

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Speaker 1: really big important questions about our planet, our society's, our future,

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Speaker 1: and also questions about boogers. Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren bog

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Speaker 1: Obam here. You've probably caught someone in the act of

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Speaker 1: picking their nose and inspecting the contents and disgusting, right,

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Speaker 1: But you do it too, except maybe you opt to

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Speaker 1: remove your boogers using a tissue in the privacy of

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Speaker 1: your own home or car, or that empty elevator you're

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Speaker 1: riding to the tenth floor. Whatever. We don't judge whether

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Speaker 1: you know them as a bat in the cave or

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Speaker 1: a nose goblin. There's a good reason for boogers, even

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Speaker 1: when they stick around in gelatinous little lumps. The lining

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Speaker 1: of the nose and sinus is also known as the

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Speaker 1: epithelium produce at least one court. That's one leader of

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Speaker 1: mucus every day. That's a lot of snot the mucus

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Speaker 1: in your scientusys keeps the nasal linings moist and helps

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Speaker 1: with your sense of smell. Most importantly, though, it traps dust, bacteria, pollen,

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Speaker 1: and other contaminants. Mucus essentially acts as a sticky fly strip,

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Speaker 1: grabbing pollutants and keeping them from getting into your respiratory system.

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Speaker 1: Without mucus, most of these particles would end up in

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Speaker 1: your lungs. The trapped mucus clinged miniature hairs called cilia.

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Speaker 1: The cilia move the mucus toward the nearest exit, either

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Speaker 1: toward the front of the nose or the back of

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Speaker 1: the throat, where it's swallowed in small amounts. But sometimes

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Speaker 1: the mucus has trouble fully exiting the nostrils. It begins

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Speaker 1: to dry out and may become clumped together. Additional dust

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Speaker 1: and other debris join forces with the drying mucus and huila,

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Speaker 1: a booger is formed. Buggers form more frequently when you

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Speaker 1: have the common cold or about with allergies. Dry, dusty

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Speaker 1: or air conditioned air can cause an increase in booger

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Speaker 1: formation too. Even with all this aired influence, a booger

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Speaker 1: may remain soft and rife with airborne particles. Sometimes, however,

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Speaker 1: a booger can become extremely hard and have rough edges

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Speaker 1: that can pierce the nasal lining, causing it to bleed.

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Speaker 1: Now for rather indelicate matter, the next time you see

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Speaker 1: a child, or help us all, an adult, inspect the

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Speaker 1: contents of his or her nasal cavities. Watch for surreptitious nibble.

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Speaker 1: Turns out the people eating their boogers maybe taking a

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Speaker 1: step forward on the evolutionary ladder. A biochemist at the

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Speaker 1: University of Saskatchewan theorized that eating boogers is actually a

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Speaker 1: way of introducing germs into and thus strengthening the immune system.

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Speaker 1: This hygiene hypothesis asserts that dining on bits of mucus

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Speaker 1: may actually build a superpowered immune response that could give

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Speaker 1: booger eaters an edge over the rest of us. Bone

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Speaker 1: up a teeth. Today's episode was originally produced by Tristan

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Speaker 1: McNeil and is based on the article how do boogers

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Speaker 1: form in your nose? On how Stuffworks dot com written

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Speaker 1: by laure L Dove. Brain Stuff is production of by

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio and partnership with how Stuffworks dot Com, and

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Speaker 1: it is produced by Tyler Klang. Or more podcasts my

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Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows, h