Speaker 1: Guess what mango? What's that will? So I was traveling
Speaker 1: last week and as I go through security, I'm waiting
Speaker 1: on my bag to be scanned, and I catch this
Speaker 1: strong whiff of pure and it reminded me to pull
Speaker 1: mine out, because there's something about all this stuff going
Speaker 1: in and out of bins that really grosses me out.
Speaker 1: But then I realized mine wasn't on me. So I
Speaker 1: looked at the end of the moving belt and I
Speaker 1: saw there was a dispenser. I walk over and I
Speaker 1: put some of that magic on my hands. Ten feet
Speaker 1: after that, there was another dispenser. Suddenly I started noticing
Speaker 1: these things everywhere I could have gone swimming, and all
Speaker 1: the hand sanitizer available to me. It's something so present
Speaker 1: in our lives. My son just calls it hand sand hands,
Speaker 1: and I hope that takes off me too. And it
Speaker 1: made me wonder how did hand sanitizer becomes such a thing.
Speaker 1: And it turns out it goes all the way back
Speaker 1: to this woman named Goldie Lippmann who worked at a
Speaker 1: rubber plant in the forties. At the time, workers would
Speaker 1: use benzine to get carbon off their hands, which is
Speaker 1: super harsh. So Goldie and her husband Jerry, invented a
Speaker 1: more gentle, waterless cleaner. It's this classic startup story. They
Speaker 1: lived in their parents attict. They mixed up test batches
Speaker 1: and the laundry machine, and then they packaged it in
Speaker 1: pickle jars. That's right, so artisical, I know. But then
Speaker 1: they tried to sell the stuff and it didn't go
Speaker 1: so well. How come? Well, no one wanted to try
Speaker 1: this goopy stuff, So Jerry came up with a sales trick.
Speaker 1: Just before meeting. He scored a little dab on his palm.
Speaker 1: Then when someone would shake his hand, they'd get startled
Speaker 1: because who wants to feel this cold, wet glob and
Speaker 1: a handshake. It's pretty gross, I know. But as they
Speaker 1: rubbed it to get it off, the factory stains would
Speaker 1: vanish from inside their palms, which I guess. It's pretty smart.
Speaker 1: It's genius, I think. And so this is the proto
Speaker 1: purell and today hand sanitizers are everywhere, But looking at
Speaker 1: all the hands sand around us, it got me wondering
Speaker 1: are we being overprotective? How clean should we be? And
Speaker 1: that's the question we're tackling on Today's Part Time Genius
Speaker 1: Say their podcast listeners, I'm Will Pearson and as always
Speaker 1: I'm joined by my good friend man Gesh Ticketer, and
Speaker 1: you're listening to part Time Genius now today I can
Speaker 1: barely recognize man Gesh because he's currently wrapped in plastic
Speaker 1: wrapped from the office kitchen. Any reeks of hand sanitizers?
Speaker 1: Did I used too much? I mean, maybe a little. Well,
Speaker 1: I know Purell is more your thing, but ever since
Speaker 1: doing all this research on germs this week, I think
Speaker 1: of making it my signature scent. Like how prints always
Speaker 1: smell like lavender. I can't say that I was aware
Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, used to smell like heavy, heavy lavender,
Speaker 1: and his friends used to say that they could smell
Speaker 1: his presence like a full minute before he entered the room.
Speaker 1: So you'd be sitting there and you'd feel this hit
Speaker 1: of lavender and then oh, you can just appear like
Speaker 1: an angel. Anyway, after this week, I'm thinking of doing
Speaker 1: that with Purel. I think that's a that's a brilliant plan, Mango.
Speaker 1: But you know what's interesting, and I realized we're going
Speaker 1: deep on hand sanitizer before this episode even starts. But
Speaker 1: one of the things customers always indicate is a preference
Speaker 1: for unscented sanitizers, but when hand sanitizer companies came out
Speaker 1: with more a few years ago, not only did customers
Speaker 1: not by the fragrance reversions, but there was concern in
Speaker 1: the health community that people weren't applying enough of it
Speaker 1: to really kill the germs. Well, I'm pretty sure I
Speaker 1: use enough of it. I would agree with that. But
Speaker 1: speaking of our research this week, we were reminded yet
Speaker 1: again that science is weird because it feels like we're
Speaker 1: always reading these contradictory reports. It's healthy to drink wine
Speaker 1: one week, then it's not healthy to drink wine. It's
Speaker 1: healthy to drink coffee, it's not healthy to drink coffee.
Speaker 1: You know, it turns out it's not healthy to smoke
Speaker 1: a bucket full of cigarettes. That that is how they
Speaker 1: sell cigarettes now today. Still, yeah, you want to get
Speaker 1: them by the top, that's the super cool thing to do.
Speaker 1: And it feels like studies on germs are the same way.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know it's good to be clean, but
Speaker 1: we also hear reports that tell us to quit trying
Speaker 1: to kill every germ out there. Speaking of which, before
Speaker 1: we fully dive into this, I know we can both
Speaker 1: be a little germophobic, mango, But what's one thing you
Speaker 1: do it was a germophobe that you'd be embarrassed to admit.
Speaker 1: I know. For me, it's that as soon as I
Speaker 1: walk into a hotel room, I look for the free
Speaker 1: shower cap and the bathroom or the plastic bag and
Speaker 1: the ice bucket to slip over the remote control so
Speaker 1: like a remote control condom. Oh yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: So we've known each other for almost twenty years now,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure you know this, but I won't
Speaker 1: take a sip out of a drink someone else has
Speaker 1: been drinking from. I know. And it's not just germophobic,
Speaker 1: it's cultural. Like in India, the tap water is un drinkable,
Speaker 1: so families tend to keep big glass bottles filled with
Speaker 1: purified water on tables. They're communal and they're just filled
Speaker 1: and ready to drink from. So it's a four year
Speaker 1: old you learned to pour water from one or two
Speaker 1: inches above your mouth, so you're never actually touching your
Speaker 1: lips to it. And it's all because you don't want
Speaker 1: to spread germs, Like if you've touched your lips to it,
Speaker 1: then you've ruined it for everyone else. But and this
Speaker 1: is the weird part, and it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: say out loud, but even if my wife sees me
Speaker 1: drinking a bottle of root beer and just takes a swig,
Speaker 1: I can't drink it out, Like I really can't drink it.
Speaker 1: I have to force myself. And so that's my big secret.
Speaker 1: Like my sister and I both, it's this weird mixture
Speaker 1: of like Indian politeness and germophoben nous and sort of
Speaker 1: where those things then diagram. I think this is really
Speaker 1: the kind of thing you shouldn't admit, not because it's
Speaker 1: that embarrassing, but because friends love to mess with you
Speaker 1: on things like this. It's like when friends find out
Speaker 1: that I can't stand for my nose to be touched.
Speaker 1: It makes me dizzy, and then they just think it's
Speaker 1: so funny to walk up and tappy right on the
Speaker 1: button knows that's right now. We also wanted our podcast
Speaker 1: listeners to share some of their more embarrassing germophobic moments
Speaker 1: on Facebook. So if you're up for sharing, contribute your
Speaker 1: story to our Facebook page and we'll be mailing out
Speaker 1: a big and ridiculous prize to our favorite three stories.
Speaker 1: What What what's the prize again, I can't tell you.
Speaker 1: This is gonna be huge, so big can't win. But
Speaker 1: let's talk about this recent cover story and New Scientists.
Speaker 1: You know this is one of my favorite magazines. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: how many times a day do I mention my love
Speaker 1: of New Scientists? Conservatively, maybe I'd say at least yeah.
Speaker 1: So Penny Sarche, a biomedical news editor for New Scientists,
Speaker 1: which we've established I love, and who's going to be
Speaker 1: joining us a little later today, wrote a story titled
Speaker 1: Germ Warfare, and and it she talks about this struggle
Speaker 1: of trying to figure out how clean is too clean,
Speaker 1: because we know good hygiene helps prevent infection and the
Speaker 1: spread of disease, but we also know they're definitely good
Speaker 1: bacteria that keep us well. But let's back up a
Speaker 1: little bit. So in the late eighties and early nineties,
Speaker 1: many researchers really started to get behind the theory that
Speaker 1: kids were developing allergies later because they were avoiding so
Speaker 1: many infections early in life, and they had plenty of
Speaker 1: evidence to point to like kids are less likely to
Speaker 1: develop allergies or asthma if they grew up on a farm,
Speaker 1: or grew up with a dog, or if their parents
Speaker 1: washed dishes by hand. I mean, we're a dishwasher family.
Speaker 1: Some white kids are screwed. Definitely us too. But oh,
Speaker 1: here's a really gross one. Are you ready for this?
Speaker 1: You might want to gargle a little more purele before
Speaker 1: I read this up. So Sarch says a two thousand
Speaker 1: fourteen paper that found that children are less likely to
Speaker 1: develop precursors to asthma if in their first year they're
Speaker 1: exposed to particles from cats, mice, and cockroaches. It makes
Speaker 1: you wonder if they'll eventually develop a powder made of
Speaker 1: cat hair, mice tails, and cockroach faces that you sprinkle
Speaker 1: on your kid. Cockroach faces. I don't know why it
Speaker 1: has to be faces, but it just seemed all of
Speaker 1: it was gross. We can't even imagine that. Actually, I
Speaker 1: read this piece in the l A Times about Amish
Speaker 1: families and their homes because the kids tend to have
Speaker 1: considerably less asthma. And scientists actually took dust from regular
Speaker 1: homes and then dust from Amish households, and when they
Speaker 1: sprinkled the Amish dust in front of mice's noses, it
Speaker 1: tended to protect the mice's airways from allergens, which is
Speaker 1: so crazy, so amish dust. It's like a new business idea,
Speaker 1: we are going to be so rich. Actually, do you
Speaker 1: know who was really dirty and probably didn't have much
Speaker 1: as I can't wait for the answer on this one.
Speaker 1: What a setup, right? For some reason I got stuck
Speaker 1: in a rabbit hole about royalty and according to the economist,
Speaker 1: kings from France and England in the fifteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds were the dirtiest, like they believe hot water
Speaker 1: was the devil and that they could open up your
Speaker 1: pores and let all sorts of illness in. So here.
Speaker 1: A few stories I found like Francis Henry the fourth
Speaker 1: famously stunk of quote sweat stables feet and Garland Louis
Speaker 1: the eighth didn't have his first bath until he was seven.
Speaker 1: Oh God, Versailles for all the glamorous laboratories, like washing
Speaker 1: with water wasn't even a concern. And England's James the
Speaker 1: First never bathe. He only washed his fingertips, just just
Speaker 1: the tips. That is so gross. But unfortunately, being healthy
Speaker 1: and living forever isn't as simple as just saying okay,
Speaker 1: let's be dirtier. But before we dig into that, how
Speaker 1: about we break for a quiz. Sounds smart, So, Mengo,
Speaker 1: who do we have on the line to play today?
Speaker 1: So he's got two lab scientists. Their names are Bertha
Speaker 1: and Umish, and Umish is a special guest. That's right, Mash,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Oh, thank you. So you knows
Speaker 1: was a chemical engineer who worked on several agriculture products
Speaker 1: over the years. But I heard that you actually first
Speaker 1: got interested in chemistry and experiments by baking bread with
Speaker 1: your dad as a kid in India. Is this true?
Speaker 1: Or is Mango just making stuff up as usual? You
Speaker 1: used to make the cloth and we had to modify
Speaker 1: it for gluten and other things to make it sure
Speaker 1: it rose and reacted to the east. That's wonderful, that's
Speaker 1: really neat. What a great way to be introduced to
Speaker 1: the science. Is so. And our second guest, Bertha is
Speaker 1: at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Bertha, Welcome to the show. Hi,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Tell us a little bit what
Speaker 1: you do at U A B. So, I'm a genetic
Speaker 1: epigeeologist and um that does not mean that I study
Speaker 1: skin diseases. I study genetics and um type two diabetes
Speaker 1: and a b CD and cardiovascular disease, and try and
Speaker 1: figure out what environmental exposures can change some of our
Speaker 1: genetic outcomes. Oh wow, very cool. Yeah, we do the
Speaker 1: same thing, but Mango and I are both really into
Speaker 1: that kind of expert on the side. Yeah, speaking of
Speaker 1: on the side, I understand that when you first got
Speaker 1: into the field, you weren't quite making enough money to
Speaker 1: make ends meet, so you would ballroom dance to bring
Speaker 1: in additional money. Is this true? I did? I am
Speaker 1: responsible for many a wedding first dance choreography. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of fun. Well cool, Well best
Speaker 1: the best science is very collaborative science. So we've decided
Speaker 1: to let you to team up for this quiz. Now
Speaker 1: what are we playing, Mengo. We're playing a game called
Speaker 1: clean Sweep. Okay, all right, Now, normally we would try
Speaker 1: to make some sort of tangential connection, like being lab scientists,
Speaker 1: you're very good at sanitizing things. But we want to
Speaker 1: be honest with you here. We just found a lot
Speaker 1: of words that rhymed with clean and turned them into
Speaker 1: quiz questions. So this is how it works. We're going
Speaker 1: to give you a clue, and then you say the
Speaker 1: word clean before the example. So this is so stupid, Mango.
Speaker 1: You're the best at these awful cluses. Alright, so give
Speaker 1: us a sample, Mango. So the reason we wear costumes
Speaker 1: on October thirty one, you would say clean Halloween, right?
Speaker 1: Or Elizabeth the second title in England, you might say
Speaker 1: clean Queen? Right? All right? You guys that you guys
Speaker 1: got it? Okay, so here we go. We're gonna let
Speaker 1: you guys go one at a time, but you're working together,
Speaker 1: and if one of you doesn't get it, you can
Speaker 1: toss it to the other person. So, Bertha, we will
Speaker 1: start with you. Question number one. A stretched out car
Speaker 1: that glamorous people get to drive in. Oh uh, clean
Speaker 1: limousine for one mesh an underwater vessel the Beatles sang
Speaker 1: about you got it all right, Bertha. A jingle jangle
Speaker 1: hand instrument. Bob Dylan asked a man to play in
Speaker 1: the song Oh My Goodness and my Dad as a
Speaker 1: backup singer in a Rolling Stones band and call it
Speaker 1: might know this all right, let's hear it. It's a
Speaker 1: jingle jangle hand instrument. It would be a clean tambourine
Speaker 1: that's okay, alright, who matched? This is back to you
Speaker 1: the thing you mix with ginger ale in a Shirley
Speaker 1: Temple queen grenade felt their Bertha, Okay, this one's back
Speaker 1: to you, alright. A character with adamantium clause from the
Speaker 1: X Men. It's also the University of Michigan mascot. We're
Speaker 1: just gonna throw them out. Let either one of you answer.
Speaker 1: Here we go, number number six. You guys have gotten
Speaker 1: five out of six, so you're in good shape. A
Speaker 1: colorful easter candy, the Easter bunny might leave for you.
Speaker 1: A colorful candy the Easter Bunny might leave for you.
Speaker 1: You got it, Bertha, well done, alright. Question number seven
Speaker 1: two left a method of execution that arose during the
Speaker 1: French Revolution. The last time one was used and was
Speaker 1: in France in nineteen seventy seven. Got a nice job,
Speaker 1: last one, all right? Former star of Two and a
Speaker 1: Half Men, brother to Amelio Estevez. Oh gosh, it's got
Speaker 1: a dad named Martin. Yes, clean, Charlie Sheen, I don't
Speaker 1: think really exists. So it's ath So how many do they?
Speaker 1: How many they get? Right? Mango? So they got seven
Speaker 1: out of eight and of course that means they win
Speaker 1: the big prize, which is a note to your mom,
Speaker 1: your boss written from us, which is, you know, finally
Speaker 1: the validation you've been looking for. Wow, what a great prize.
Speaker 1: Congratulations guys. So we're talking about the question how clean
Speaker 1: is too clean? And before the break we were discussing
Speaker 1: how a little more dirt in our lives might be
Speaker 1: a key to healthier live thing. But for anyone who
Speaker 1: heard that and decided to start licking the floor, pull
Speaker 1: yourself together. It's a little more complicated than that, although
Speaker 1: it is a little of that, right, Like, one of
Speaker 1: the things I'm fascinated by is that we ingest fifty
Speaker 1: to sixty milligrams of soil a day, and that little
Speaker 1: bit of dirt might be helping us be healthier. Like,
Speaker 1: scientists also think playing quote social sports can help and
Speaker 1: will I know, we like to have debates about what
Speaker 1: a sport is, like is Badman really a sports? Please
Speaker 1: don't get me started off. I know you have some
Speaker 1: super strong feelings. But what's important here is where we're
Speaker 1: getting our daily bacteria from could actually play a big
Speaker 1: role in our health, right, I mean, the reality is
Speaker 1: some bacteria are good, some are bad. So it's more
Speaker 1: about understanding our dada microbiome. Now you're probably wondering what
Speaker 1: a microbiome is, And for the super condensed version, let's
Speaker 1: turn to our microbiome correspondent. Oh wait, that's you. You're
Speaker 1: you're a microbiome correspondent. Ban of congratulations. All right, okay,
Speaker 1: talk to me. I can talk to microbiomes. So let's
Speaker 1: stuff back as that. And we humans like to think
Speaker 1: of ourselves as individuals, right, like we've got big egos.
Speaker 1: But the truth is there as many non human cells
Speaker 1: in our body as human cells, and because they're all
Speaker 1: working with us, playing a vital role in our body's success,
Speaker 1: in some ways, it's more important to think of your
Speaker 1: body like a super organism, almost like a colony of
Speaker 1: ants all working together, or even a slime mold, like
Speaker 1: all pulling in one direction. I know it's gross, right,
Speaker 1: but that analogy doesn't even go far enough. In fact,
Speaker 1: your body is more like a rainforest, and each of
Speaker 1: the thousands of bacterial species inside you is precisely built
Speaker 1: for a specific environment. Like the bacteria and your stomach
Speaker 1: would die if it moved to your small intestine, and
Speaker 1: the small intestine stuff would struggle if it was placed
Speaker 1: in the big intestine. Like, it's actually that complicated. As
Speaker 1: one of my science writer friends told me, humans are
Speaker 1: more closely related to C squirts than these microbacteria are
Speaker 1: to one another. Yeah, And another way to think about
Speaker 1: how diverse your body is is to like take a
Speaker 1: look at your left hand in your right hand. Your
Speaker 1: hands feel like they should be the same, right, but
Speaker 1: of the thousands of bacteria on there, your left hand
Speaker 1: and right hand might only share one in six microbial species.
Speaker 1: Like how bizarre is that crazy? Right? So scientists are
Speaker 1: isolating these microbes and understanding their superpowers. They're also considering
Speaker 1: how to hack the bacteria and use it to human advantage.
Speaker 1: Like in Sweden, doctors at a hospital noticed that their
Speaker 1: pneumonia patients were getting infections from feeding tubes and the
Speaker 1: patients were having a harsh reaction to the antibacterial sprays.
Speaker 1: So the doctors looked at this bacteria in your saliva
Speaker 1: called lacto basilious plantarum, and it's this probiotic that helps
Speaker 1: you break down food in your saliva. And when they
Speaker 1: spread the culture inside their patients mounts and on the
Speaker 1: feeding tubes, it actually stopped the infections like no side effects.
Speaker 1: So scientists have been using the Human Microbiome Project to
Speaker 1: crack the code and map out all over microbiota. What
Speaker 1: one crazy thing about microbiomes is that scientists used to
Speaker 1: think that how bay bees were born might affect it,
Speaker 1: like c sections. In particular, they thought might be creating
Speaker 1: a different type and perhaps less healthy baby than straight
Speaker 1: vaginal deliveries. But it turns out that isn't true. I
Speaker 1: mean it's true initially, but by six weeks the differences
Speaker 1: aren't even detectable, which is pretty crazy because kids aren't
Speaker 1: crawling around then. But the colonies just grow so fast
Speaker 1: in the mouth and on the skin and then the
Speaker 1: gut that they don't need that much exposure to grow
Speaker 1: these distinct colonies all over their bodies. I know, I
Speaker 1: think if toddlers being dirty, but not really babies dirty babies.
Speaker 1: But the lesson is, in general, it's healthiest to have
Speaker 1: a wider range of microbes. So it's not quite true
Speaker 1: to say that getting more infections as a child makes
Speaker 1: us healthier later. It's really the exposure to different bacteria,
Speaker 1: and almost exclusively exposure at a very early age. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking before the age of three, that's when it's
Speaker 1: pretty much set. I mean, you know, as my mom
Speaker 1: used to say, once your microbiome is set, your microbiome
Speaker 1: is set. She's right, you gotta set in forget it
Speaker 1: like a firm, not like a or permanent. As my
Speaker 1: grandfather would say. People still get perms. That a thing
Speaker 1: they will now, So that means the bad news for
Speaker 1: all those who were excited to start skipping your chores
Speaker 1: and stop washing your hands and bathing. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you should stop doing any of those things. Well, one shore,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've read a bunch of these reports and
Speaker 1: they all said the same thing. Don't make your bed.
Speaker 1: And can I tell you one thing, sure, I hate
Speaker 1: this advice so much, like making my bed is the
Speaker 1: one thing I do. It makes my room look orderly.
Speaker 1: But even though I hate saying this, an unmade bed
Speaker 1: is healthier because it exposes the dust mites in your
Speaker 1: bed sheets to sunlight and fresh air, which you know
Speaker 1: kills them off and helps your allergies. Man, the kids
Speaker 1: are going to really love this episode. So don't mother
Speaker 1: making your bed. I'm behind that. But where should we
Speaker 1: be cutting back? Now Here? A few places antibacterial soaps.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've been seeing for a couple of decades
Speaker 1: now that when we killed too much of the good bacteria,
Speaker 1: the undesirable bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics, which could be dangerous. Also,
Speaker 1: clean products indoor pollution from all the cleaning supplies and
Speaker 1: chemicals in them. The most harmful ones are often the
Speaker 1: ones being used just to produce a good smell, So
Speaker 1: instead you should clean with things like vinegar and other
Speaker 1: products that you'd feel comfortable cooking with. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: was actually looking into this because my family tries to
Speaker 1: use mostly organic cleaning products for a kid's sake, And
Speaker 1: when I was googling what you can do to reduce
Speaker 1: the chemical sense in your home, one of the things
Speaker 1: that comes up is a list of recommendations from NASA.
Speaker 1: From NASA, Yeah, I just learned this, but every year
Speaker 1: NASA issues a list of the best plants to help
Speaker 1: purify your home, and they've been doing clear air studies
Speaker 1: since the eighties because the agency wants to know what's
Speaker 1: the best way to clean the air and space stations.
Speaker 1: So this list of preferred plants as things like the
Speaker 1: peace lily, which can eliminate traces of formaldehyde and benzene
Speaker 1: and pneumonia. But it's also toxic to dogs, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a big trade off, right, like peace dogs
Speaker 1: between clear air and this plant. It's all plant. But
Speaker 1: the crazier thing to me is this red inundation on
Speaker 1: the ideal number of plants you should have in your house.
Speaker 1: And can you guess what it is? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Four it's one plant for a hundred square feet. Like
Speaker 1: I live in a tiny, super small apartment with a
Speaker 1: wife and two kids, and now I have to share
Speaker 1: it with a tiny forest, like just to breathe the air.
Speaker 1: I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do. That's
Speaker 1: so speaking of our homes and finding that perfect balance
Speaker 1: of clean, Penny Sarchet describes a science approved hygiene sweet spot,
Speaker 1: So that is, you're not looking to completely sterilize your home.
Speaker 1: It's more about focusing on getting rid of harmful bacteria
Speaker 1: in places. This bacteria is most likely to be in
Speaker 1: places we come into contact with, so kitchen surfaces, door knobs,
Speaker 1: bathroom light switches. But as long as we're talking about Penny,
Speaker 1: what do you say? We get around the phone and
Speaker 1: give her a little quiz and that sounds great. All right,
Speaker 1: So we've been talking about new scientists a lot and
Speaker 1: how much we love new scientists. And you know how
Speaker 1: excited I because we have a biomedical news editor joining
Speaker 1: us today, Penny Sarsha. She's going to uh talk to
Speaker 1: us about her article and a few other questions that
Speaker 1: we have, but also to play one of your ridiculous games.
Speaker 1: She may regret this visit. What's the game we're gonna
Speaker 1: be playing? Not so dirty words? Okay? All right, well
Speaker 1: we'll find out more about that in a bit. But Penny,
Speaker 1: welcome to Part Time Genius. Hi. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for writing the story and for joining us. I I
Speaker 1: do have to start up by asking you about this
Speaker 1: quote that, to be honest, kind of made me feel
Speaker 1: nauseous when I read it. So you were talking about
Speaker 1: a two thousand fourteen paper that found that children are
Speaker 1: less likely to develop asthma or precursors DASM. I guess
Speaker 1: you said in their first year if they're exposed to
Speaker 1: particles from cats, mice, and cockroaches. What do we do?
Speaker 1: What do we do about this? Penny? I know it's
Speaker 1: really grand, isn't it. I think the difficult thing is
Speaker 1: you can measure these things and find me association, but
Speaker 1: working out like the coolisation and what that actually means,
Speaker 1: like is a cockroach particle good for a child. It's
Speaker 1: an entirely different experiment and one that you're not ever
Speaker 1: going to do, so I wouldn't aim to have a
Speaker 1: stiff be home, But I think the best way to
Speaker 1: see that kind of thing is more an indication that
Speaker 1: it's not as simple as let's just be dirty or
Speaker 1: let's just be clean. And I think some of the
Speaker 1: further research that I did after coming across that paper
Speaker 1: kind of suggested that these things, like the fact that
Speaker 1: you were exposed to cat hair, also meant you were
Speaker 1: probably exposed to other things related to the cat. So
Speaker 1: it might not be in the cat hair or even
Speaker 1: the cat fe sees that you may have come into
Speaker 1: contact with. It's the fact that the cat might have
Speaker 1: been bringing soil into your home, for example, and perhaps
Speaker 1: some of the bacterian soil are really good for preventing
Speaker 1: asma and young infants. But it's just it came out
Speaker 1: as this quite disgusting correlation in the study. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: glad to know that it's not necessarily the cat feces
Speaker 1: that you said, that's that's like that. So, Kenny, I
Speaker 1: thought you did a really nice job of describing a
Speaker 1: clean sweet spot in your article, and I was just
Speaker 1: curious if you could just describe that for our listeners
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, it's quite helpful for me too. Um.
Speaker 1: So it's basically almost like a priority system. So you
Speaker 1: should really focus on being clean at the most important
Speaker 1: sites and places in your home and at the most
Speaker 1: important times, and that stops you from spreading infection and
Speaker 1: getting sick. But it also means you're not spending your
Speaker 1: entire life needlessly cleaning your home from top to bottom.
Speaker 1: So the places we're talking about, you know, certaining kitchen
Speaker 1: sstaces and cooking, but also in the touch points, so
Speaker 1: light switches, doorn or like taps as well, and just
Speaker 1: things that you touch a lot, and you might pass
Speaker 1: things onto who you're living with. And then in terms
Speaker 1: of times, it's obviously when you go to the bathroom
Speaker 1: and when you're cooking and when you're eating, but also
Speaker 1: if someone is sick in the house, you might want
Speaker 1: to be unpup how clean you are and how often
Speaker 1: you've clean down these touch points, because if someone in
Speaker 1: your family has noura virus and it's growing up regularly,
Speaker 1: you're obviously at much higher risk of spreading things around
Speaker 1: the home and the family. Then say, you know, you've
Speaker 1: got a clean bill of health and no one's obviously ill.
Speaker 1: The whole study around the microbiome is just so fascinating,
Speaker 1: and it feels like we're still so early and understanding
Speaker 1: the microbiome. What what kinds of things are you guys
Speaker 1: thinking about it new scientists right now, or things you
Speaker 1: think will be able to better treat as we as
Speaker 1: we better understand the microbiome. Well, So it's so difficult
Speaker 1: to know because there's just endless conditions that seem to
Speaker 1: be linked in some way to the microbiome, like everything
Speaker 1: from Albioman's to obesity, and we're still really only sort
Speaker 1: of unraveling those links, and we're still quite a long
Speaker 1: way from working out how usefully we can use this um.
Speaker 1: But I haven't stopped lots of people from already developing
Speaker 1: like sprays and treatment and all kinds of things you
Speaker 1: can buy online to kind of change the bacteria and
Speaker 1: your skin or in your gut, And we don't really
Speaker 1: know whether there's work yet and if so, how there
Speaker 1: are a few things we know. So in some places,
Speaker 1: fecal transplant, so that really is just a transplant of
Speaker 1: pooh is allowed or has been approved of the treatment
Speaker 1: for se differentials, which is a bacterial infection that is
Speaker 1: really difficult to get rid of once you've got it.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of they're quite a landmark in that
Speaker 1: respect that it's actually being used as a treatment there.
Speaker 1: But there are people out there who are just going
Speaker 1: ahead and doing transplants of pooh themselves in an unregulated way,
Speaker 1: and from some kinds of studies like this, there are
Speaker 1: kind of early anctotes and warning signs that this is
Speaker 1: obviously much more complex than we really know yet because
Speaker 1: there's so many species of bacteria and we don't know
Speaker 1: what they're doing. Um, so there's some evidence that maybe
Speaker 1: if you were to receive the transplant from someone you
Speaker 1: is a beast, that might actually make you more likely
Speaker 1: to become a beast, and these kinds of interesting effects
Speaker 1: that start happening when you play around with your microbiome.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's really any days. And the other thing
Speaker 1: we don't really know is beyond something drastic like if
Speaker 1: people transplant, can you really even change your microbiome beyond
Speaker 1: beyond the age of about three. Maybe you're obviously go
Speaker 1: through a lot of changes this first few years of life.
Speaker 1: But once your body has been colonized by whichever bacteria
Speaker 1: come on in, can you really kind of shift it
Speaker 1: much more in a healthier or less healthy direction. We
Speaker 1: don't really know that yet, you know. One thing I
Speaker 1: was curious about was whether your behavior has changed since
Speaker 1: working on this article, Like, when was the last time
Speaker 1: you wash your hands? Yeah, I'm still a fan of
Speaker 1: washing my hands. I did the toilet before speaking to you,
Speaker 1: so they're very keen right now. But yeah, handslessing, I
Speaker 1: haven't changed. I was hoping actually for an excuse to
Speaker 1: wash my hands left being a clean freak, but actually
Speaker 1: speaking into the food hygiene and home hygiene experts who
Speaker 1: are telling me about how many people get food poisoning
Speaker 1: in their homes every year, that actually gave me no
Speaker 1: excuse to cut back at all. But we've got a
Speaker 1: garden flat that we're in and out all the time
Speaker 1: with bikes and plants and things, and so much of
Speaker 1: what I'm speaking to some of the people about soil
Speaker 1: and dirt and just being outside. I'm a lot more relaxed. Now,
Speaker 1: if we kind of walk soil in just sweep at
Speaker 1: us and they need to kind of really thoroughly clean
Speaker 1: the floor or anything like that. Um, I think the
Speaker 1: only thing there that would be really wearing was if
Speaker 1: we had a baby that was cooling around and licking
Speaker 1: the floor. If they want to do that would be
Speaker 1: slightly mooring, but that's not what I do. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: thank you for talking about how to be clean, and
Speaker 1: we want to put you to the test if you're
Speaker 1: willing to stick around and play a game of what
Speaker 1: did you say? The game was called it's called Not
Speaker 1: So Dirty Words, and it's a game we expressly wrote
Speaker 1: for you since you're a clean expert. Here's how it works.
Speaker 1: We're going to take one word that sounds dirty and
Speaker 1: give you two definition and all you have to do
Speaker 1: is tell us which one is the real one. Does
Speaker 1: that make sense? Yeah? Alright, here we go. Word number
Speaker 1: one is formication. That's not with an inn but an
Speaker 1: M as in Michael. Formication. Does it mean a a
Speaker 1: sensation like insects crawling on your skin? Or be the
Speaker 1: word veterinarians used for the tartar build up on a
Speaker 1: goat's teeth. Formication, that's a tough one. I think I'm
Speaker 1: going to go with a formication insects because of maybe
Speaker 1: you're absolutely absolutely she's all on also an insects expert. Alright,
Speaker 1: this is a number two. This is where did you
Speaker 1: find these mango? This is ridiculous? Alright? Number two? Did
Speaker 1: you make this up? Is this a real thing? Okay?
Speaker 1: Tortis maximus okay is Trtis maximus a broad shield volcano
Speaker 1: that forms in the middle of oceanic plates, or the
Speaker 1: Latin name for the Tibetan blackbird found in the Himalayas
Speaker 1: in Pakistan. Tortois maximus. Is it a volcano or a blackbird?
Speaker 1: I'd like to think if it was a bird it
Speaker 1: would sound for more familiar, although I can't remember what
Speaker 1: blackbird is right now. I'm going to go with a volcano.
Speaker 1: It's it's actually the blackbird. It's a member of the
Speaker 1: thrush family. Oh, of course, if we had just given
Speaker 1: her that hand that it was a member of the
Speaker 1: thrush family, nailed it. So Number three. Our soul spelled
Speaker 1: a R. S O l e is our soul, a
Speaker 1: Hawaiian term for meat harvested from the tender coconut, or
Speaker 1: be a ring shaped arsenic based organic compound. Is it
Speaker 1: a word for the meat harvested from the tender coconut
Speaker 1: or a ring shaped arsenic based organic compound. I can't
Speaker 1: tell if it's a red herring or not, but as
Speaker 1: surely yes, well done, Okay, let's do I'm just having
Speaker 1: too much fun. Let's let's keep going, all right, the
Speaker 1: next one fartlick f A R T L e K.
Speaker 1: You can use these words in your articles in the future,
Speaker 1: by the way, Penny, they're good ones, all right. Is
Speaker 1: a fart like a Swedish method for training distance runners
Speaker 1: by varying pace and terrain, or be a small species
Speaker 1: of antelope closely related to the dicticum I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with tonight. Sound like they should be related, alright, but
Speaker 1: it's actually a Swedish distance training that she needs to
Speaker 1: get three correct to to win the big prize. So
Speaker 1: let's do one more. Sac butt s A C K
Speaker 1: hyphen butt alright, alright, here we go. Is it a
Speaker 1: the fourteenth century ancestor of the modern trombones, sometimes called
Speaker 1: a sag butt, or be a Viking table used for
Speaker 1: formal banquets. It is well, you did what what? What
Speaker 1: does she want? Mango? Well, she's allegible for our top prize,
Speaker 1: which is our endless admiration. Oh my god. Congratulations Penny. Well, Penny,
Speaker 1: keep up the great work. We remain huge fans of
Speaker 1: new scientists. Thanks so much for joining us, and we
Speaker 1: hope to talk to you again. Thanks very much. Thanks
Speaker 1: by Welcome back to part time Genius. So before the break,
Speaker 1: Penny Sarche was chatting about the hygiene sweet spot, that
Speaker 1: is keeping your house clean but not too clean. It's
Speaker 1: kind of a Guildylocks approach exactly. Since I wanted to
Speaker 1: know what to watch out for, I got curious about
Speaker 1: the dirtiest places. And here are a few things I
Speaker 1: found so at home. The walls around your toilet, you know,
Speaker 1: you just kind of imagine it's the toilet, and it's
Speaker 1: actually the falls around our toilet. The kitchen sponge, the
Speaker 1: kitchen sink drain, the cutting board is a really nasty one.
Speaker 1: That toothbrush cup where everybody keeps their toothbrushes. So some
Speaker 1: of these places that you don't immediately think about. And
Speaker 1: one of the huge ones the remote control. Now in hotels,
Speaker 1: two of the nastiest places are the remote control, which,
Speaker 1: of course you'll no longer have to deal with thanks
Speaker 1: to our patented part time genius remote control condoms. You
Speaker 1: should see these on shelf soon and the bedside lamp switch.
Speaker 1: I never would have guessed the lamp switch me either.
Speaker 1: So what about airplanes? What do you think is consistently
Speaker 1: the dirtiest place on a plane that twisty thing you
Speaker 1: put to turn to put on the air or maybe
Speaker 1: the drinks page with the airline magazine. That's say, that's
Speaker 1: a pretty specific page, and I'm guessing it's not clean.
Speaker 1: But the number one dirtiest thing in some studies by
Speaker 1: surprisingly significant margin, seems to be the tray table. But yeah,
Speaker 1: disgusting if you think about it. People are using it constantly,
Speaker 1: folding it up and it may not get clean. And
Speaker 1: let's get back to the idea of good bacteria. This
Speaker 1: is something we all hear more and more about these
Speaker 1: days because of probiotics, varieties of yogurt, and the grocery store.
Speaker 1: As a side note here, recently I saw a list
Speaker 1: of the ways you can annoy people in your office,
Speaker 1: and number one on that list of ways was to
Speaker 1: stand behind a coworker with a cup of that fruit
Speaker 1: on the bottom yogurt and just stir it up. That
Speaker 1: that sounds, do you make that list? Make that list
Speaker 1: on the author of that list. So there's definitely a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about with probiotics. And that's because the
Speaker 1: gut flora is really important. And it's important because it
Speaker 1: keeps you regular, like you don't want to be constated.
Speaker 1: But the thousand different bacteria and there also have a
Speaker 1: direct impact on your brain, and studies have shown strong
Speaker 1: links between anxiety, depression, even autism, and it's all linked
Speaker 1: to your gut flora. But and here's the important part,
Speaker 1: what you put in their matters. Like in two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: the medical journal gastro and Trology published a paper where
Speaker 1: women ate yogurt twice a day and the probiotics changed
Speaker 1: the makeup of their gut flora and actually made them
Speaker 1: calmer and happier under stress tests. That's fascinating. Now, speaking
Speaker 1: of things we eat, it reminded me of what might
Speaker 1: be too clean. And I've got to tell you, I
Speaker 1: was thirty seven years old before I ever washed a banana. Banana, yep,
Speaker 1: why would you wash one? So one of my daughter's
Speaker 1: friends refused to eat a banana from our house until
Speaker 1: I washed it, because she said, my mom always washes
Speaker 1: my banana. Well, if you're recommending it, I guess we should.
Speaker 1: But let's answer the question of how clean is too clean?
Speaker 1: Obviously you should keep washing those hands and bananas and
Speaker 1: pay attention to the dirty stereas of your house, the
Speaker 1: things we touch a lot, like the light switches and
Speaker 1: remote controls and cutting boards. But also, what's the best
Speaker 1: thing you can do to expose yourself to a wider
Speaker 1: variety of good bacteria. It's to spend more time outside, which,
Speaker 1: of course we're recommending from a room with no windows.
Speaker 1: I love it, speaking of things, I love. You know
Speaker 1: what time it is, Well, yep, it's time for the
Speaker 1: fact off, where we share all the things we learned
Speaker 1: this week that we didn't get a chance to mentioned.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, we should probably give out
Speaker 1: our genius Award. Who do you think deserves that honor today?
Speaker 1: I think we've got to give it to miss Goldie Lippman,
Speaker 1: who came up with the idea of go Joe the
Speaker 1: pre pure l. I agree. I mean she passed away
Speaker 1: in the seventies, but we're going to add it to
Speaker 1: our Hall of Genius and send the company a certificate
Speaker 1: that they could hang on their office bulletin board. So congratulations, Goldie.
Speaker 1: I'm for that. But back back to the fact off MS.
Speaker 1: We like to say on the part of north central
Speaker 1: Alabama where I grew up, you first, So here's a
Speaker 1: fact for you. There's a guy named Jasper Lawrence who
Speaker 1: had severe allergies, like his eyes would swell up to
Speaker 1: the point where he couldn't see. He had intense trouble breathing,
Speaker 1: and he decided the only way he could get his
Speaker 1: body to stop attacking itself was to give it something
Speaker 1: to attack. So, and this is the part I love.
Speaker 1: He went to Cameroon and he intentionally walked around barefoot
Speaker 1: in areas where people went to the bathroom, I know,
Speaker 1: and the reason was to give himself hookworm. And then
Speaker 1: he started this internet business selling hookworms to relieve people
Speaker 1: with crones and other autoimmune disorders, which may actually work
Speaker 1: but comes with all sorts of f d A and
Speaker 1: postal service complications. I like to imagine the conversation where
Speaker 1: he's like, honey, I tried the flown as it didn't work,
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna move on to hookworms. So there's a
Speaker 1: psychologist from Cornell, David Pizzarro, who studies the notion of disgust.
Speaker 1: And in one of his experiments, he had students fill
Speaker 1: out a survey on their political beliefs. And most of
Speaker 1: them were just filling out surveys in a crowded hallway.
Speaker 1: But then he relocated a few of the groups next
Speaker 1: to a hand sanitizer dispenser, and when he did, those
Speaker 1: groups reportedly came back more conservative. And he found this
Speaker 1: over and over in studies, whether it was signs about
Speaker 1: washing hands, or sanitizer or the presence of handwipes. Wherever
Speaker 1: there was a subtle reminder of physical purity, it made
Speaker 1: a respondent more conservative than they might have otherwise been.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. So remember how we Inhale fifty to sixty
Speaker 1: milligrams of dirt today. So one of the things I
Speaker 1: love is that the Japanese government has been organizing these
Speaker 1: things called forest baths. That's what they're called. And forest
Speaker 1: baths are basically guided tours on destressing. A guide will
Speaker 1: teach you how to break open the twin of sassafras.
Speaker 1: And Inhale and appreciate nature and generally be more mindful.
Speaker 1: And part of it is just reminding people how easy
Speaker 1: it is to get in nature preserves. But I kind
Speaker 1: of love this idea that if you're going to inhale
Speaker 1: fifty milligrams of dirt today, let's pick where that dirt's
Speaker 1: coming from. Okay, I like that idea too. I've got
Speaker 1: another one here, IBM processed water. Have you heard of this?
Speaker 1: So one of the weird things is that instead of
Speaker 1: using solutions to clean their chips, IBM actually uses this
Speaker 1: ultra pure water, that's what it's called. They process their
Speaker 1: water so many times, over fourteen times that it has
Speaker 1: no specks of dirt or particles, so that it doesn't
Speaker 1: scratch the chip. But the same thing that makes it
Speaker 1: great for cleaning also makes it harmful for the body.
Speaker 1: So like in its truest form, water will leach nutrients
Speaker 1: toward it from other substances, and so even though it's
Speaker 1: really really ultra pure, it's actually too clean to drink,
Speaker 1: Like drinking will actually hurt your body. That's crazy. So
Speaker 1: there's a great Sean Bradley story that I promised relates.
Speaker 1: This is Sean Bradley, the basketball player. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: so esco, I asked him what it feels like to
Speaker 1: be seven ft six, and you just generally feel miserable
Speaker 1: for the guy and his answers like he can't buy
Speaker 1: normal clothes, he can't buy a regular sleeping bag, you
Speaker 1: can't buy a regular car. I mean, you realize this
Speaker 1: world is not fit for anyone his size. But the
Speaker 1: worst thing he said about being that tall is that
Speaker 1: when you're seven ft six, you're looking down on everything
Speaker 1: and everything is dirty now. So we're seeing like ceiling
Speaker 1: fans and tops of fridges and lockers and everything is
Speaker 1: just gross. And as a short dude, that's not something
Speaker 1: i'd really ever think about. Oh yeah, I never thought
Speaker 1: about that at all. That's it must be really gross.
Speaker 1: So all right, pandas, let's talk about pandas. So pandas
Speaker 1: seem completely useless, right, but they have a bacteria in
Speaker 1: their stomach that can reduce the mass and volume of
Speaker 1: garbage by which is great because anytime you don't want
Speaker 1: to take your trash out, you should be able to
Speaker 1: rent a pan at a squad on your rubbers. And
Speaker 1: it feels like another great business idea. I like it. So,
Speaker 1: speaking of what's too clean. The Mona Lisa has actually
Speaker 1: been cleaned too often. And you know, when you picture
Speaker 1: the Mona Lisa, you might remember she has almost non
Speaker 1: existent eyebrows and super light lashes. But that wasn't always
Speaker 1: the case, like she used to have thick brows, and
Speaker 1: our analysis actually showed that all that hair got thinned
Speaker 1: and trimmed over the years because the painting has been
Speaker 1: cleaned too much. Okay, all right, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: I'm going to give it to you win the battle
Speaker 1: this time, but I'll be back with some wild tangents
Speaker 1: next time. That's it for today's Part Time Genius. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Thanks again for listening to our
Speaker 1: Time Genius. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your podcast, And because we're a brand new show, if
Speaker 1: you're feeling extra generous, we'd love it if you give
Speaker 1: us a rating on Apple Podcast. Part Time Genius is
Speaker 1: produced by some of our favorite geniuses. It's edited by
Speaker 1: Tristan McNeil, theme song and audio mixing by Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jerry Rowland. Our research team is
Speaker 1: Gabe Lousier, Lucas Adams, Autumn Whitefield, The Toronto Austin Thompson
Speaker 1: and Meg Robbins. Jason Hok is our chief cheerleader.