Boonta Vista - EPISODE 438: Shrieking And Farting All The Way To An Air Vent (with Jesse Black)

Episode Date: March 22, 2026

Marine biologist of the show Jesse Black joins Theo and Ben to discuss: The world as seen through community Facebook pages, and a scientific attempt to quantify the previously unquantifiable. *** Listen to Savant Garde: https://www.patreon.com/savantgarde *** Outro: Underwear - JID

I do that. Hello. Welcome to... Hello, Morgan Buinda Vista, episode 438. Oh, Christ, come on. All right. Ah, I got it. I got it.

I'm Theo. Today it's time to ask, how much do you know about monotrems? That's right. Today we test our three contestants to answer the question, what do you know about these crazy friends? fellas. Let's meet our contestants. First up, or shall I say first up, like fur,

do you are, is Lucy when I ran this, I wrote this intro, I kind of misread what was happening in the messages, but I'm just going to read through this because I've got it written down anyway. Lucy, first of all, welcome. Now, your special interest is sexual drawings of public domain cartoon characters. How do you see this helping you today? And she'll be like, Okay, all right. That's a really good Lucy. Whoa. Yeah, that's exactly what she would have said.

She would, yeah. Okay, yeah. Disapproving, but with a wry smile. Yeah, because it's true that she does love. She can't laugh because that shows weakness. Also with us is Ben. Ben, instead of a normal childhood, you had living on boat. Did you ever see any platypuses during this time?

No. Okay. No, I did not. They're not out to sea. Okay. Finally, we have 912-time carryover champion, Jesse. Who's frankly, overqualified. Howdy, Jesse?

Welcome back. Oh, it's great to be here. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to talk about the monotreams. Do you think your experience as a marine biologist and them having, like, kind of some of the same parts by accident? Is that going to help you today, do you think? Absolutely, when it comes to holes that stuff comes out of,

Oh, you're going to love this quiz. You're going to love this quiz. Also, venom is involved, I believe. Woo! Yeah, we put that one on there, but that is cool. The pletopus, the male platypus, got a little venom gland there on his right back foot, is that right?

Yeah, I think so. And it hurts really bad. It's like they put all their points into like special or like, they specked out in different areas. Casting agony on you, yeah. And you're like, Ow, Uh,

uh, ow, uh. Do they have like, are they capable of generating a low level electric charge or something? Can they do that too? Yes, from their,

from their bill, yeah. Because they, because when they dive under water, this also isn't on the quiz, their, like, their eyelids close,

their ears close off. And they feel, they hunt for animals by much the same way as I think a hammerhead shark, by generating an electromagnetic field and feeling the fluctuations in it when it passes by a moving animal. That's so cool. If I'm cool as hell, right?

That's awesome. In fact, fish have a lateral line system too that they detect, sorry, I'm just going to derail this in a fish chat. But they have a line along their body, or a line along their sides of their body that detects electromagnetic fields. And I was wondering what that must feel like

as like a sense. Do you think it feels really good to like slot into like a school of fish and have all of your shields basically like meshing. So, I bet that feels really good. I believe that there's, so there's a few people

probably like 15 years ago who got into subcontaneous rare earth magnets under their fingers as an additional sense. For exactly that's that reason, right? Because you can feel by moving your finger through an electric

electromagnetic field, it's an entirely new sense that you didn't have before. So like if you're near traffic lights, for example, they've got big magnetic induction detectors underneath. It's not pressure to my understanding. It's actually when you drive over the detectors underneath the intersection, it changes the magnetic field,

and that's how they know that there's a car there. And you can feel that sort of all those changes to the EMF with a little magnet under your finger. I mean, useless, but it's an interesting thing, right? Like, yeah. That'd have to be, like, that'd have to be tiny magnets because otherwise you put your finger near a big magnet accidentally and it's just ripping the fucker, like, right?

How many big magnets are you going near? Because, like, big magnets? There's lots of stuff with big magnets, right? Like, what? I don't know. Am I banned from MRI machines, though? Credit card readers still have magnets in them? You are 100% banned from MRI machines.

You cannot get a right out of me. This until you get it cut out. I do actually have some big magnets here, Ben, so actually props to you. What are you? These are You just put out the contraption. Yeah, what the physics teacher?

It's the contraption because all the other shit has stuck to it. It's two rare earth magnets that are used to have a USB cord coming out of them. It's accumulating craft. Oh, it's not.

It's just accumulated. They don't, it doesn't actually do any. That's all right. I'm going to ask you guys several multiple choice questions about these creatures. Yeah.

Over time. Call in with your name as your buzzer, but remember if you call in early, I will not be reading you all of the possible choices. Everybody ready? All right, let's go. Question one, there are eight extant monotrimed species. These are A, two species of platypus and six species of echidna,

B, two species of platypus, five species of echidna, and the Tasmanian devil, or C, one species of platypus and seven species of echidna. Jesse. Jesse. D. There was only A through C, so I've got to guess that you meant C. Yeah. Which is correct.

There's one species of five species of a kidney. You cannot order off the menu. Those are the only monotremes? Those are the only monotremes. I thought we had shitloads of monotremes. No. Fuck. That's rough.

Seven species of echidna. Seven species of echidna? That seems a lot. That's wild. Seven species of acutna, yeah. We should, it doesn't seem fair, right? Like we should have, the platypus is the way more interesting one. Yeah.

But the very least we should have, there should be a backup platypus. Backup platypus, yeah. Just in case one species sort of becomes like a dead end or whatever. We should have the other one ready to go. A redundant platypus. Yeah. Absolutely. But what would you change, though?

What would you change possibly? Oh, my computer. I think just like a pygmy platypus. Oh, a little platypus? Little platypus? Yeah, just like smaller, bigger eyes sort of modelled off the baby Lima for the Madagascar movies

but with all of the qualities of the platypus. Question number two. Possibly the most significant evolutionary difference between monotrems and other mammals is A, they have bird-like hips. B, they lay eggs or C, they did not orchestrate the Tokyo

sarin gas attack and they lay eggs. Ben. Ben. I believe C is correct on both. That is correct. C, they did not. The Tokyo Sarangass attack was orchestrated by adherence of the Om Shinrico cult, who are, of course, human. Question number three, monotremes lactate from A, their nipples, B their fur or C their asshole. Ben.

Ben. B, you are correct again. They lactate from their fur. Isn't that? Gross. You just squeeze them out like a washout. Like a washcloth? It's horrible.

No good. I don't really understand the mechanism there. They've got like they've got fur patches on the skin. They've got glands. That's sort of like sweat glands kind of thing. There is a cream in the skin coming out in the fur. Like the pairs are little like syringes full of milk, right? No, that would be crazy.

I'm thinking it comes out on the skin and then you're licking on the fur. I don't know. They got venom cloths. I think anything's on the table. They are licking on the firm. You never know. Yeah. It is all up for grabs.

That's correct. Which brings us two. Question number four, Monotremes, piss from. A, their urethra, B, their arshole or C,

their cloaca. Jesse, the cloaca. Correct. Now, this is usually the purview of birds. Fish? I don't know. Do fish have a cloaker?

What's going on there? Yes. What's going on vis-a-vis with fish holes? Fish do a, basically a similar thing where they comes out as like a one liquid instead of us we have solid

and we have multiple phases well ideally you have multiple phases of waste I'm on the cloaca Wikipedia page right now too it's basically combination urine feces situation get rid of your excess nitrogen and all that

it's good stuff I seem smart yeah do we diversify for a reason I mean obviously there's no intent blah blah whatever but I mean like is there a practical reason why having your waist go out separate holes is like good beneficial yeah we're like kind of grading nastiness on a curve too aren't we

I guess if you want to get it away from the thing that touches your babies ideally a little bit right true but like a little bit of microbes is also good though that's the other thing is now we're learning all the Michael biome is so important so it's like maybe it's okay to get a little bit of poop on your offspring yeah we're getting back in touch. And perhaps the, uh, what if your food was, was like back when your asshole

touched your genitals? It was funny you say that. I'm actually reading in this, uh, um, mating through the cloaca is called cloacal copulation and or cloacal kissing. I think that's sweet.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think I've seen videos of that on the, on the internet. Gotta put in your ID now in Australia, though. Um, have you done it?

No. Yeah. God no Me neither I'm not going to Putting my ID into a porno site Fucking hell Can you imagine

Yeah I don't know if you heard this Jesse Do we have to do this now It's been on pornography No no not you guys Just in Australia

The United States Oh cool Okay Yeah we got our little We got our little Taste of Tennessee or whatever Right Over in Australia

We can't claim like We're smarter than the Yanks or anything And like the UK I think has had a problem Yeah Wow You gotta like put a photo

of your ID and make you stone your face or stuff. Really? Yeah. Oh. How do you remain horny throughout the verification process? You're like putting your positioning your head in the box. Like putting on the cut.

Seeing my sweaty face like the back lid from align it to here and then typing. Oh, holding a little mirror up to your face? Oh, like, ah. Shit,

that's what I look like. I'm about to jack off. I'm going to go garden. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to read a book. I'm going to go help a nun cross the road. I can't believe they did that.

That's crazy. All right. Now, this one's going to be hotly contested. So, buzzing quick. Mouts on the buzzers. Question number five, monitoring's shit from A, their rectum, B, their cloaca. C, their rectum, then their cloaca. Ben, B.

Incorrect. The correct answer is C, their rectum, then their cloaca. Explain. Okay. Okay, so basically they've got like a confluence of pipes going on there. They got all kinds of pipes coming in, and they got like a back pressure butthole. So it goes rectum, and then it's going to go into the big cave for the cloaker, and then they're going to shit that out.

Oh, there's a staging? There's a staging. There's a staging environment. Yeah. For the poop, before it goes into prod with the piss. Yeah, the rectum is poop preprod. There's like blast doors and like a contamination change. Yeah, absolutely.

I don't know whether they're doing traffic management there. Because there is a lot going on in there, which brings us to question number six. Monotrims come jizz from, A, their dick, B, their cloaca. C, their dick, then their cloaca. Okay, this feels like you're leading us on. Ben. Ben. We're going to stick with trusty old B. Incorrect.

The answer is C, their dick, then they're clay. So the poop and the commies going to the same chamber? Yeah, yeah, and the we as well. And the we as well. But from a different pipe as well. It's not like a bird where, or fish, I guess, where it's all like one phase of waste. They have multi-phase waste, all feeding. They're doing post-mix?

Yeah. They got post-mix assholes? They got post-mix cloakers, yeah. Fuck. Wait, so, okay, there's a different staging ground for the Pup, then there's a staging ground for the Jiz. Yeah. And then there's one free-flowing...

No, there's no staging ground for the... Oh, maybe there is. I don't know. Is the dick a staging ground? I guess you're talking about line pack then in that... In kind of like pipe terminology. But they're not... They're not producing Jizz on the demand. And the Giz has to be ready to go, right?

Somewhere. That's true. Yeah, it's got to be somewhere. The Giz has to be somewhere. Well, they do have a vast difference and... I can think of one vast difference between me of them. They're platypuses. But no prostate, though.

That's the same for them. Just in case you're wondering. All right, so now it's time for our carryover champions' hand-picked category. And this week, Jesse has chosen monetary dicks. Let's see if it gives him an advantage. Good choice. Question number seven, the shape of a platypus dick is, A, normal with spines, B, larger on the left side of the glands than the right,

or C, larger on the left side of the glands than the right with spines. Is this like platypus right, or my right viewing the platypus? Stage right. Where are you viewing the platypus from? If you were the platypus, say you were wearing a platypus suit. If I'm the platypus, that's my right. Be the platypus. I'm going to say

whatever C was I'm gonna see yeah larger on the left side of the glands than the right with spides so it's got a little dickhead and the left head sides fucking hell it's bigger for

for unclear reasons actual works very mysterious ways yeah question number eight and Akidna has how many dicks a four B none C one

didn't we say that do cloacal copulation. Coleycal kiss, yeah. But the dick is still getting come to the cloaca. Oh. It's like kind of

the fuel injection valve. Yeah, but how many how many injectors do they have in that bad boy? Are we talking a V4? No, that's the cylinders. That'd be a square forward. Yeah, so it's single piston.

How many valves? Single pistol. Ben A? Because one, like one isn't an interesting enough number, I don't think. Yeah. Correct. Correct. Yeah, they have four dicks. Question number nine.

Cloeca. Four pre-Cloacal dicks. Four. I've got a diagram pulled up. It's in the cloaca, I guess. Sharing screen. Kind of chamber. I don't know what you call that. Yeah. Question number nine. And Akina has how many pussies? A, one, B, two, C, four.

Four dicks would imply. Four dicks would, I think we all can, but these are tricky creatures. As we already, you know. They are tricky. They'll catch you in the back foot with this kind of stuff. Full of secrets. Exactly.

Can you give us the options again, sorry? A1, B2, C4. Ben, B, I'm going to say two. Two is correct. Yeah, it felt right. So, then that leads us to question 10. Fucking Jesus, we're at 20 minutes. How did these kids participate in sex?

A, all four at once B, two take turns each time Or C, only one gets used While the others hang limply Jesse Jesse One gets used while the others hang limply Incorrect, Ben, would you like to

I would like to steal? I'm going to say all four are firing off at once We're going to say A Also incorrect, the correct answer is B Two take turns each time I thought this was too easy. Each time that they have sex, two of them have a go, and then the other two just sort of like are on the bench.

Do you know what the firing order is? Are we going two are always paired with each other? Is it top and bottom or is it left and right? I don't know, actually. Is it like the quad cannons from the Millennium Falcon? Or is it like the two go, you know, two then. So one and two and then two and three, and then three and four, then four and one.

Yeah. It could be rolling. So each one does two in a row. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm thinking. Yeah. Okay.

Final question here. Question 11. We're not having, we're not having sex. A. goes back in the sack. B just sort of wiggles around or C. forages. You look so gleeful.

That's not my guess. Well, it is my guess. Ben C. Incorrect. Fuck. Shit. Jesse, A, I'm going to say that's the more safe option. because like there's a lot of stuff in the water that'll nip it.

There's a lot of stuff going on in there. Let's just say there's a lot going on there. They got a little siding or something. Yeah. Like it folds back in. But they've got to slurp it all back into. Fuck. That's all I got.

Thank you so much. I don't know. We all lose. Yep. Hey, Akidna's. They're not that common in Australia and seeing them as a pretty big deal. You might see a post about an Akina in a community Facebook group. we talk about community Facebook groups

in community Facebook group watch I recently have just like completely dog shitted up my Facebook algorithm by clicking on posts that I know are bad for me and now the only thing it wants to show me is like local controversies playing out in small community Facebook groups

and I thought maybe I'd just give you guys like a sample of what's going on Maybe I can monetize the rot. Yeah, that's right. Maybe if I use the rot for content, it's good. Yeah. How about instead of doing something for content, we do something for content. Yeah.

Yo. Is that? Like having a cup of tea. Yeah. Or breath work. What else is good? What else is good? You guys ever kind of like are in a bad mood and you're like, hey, what do I do that I enjoy?

What do I actually, what makes me feel good? Yeah, and then you just sort of stand in the corner, like afraid for a little while. I've got a few tips and tricks. Oh, you've got a tip? Yeah, sometimes like leaving my phone in the other room and then sitting in the part of my house where the plants and the speakers for the record player are. That's nice. Sit down and read a book and listen to music.

Because you can't scroll on a record player. You can't. It is. I do have to walk in the other room to flip, though. other side, which is really fucking... DJs can, but that's a special case. That's the exception that proves the rule.

That's really true. That's the exception. This first post is from the Russell Island Community Facebook group. So this is... Russell Island's in the Morton Bay region, right? It's in Morton Bay, Theo? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sorry, it doesn't pretend like that. Great. Yeah. No, I used to work with a guy that lived on McLeigh Island. Yeah, we almost... Name as you. When we first moved to Queensland,

We, it is spelled differently though. We actually, we almost moved to McLeigh Island when we first moved to Queensland. Because when you've got a life, a houseboat, kind of islands are your oyster. I'm so used to islands, dude. Yeah. I saw that, I saw that work made in my dreams last night. Oh, yeah. Sort of just in a hallway distantly, yeah.

No moral. This is not good radio. I had a dream last night that I had the condition from Memento and I had suddenly started working as like camera assistant for Auntie Donna. And I just sort of was trying to explain to Zach Rwain that I had just, it was as if I

had just woken up in the middle of doing an important job for them and I had no memory of what I was doing there or what the context was. And he just said, oh, that's really interesting man and then look disappointed. Yeah. So. It seems very real to the

yeah. Okay. The post goes as thus. Thief alert. Someone has stolen my new grass from seven woodland circuit. They would have to be close to the street or in the street any information would be great to pass onto the police.

Someone stolen this man's lawn. Stole his grass. Stolled his grass. Yeah. That's fucked up. So if you see any grass somewhere Yeah. It might be it is. I don't know how can you just wait long enough time but it will kind of replenish

itself? It'll come back. Yeah, grass is free man. It's from the earth. Literally it's from the earth. Or from like landscaping places. You buy those squares. Yeah, you could also buy the side or whatever, yeah. Yeah. Sort of out past bow desert where they grow a whole bunch of it. Grass farms?

Yeah, grass farm. Yeah. That's my new cool way of saying like The ground. The park or whatever. Oh, the grass farm. Heading down to the grass farm. Yeah. That's awesome. It's hard of season, Dave. I think it's extremely cool.

Yeah, it's like the rocks. This is from the Kelvin Grove Red Hill Ashgrove Community Group, so this is a trio of suburbs that are sort of just in Brisbane's inner west kind of near near where I am. A quick message to the woke lefty who reported my car for

quote hate speech and sent the police to my door today. The car is not quote covered in swastikas as you put it. Okay. Any more on that? Oh yeah, there's a little bit more. The badges on the car are original VW advertising logos that are accurate for the age of the car.

I suggest you learn More about the history of the people's car pre and post World War II instead of wasting police time. I mean, it feels like someone's wasting police time here. Wow. By putting... Well, okay, so he's attached... What is a history accurate Volkswagen? Oh, do you want to know?

We know what we're getting at here, right? Yeah, but do you want to know what the historically period accurate Volkswagen logo looks like? I do. I just asked. If it's very early, it's got a cog around the outside instead of... of a circle. Okay. And if it's...

Cool. During World War II, there's sort of like a weird pinwheel kind of design around the outside, but not a swastika. It's like almost looks like a windmill in motion kind of. And then after that, it's a circle with the letters V and W in it. Now, what this man has on his car is none of those. It is... You might have seen something very similar to it.

I want you to picture like a stylized eagle. and then it's clutching its talons a wreath and then inside the wreath is the VW logo but you might know it from having a swastika in the middle Yes Or sort of you might if you're kind of thinking Where have I seen that before

It was probably from one of the uniforms Of the famous Nazis The Nazis from World War II You remember World War II With the lead up to World War II Yeah Yeah Yeah

And so that's not a period accurate logo design. It is just something that white supremacist VW enthusiasts sell on Etsy is you can buy those. If you want to evoke the Third Reich

on your VW, more than the VW evokes the Third Reich already due to its history. Not saying everyone that drives a beetle is a Nazi, but I think if you put the Nazi version of the logo

that was made up because there wasn't a Nazi enough VW logo. Yeah. You know, maybe something to think about. Yeah, this is for people, like the tagline on this Etsy page would be like interested in history, question mark.

And there's a certain kind of guy that goes, oh, yes, I'm very interested in history. A lot of assumptions made throughout history that I maybe don't agree with. Just maybe to get like an idea of the character of this guy, I do have another Facebook post from this dude. This is from his personal Facebook. wasn't posting this in a community group. He's posted, just answered the door to Jehovah's Witnesses

with these on my feet. Okay. Then he's attached two photos. What are they spiked boots? So he could kick them to death. No, it's something much more confronting than that. He is wearing, so he's posted a picture of his feet,

and he is wearing socks, no shoes. And the socks have a stylized middle figure on them by the words, fuck you. So that's, so if the J-dubs, sort of saw like the sides of his feet, I guess.

They might be like, ah, I'm getting cussed out by this man. Let's skip this one. Yeah. House sucks. Yeah. This guy's really dedicated to like building

signifiers surrounding him that just say, this is the guy that sucks. And, you know, that might be like inside this car or like inside this house. Yeah. But just like wherever he goes, making sure there's a label somewhere

on him or on his possessions being like, I'm the guy that sucks. Yeah, I suck like heaps. And I want you to know it. I'm trying to make you aware that I'm bad. Yeah. Yeah. He's real.

And he lives in either Red Hill, Ashgrove, or Kelvin Grove. Huh. Man, that sucks so fucking bad. That sucks. That's a fucking loser. His life sounds pretty bad, though. So there's that. Like, in general, he sounds pretty unhappy.

So I think we can take solace for that. Yeah. I do text Ellis in that. Thank you. And actually, I think it's good that like the more time that the police are like door knocking this guy for having the Nazi-looking VW logo, that's like one less person they're arresting for having a shirt that says from the river to the sea in Queensland. Yeah. Or like kicking down their door and like stealing all their all their shit because they did. If they must harass them. They're upset about someone's sign, yeah. Is it just straight up illegal to say from the river to the sea in Queensland now? Yeah, in Queensland, I believe it is illegal to say from the river to the sea.

You can't say from the river to the sea. You can't say from the river to sea in Queensland. You're telling me, in Queensland, right now you can't say from the river to the sea. You cannot say from the river to the sea. I think from like a week, a week and a half ago or something like that, it's illegal to say. They arrested that woman. She was the first person to get arrested. She's just wearing a shirt that said from the river to the sea.

Which is, as a lot of people have pointed out. out there's a there's a john farnham song with those exact words in it yeah they're gonna arrest john farnum for well i don't know he hasn't he hasn't said from the river to the sea yet but his song that he made his song says from the river to the sea from the river to the sea yeah yeah yeah it seems kind of fucked up what are the uh do you have an idea of the uh the penalties involved is this like a ticketing situation or are they going to put you in the slammer for like 30 years you're going to get mo for this i don't know they'll probably find you i don't know i don't know i don't know if they'll put you in jail.

They raided some guys' house again this weekend. What if it depends on the number of times that you say from the river to the sea, it's like racking up. Now here's this. If you said from the sea to the river as well, the logically, that's a really good point. A to B to C, C to B to A is the same. You think the properties are transitive? Unless you could only travel in the one direction, then you're actually describing the

complete opposite territory. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. One more thing of that fish I wanted to bring up before we, uh, stop talking about fish forever. Not forever. Jesus. Yes, dude. God forbid.

One last time. Some of them can also expel excess ammonia out of their gills, and I wanted to say that I thought it would be interesting if we could piss through our lungs. That's all I had. Sorry. I think that would be interesting too.

Yeah. And you know, you have these thoughts because you have a beautiful scientific mind. Thank you. And we talk about science in Science Watch. This is a press release from the University of Maryland. How often do people really fart

scientists built smart underwear to find out. I mean, they already did this on Mythbusters. Yeah, I've seen that. This is kind of... You've seen that Mythbusters. You ever say what?

Tracking all of that. This story is a bit of low-hanging fruit, but I think there is a lot of delight in the details here, so bear with me. Researchers of the University of Maryland have developed smart underwear, the first wearable device designed specifically to measure human flatulence, which implies that we have other devices that can do it,

but they were also for other stuff. So I guess just like two for one, yeah. Methane or hydrogen detectors or whatever. The small sensor tracks hydrogen in flatus, fletus being the gas that we produce. In flatus. Flatus. Oh, that's the noun like I've

I'm currently expelling phletus from my... I'm creating an expelling fletus. Yes. This is very different from inflatus, which is a... Oh, the movie? It's an instruction we give to our artists.

Inflatus. Clint East were directed that. Allowing scientists to examine oh, sorry, to re-examine long-held assumptions about how often people pass gas. Yes. Yes, this better be validating.

You come across something sometimes where, I don't know, maybe it's just me as a not scientifically minded person. I assume that most chemical, physical, and natural processes, we have the tools to be like, this is caused by this

and it happens predictably in this way and we can measure how often it happens. And like, I just kind of assumed that there are very few sort of black boxes in the natural. world. It turns out, not at all.

Like, we just found out like an extra, like a massive component of how static electricity works, apparently. Because that's

very poorly understood, which seems insane because it seems pretty straightforward. Yeah, I understand it completely. I thought that was like Tier 1 technology tree stuff

we already figured out. That's my bad. Yeah. I don't know physics stuff. You get static first. For the moment we invented the balloon, we had static electricity

like fully. I thought we had that shit figure out. PRISons as well. Carpet and socks. Yeah. Interesting. So apparently I would have thought farts it was just like we had a figure of like you fart X amount of times per day and it's roughly correct on average in big populations. Wrong.

Until now. Okay. The technology also offers a new way to observe gut microbial metabolism during everyday life. For many years, doctors have had limited tools to evaluate patients who report problems with intestinal gas. gastroenterologist Michael Leverett. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sort of a kind of a silent, um. A silent epidemic. Yeah. Silent epidemic of, kind of like, you know, it's there in plain sight, but no one will give it the credence it serves. Sort of laughed out of the room almost. Yeah. And then, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes we might just come out and like, you

know, uh, ease your suffering on your friend's couch. Oh. And then suddenly you're not. invited back to kind of sit on your friend's couch anymore because you do something that's very natural. Sometimes you get so comfy doing that you do it in front of say your friend's wife. Yeah, that's right. It's home. Yeah, exactly is what I'm talking about. Yep.

God forbid you groan during. God forbid. Then you're fucking... Oh, Jesus. You laugh. You start laughing before the fart happens. And then you laugh after the fart during the fart. You're laughing the whole time while my wife is shaking you're having discussed. Yeah, so what's the problem? Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I'm the asshole.

It's natural. Gastroenterologist Michael Levitt, widely known in the field as the quote, King of Farts, highlighted the challenge in 2000 when he wrote, quote, it is virtually impossible for the physician to objectively document the existence of excessive gas using currently available tests.

Huh. You're telling me, up until now, maybe, we did didn't have a way to be like, you're farting too much. You'd tell a doctor, I think I'm farting too much and then say, well, who knows? That's between you and God. Yeah. Well, and are we talking quantity and or volume?

You know what I mean? Yeah. A bunch of little farts versus a number of farts versus size of fart. Versus average gas. There'd probably be a direct correlation. Yeah. Like, surely if you've got a lot of gas, you're doing a lot of farts. In layman's terms, I'm trying to simplify this.

Unless you've got really strong, hold of the vast muscles. And so they build up to one big guy. You know what I mean? Or a bigger chamber? Maybe. I also don't think that... I think volume doesn't like explain what's going on there. I think this is like a multifaceted data set, right?

Yeah. It's more than a dimensional for sure. I think it's so much. We need to be doing like principal component analysis on this. etc. I think, for example, heat is a big component of it. If it's coming out hot, there's a big correlation between the heat of that fart and how nasty it is taking your average observer. You can feel it. You can feel it. You can feel a hot fart coming. This is the part where my wife has stopped listening to this episode now. Maddie is completely

switched off. She can't do this. She doesn't like farts? hates farts. Oh, I'd like to clarify. When I meant volume earlier, you may have thought I meant like noise volume, which makes total sense for far as loud. We know what you meant. Oh, you knew what I meant. I meant like liquid cubic centimeters of hot gas. Or either one.

You could put a guessable meter in there. Right. Yeah. Yeah, true. But probably, although, yeah, I guess that's sort of, that's got more to do with the state of the asshole than I guess. Sure. Although the amount of gas would certainly have a calling. Also, I think that one can be manipulated, I think, by the test subject as well, right?

You've got a certain control over it. You've got a certain... A mastery. A mastery. It's a woodwind instrument almost. You can control the re-dimensional dimension. You can control the ambusure of your asshole? Precisely.

Yes. You can. Yes. The tombur. To tackle this issue, a research group led by Brantley Hall, an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics. Dr. Hall, maybe. It's funny because I was like, is this like a building from which it is happening?

Or is it a man's name? It's a man's name, it turns out. Created smart underwear, a compact wearable device that clips discreetly onto regular underwear. You don't have like the enormous fart measuring box. Yeah, out. back your pants. Big antennas to go over. You guys remember the old days?

You hook up a fox like a fax machine to the side of you. Size of a school gymnasium. Yeah. Now they're discreet. You can even wear them swimming. Look at that wagon.

He's dragged. The device contains electrochemical sensors that continuously monitor intestinal gas production through the day and the night. In research published in biosensors

and bio- Electronics X, a study led by UMD assistant researcher scientist Santiago Botasini, used the advice to measure flatulence in healthy adults. Participants produced flatus an average of 32 times per day, about twice the 14 daily events often cited in earlier medical literature. You're telling me that for like all of modern science leading up to now, up until like within the last couple of months, we had been underestimating the average number of farts

of a person by two. Yeah, we were so wrong about something that is so commonplace. What else are we wrong about? Yeah, and this is the empirical we here. I mean, I've not been incorrect about that.

And you've got to imagine that. You would have guessed that number? Like one out of like 32, you're going to be like maybe somewhere comfortable. You're going to be sitting somewhere that just sort of like, you're comfortable. And there's nothing wrong. and you got to

and there's nothing wrong and sometimes it's about to be in the company of your friends their friends here's a haunting thought what have everybody's farts become more common

over history but we have like a societal amnesia almost so like 1800s folks were like you guys are farting 32 fucking times a day and we're like

what are you guys doing? You got boomers being like hey remember remember how you didn't used to fart Now I'm farting 30, 33 times a day. It turns out of the hose stops you from farting. What was it like before the farting times? They ban our medicine.

It's crazy. I bet if you charted fart frequency versus whale population numbers, they'd roughly... No, they'd be inversely proportional. Whales drop off, farts go up. Wow. You guys ever seen those, like, the infrared cam videos of someone like... Some fun.

Yeah, someone's fine. They're like... It's horrible. I hate it. They always have the same pose beforehand. It's horrible. Where they gather themselves into the least surreptitious form possible. Straight up and down, beautiful, like, pencil pose.

Ready to eject their cheek. And then... Yeah. People are just, like, walking through the cloud back and forth. You could probably train yourself to identify that body language. like someone just sort of collecting themselves. Oh, I'm a body reader. That man's farting.

That lady's making it stink. We get a body reading. Put a thermal sensor on the lot, boys. You'll be seeing farts like they live type shit. But with farts instead of them. That would be such a like easy thing to do now with like training, like a big data set training, neural network for fart body language.

and just having like a little like robocop vision that's like farting you get the little watchdog kind of like rectangle coming over like she making a fart like yeah she does like a radius subject is farting the damage zone almost far yeah avoid area fart detector thank you computer me putting up the sides of my cyberpunk jacket thanks latest levels critical deploy countermeasures just tracing like a serpentine path through the ball just to avoid all of the fart sides congratulations you have had a fart free run

of it's the billy shopping center farts touched two we're going to get those numbers down however results varied widely among individuals with totals ranging from just four Flatus events per day to as many as 59.

Holy fuck. Yeah. Order of magnitude. The people that are doing like the four fletus events a day, they must be thinking, like the other people just sort of like normal, regular folk kind of just walking around they're like, they might be like right in the middle of the bell curve, let's say. These four flaters people are going like, that's gross. That's yucky.

Stinky stinky, right? Yuck-y-pooh. I don't realize it's going to hit home. But they're the weird ones. Yeah, they're the weird ones. They're the weird ones. It's not me. Four farts and you're asleep for like half of them?

Yeah. Every day you're like, what the hell? Oh. You don't even know. I guess that was a fart. Pretty weird for me. I don't, turning to the people next year, and like, holy shit.

I don't usually do those. Oh. Sorry, it usually doesn't happen to me. Not pulling out my head. I hate to interrupt, but I just felt a bolus of gas, except by asshole. Is this normal? This has happened to everyone?

You guys are doing what? 59! You guys are doing what? 59 is, what is that? After a chili pepper? Hourly basis. How many minutes are there in the day? 3,600 or something?

No, that's minutes an hour. I don't have time for this kind of man. One in a bit? How many minutes are an hour? Two and a half? How many minutes are a hour? 60 minutes an hour. 60 seconds in a minute.

Bosh, bach, b, b, b. 36. a hour. Seconds. That doesn't help me address the fart question at all. I didn't think you did it at all. You do it like a bit over two.

Nothing on this show helps. Farts per hour. Right? Oh, 2 FM? 2 FBA. We are so fucking smart. Yeah. FBM.

Yeah. That's cool. Older estimates were likely lower because previous studies depended on invasive measurement techniques conducted in small groups or relied on self-reporting. Doctors is.

Doctors is walking. around with his finger all day. I found something. You got to use your non-dominant hand for that so that you can still write on your notepad on your notepad. Flathias? We got Flatis here. Small groups.

I thought youth group was bad. That sounds terrible. Sometimes you've got to get your intern in there too to be like, no. What do you think was that one, Flatis or two? Wet or dry. Wet or dry. Well, call it.

Quietly. You have to call it. You're a judge. You have to call it. What's the most you've ever lost? Two flaters. Semi wet. Three days in the colonies.

You have to call it. This is scrapping this episode. Both approaches can miss events depend on imperfect memory and cannot record gas production while someone is asleep. Yeah. The imperfect memory part is very funny.

That's beautiful. How many how many farts have we forgotten? Yeah. How many farts have we created in our minds? You talk to someone else. You didn't fart that time at all. Huh, I thought I had farted. That's gas lighting.

Yo. Fuck, dude. Jesus Christ. Sorry, let me just do a quick. That was gas, Theo. Let's go. Yep. In addition, people differ significantly in visceral sensitivity, meaning two individuals may produce similar amounts of fletus, yet perceive it very differently.

Yes. Perceive it differently. Oh, fuck, dude. Just speaking of this, I'm... It's in the nose of the beholder. I walked past a chat at the bar yesterday while I was working two dudes in their probably late 40s, early 50s. And one of the guys was talking to the other one was just like, yeah, but like, what if what I see is green, you don't see green? It's so, we should make school for 20 year olds.

You've got to nut this shit out while you're like, you're fucking smoking weed in a garage. And you're listening to Tool and you're like, dude, I just had the craziest dorm room brain shit. A black light is a catalyst. If you want to get that going, you want to get going more quickly. It doesn't actually participate in the reaction, but it does help catalyze the reaction. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to want to get some milk crates as well.

You want to be sitting on milk crates for this conversation. Yeah. Ideally. Yeah. You know, if you sit them on their side instead of so that the bottom is on top, they have a little bit more flex to them and it's actually more comfortable as a seat. Kind of snap it. Yeah, dude.

Nah, they're pretty strong. Yeah. I'm a little guy. Theo, you're not snapping in milk crate. Come on. You think you're heavier than milk. Boy. Get on, back here.

You think you're heavier than milk. Fucking guy's really full of himself. Yeah, a fucking guy just thinks he's heavier than milk. That boy thinks he's... A tall glass of milk. Some wisdom from the... That's near son. You ain't...

Heavier of milk. Shit was heavier than milk. God damn. heavier is milk I do believe that boy's hair and milk Harry King heavy of milk that's such a disgusting

milk is such a fucking nasty word for what it is so nasty it's just wet and sticky too it'd be okay if it was just wet yeah and talk about farting milk will often cause farts in my experience

milk will cause farts in some folks milk causes farting write that down and maybe you go on like you know undiagnosed for many many years years. I do wonder how much this varies by diet and, like, genetics and, like, gut biogenetics. But this is the thing right. Now we've established the baseline.

We can start getting some experiments going. We can get a good P-value on this shit. For progress. Absolutely. In most people, Flatus is composed primarily of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. Yes. Only some people have methane. And you can tell by the color it burns when you hold a flame to it. That's right.

That's very good. The next sentence is some individuals also produce methane. And for the sake of the environment, we got to get rid of them. We've got to kill them all. Son, changes no joke, people. You hold your ass to this lighter. I'm killing you anyway. Hold it a shotgun at a lighter and be like, I'm sorry, boy. I'm sorry, boy. It's one or the other.

Which one's going to light you up, son? I know what my, what's in my farts. Now, time to show you what I already know, whatever. Kurt Russell is... You pop out a blue flame and you immediately just start, like, shrieking and farting all the way to do like an air vents. Hunt tie me, this guy. Come on, man. Like a flame throw you.

Fuck, you hell. You explode like a boomer in left for dead. Hydrogen is generated exclusively by microbes living in the gut, so continuously measuring hydrogen inflatus provides a direct signal of microbial fermentation activity as gut bacteria breakdown food components. Isn't it awesome to think that, like, one day, that like you having eaten like a big old burger and producing methane, that, no, the hydrogen, that will one day end up in a star.

Probably. I don't think it's going to end up in a star. It's certainly. Well, what, what, what breaks down hydrogen on Earth? Where does the hydrogen that we make go? Oh, that's a good point. It does the hydrogen go up? I've been asking for years.

My car has lots of stuff written on it that says, where does the hydrogen go? Where does the hydrogen go? Is the gravitational field of Earth sufficient in the atmosphere keep it? It's not just going to float away? We have leakage. We lose stuff. We definitely leaking stuff, right? Depending on the mass of the...

We do leak some stuff. We're losing some stuff. Are we losing hydrogen? Is it earth farting? Yeah. In that sense? Is the hydrogen turned into water? Is it captured?

Is that where the hydrogen is going? I assume there's... It could do. It probably gets turned in... Like, there's probably statistically some hydrogen that's going to bond with oxygen. Yeah. And then it gets hydrolyzed and the whole thing starts over again. Yeah. So, sure.

I think some of it's going to... So there you go. So one day the burger that you eat is going to turn into the hydrogen that you fart, which is going to turn into the water that we drink. Yes. Is that beautiful? I'm drinking statistically. I'm drinking Caesars nasty, nasty-ass farts.

I don't think that's true. I don't think that's correct at all. Isn't that beautiful? It's all cycles, dude. Yeah. It's the rhythm, the rhythm of life. Star, burger, far, hydrogen gas. If you combust hydrogen gas with oxygen,

It turns into water. It's the cleanest fuel we've got. But the guy that invented it. They killed him. The Big Four or whoever, they took him out. They're like, we can't have the fucking hydrogen car, dude. It's going to blow up our spot. Wow, frick.

They built like thousands of charges and stuff to keep it underground or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And look at the oil prices now. Look at the fuel prices. Not looking, yeah, hydrogen. Not looking so bad, is it? I bet those, the big four fuel execs are driving past a Caltex.

saying we shouldn't have killed that one guy. Yeah, we should have gotten into hydrogen probably. They probably don't find out fuel prices by driving past petrol stations, I guess. They've got a guy for that. They've got a guy that drives past petrol stations. Like, sir, yeah, just enough day. It's fucked still. I've been past Caltex.

You're going to want to see this. I just found out something very upsetting. Yeah, yeah, it's really high. Yeah, no, still cheaper than Australia on like a regular day. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we don't really know about maths. Oh, dude. Yeah, people post photos of this like, oh my God,

the fuel price and you do the maths, and it's like $1.60 per liter, and we're on like $2.30 or something. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's like two conversions involved, and no one's doing that. You got to do two.

Yeah, I don't want to do two otherwise. Gotta do two. You got to get them in the right direction, too. You can't make them big when you're supposed to make them small. This has been such an informative episode of the podcast. It's unbelievable. This is what happens in the world. We're three science and minds get together.

Three curious minds. Three stem heads. And I'm not talking about the shitty weed that we smoke. Yo. Just stems and seeds, dude. That's all I smoke. Yeah. That's what the inkers smoked.

Give me the most fibrous high. Absolutely. I want that shit that Huayna Kapak smoked. The inkers just smoked seeds and stems and they knew where the water level was. Oh, fuck, man. Scientists have established normal ranges for many health measures such as blood, glucose, and cholesterol. For flatulence, however, there is no widely accepted baseline. That's right.

And some people might think that the baseline's much lower than what's horrible. Come on. We don't actually know what normal fletus production looks like, all said. That's awesome. To me, it's all normal. What's normal? This is it. I'll know it when I. smell. I may not know what the right number of farts is, but I'll know what I say it.

Yeah. If someone told me 250, I'd say, oh, no. Too many. Yucky. Someone told me one? I'd be like, it doesn't seem right either. Holding it in. Yeah. Something's going to blow. To address this gap, Hall's Laboratory is launching a large project called the human flatus Atlas. Flat-Atless. Flatless. Flatless. I would have gone with something like that, Flatless

Encyclopedia Gas. Gaseous Yeah. There's something there. Wait, no, the Flatis Atlas of Research Technology we can figure that part out. The prepositions, but that gets us far. We want fart there.

Yeah. They were going 4D, we were thinking 3D. Smart. Yes. Fourth dimension. The study will use smart underwear to so this is in all caps and we're not talking just like good trim

nice looking underwear yeah it's smart too yeah yeah like your grandma would say oh those those underpants are smart did you grandma say that sure oh Larry to measure

flagellets patterns continuously in hundreds of participants while also analyzing their diets and gut microbaram composition and there's just one perverts sitting in the control of man you've worked 70 hours this week

and you love your job abundance of riches he's got to fucking fuse to the seat like the end of it I'm gonna have to peel him out of that he's fed into all the farts like the pilot from first game I was gonna say he's

oh I was thinking the pilot from alien when they find him fused into the jockey The other pilot that's fused. God, how, man. Love a fused pilot. Fus pilots are fused. One of the few things we know about the future is we're going to get fused pilots. Fused pilots next.

You look at all the sci-fi, comes back to one thing. Those pilots are fused as hell. They're in there. They got like, they got like fucking switchboards and shit that they're putting cables in. To capture the full spectrum of variation, researchers are recruiting volunteers who fit several categories. identified during early research. So these are the three categories we've got here.

Zen digesters. So these are people who eat high fiber diets, but produce very little fletus. Yes. Studying them may help researchers understand how the microbiome adapts to diets rich in fiber. So these are you like four farts per day people. Your hydrogen hyperproducers,

individuals who pass gas frequently. Yeah. DPS. Examining this group may reveal biological factors that drive high gas production. What about social factors? Are they looking at out for the social factors? Are the hydrogen hyperproducers?

They're not incorporating that into that, yeah. Because it might be like something that affects the numbers. It could be a sensitivity, I think, you know. You might lose a lot of people to depression. From the social alienation they experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a follow up paper. They're probably planning.

Yeah, comorbidities with ADHD. And a third group, normal people. That is capital N, capital P, that is the designated term for the people that fall in the middle of hydrogen hyperproducers and Zen digesters, normal people. That's awesome. They represent those who fall between the two extremes. Yeah. Yeah. And you can sort of self-diagnose, I guess.

I think if you're doing like, you could probably maybe at the start of the day for one hour, keep. track of the number of the fights you've done, then in the middle of the day, keep track of another hour and then the end of the day. Yeah. And then take the average of those, extrapolate for the entire day, including your sleeping hours, and then see if you fall somewhere close to the floor, close to the 59. And then what you're saying is you could kind of use the rest of your hours to do like normal things that aren't tracking your farts.

You don't have to do it for 24 hours straight, is kind of what I'm saying. be the guy who's on his fart metrics. Yeah. What if you just drive for an hour? Looking at his smart watch. In a bunch of days. A couple of farts under.

Need to get a couple more farts in today otherwise that track of good. I might just hop in the bath. I wonder if this thing counts farts. Is that real? Certainly helps my kids. Does farting the back? Does what to make the farts come out?

Yeah. Oh. Interesting. The human body is a genuine miracle. Hey, this was definitely an episode of the podcast. podcast, Putter vista. Jesse, thank you so much for joining us.

You know, I never know sometimes if we don't have Andrew on or if we don't have Lucy on, like how many stories we're going to get through. So I had like seven prepared. Yeah. And it turns out, you know, we just have such curious minds. We're just asking the right questions. I mean, we'd be here for days, teasing through these details. Oh, my God.

Coming up with theories. Yeah. I just want to say, well, as I'm scrolling the echidna page, like a fidget spinner with my right hand, my eyes rested on this one sentence prior to, and this will be kind of like a signing off thing, you know. Oh, you're also looking at Wikipedia while you're, fucking Jesus. More is just kind of like jiggling it in an anxious way.

It hopefully makes a low level of noise. I love to jiggle Google Maps. For Ben. I like to kind of make the Google Maps go in and down. You love to. Yes, I was doing that earlier actually as well. And here's a quote. Prior to 2007,

no one had ever seen in Echidna Ejaculate. Yeah, I know. I tried to pick that. somewhere, but... Holy shit. That's the year I graduated high school. You're telling me... It's happening in the hole.

Opening shot research lab 2007 across blazes across the screen. These are kittens have never ejaculated, sir. We've never seen one before. And then one day,

everything changes. That's really beautiful. It just fucking comes, I guess. Science has never finished. But I'd say things have only gotten worse since then. Yeah. Oh, wow. It might have been a no man.

I don't think those are related. I don't think it was. supposed to see it. Oh. There had been previous attempts. Yeah. But it didn't work. Yeah.

Many of them planned a star. It just goes to show you. You can't control nature. But yeah, sorry. That was just, I really wanted to say that, I guess, before you didn't ruin your sign-off. That's okay. We never really do them well anyway, so it's not a huge deal. Jesse, people can find you on Savant Guard.

Can they still find you on Sludgefest? Should I, should I keep making those? they're so depressing I feel like okay maybe I will start getting back in there hell yeah start doing it again we'll come on there we'll do some yeah hell yeah we'll talk about some environmental crimes but for right now we and Lucy are mostly

spinning our juices on savant guard it's a great episode it's one of the more rewarding things I've created in my life I think with the help of my wonderful ex-wife current bestie it's about fucking the good doctor this shows sucks ass and monk that shows good

yeah and I gotta tell you it's, I mean, obviously you guys are experiencing the same thing, but it's, with the benefit of hindsight, I would have switched the episode that, like, the show order around because... You think so? I was just thinking about this. Like, the monk is a delight. And to hear you guys enjoy monk, wonderful. And then you have your punishment for dessert. Yeah. Yeah. You think it might be... Make more sense to start, start tough. Start low, get easier. Finish high. Yeah, yeah. That's That's sort of more of my mindset, but maybe you guys have more fortitude than I do.

We did reverse a previous episode once. We did it one-time or switcheroo, and I think that I panicked everybody across the board. And I apologize. Oh, something changed? Well, the season premiere. Rough. Exactly. The season premiere, The Good Doctor, was so powerful that we felt we had to address it first.

Yeah. We had to come out and talk about it. People weren't ready for that. You hadn't warned them like a month in advance, by the way. the order of this is going to be different. We understand it's usually the other way around, but this one time we're going to switch it. And it would be very similar.

It'll just be this bit that's unexpected. That's right. Have you ever experienced Tony Shalhub in Fall Out 1? Oh, shit. He isn't Fall Out 1? Yeah, he's Arrash. Is he the guy that tells you to hunt scorpions? He is, yeah.

Is there a low frame rate CGI thing that looks kind of like him, true? Yes, absolutely. There is a talking head of Tony Shalhouber's Aradesh. Oh, shit. Yeah. They really went a little hard on his eyebrows. I was going to say it seems unkind.

Unnice. Yeah, unkind, yeah. That one. Like the side by side is really great. That's a beautiful image. That was definitely an episode. Find Jesse over at Soundcard. Go back and listen to the back catalog of Sludge Fest.

Find him in the episodes he's done with us. He's probably, you're in the top three for episode count. like number of appearances. Surely. You've got to be fighting against Tom Walker, Demi Lardner, Max Laverne.

I think in that fight, if it came down to a physical fight, Max Levinn would maybe win. He may be wins. Isn't Tom really tall? Big arms, big reach. Tom's very tall too. But he doesn't have a fighting spirit.

He doesn't, he's like those animals who's like survival instinct is just to lay down and pretend to be dead until they are. That's kind of that Tom's fighting. I think Max Levin can bring his weapons to focus, if you will. I think he's got a kind of mind that would leap at, like an octopus, that would sort of leap into action and use all of his resources to, like, kill you with a big rock.

Yes. Every single faculty available to it. Look, thousands of years of human development. Big rock comes out on top. Big rock comes out on top. All right. We'll talk to you next week. Bye.

Bye. Bye.