Radiolab - Our Stupid Little Bodies

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Sometimes a seemingly silly question gets stuck in your craw and you can’t shake the feeling that something big lies behind it. We are constantly collecting these kinds of questions from our listeners, not to mention piling up a storehouse of our own “stupid” questions, as we lovingly call them. And a little while back, we noticed a little cluster of questions that seemed to have a shared edgy energy, and all led us to the same place: Our own bodies. So, today on Radiolab, we go down our throats and get under our skin, we take on evolution and anatomy and molecular cosmetics, to discover some very not-stupid answers to our seemingly stupid questions.  Sometimes a seemingly silly question gets stuck in your craw and you can’t shake the feeling that something big lies behind it. We are constantly collecting these kinds of questions from our listeners, not to mention piling up a storehouse of our own “stupid” questions, as we lovingly call them. And a little while back, we noticed a little cluster of questions that seemed to have a shared edgy energy, and all led us to the same place: Our own bodies. So, today on Radiolab, we go down our throats and get under our skin, we take on evolution and anatomy and molecular cosmetics, to discover some very not-stupid answers to our seemingly stupid questions. Special thanks to Mark Krasnow, Sachi Mulkey, Kari Leibowitz, Andrea Evers, Dr. Mona Amin, Benjamin Ungar, Praby Singh, Brye and Rachel Adler EPISODE CREDITS:  Reported by - Molly Webster, Becca Bressler, Latif Nasser, and Alan Goffinskiwith help from Ekedi Fausther-KeeysProduced by - Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Becca Bressler, Alyssa Jeong Perry, Molly Webster with help from - Matt KieltyOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Jeremy Bloom with mixing help from - Arianne WackFact-checking by - Diane Kelley, Emily Kriegerand Edited by  - Pat Walters and Alex Neason   Our newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)! Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today. Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail]. Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  

Heads up, today's show does include a couple of curse words. So anyway, here we go. Wait, you're listening. Okay. Okay. Alright. Gord listening to radio lab. Radio lab.

From WNYC. This is radio lab. I'm Lulu Miller. And I'm Lottos Nasser. Yeah. Yeah. This is Radio Lab. I'm Lulu Miller. And I'm Lottos Nasser. And today we have a very special thing because all year long, we collect what we call stupid questions.

There are no stupid questions, maybe, but actually I think there are. You know, question three. There are not. That's the official position of this show is there are no such things as stupid questions. I'm not sure I agree, but it doesn't matter because as a show

that is largely about curiosity, people send us questions all the time. Listeners, we at tweets, we get emails. My kid asked this or my cousin. And then also on staff, we have a little place where we collect stupid questions throughout the year. That's right.

And I was just looking back at the literally dozens of my own questions. Throw some out. OK, when you cut skin, do you cut through cells or do the cells always get out of the way of the blade like Chuck E. Cheeseballs in a ball pit? Great question. Number two, is your brain a pint of liquid more or less?

That's an easy one to answer, I'm sure. I don't know. Okay, if you squished the, quote, 60% of water out of me that is apparently inside every human, could you drink it, or is there a part of that you could drink? You really want to drink people, Lulu, why is that? I don't know, that's another question. But anyway, the point is we look at all these questions and then we see which ones have legs to kind of rise up to the level where we actually want to report them out. None of mine this year, by the way, they did.

Okay, we'll have that conversation at another time, but what happened was that at some point we noticed a group of these questions that all had a kind of a shared energy. Like, um... You know the show, The Magic School Bus? I've been there to the bottom of the ocean. Classic PBS cartoon. Of course, led by Ms. Frizzle, the teacher who gets all the kids onto the Magic School Bus, and she they shrink it down and go into drain pipes

up kids' noses into space to answer questions and understand our world a little more. Yeah, but our stories today and our Miss Frisal reporters, they had vibrating anxious energy. I would say that they have more Miss Frasal energy. Rather than Miss Frisal energy. That is totally accurate. It's so, it's everyone.

And they also tend to like take things a little further than your average PBS kids cartoon. He's like this really annoying wheelchair. I'm right. So we've got three angsty magical journeys today. And it just so happens that they all take us inside the human body. That's right. Stupid questions about our stupid bodies.

They're not stupid questions, they are good, honest questions. All right, first trip courtesy of Senior Correspondent Molly Webster. Okay, so to get to my question, we're actually going to start with a conversation that I had with reporter and former radio lab intern, Sachi Mokki. I'm just going to play a bit of that for you. Oh, okay. And it begins like all good things do at the new year. Okay.

New Year's is kind of like a, it's a daytime phenomenon in Japan. Like we don't do a New Year's Eve thing. The day of New Year is you do your first temple visit in the morning, and then you come back home and you have this traditional New Year's soup called Ozoni, and it's like a mochi cake in a bowl of like pretty clear almost flavorless broth. And what is mochi? It's a pounded rice flour mixed with water and kind of turned into this chewy, chewy rice cake. You just plop it into a soup. It kind of softens in the water. It gets this very gooey edge.

And it's chewy, right? It stretches out. It'll stretch inches. Really? Yeah. Wow. So what happens is a lot of older people will have the Rosoni and fail to be able to chew it fully or it will kind of cool down and harden in their mouths

and then they choke on it. Like I just I was looking at this crazy chart that said something. I just want to look at it to make sure I don't give you a wrong number. Yeah, pull it up. Almost 800 people between 2006 and 2016 died in Japan from food choking deaths right on New Year's. It's just this spike. Like they choke to death. It's not like a choke in a cough out. It's like people are actually dying from this. Yeah, people die from this. It used to be a lot higher before the PSAs. They have PSAs just about the soup.

All over the news, like NHK News, Japanese household news, around years, they're like, don't forget to chop it up into small pieces. Here's how to do the Heimlich maneuver. Like, don't use a vacuum to get it out. There's all sorts of news around this. Like, be careful. Make sure they're eating this super-sponsibly. OK, so that was part of my conversation with Sachi.

And maybe, statistically, Sachi told me the story because she knows that I am terrified of choking. I would say that at least once a day, I think about the fact that as I swallow, I am pushing like a mashed ball of food past the one opening that is keeping me alive. Yeah.

And so my question is, why in the world are we designed this way where we can die of choking? Why? But this works way more than it doesn't. No, and no, but it should never not work, Latif. Like evolution has given us so much crazy stuff. We have brains and opposable thumbs and other weird shit. And you're telling me that it couldn't figure out how to breathe in one place and then

eat in another. I'm with it. Okay, okay, I am with you. Let's go. Okay. We're shit. And you're telling me that it couldn't figure out how to breathe in one place and then eat in another. I'm with it. Okay, okay, I am with you. Let's go. Okay. So, I went to scientists asking them, why do we have one blockable breath hole? Do they laugh at you?

Yes, of course. But they also told me stuff, including the original culprit of all of this. It's fish. Huh, okay. And so fish have one tube for food, which runs from the mouth to the butt, and then for breathing they have gills. Right.

So, no choking. But the fish that eventually flocked onto land and became the ancestor of us, it couldn't do that without a pair of lungs. But the thing with evolution is it doesn't just make new things out of nothing, it builds them off of existing systems and so it actually built the lungs out of the digestive track.

Huh. And the way that that works is the digestive system was already pulling nutrients out of food, so it was like, all right, why don't I just use this to get some oxygen out of air? Right. And slowly, slowly, slowly what happened over time is a pair of lungs balloon off of the digestive tract.

Wow. Huh, that's amazing. No, it's not amazing because this is the essential design flaw. This is how you get an eating system and a breathing system that are overlapped. And this is why we choke. But wait, does that mean other animals choke? Like Jane Goodall is out there watching the chimpanzees and stuff. Like, did any of them ever, they were like eating a banana and started coughing and choking kind of thing?

Yes, other animals can choke. There's not really any reports of it. If you search the internet or something, it's not like we're going out into the wild in autopsy and animals. But we do seem to be a little different than other animals. We have become the worst breeders in the animal kingdom. Really? Yes. While I was looking for answers to this question, I ended up talking to the science writer. James Nester. He wrote this amazing book about breathing and how we breathe. And when I asked him about choking, he said,

Well, it sounds like your problem isn't with this air tube, this breath tube. It's with the larynx. It's not just our one tubiness that is to blame. It has to do with the shape of that tube and how we humans use it and how it has evolved differently than even in our closest ancestors. Or larynx have funk.

Okay. The larynx is the spot in our throat where the esophagus, which takes food to the stomach and the trachea, which takes air to the lungs, split off. And it's made of like cartilage and muscle and stuff. What does sinking mean? Where was it? It's lowered, it lowers.

It moved down from the back of our mouths to a couple of inches down into our neck, pushing the meeting place of the esophagus and the trachea into a narrower part of our throat. Because now the esophagus and the trachea are too close together, so that larynx can shift food that is supposed to be going to our stomachs into that breath hole. And as a result, we started to choke more and more. But, James said,

That's the whole point is by having more space at the back of our mouths. We created more space for something else. Yes, yes. Which is while other animals sound like this. As our larynx lowered, it opened up our oral cavity. And along with some developments in the brain, that allowed us to make more and more sophisticated sounds. And we use these sounds to warn and teach and share our feelings.

We use these sounds to change the world. I mean, I do like talking. Sounds like such a ridiculous thing to say, but I just still wish it wasn't in all-in-one tube. In kissing? What about kissing? Why do you mean kissing? Kissing is kind of random, but like maybe what's so special about it is that it's like all the things. It's like you're eating

breathing like drinking it's like sustenance on every level. Let me put my crucial mouth hole near your crucial mouth hole and to be clear I'm I'm all for like all these things obviously kissing talking whatever. I'm not looking to change it I just wish there was another backup. Right. So I did ask one of the scientists about backup systems. And he was like, well, people do do trakiostomies for medical reasons.

Right. Putting another hole in your throat. But like at the bottom. Is that hole below? The vocal cord? Yeah. Oh. That hole bypasses the log jam of the throat

and then it just lets air straight into the lungs. Oh, so that's what you want. That's exactly what you want. Yeah, it kind of is. But I don't really want like, You don't want a trachea. Is there a more pleasant way? Right.

And then James was like, well, I didn't think I was going to be going here, but you asked there could be one thing. So we can ingest oxygen through our butts. And so no fucking way. But breathing. What? Yes. But breathing is a real thing. Goodbye. Literally. Oh my God. Lula, Lula, Lula, it doesn't have to do with farting. Okay, I can't hear you if you're talking because I took off my headphones.

I'm coming back. Wait, Lula, it doesn't have to do with farting. So don't worry, I don't like farting either. Is this breath? No. It is breath through the butt. No, I feel like every video I'm sorry. No, no, it doesn't have don't like farting either. It is breath. It is breath through the butt. And I feel like every video, I'm sorry. No, it doesn't have to do with farting.

So take a deep breath and absolve yourself of that. We're not going to talk about it. Take a deep breath through your butt hole. Up. Just anyway, okay, fun. Whatever. Okay, so he's saying in a real way, you can breathe. Yeah, well, he pointed me to this paper.

Come on, science. Okay. Yeah, so this paper me to this paper. Come on, science. Okay. Yeah. So this paper came from this researcher, Takah Takeda from Cincinnati, Juleen's hospital, and I also told him medical, in dental university, Japanese researcher. And he splits his time between Japan and Ohio.

I'm throwing back on full century months for the past seven years. Every month. The reason that he did the study was his dad ended up having to go on a ventilator. Maybe six years ago, I think he has a new more near conditions and not should we hospitalize the ICU situation. And dad is fine. Dad came off the ventilator, but then COVID happened and everybody was getting slammed on ventilators and Taco was like this is not seem sustainable. I also realized, you know, so we do the same thing as in the past Founding 200 years ago. Really it was 200 years ago that we developed

Ventilation. Yeah, exactly So he's like is there another way to get oxygen into the body? He starts looking at how other animals might do it, and he comes across a fish. That is actually taking up the oxygen from the bowel or from the anus, the butt. And he thinks, hmm, maybe that's another way. And so what he does is he takes some mice and pigs, and he puts them in low oxygen conditions. What's called hypoxic. And he pumps O2 into a tube that is stuck up into their butt. Okay.

This doesn't work so well. Their oxygen levels stay about the same. But then he's like, what if I take oxygen that's like dissolved in a fluid? So he does it again to up the butt, oxygen in a fluid. And what they see is that for these mice and pigs, color and warmth return to their skin and to their extremities in minutes. So think of the butt respiration as like an enema that gives you oxygen. Wow. I know. I was thinking about the fact that we did like evolve from fish and you're in a way tapping into some sort of evolutionary history that lets oxygen exchange in the gut be possible. It's almost like going back to a prior way of being.

Exactly. I wish my skin respirated. On to our next question. So we actually put a call out, an intentional call out to listeners at one point, and we got a bunch, and the one that ended up haunting, like a bunch of us here on staff came from a listener named Logan Shannon. She lives in New Hampshire. Yeah.

And all right, here is her question. I don't understand where lotion goes after we apply it to our skin. It gets absorbed through our pores, sure, but where does it go? Where does it go? That's a, I never occurred to me. So I buy these bottles of lotion, and then the contents of these bottles just disappear

into my body, and it freaks me out. She says she sometimes just lies in bed wondering, like, is the lotion traveling down into her sleeve and just with her forever. So we sent producer Alan Guffinsky to try to find out the answer. Alan the song bud Guffinsky if you've heard terrestrials. Yep. He creates original songs for our kids podcast terrestrials. And anyway, so he did a bunch of reporting and delivered it directly to Logan in song form. ["Logan"] Logan is a blade on Twitter.

Watch her scroll and scroll and scroll and her tweeting thumbs are dry and crackin cracking she feels the dryness in her soul She longs for the relief of lotion smooth hydration healthy glow her hands are dry, but her mind is racing She doesn't know where does the lotion go Hey, hello, how are you? We have questions Oh, boy, and you seem like the type of person who might have answers. OK, yeah, sure thing. I am Dr. Adaline Kikam.

I am a board-certified dermatologist, all-thing skincare. Logan's question freaked me out. So I asked the doc just what goes down each time we slap that lotion on. Here's a bit of what I found. Logan is talking about skin care products, you keep your skin moisturized. The good thing is cosmetic products are formulated in a way that they don't get absorbed into the bloodstream. The particles and lotion are designed to not seep in. The molecules are formulated to rest to top your skin.

This is your lotion, lullaby. The most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful, the most beautiful Traces that we've seen in blood. Small molecules don't have an issue. They squeeze through interstitial tissue. It's all about the formulation. Particle size, concentration, some particles do end up in the bloodstream. Particles from chemical suns, great. Like avid zone and octokrhylene,

parabens and valates will sink right down into your blood and all around. Red goes the lotion goes. Sometimes your skin just can't resist them. Of course the body has a filtration system. The lever and the renal system are how the skin detoxifies and clears anything that it doesn't want. The renal system flushes the mouth, so maybe there's not so much to worry about Uh oh Then the doctor shared how not all particles seep into you

Some just sit on your skin cells and tell those skin cells a bit I do You're telling me I'm not contained My skin cells just disintegrates Where do I end and I begin? I am not confined within Half a billion cells of skin slither off your body every day Dust the air or down the drain into the ocean and far away Then your biomagnetic field extends beyond your mortal flesh your flesh is loose electron clouds

Fafosi subatomic mess the constant shift with every breath your every thought and word expressed Who are is not contained? Existence is one big exchange. Your self spills out throughout the universe. Contamination is inescapable, and absolutely corruption is your God. And nothing can save you from the existential calamity. You're all encompassing a figure's cosmic hierarchy. So now, I guess you kind of know where does the lotion go?

Where does the lotion go? It was so demanded, I love it. I honestly did not expect this question to result in pondering thermodynamics and the laws of conservation of mass and energy. I think maybe I took things too far. I don't think you took it too far. I think it's like, obviously, I don't think you took it too far. I'm the one who obsesses about lotion and where it goes. But like, you know, is it Sagan who said we're all star stuff? Right. So I was thinking about it. If you really kind of want to think about it from a cosmological cosmology, no, cosmetic, no, that if we're all made of star stuff and everything is made of star stuff, then so is lotion. So that's like kind of like you're

just in the soup of being a human on a planet with all these molecules like oxygen is like bombarding you all the time and so you're putting lotion on and some of it does go down. Some of it stays on top. Some of it gets fluffed off. It's also nice to know that it's not bad. Yeah, it's comforting. I don't know if I'm as comforted as Logan, but anyway, that is where the lotion goes.

It is time now for a break. Okay. Should we do like a more into the break? Yeah. We've got a question that really got under the skin of our producer Becca Bressler. Okay. You're going to hear that after a short break. What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song?

What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song?

What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song?

What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? What's your favorite song? You decide for yourself. Our next one comes from producer Becca Brusler. Do you have an emesis? Oh God. Didn't see that one go and did it. I didn't. I think so. Yeah. I think I do. I actually have them on the line here. So that's what we're doing. No, but we are here. I'm here to tell you about my nemesis. Okay. Oh my god. Or nemesis rather, okay. Which are mosquitoes.

Okay. Mosquitoes. So this, I thought we were gonna get some like, juicy tea, but you're just like a bug that generally sucks for humans. No, it doesn't just generally suck for me. Because when I get a bite, I get these fat, hot, welts that at times are like the size of a tennis ball.

Whoa! We honestly tennis ball. It's not like spherical in the same way, but the circumference of a tennis ball, and they itch for days. And nothing has ever helped. Afterbite? Afterbite.

No, Ben and Drill doesn't work. The only thing that sometimes works is when I boil water and then take a washcloth and burn my bites. Oh my god. Bags. Yeah, it's awful. It's been this way since I was a kid. But recently, I stumbled across this device.

This like as seen on TV kind of device, it was on Shark Tank. I've never actually seen Shark Tank, but is it like don't don't don't? Yeah. It dun dun dun dun dun dun dun. I can picture it. Anyways, so it's a tube with handles on the sides,

kind of like a syringe without the needle. And it's like a little plastic plunger that claims to suck out mosquito saliva, which is apparently what causes the itchy well. And it's called bug bite thing. And so- Like the specificity of that, the like bug bite thing. I have mixed feelings about the name,

but whatever, it's $10, so I bought it. Did you like run into a wet woods for you like, I want to test it? Kind of, because a few weeks later, I bought it. Did you run into a wet woods for you? I want a test. Kind of, because a few weeks later, I went camping. Oh. And so I brought it with me, and I remember the first time that I used it. A mosquito bite me on my leg.

And I whipped it out, pressed against my bite, pulled back. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, four. I think I did it a couple more times for good measure. It didn't tell me I needed to. I really plunged it. Okay. And the well flattened, the redness slowly dissipated. And then it was gone. Hmm. Hmm.

Okay. And I couldn't believe that I finally found something that worked. Hmm. And did like juice come out? So I didn't see anything come out. Are you giggling? Well, I'm, I mean, I'm a little skeptical. Yeah.

Basically you and everybody else. Come on Becca. Anytime I would talk about this little miracle that had entered my life. So you're telling me this little plunger. My best friends. Stopped your body from having reactions. Some of my coworkers. So you're telling me this little plunger my best friends stops your body from having Reaction some of my co-workers what all of them said no way

No, there's no way this works Mm-hmm. Absolutely not it can't possibly do anything do anything Come on back. I don't know. There's no way that works and like no No, I really started asking myself. I just refused to believe What the fuck is wrong with my friends? I'm like, no. I really started asking myself. I just refused to believe in doing this. I'm just kidding. What the fuck is wrong with my friends? Like they don't know anything about this product or mosquitoes.

Like I use this thing all the time and they just insist this is all in my head. Why don't they believe me? Okay, wait, so your question is what? I don't have a question. Oh, not a real one. Okay, you just so your question is what? I don't have a question. Oh, not a real one. Okay, you just, so what are we doing here? We are here because I set out to prove to you

and everyone else that this thing really does work. Okay, so you turned your back on the rules of the profession, which is like have open-ended questions, don't try to prove a thesis statement. Okay, yes, but I went looking for scientific evidence, so like, I want to actually convince you. Okay. And first thing I have for you is I found a study that's been done on the product.

Okay. All right. I like that. So let me walk you through it. Okay. So there were 40 people in the study and they stick both arms into a box of mosquitoes until they get a bite on each arm. Okay. I know.

And they use Bug Bite thing on only one of the bites. Okay. And so the bite that got the device, the itch went away within 10 minutes and the swell mostly went away within 30 minutes. Okay. And then the bite that didn't get bug bite thing, the itch lasted for an hour.

Huh. And the swelling lasted for one to two hours. Huh. Okay. Which is like very significant. I mean, 40 people is a pretty small group. Yeah, it is. It is. Was it published? Was it like peer reviewed?

No, it wasn't. It was commissioned by the company for potential retailers. Okay. Because I'm not a scientist. I don't want to miss speak on the science. I did ask this woman, Kelly Higney, about the scientific evidence. She's the CEO and founder of Bug Bite Thing. At least my point of view is we see pictures, right?

We see the beginning of the wall or the beginning of the video. And then we can see how it looks after. I mean, pictures and videos are great. Did they do a placebo group? No. So there's no one getting a placebo device that's not doing anything. No.

Okay. Okay, yeah. So. Okay. Okay. So we're throwing out these results, right? I mean, are we though? Yes!

How is that not so compelling? I don't know. Well, if you can't show that the bug bite thing does more for a bite than some fake nothing device, you aren't really showing that it does anything. Eight sure. I will concede the study doesn't prove that it's sucking out the saliva,

or that that would even make the bike go if it did. Right. But so... So let me add to the spit story a little bit, at least once what you just said. I decided to call up a mosquito scientist to see if it could be doing something. Yeah. So this is Lyric Bartholome. She studies mosquitoes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The mosquitoes, like, it's amazing, Becca. She told me she enjoys getting bit. And because it's fascinating to me. Oh my goodness. It's just this peaceful moment of being a little awestruck. Yeah. But I gotta say, as Lyric described it, it is pretty amazing. Okay. So mosquitoes have this needle on their head, called the probossus, and the females they're really just trying to feed their babies. They use that herbossus to break through your skin. Dig around underneath your skin and poke around for a blood vessel. I mean, she's got to be moving cells apart in order to find a capillary that she can break into.

And once she finds that blood vessel, she saws it apart, and sticks her herbossus into the blood and starts sucking the blood into her body. And the whole time she's dancing around with her pervases under your skin, she's salivating. And so these proteins and other things are coming out of her salivary glands. Is it leaving saliva behind just because like, yeah, I can't agree. And it's like drooling. Yep. Just like you and I when we're hungry for a meal, she's salivating. And that saliva that she leaves behind triggers

an immune response. So your body sends histamines to the site of the bite. And you get this raised red welt on your skin. The itchy, itchy out. The itchy, itchy out. Okay. So then I, What to mail, mesquitos?

Okay, fantastic question. They feed on plant nectar. Mm. I know. I actually didn't know before that our blood feeds her eggs. When I learned that I was like, oh man, I feel a little more sympathetic. Yeah. Anyways, so I asked Lyric about bug bites. By saying, does this ring a bell to you?

Yes, it's funny. Somebody just sent me a picture of it recently and said, is this thing real? What'd you say? Well, I guess, I mean, if you were to use a suction device almost immediately, it could be that you actually pull out some of the spit that the mosquito has left behind. You'd write that's like what you're responding to.

Huh. Yeah, right, so so. So, and I'm sorry to drill down on this so specifically, but if I were to pull out the mosquito saliva Should I be able to really see it in the suction device? No, it's it's such a minuscule amount Hmm. It's like of course I haven't fucking seen the saliva. Do you know how big a mosquito is? but if it's if it's I mean the hole's gonna close where she's fed really pretty quickly. Oh and

The hole is going to close where she's fed really pretty quickly. And Learick says in the meantime, Spitt has disseminated under your skin in a way that it's unreachable by a suction device. But isn't the skin pretty permeable? Could you not suck it back up through your pores? Well, her salivary proteins are actually going into your blood vessels as well. So they're long gone. Okay. into your blood vessels as well. So they're long gone. Okay, the suction device, no way would get it all. And I'm skeptical that it would get any gacha.

But, you know, maybe there's some science that's been done to show what oozes out when you use it quickly enough. I just haven't seen that science. Which is like quite, quite reasonable. Is there anything in the device purporting to suck the bad stuff out? Yeah, yeah.

The company hasn't shown that there is. Okay, my heart lapped and now it's sinking again for you. Is it? Yeah. Oh, God. I mean, I will say she didn't outright deny that it could work. Okay, so she cracked a little corner of possibility. Yeah, right.

And I hear that it's probably not the most convincing thing in the world. Uh-huh. Yeah. But I think it works, but I think if you did a study with the placebo group and if you did look in the device, I believe that it would work. I don't know. I just... I mean, you just, I feel like you just, you can't just let it be,

you just don't want it to be the placebo effect. I just, it makes no sense to me that I could have this fat mosquito bite on my leg and because of my mind, it just goes away. Like, that's what you're all saying when you say this is in my head. and it just, I like, I just can't, I can't, it doesn't make sense. And the study, it didn't prove that it was a placebo effect. Right, right, right. It didn't prove that I could do that. Yeah, fair.

And so I wanted to go see, in this increasingly desperate journey, if I could discount the placebo effect. Okay, so you're not going in like saying, huh, is this the placebo effect? You're saying, can I strike it off the list? Yeah. Yeah, so I think it's a very interesting question. And I even managed to find a scientist who studies the placebo effect on itchy welts.

Ooh, nice! Yeah, so what should I go into the concrete details? itchy waltz. Ooh, nice! Yeah, so what should I go into the concrete details? Well, before we get there, so this is Lauren Howe. She's an assistant professor at the University of Zurich, and back in 2016, as I was wrapping up my PhD at Stanford,

Lauren and a team of scientists brought a bunch of people into this room. What we kind of lovingly call our mockeders' office in the Department of Psychology. And they each had their arm pricked with a tiny amount of histamine to give them this itchy welt. Exactly. But then a seemingly competent and friendly doctor

or mockeder came into the room and put unscented hand lotion on that reaction. Rubbed a placebo cream on their welt, which means it shouldn't do anything. Okay. And for half the patients, the mokter said, this cream is an anti-histamine. It's going to reduce the well and reduce itching.

And in the other condition, they were told, this cream is an histamine agonist. It's going to make your well bigger and increase itching. Okay. We measured them, I think every three minutes or so in the study, and over time, the people who were told this is gonna make it worse They're well got bigger. Whoa, and I guess more to the point the people that were told this is gonna make it better They're well

Actually shrunk, huh? Even though they were given like a big fat dollop of nothing on their well. Wow That is like beliefs on the skin. I mean, that is just kind of breathtaking at the body. Just how the mechanisms of our body works, like you are seeing a belief imprinted on the skin. Okay. Well, hold up for a second, because we actually didn't see any effects in itchiness.

The people in the study did not experience less itch. You're saying that was some degree of pride or hope, why? Certainly, because when I use bug bite thing, my itch goes away. Oh, okay, although I'll say for full transparency here, there was a different study at Stanford. Okay.

That was similar. And they did show the placebo effect on the itch. Oh. However, and it goes down. How, yeah, it does. However, I did talk to a third scientist though. I can't wait to hear how you're gonna like. Well, wait, wait.

Well, so she told me that there's a third possibility here, which is that it's a conditioned response. Okay, meaning? Meaning, if it is a placebo, your body's responding to it because it has experienced the real thing. So like Pavlov's dog, the dog salivates with the bell because the bell was paired with the food.

Right, initially, right. Okay, and so the plunger does work for me repeatedly then it must have like actually pulled something out at some point. Okay, so can I just take a sort of recap of what we have learned? Go for it. Okay, so you have found this shred of a chance that it could pull something out if you used it right away, and you're combining that with a shred of a chance that it's not placebo, but instead a conditioning response.

Like, I'd be willing to give you a slice of maybe, maybe, but why, like, why are you so hostile to the placebo effect? I mean, the reactions in your body, this flood of chemicals, like the diminished wealth, those things are real, does it, does, even if a placebo effect set that chain off, does it, does it have to cheapen it for you? Yeah, I feel like so uncomfortable

with that possibility deeply. I feel like deeply shaken by it. I just feel like this house of cards, where if you tug away at this thing that I believe it has a scientific basis for like why it works for me. I just feel like you start unraveling a lot of other things too. Hmm. Like what? Um, you know, I'm sure we probably won't air something like this for an episode about a silly little bug bite thing, but there is like a lot of resonance for me between this experience of like wanting to validate this

bodily reaction with an experience I had a few years ago. You know, I was violated by someone and that person kind of denied that a violation took place. And it shook me up really, really badly, like I stepped away from work for weeks to try and deal with it. I felt like I was in this constant state of panic. My chest was on fire. I felt like I had no control over these sensations in my body. And in this really weird way, opening up the potential that this mosquito

plunger isn't really working, that it is me, Becca, my mind, having such a visceral effect on my body, it resurfaces this fear that I had and that I thought I put to bed a long time ago, that all of those feelings of pain and panic were really just like caused by me. That it was just in my head. I think what I'm understanding is that like, you just didn't want to let in the possibility that your mind could make your body feel such things. You didn't wanna be any part of that. You wanted your body to be a pure signal

about something that happened in the outside world. Yeah. And if you were a part of it, what, then, you're somehow to blame? Yeah, it's about blame, but it's really about being believed, actually. When people question my experience or say that this is in my head, fundamentally, they don't believe me. And that's really what I want here. I just want people to believe

me. Your journey has convinced me that maybe you should have never had to take the journey. I guess, let's just say that. We don't, I don't need science to believe you. Well, thank you for saying that. But I got to tell you, one of the only people who said that to me from the start was the actual scientist, Lyork Bartholomey. I understand, like, yeah. You know what? I, like I said, I think if it works for you and it makes you less uncomfortable.

Yeah. Then you've got to do it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've just been sitting here kind of like obsessively plunging the bites. And they're not going down. At this point, I don't even know why I keep flunging it. It's like, what am I thinking is going to happen if it hasn't already happened? If this stupid fucking story is the reason why this stupid fucking plunger will not work for me anymore? If this thing stops with this, if this, if I cannot rely on this thing moving forward,

I truly will curse this show. A big thanks and apologies, I guess, to our producer Becca Bressler. And that'll do it for our show of stupid questions about our stupid bodies. Not quite. What? I know we said we do three, but I got one more little magic bus ride journey here. You're a little brain camera. No, and this is from actually leave a little of brain then mine

This is from my son my older son. My name is F-I-V-E-L His name is five oh I work at a five-hole factory Where we make five So while back I have a question The babies. So while back I have a question. He asked me this question that just completely stopped me on my tracks. Is there anything in our bodies that we have three of? Oh.

We have one nose. We have two eyes. Four limbs. We have five fingers on a hand. Like 12 ribs. Yeah. Are there any threes in our bodies? I think.

Well, just in that initial moment, like when he asked me that, I was like, oh my God, I have no idea. And then I started talking to a bunch of people. I started talking to friends and doctors and one of the first answers that I got from people, like one of my friends was like, I have three nipples,

or like, you know, some people are born with three kidneys or something like that. Oh, really? Yeah, but. So people with three kids, my uncle has three nipples. Yeah, so, okay, you know, some people are born with three kidneys or something like that. Oh, really? Yeah, but- Some people with three, my uncle has three nipples. Yeah, so, okay, so, but I was like, okay, that's, that's not the normal way things go. So, you're saying there's accidental.

There's sort of accidental threes, but then the thing I was looking for is, kind of, most or all of us should have three of this thing. Okay, and at that point, I was just like, I can't think of anything. Okay. Mm. Three of.

Well, let me think about that. So I called up a few friends of the show. It's a great question. You're a doctor and reporter of your metra. And it's our fact-checker Diane Kelly, who also happens to have a PhD in comparative anatomy. Almost everything comes in two. Because we're so symmetrical, you know?

Or you have one thing. But not completely symmetrical. I mean, I'm struggling here, but... But I was like, there's gotta be something. There's gotta be a trio somewhere. Right? It really does feel like... Like, I feel like there's one on the tip of my tongue, but I'm not talking about taste buds, but like...

I gotta keep thinking. Ah... Well, female mammals have three exits to their reproductive and okay waste systems, okay, okay, but only females only females right in mammals in ears the inside of each ear has three bones, but then that's tricky because it doesn't quite They're each different they're each a different bone. It's a chain of three bones there, but they're each a different bone. Oh, that's a cheat. It feels like a cheat.

Those three are different from each other. Yes, that's a cheat. They're not the same. They are not the same. They're not the same. They're not the same. What I want is I want three discrete three of the same thing. No, you want to set three little eyeballs.

You want three. I feel you three hearts. You want that three same thing. No, you want to set three little eyeballs. You want three, I feel you. Three hearts, you want that. Three same things. Right. Ooh, I got a good one that's three, but it's kind of gross. Okay, go for it. There's three spongy parts that make up the sponginess of the penis. You know, that's still up with blood.

Yes, there are three erectal bodies in the penis. Two of them are called the corpus cavernosum. And then one is called the corpus spongiosum. Which is underneath the two of them. And then it flares out at the far end of the penis and forms the glands tissue. So there's three. But there are different, there's one pair of one kind of a rectal body and then there's a third of another type of a rectal body.

Okay, okay. So that's not good. So it kind of is kind of a nonstarter. Also, that's only half the population anyway. Okay, ooh, okay, I got another one. Do you know that we have a third eye? Tell me, where's our third eye? It's actually like when you look at religious drawings,

you know, and like, it's like where they're talking about. It's kind of in the center of your head. Okay. Most likely that was a very old, old eye back when we didn't even have skulls and we weren't even here. Really? So it's like a vestigial eye kind of thing?

I'm just going to go out on a limb and say, yes. Okay. He's thinking of the pineal gland It's in us. It's like way deep in the brain, but it's it's not like you call BS on that one I I don't think it I don't think it matches your parameters. Yeah, that doesn't count That doesn't count right and I just kept asking more and more people like body that we have three of Hmm like I was in an interview, completely unrelated interview with Danielle Reed.

She's an expert on senses and the brain. Yeah, I can't think of a thing. And I asked her the question. No, I can't think of anything. She was stumped, and then I went to Kat Bohannon. I'm Kat Bohannon. I'm a researcher and an author. Just finished my PhD at Columbia University

and the evolution of narrative and cognition. Okay. Just wrote a book called, Eve, How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. Neat, I was just hearing about this book. Yeah, so I asked her a question that had nothing to do with the book. Oh, I thought you were going to ask me something bad, Generals. Oh, yeah. Because half of my life right now is answering those questions.

So when I asked her the three body part question, she said, you're very unlikely to arrive at a three. So actually very good question. But why is it so hard to find threes in the body? Because I mean, I've found a four, I've found a five, I've found a six, it feels easier to find every other number besides three. In part that is because bodies are things which are built.

Actually. So according to Kat, because bodies are built, they need a building plan. And that plan needs to be effective, but it also needs to be efficient. If you're thinking about how this body plan is building out, you can simply think of each half of the body essentially doing the same thing in a mirror function.

Which means that for basically all animals, symmetry is the baseline move. It's efficient because you have to just plan half of something and then you say, double it. It's good for moving around, right? Think of walking, crawling, being symmetrical really helps. And also because it gives you a backup. The central reason that most of us have, two testicles, two ovaries, two things is also that well of one fails, we're still good. Now, of course, there are times when you want to break the pattern. But it's often a shrinking from two to one.

There may be something about having two hearts that would be deeply stupid. You know, this is simply better to build as a single unit, a single pump, as it were to just push this through the system than to try to maintain, too, because then you'd have to coordinate the two. It'd be like this, weird waltz, all, well, maybe not a waltz, it'd probably be a 4-4, but you know what I mean, right? And the other reason you might want to go from 2 to 1 is running the thing. The simple matter of the cost.

How much energy is it going to take to maintain this thing, to run this thing, to use this thing? Yeah. I'm not at all surprised. We don't have two brains. That is the most metabolically expensive tissue in our body. It feels like over the evolution of the human body, it's like the number one and the number two sort of arm wrestled over every part of the body.

To be like, should we have one of these? Should we have two of these? Should we have one of these? Should we have two of these? Effectively, effectively. And then number three is not even at the table. Number three is like, hey, I got a great idea. We could do three and everyone's like, no, no.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Three is not a magic number when it comes to animal bodies. But then, I just like ran home so I could set this up. Veer called me back. I can picture this getting so under his skin. Yeah, yeah, oh, he really bugged him. I was just in bed at night and it just like the answer just came to me. So what is it?

Okay, so basically the aortic valve, which is the only way to get blood from your heart to the rest of your body, you gotta go through a valve. It's called the aortic valve. And that valve, the best design is for it to have three cusps. The design that makes your blood goes one way out the heart and not the other way back in, because that would be very bad. They're triangle doors that like open up when you want the blood to go out and then just

flop back down when you want it to close. But actually what it is is like three leaflets. What do you mean by leaflets? Like three triangular doors that add up to being a circle. If you saw a Mercedes-Benz symbol, it would be those three, the up left, almost like a peace sign, you know, like that type of thing. Yes, so that's a possibility, because there's three cusps,

and they're all the same. That's true, that's a good option. But there's more than one of them. Okay, so yeah, this is where my whole thing may break down. You have more valves. Oh, because you just were, no way, no way, it doesn't exist. No, listen, listen.

You have four chambers of the heart. Four chambers, each have a valve, four valves. Yeah. And so then I was like, oh, but that kind of means we have 12 cusps, not three. And then it got even weirder, because it was like, no, no, no, no, because one of those valves is not a tricuspid valve,

it's a bycuspid valve. So we have two. So it was like, you leaven, like we found an 11 and we found it. We found it. We found it. Three. We found it.

We found it. I don't, that's an 11. Damn it. But I did, but I did end up deciding to take it to cat anyway to see what she thought. I forgot about that. Feel like that, does that cut it for you?

Does that feel like, does that feel good? You know, it had, I got a little tingle, I got a little something, I got a little something, think about it. But keep going, because you were about to tell me why not. Because there are. And I explained my whole thing to her, like, isn't this actually, like, it looks like a three,

but this is actually an 11, right? Technically 11 cusps. However, three would share the property of having the three cusps. If you don't count the cusps, if you count instead, the tri-cuspid valves. Oh, there's three tri-cuspid valves? There are three tri-cuspid valves. Three sets of three which feel satisfying and vaguely mystical. Three threes literally in your beating heart.

Oh! That's beautiful! Okay, alright, there we go. There we go, three threes. Did you tell five all is he excited? Yeah, yeah, I got him on my mic. I explained the whole thing. My buddy, my little doors in your heart.

They're shaped like a little pizza with three slices. I laid it out for him. So there's the special door in your heart. Heart things. Three heart things. Three heart doors. And then in the door, yeah. Three of them and it's three, three,

which make nine of them. Yeah, three of these kinds of doors with three flaps in each of them. So you think that doesn't count? Yeah. But there's three of them. Okay fine. So I found you with green in the box. Okay, okay, that actually was our last magic school bus trip. So you know, go back to your life. Your desk, buses parked, you can go back

to your normal school or work day. You know, go learn about the crev cycle, but don't worry because we actually have another wild ride coming up in just two weeks. Latif, this is a story of yours that has captured your heart and sent you, basically put jet engines on the school bus and launched you basically put jet, jet, jet engines on the school bus and launched you all the way into space.

So we are all gonna get to hear that. I'm very excited for it. In the meantime, this episode was reported by myself as well as Molly Webster, Alan Gafinski, and Becca Bressler. And it was produced by Cindy Nyanna, someone done Molly Webster and Becca Bressler with help from Matt Kilti, Aketty Foster Keyes, and Alyssaressler. And is produced by Cindy Niana Sombanda, and Molly Webster and Becca Bressler, with help from Matt Kilti, a Ketifaster Keys, and Alyssa Jung Perry.

With music and sound design from Jeremy Loom, and mixing help from Arianne Wack. Original song by Alan Guffinsky, with backups by his wife, Alita Guffinsky, special thanks to Mark Krasnow, Kerry Leboets, and Andrea Evers. Thank you for listening.

Bye. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Brestler, Rachel Kusik, Akati Fouster-Kees, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sundoon Yannem Sombalan, Matt Kielte, Annie McEwen, Alex Nieson, Sara Cari, Alyssa Jung Perry, Sarah Sandback, Aryan Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are a giant Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton. Hi, I'm Erica and Youngers. Leadership Support for Radio Lab Science Programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, Assignments Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Foundation of Support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.