SciShow Tangents - Advertising

Episode Date: December 18, 2018

From website banners to scratch-and-sniff magazine spreads, you’ve probably been the target of thousands of ads. Like, you’re even going to hear one during this podcast—we gotta eat! At this point, you might feel like you’re immune to advertising, because there’s no way a ridiculous infomercial could make you want a reusable juice box. But the psychology behind advertising has always been powerful. So this week, we’re diving into the science of when ads work, when they don’t, and when they’ve led to some pretty serious problems like the opioid epidemic.Sources:[Truth or Fail]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797613502732https://academic.oup.com/jcr/article-abstract/44/4/877/3829544?redirectedFrom=fulltexthttps://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/uom-ita031116.php[Fact Off]Brand partnerships:Opioid epidemic:https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-advertising-shaped-first-opioid-epidemic-180968444/https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1508818https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5125194/[Ask the Science Couch]https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-05/uoia-scs051817.phphttp://www.nber.org/papers/w20171.pdfhttps://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/a-dangerous-question-does-internet-advertising-work-at-all/372704/https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/08/why-good-advertising-works-even-when-you-think-it-doesnt/244252/[Butt One More Thing]https://thequackdoctor.com/index.php/dr-youngs-rectal-dilators/

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make SciShow happen, including Stefan Chin. Hi. What's your tagline? Ooh, cheesy puff man. including Stefan Chin. Hi. What's your tagline? Ooh, cheesy puff man. And Sam Schultz. What's your tagline? New York Times bestselling author of the book

Undeniably Exceptional Object. We've also got Sari Reilly. Hello. What's your tagline? That showbiz baby. And I'm Hank Green. Poopsmith. So here's how SciShow Tangents work. Every week,

these people get together, try to amaze and one-up each other and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory, but we're also keeping score and awarding Hank bucks. And we do everything we can to stay on topic. But judging by previous conversations with this group, we will not be super good at that. So if somebody goes on a tangent, we will all decide whether they have gone on a tangent too tangential, and then we will make them spend one of their hank bucks for that. Do a tangent crime.

Tangent crime. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from Sam. You deserve a break today. At Burger King, you have it your way. A dog that hears his master's voice. American by birth, rebel by choice. Obey your thirst?

Think outside the bun. Safety first? Reach out and touch someone. Choosy moms choose Jif. Dad drinks the champagne of beers. It's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your children are? Whoa.

That was like kind of cheery and kind of corporate. And then it got really ominous. Jeez. What happened with the peanut butter? They were right there. I was getting peanut butter. I don't have children and I'm worried about them. So the topic of this week's SciShare Tangents is advertising, which is a bit of a left turn for us.

And so there is obviously science of advertising, figuring out how to manipulate people, change them. I recently heard that YouTube is testing a new system where they are letting an algorithm put together video advertisements and then studying which ad does better at getting people to click on it. and then studying which ad does better at getting people to click on it. So now these very advanced computer systems are being charged with the task of influencing human behavior, which is terrifying. What pieces are they putting it together out of? The advertiser delivers a bunch of copy and pictures and video and different messages, and then they cobble them together into different versions and they see which one works best.

I want it to end up like the Markov chain recipes or things like that where they're like, I digested a hundred cookbooks from the 80s and then it's like meatloaf made from one jello. Seven olives. But this is a video.

People are like, I will click on that actually. Now that you mention it. Excuse me, computer, what? The whole time I was looking this up, all I could think of was the eyeball from Minority Report where it scans your eyeball and it shoots ads at you that are just for you. Is that going to happen someday?

Probably, right? It kind of already does. You put your fingerprint on your phone and then it's like, hey, I know a lot about you. Do you want to know about weighted blankets? And I'm like, I do. Yeah, kind of. That sounds nice. What is the craze with weighted blankets?

Everyone's talking about them right now. That's the thing now. Everybody wants a weighted blanket. Are they so hot right now? I think that they are surprisingly un-hot. I used a weighted blanket once. You were warm under there? I was very, yeah, trapped and warm.

Did you feel secure? No. No, that sounds really scary. I felt a little claustrophobic. I don't think I'm a claustrophobic person, but under the weighted blanket, it was like, I want to try a weighted blanket. It sounds like kind of my jam, honestly.

I like to be held. Is that the point? Is like to make you feel snuggled? Yeah. It apparently reduces anxiety in some people. A human thunder blanket, right? Yeah, like a human thunder shirt, I think is what they call them. Oh, really?

Yeah. A thunder shirt. It's like a hug for your dog so they're less scared. Oh, right. They also use them for cows when they're about to slaughter them. Oh, come on. Hey, sad fact. All right, you have to spend the hang time.

Yeah, you had to take it there, didn't you? I didn't think we killed cows. I just thought we ate them. So the hard work of Truth or Fail has this week gone to Stefan. Truth or Fail is the time in the podcast where one of our panelists has prepared three science facts for our education and enjoyment, but one of them is real

and the other are fake. And the other three panelists have to figure out either by deduction or wild guesses which is the true fact. And if they do, they get a Hank Buck. If we are fooled, then Stephan will get the Hank Buck. Stephan, hit me with three science facts

about advertising. All right. Fact number one. So there's the old adage that sex sells. Yes. But research is sort of suggesting now that sex doesn't really sell as well as we used to think, unless you're a woman looking at luxury products. Fact number two, advertisements focused on the senses of sight and sound rather than other senses are the most effective. Fact number three, in today's ad environment where people tend to avoid looking at ads online, the ads that made the most positive impression on viewers

were the ones that were the most clever. How do you make an advertisement that isn't focused on sight and sound? So if it's like a restaurant advertisement, then they're focusing on the sights and sounds of being at the restaurant versus like the tastes. Right.

Describing or talking about what the thing is. I don't know what else you would advertise. Right. Because like McDonald's commercials, they're never eating the food, I feel like. They're just going to hang out at McDonald's. That play place. Jump in that ball pit.

I mean, when I think about what I want to do at McDonald's, it's mostly just hang out. Yeah, use your laptop. Hang out with your friends. Play an MMORPG. Like that guy at McDonald's who's always there. That's true. I just want apple pies. Oh, wow.

Like multiple apple pies for very cheap. That's all I want from McDonald's. I just thought that about my favorite McDonald's food was chicken McNuggets. And then I thought, could I put a chicken McNugget into a McDonald's apple pie? You can do whatever you want. I honestly think that would be good. I think it might be too. That sounds pretty good.

No. Sam, high five. Ketchup and nuggets. That's it. That's the golden combination. Wow. I, high five. Ketchup and nuggets, that's it. That's the golden combination. Wow, I've never even tried ketchup with chicken nuggets. No, I always have the barbecue sauce. Honey mustard.

That's good, too. Or just honey. I like it with... Anyway, which person went on that tangent? It was the cascading effect. McDonald's. It seems that Sarah's gesturing toward me. Oh, yeah, this is an audio medium

I just did a thumb yeah I got thumbed alright negative one for me but I'm gonna get it back I'm gonna claw it back with all of my might right now I can't even remember what the other facts were sex and luxury products so is that like a sexy man

in a suit holding a luxury product or is it like a naked woman and then like. So is that like a sexy man in a suit holding a luxury product? Or is it like a naked woman and then like, oh, I want that perfume? It's sexually explicit imagery combined with an expensive product. Those all seem very, very likely and totally possible. So sex doesn't sell unless you're a woman looking at luxury goods. Sight and sound ads are most effective, or clever ads are the most effective online. I feel like clever ads make me mad.

So, I don't think it's that one. Yeah, why did you distract me? I'm doing something right now. I'm going to go with sex doesn't sell unless it's a woman looking at luxury goods. I'm going to go with clever advertisements because I think people like stories and it makes them feel things about products. I'm going to go with clever advertisements because I think people like stories and it makes them feel things about products. I'm going to go with the sight and sound one.

Wow. One of each. Spread all the way across. That's a sign of a good liar over there. So the true one was the sex only sells if it's luxury products. Back to zero. So there have been a bunch of meta-analyses recently that have found that sex in ads overall is like less effective than we realized.

But those noted that it's sort of split between men and women. So men tend to like sexy ads and women tend to not like them and it sort of averages out. Ah, I see. So it makes me think, and they didn't really talk about this in the thing,

but it makes me think that maybe products that are only targeted at men would do better with sexy ads, but I don't know. Like X-Body Spray and such. Yeah. So in this study, they tested watch ads with men and women and either had a sexually explicit image or a mountain range in the background.

Explain, was the mountain range like hot though? A sexy mountain? I don't know. Like the Tetons? Yeah, I'm not sure. But then either the watch was listed as costing $10 or $1,250. And so across all of the tests, men felt similarly about, they didn't actually say how the men felt. They just said that there was no real difference in how they felt between the different ones.

But women tended to have a negative reaction to sexy ads unless it was the expensive watch paired with the sexy image. That's interesting. What the heck? What the heck? Was there truth behind any of your others? Yes. Sight and sound.

So they were showing people a bunch of ads for a restaurant and then asking them to make an appointment at the restaurant, a reservation, and seeing how far away that appointment was, how far away that reservation was. The ads that focused on distal senses, so away from the body, like sight and sound, led to people delaying their purchases. So it was the opposite of what I said. Whereas ads that focused on proximal senses like touch and taste like very close to the body usually I guess so why aren't people eating hamburgers and McDonald's

commercials I don't know maybe because it's McDonald's is a specific thing but I do want to be very close to a McDonald's hamburger right now yeah actually so they're already in our heads. But close, but not touching? No, like that close. Do you ever actually touch anything? Moving on. I really liked, as part of their research,

they also analyzed 31,000 Yelp reviews. And the reviews that were rated the most useful were sight and sound focused if they were written in past tense, but touch and taste focused if they were written in present tense.

They gave an example. I'm eating this right now and it's so yummy. It would be a helpful review of present tense. I should review more things in real time. Yeah. Just be like, I am currently reading this book, and so far I enjoy it. Bite number one, yum. Bite number two, quite good.

Too much pickle. You should have mixed it up a little bit. So then the third one about clever ads, this one is a little bit complicated. They call it banner blindness, which is a thing where people just don't look at banner ads. So normally when they're testing ads, they often use intervals that are like multiple seconds, like 10, 20 seconds that people are looking at each ad. And so they wanted to test really, really short intervals also. So like 100 milliseconds, which would be maybe about the time that you'd be viewing that ad if you were just scrolling down a page or something. And so what they found was that straightforward ads, like using a picture of

soda to sell a soda, were viewed positively at every time interval because they're very easy to grasp and they're not trying to mislead you in any way. And what they call mystery ads, which are ads that require your engagement to understand. So either they're really visually complex or they are telling some kind of joke and you have to like think about it for a second. People perceive those negatively at first, but the longer they looked, the more they liked them. Right. And then ads that used an image of one thing to sell something else, like using a hot mountain range to sell a watch. Those first impressions were positive, but then those got worse the longer they looked at it

because they were like I'm being duped by this yeah sexy mountain range feeling we've all had I'm sure well Stefan came out of that

with two Hank bucks I came out at zero but like that's better than the negative one I had before I'm still at negative one yeah you's better than the negative one I had before. I'm still at negative one.

Yeah, you are. Well, you got a chance to come back during the fact-off, which will happen after our advertisement break. Welcome back. Sari is currently at negative one. I'm at zero. Sam is at zero. Stefan is at two, so he's impossible to catch at this point. More.

Oh, Sam, I want to give you one for your poem. Does everybody agree that Sam should get a hang buck for his poem? Yeah. That was skeptical. Well, I'm remembering the sad ending that led us into a sad tangent. Yeah. Wait, no. You shouldn't get one

because that led to my sad tangent. You don't deserve a buck. What if I said it happy like, it's 10 o'clock. Do you know where your kids are? No, that's even worse. That sounds like you murdered them.

I got a whole van full of kids. You can pick whichever one you want. Alright, now it is time for the fact talk. Two of our panelists

have brought science facts to present to the others in an attempt to blow their minds. The presentees each have a Hank Buck to award if they like the fact. However, if they don't like the facts, they can just throw their Hank Bucks away.

This week, it's me versus Sari, which is terrible news. And we're going to decide who goes first by deciding who watched an advertisement most recently. Why do you get to pick it? You don't get to pick it. I already had it in my head. Oh, you did? What is it? Which one of you was most in a commercial during Big Bang Theory?

What? Doesn't have any idea. I was in a commercial during the Big Bang, during an episode of the Big Bang Theory. When I first started working here,

my mom saw you on one of the episodes I worked on. And she was like, ah, I saw a commercial of him on Big Bang Theory. So it worked. It worked. She remembered me. It was super weird. But I got like a thousand texts. They're all like, I just saw you on a commercial for an engineering company on Big Bang Theory.

And I'm like, you watch Big Bang Theory? Yeah, that's a good trap. At first, the way that you phrased that and made it seem like on a TV, on the Big Bang Theory, like in the universe

of the Big Bang Theory, you exist. That's how they get so many ads in per minute on TV. They're always watching TV. Yeah, they're just like watching TV on the show.

Advertisements are playing. Everyone's quiet. And they're just like, that was an interesting advertisement. There was an episode of the show Pretty Little Liars where the characters all sat down to watch an advertisement for the movie Truth or Dare. And then when it was over, they said, ah, that looks like a great movie. Oh my God.

Oh, this is where we're at as a society. Yeah, this topic is challenging my brain a lot. Advertising? I don't understand advertising. I'm freaked out by advertising. I don't like to think about people thinking about my brain. Don't worry. Robots are going to do it soon.

I'm much better with robots doing it, actually. Well, as long as the most complicated computers in the world are tasked with the task of changing human behavior, I'm sure we'll all be fine. I'm sure that sounds good to me, I guess. I mean, can we just have the computers make us happy? Is that an option? Can we be like, hello, do your computer, type in code, make me as happy as possible. Just tell me what to do. I'm a little surprised that we don't have a device that just gives like a pleasure signal in the brain.

We do. Like an electrical stimulation. It's called a vibrator. Maybe? No. I mean, yeah. It's not like I was thinking. Directly.

I was thinking opiates. Oh, opiates. Drugs. Those are bad for you. Yeah, they are. So I think would be any device that gave a pleasure signal directly to your brain. So it's me. Products sometimes like to partner with charity initiatives to make people feel better about buying their stuff.

Like the red product line or pink products for breast cancer. But in 2015, a paper was released that outlined that products were getting a boost that the general public hadn't anticipated. If the product partnered with a health-based nonprofit, like the American Heart Association or even the Red Cross, people thought their food was getting healthier. People perceived those charity partnerships, in which some of their money was going to charities, as endorsements by those charities. The study showed that a partnership with Goodwill increased the odds that people would choose a product for that charity reason, but a partnership with the American Heart Association increased the odds that people would choose a product for health reasons.

This might seem abstract, but companies have been partnering with health charities without any implicit endorsement of the product for a long time, including a 2015 campaign featuring the Kids Eat Right slogan promoted on Kraft Singles slices, which Kraft says was just there to promote the program, not to convince people that Kraft Singles are good for kids, which they are not. The weird thing about this for me was that, like,

it's totally possible for the American Heart Association to partner with a product and, like, anditos and say a dollar from every bag of this Doritos, it wouldn't be that many, goes to the American Heart Association. But then for people to end up buying and eating more of those Doritos, and that does more health damage than the money that goes to the American Heart Association. more health damage than the money that goes to the American Heart Association. So they had, yeah, people got really mad about this kids eat right slogan on the craft singles because people have met craft singles before. And they know that that's not eating right. They're so floppy. Yeah.

Shiny. Shiny. I haven't had a craft single in a while, but I do remember them very, very deeply inside of my food brain. Do you not have a grilled cheese in it? Or if you had nice grilled cheese? Yeah. I'm at a point in my life where not have a grilled cheese in it? Or if you had nice grilled cheese? Yeah, I'm at a point in my life

where I have nice grilled cheese. I just like, I get the, I get the Tillamook cheddar slices and do it that way. Must be nice. Yeah, what's that like?

I'm making, I'm making Kraft Singles white bread on my ironing board. That's not, do you use butter? Or do you just toast it? I don't have enough money for butter. Oh, man. Oh, man.

Okay. Now it's time for Ceres. In the early 1800s, a German pharmacist isolated a chemical from poppies that would change the course of medicine. It was called morphine, and it's a highly addictive opiate. They bind to opioid receptors in the brain and decrease the sensation of pain. They also have side effects like drowsiness or constipation. And throughout the 19th century, opiates became a wonder drug.

They were hyped out throughout journalism, and you could find ads in papers for things like Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup with morphine made to quiet babies where they're crying and teething, so they hurt less, and also heroin tablets to alleviate asthma and coughing. But the bigger advertising push went to doctors. So ads for morphine were in medical journals or distributed in pamphlets directly from companies to doctors. And that contributed to morphine tablets or injections being overused for everything from headaches to menstrual cramps to injuries from war, even though it worked to treat diseases. And so really the first wave of the opioid addiction epidemic was sort of because of advertising.

I mean, that sounds like a familiar story to the current situation to some extent. That's pretty much still what it is, right? I think it's very similar to what's happening now. There are rules now for how pharmaceutical companies can advertise, I'm using air quotes, to doctors. And also in America, you can advertise for pharmaceuticals on TV or at all. In most countries, you can't. People are like, that's weird.

Why would you do that? That's the doctor's decision. It's not the patient's decision to like, oh, I heard about this drug. Go talk to your doctor about it. Ask your doctor. Yep. For babies. What do you think?

I mean, we made it this far and we gave opiates to babies. It's pretty impressive. Yeah. They were not good. They were also fairly small amounts. Okay. They were not good. They were also fairly small amounts. Okay.

It's not good for babies, but it didn't create the addiction problem. You would think that having opiates and all these tinctures and things like that, that your marketing to the public would have caused the epidemic, but it was mostly concentrated in upper middle class white women who were the people who were going to doctors all the time, as opposed to people who would have purchased these products and given them to babies. Babies got sick because this is not good for them, but there were such negligible amounts. And even though they were over the counter and unregulated, people, I don't think were abusing them as

much as like get a prescription from a doctor and then reuse that prescription over and over and over again to get like high concentrations. So hit us with your Hank box, boys. We got people buying things that they think will make them healthier. Question mark. From Hank. From Hank. And we got babies doing opium.

Yours is so topical, Sari, but Hank's is also quite topical. But Sari's gave me like a visceral reaction, so I'm going to give mine to Sari's. Yours gave me a visceral reaction too, though. Oh my God. Sari. Too late. You said mine. Thanks for the buck.

Yeah. Sari's makes me think of like like we're still facing these or I think about the the opioid epidemic today or like various things and then I'm like

oh we're falling apart at the seams but then like you look back a hundred years or a thousand years and like some those still those same problems

were still happening so yeah we never have known what the heck to do but I actually think I'm gonna to give my Hank back to Hank. Woo! Because you just like Kraft American cheese singles.

I just think people are so dumb. I mean, but I would totally, like, it's a subconscious thing. Like, you see American Heart Association and you're like, oh, it's clearly healthy. Right. You just don't think about it. And they're getting better about it. Like, they're realizing that these companies are using their brands

in exchange for these donations, which are nice, but ultimately, it's not in the service of the thing that they're trying to get done. And now it's time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds. I don't know.

Neither of us are operating at 100%. It feels like today I'm definitely. Yeah, I'm down below 50, I think. But we've got a question, and Sam's going to read it for us. Tell me all about it. All right. Dave Roshenfels wants to know, is the cultural saturation of advertising making it ineffective? I hope so.

I'm tired of advertisements. I don't want to be affected anymore. I want to buy the thing I want to buy. Yeah. Just tell me. But why do you want to buy that thing? Word of mouth. I guess, yeah, that and like is seeing a thing that you don't yet own

an F-form of advertising like walking through the store and seeing it? Well, I mean, there is in-store advertising. Companies pay to have their products on the end caps in front of the store. So that is advertising. And I want to say that advertising doesn't work on me. Oh, it does.

I buy every Mario game and don't play them. I just buy them. That's so sad. No one will play them with me. I bought Mario Party and haven't played it yet. So let's play it together. I don't have any friends to play it. I know. That's why I don't have money for butter.

Yeah, this is why we're eating Craft American singles. We both have Mario Party and no friends. But lots of cheese. So do you have a good answer to this question? I think that it must be to some extent. Yeah. So there isn't, the thing is, like you were saying earlier, there isn't a lot of scientific research on ads.

And it's really, really hard to do it because the way that you do a scientific study on ads is, like, you have to have measurable variables. So it's usually like people sitting in a lab having their eyes tracked and like scrolling through a screen or being shown an A-B test of look at this ad, look at this ad. Will you make a longer reservation or which one do you like more? And it's all very constructed. So we know some things like there was a 2017 study that said personalized ads, their perception of risk is much stronger than the perception of benefit.

So like they surveyed 400 something college students. So they've got a bunch of undergrads in a room and were like, do you like personalized ads? And a bunch of them said, no, I feel icky about Google's tracking my behavior and recommending things. So there aren't that many studies I can cite to back these ideas up, but it seems like a lot of the general consensus online is that the way that we are receptive to traditional advertising, whether that's just like banners or images or targeted things saying, buy our product. And if you never had that thought before in your head,

now you want to be like, yes, I do want Froot Loops or I want this motorcycle. That is less frequent. Sometimes there's an effect, like it's kind of like confirmation bias where you've already been thinking about buying a thing. It's like, I need new shoes. So you're like Googling new shoes for a while. And then an ad pops up for the exact same shoes that you were looking at. And then you buy it. Oh, I remember I did want

those. Yeah. This is something that my publicist assessed me about books. People don't buy the book the first time they hear about it. They buy the book like the fifth time they hear about it. So it's very important to like hit them over and over again with the same message. That's my book is called An Absolutely Remark and over again with the same message. That's called... My book is called An Absolutely Remarkable Thing. It's available now. It's about...

It's a science fiction story about a girl who gets internet famous. It's great. That costs the hang buck. What the fuck? That sure costs the hang buck. You have to pay us

like a hundred dollars. So there's that factor of like a confirmation bias. You see the thing bias you see the thing you buy the thing can you say that you were advertised to

maybe at some point but a lot of people on the internet especially you're just like searching for the things that you want and so ads don't really

affect you it's like I'm searching for a hand pushed lawnmower that for some reason I want delivered to my house so I'm gonna like search for that object

purchase that object that's it and that's what like that's when I feel like advertising is doing its job. It's like helping me find the thing that I want. And that's fine. That's robots making you happy. Yeah. What if the one, what if the thing that I want is happiness, Google?

But I guess the original question is, is the cultural saturation of advertising making it ineffective? I don't think it's ineffective. I think we're all being advertised to pretty much constantly. And even though it's coming in different forms of it, like one of our coworkers was talking about a toothbrush that he bought because of a podcast advertisement.

And so that's technically word of mouth, but he was advertised to and now has this toothbrush. And so it's, even if you aren't the direct susceptibility to advertisement, like there's so much social influence and we're talking to each other more than ever before.

My reaction. So when like the personalized ad thing comes up, like things that I've been searching for that I don't, I feel like I respond to that negatively. So I'm like, why are you tracking me? But if it's like the toothbrush or something where it's just mentioned and I'm like, oh, cool, whatever. And I ignore it. It's sort of like once you buy a blue car but if it's like the toothbrush or something where it's just mentioned and I'm like oh cool whatever

and I ignore it it's sort of like once you buy a blue car and then you see blue cars everywhere it's like once that idea is introduced to you then like

you'll sort of find that need in your life you're like oh I do need a new toothbrush this one's looking a little sad do you know what the name of that

thing is called that you just described the blue car it's called the frequency illusion or the Bader-Meinhof phenomenon. Where once you start noticing something, you start noticing lots of them? Yeah. And so it's like this whole psychological thing.

And it is used in marketing where it's like, and probably what your publisher was talking about too. It's like once you see a thing, it's like a novel experience in your brain. It's like, oh, I didn't realize that you could buy moss balls that float in little glass tanks. And it's like, oh, that's like a cute weird plant. And then you see it over and over again and you're more likely to notice it out of a lineup of just

aimless scrolling. So is the saturation of advertising making it more effective? I bet it is. Maybe. Yeah, because we're seeing more things. But you have to have that initial registration like I acknowledge that this is a thing. Right. And then you probably see

it a lot more nowadays than you would. Which is why podcast ads are good because it's like, oh, I spent a solid minute hearing about that thing. Yeah. I would buy anything a podcast told me to buy. Sam has 25 mattresses. Yeah. I'm buy anything a podcast told me to buy. Sam has 25 mattresses. I'm very comfortable, though.

And no butter. No butter. Nobody's advertising any butter. If my favorite podcast started advertising for butter, I'd be rotten with the stuff. If you would like to ask the Science Couch question and get the answer as quality as the one we gave today, you can tweet your question. Sari looks a little indignant using the hashtag

AskSciShow. All right. That leaves us with me with zero Hank bucks. Sari, you've got one. Sam, you've got one. And Stefan with two.

I did it. Sari could have won except she talked about too many giant bombers and death. Oh, no! If you like this show and you want to help us out,

it's really easy to do that. First, you can leave us a review. That's super helpful and lets us know what you think about the show. Second, you can tweet us your favorite moment

of the episode. Thank you to Max Miller and Justin Boot and everyone else who tweeted us your questions. And finally, if you want to show your love for Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining

us. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Sam Schultz. And I've been Stefan Chin. SciShow Tangents is co-produced with WNYC Studios. It's produced by all of us and Caitlin Hoffmeister. Our art and music are by Hiroka Matsushima and Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno, and we couldn't Thank you.

And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. In the early 1900s, if you were having problems with chronic constipation or hemorrhoids, you might have seen a newspaper ad for Dr. Young's rectal dilators, which was just a set of four rubber butt plugs that increased in size. Does it work, though? No. But the idea was that well-trained muscles in the butt would be able to cope with even the most solid of solids. Oh, man.