SciShow Tangents - Best of Butts Compilation

Episode Date: July 1, 2025

If Tangents is known for anything, it's known for our incredible, fascinating, endlessly-shareable facts...about butts. In celebration of the Butt One More Thing Fact, enjoy this compilation of topics related to butts and the treasure trove of knowledge within.Episodes in this compilation:S3 E8 - Pee, original airdate: March 16, 2021S3 E25 - Toilets, original airdate: August 3, 2021S3 E48 - Butts, original airdate: February 15, 2022S4 E43 - Poop, original airdate: February 21, 2023S5 E13 - Hygiene, original airdate: September 19, 2023Sources for each episode can be found in the descriptions of the original episodes on your preferred podcasting platform.SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! And go to https://complexly.store/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on socials:Ceri: @ceriley.bsky.social@rhinoceri on InstagramSam: @im-sam-schultz.bsky.social@im_sam_schultz on InstagramHank: @hankgreen on X

INTRO Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase. I am your host Hank Green and I'm joined as always by resident science expert, Saririley. This is the sixth episode in which I've called you our resident science expert. Are you comfortable with this title yet? I feel like it's starting to wash over me a little bit and just nodding as you speak through the intro, but then the imposter syndrome is strong

where I am not an expert in science. I am just good at Googling things sometimes, and I fact check you both when I can, but not always. Gotta love being good at Googling things. We are also joined by our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello. Who was always here to be like, that didn't make any sense at all.

Yeah, please explain. We're recording this episode as a video that we're putting up on our YouTube channel, Sideshow P, which hasn't had an episode of content posted to it in two years. So it is an Easter egg, but if you wanna see us in real life where you can see Sam's cute office

and Sari's weird towel life where you can see Sam's cute office and Sari's weird towel, then you can do that. Sam, I know that you were raised in Butte, Montana, and Sari, I know that you've been a nerd for your whole life, so I kind of want to hear the wildest party you have ever been to. Oh, I'm going to get in so much trouble. Ha ha ha! Do not tell me if you're gonna be in trouble with the law. This is gonna sound absurd,

but in high school, in my opinion, I would very frequently have parties that were pretty much like the kind of movie high school parties that you'd see. Really? Yeah. Red Solo Cups and Alice Hannigan and all that. My parents were divorced and one of them was always out of town.

So every weekend, one of my houses would be free to just get so, so drunk. I mean, if this is tying into peeing, there was pee everywhere, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like the wildest party I've ever been to has either been, was definitely as an adult, and it was either VidCon or our staff retreat. Like that's, I'm just a boring man. Yeah, I feel like I'm also fairly boring. I was often the friend who, if I would get really drunk, then I would put myself to bed

or would like take care of my other friends. Like I had a store of Otter Pops for when no one wanted water. So I'd be like, here, suck on this sugar stick and then get hydrated. But in college, my freshman year, I went to when I first, real college party at a frat house in Boston. And I played beer pong for the first time

and was like good at it. And so I played a lot. And I remember very distinctly walking back to my dorm in the winter and stopping to pee several times, just like in random behind a bush patches of snow where I was like, I don't want to pee my pants, but everyone else is walking ahead. I'd be like, one second, and I'd just like run behind

the bush, pee, and then run up, catch up with my friends, and then keep trotting through the snow. How long did it take you to get home? Yeah, what kind of walk was this? It's probably like a 30 minute walk. What the heck's going on? I don't understand. Once you break the seal, once I started peeing

after drinking, it's my bladders just like wee woo wee woo let's go. Well that's Sarri Riley with the science poem, all done. You should just perform dead. So every week here on SciShow Tangents we get together to try to one up a maze and delight each other with science facts. We're trying to stay on topic but we're not always great at that, which is why we call it tangents. We're playing for glory, but we're also playing for Hank bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. And at the

end of every episode, one of you will be crowned the winner. Now, as always, we introduced this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from me. Here's one thing, you know, it's no mystery. Everybody pees. Everybody pees. On into the future and in deep history. Everybody pees. Everybody pees. When you have a cup of coffee, do you know where it goes?

Everybody pees. Everybody pees. It's the reason that you never eat the yellow snows. Everybody pees. Everybody pees. When you have a Coca-Cola and you feel something stirring, everybody pees. Everybody pees.

It's probably your body made a whole lot of urine, everybody pees, everybody pees. From your blood to your kidneys, to your bladder, to your urethra, everybody pees into the sewers down beneath ya. What? The structure of that one was puzzling. Yeah, it kind of overstated its welcome.

So our topic for the day is pee, urine. I don't know what else we call it. And it's the water part of our excretions. And I guess I should stop talking to you, let's Sari define what pee is. I mean, you were doing great. It is not always liquid, but in mammals, like humans, urine is the liquid form. In birds and reptiles, it's solid or semi-solid because it gets mixed up with other stuff.

And I think also just like the urine-containing compound is a little bit chunkier. From what I can tell, P or urine is any excrement that is formed by the biological system that includes the organs that you listed. So like kidneys, urinary, bladder, ureters, urethra. Instead of like defining it by its components or by its state of matter, we define it by, it's the stuff produced by the kidney and the bladder. Yeah, it's the stuff that goes

through these particular tubes. But birds don't have all the same, but I guess they do have bladders. Yeah, so they don't have all the same piping, but they're like the cloaca collects the waste, but there are three main sections of it. There's the coprodium, the urodium and the proctodium, which. What's the proctodium for? So the urodium collects urine from the ureters or bladder. The coprodium collects fe from the ureters or bladder, the copradium collects fecal matter

from the colon, and then they both empty into the proctodium before being excreted outside the body. Mix them up. So if you hated someone, would you call them a procto- what? That one? Or would you call them the copra one? Like, which one is worse? The poop bucket or the poop and pee bucket?

I think the one where they both get combined. That seems more disrespectful to me. Okay. Cause then you're all the waste, all the garbage possible. And that one is the proctodium. Yes. You are all the garbage possible.

I love it. Yes. Okay, I'm putting that one in my back pocket for when I insult people, which happens never. Only us on this podcast. Yeah, that's true. Oh, God. That's great. That makes perfect sense to me. And I'm sure never has any kind of fuzziness to it at all.

Just like it's etymology has no kind of fuzziness to it. Parentheses, it does. But P, the word, came out of an abbreviation because we know us humans, we don't wanna say long words when we could say shorter ones. And so P did come about fairly recently, meaning to urinate is from around 1879. And the noun meaning active urination

was first recorded around 1902. Wow! So like very, very recently, within the last couple of centuries. And it is a euphemistic abbreviation of piss. So it is, we stopped wanting to say piss and we thought, you know, it'd be simpler. We just say pee. So like the letter P for piss. And then somebody tacked an EE onto the end of it? Yeah, you had to spell it somehow.

Why would you want to stop saying piss? That's like the fun way to say it. I assumed that piss would be the slang that came later, but no. Humans came up with piss long time ago. It was from vulgar Latin. So the official Latin verb meaning to urinate was minger, or ming, I don't know if there was a soft G, but minger, which gives us medical words like mixtrition.

Don't know how that related to urinate because that came from the same stem as water. So separate tree channel altogether. But then people were like, that's not the sound it makes when you pee. That's like piss. And so then there's the vulgar verb pissier. And then that became piss,

which was used like commonly through the 13th, 14th century through. I would have not have gotten there, but it's onomatopoetic. It just, that's what it sounds like to piss. Piss. They're not wrong. Okay, great. I mean, that was the one I've liked the most so far

of all of the etymologies that we've done. Oh, good. Well, I'll try to get some more vulgar words in there. Yeah, we definitely have to start covering some more nasty stuff. That's exactly the problem. He thinks it's spicy. Gotta keep it spicy here on SciShow Tangents.

So now that we're done shooting the piss, I guess we will move on to the quiz portion of our show. It's, I've got a game for you. It's called Recipe. Uh-huh. Fun. So urine is a waste product. It's made of nitrogenous wastes and other chemicals that our body doesn't need.

But just because our body doesn't want that stuff doesn't mean that no one wants it. Human creativity knows no bounds. And that involves exercising some chemical creativity with urine. The following are recipes that involve your pee. And you will have to guess what you might be making with that pea. There are three of these, so you can get three points or you can get no points.

Let's see how you do. They're multiple choice, so wait for it. Question number one. So imagine you've been exhibiting your wares at the market for some time, but the flowers, the bark, and the berries that you've been using to make your goods, they're not cutting it anymore. Never fear, this industry favorite recipe is here.

Collect some good old fashioned urine in a chamber pot, mix it with some alum, and then combine with your favorite vibrant natural ingredients to bring out their natural beauty. Are you making A, watercolors, B, fabric dye, C, lipstick, or dye, C, lipstick, or D, potpourri? All I know about alum is that in Looney Tunes

when they put alum in their mouth, their mouth gets really tiny. You know what I'm talking about? I think it is fabric dye. I was thinking fabric dye also, because if they have it around in Looney Tunes time, that seems like the most logical thing to be using it for. You are both correct.

One point to each of you. Yarn is a good source of ammonia, and ammonia is good at getting the chromophores in a dye to bind to a piece of cloth. That is a property that is so useful that there's a bunch of different compounds like this, and there's a name for it. They're called mordants.

And in the 16th century, so significantly before Looney Tunes time, specific chamber pots and urinals were actually set aside to collect urine. So there's like a special pot for just pee and then barrels of that stuff were sent to Yorkshire to age and mix with alum. Minus the alum and mordant recipes,

urine has also been used to directly make dyes. Wode is an indigo-like color. It can be made from fermenting the leaves of the woad plant in urine. Is dye making still a urine-heavy situation? I do not believe so. I think that we have eliminated urine from the dye making process at this point.

Question number two. Now it may seem strange to use urine to make this powder, but sometimes you make do with what you have. Just take all your starting materials, sprinkle with a bit of ash, and then add just enough urine to keep it moist. Stir it weekly until you start to see your desired whitish powder forming on the top. Are you making A. topsoil, B. ceramic coating, C. toothpaste powder or D. gunpowder? Oh no, this one I don't have such a strong feeling about. Those are all powdery. Well yeah, I wouldn't have said powder if I wasn't going to give you four powders.

Yeah, well, could have caught you on a slip up there. I've made dumb mistakes in my answer choices. I've heard of people using urine for toothpaste purposes, like ancient Rome or something like that. So that seems, by deduction, I'll just go with that one, because I have no idea. Sam's in for toothpaste powder. Okay, I'll go for gunpowder just to diversify,

because those were the two I was caught between two, and I have no idea. The answer for gunpowder just to diversify because those were the two I was caught between two and I have no idea. The answer is gunpowder. Though Sam, you were right that urine has been used as a mouthwash. But they didn't like do anything to it before they used it? I think that they may have let it like sit around

for a little while to increase the ammonia content. Yeah. So one of the main ingredients of gunpowder is potassium nitrate or saltpeter, which you can find in natural deposits. You can mine it or you can make it. Before we learned how to synthesize saltpeter in large quantities,

sometimes we mixed pea with manure, ash, and leaves for months and the ammonia in the pea would react with oxygen to create the nitrates that then bonded to the potassium in the ash, creating potassium nitrate. Useful stuff, that pee and poop. Yeah, that one had pee and poop in it. Final question!

Humans don't produce the only valuable urine out there, which is probably good for you in this story, because you work in an industry known for its discerning customers and selective ingredients. What better helper than the rock hyrax, which looks like a medium-sized rodent but is actually closely related to the elephant. But you don't need to find the animal itself. You just need to find the ancient, petrified mixture of their urine and feces called hyracium. Inside, you will find an oily mixture that will help balance out your final product. Are you making perfume, wine, face cream, or cheese?

I wouldn't think you could eat it. The world is a many and varied place. I guess so. Perfume seems like the obvious choice to me. Yeah. Because they make perfume out of all kinds of wild stuff that comes out of animals' butts and stuff. You're right.

Like weird sacs and glands. Oh, I'm going to go with my gut and say perfume. Okay, Sam's saying perfume. I'm also going to go with perfume because Sam, your logic convinced me. That's good logic. My gut? Is that what the logic was? Okay.

And you are both correct. Hyracium is used to add a dirty note to perfumes, which makes sense because it is the combined urine and feces of a rock hyrax. So the situation here is that colonies of rock hyrax tend to poop and pee in the same spot over centuries, and the waste products can petrify into a brittle rock-like thing,

and the oil inside has been described as having an intense, complex, fermented scent. I bet it does. Oh, man. And that, Sari, means that you got all three correct, and Sam, you got two correct, so Sari is currently in the lead. But it's okay, Sam, there's a chance for you to come back

after we go on our short break, when it's time for the fact off. ["Science Facts"] Welcome back everybody, it is time for the fact-off. Our panelists have brought science facts to present in an attempt to blow my mind. After they have presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hankbox as I see fit. And to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question for you. Cats, of all sizes, are well known for using their urine to mark territory. When a male cheetah marks, they will turn their back to the object they want to mark

and either point their penis horizontally backward or upward by how many degrees? Whaaaaat? Where's zero degrees? Where is zero degrees? Where is zero degrees? Where is, I think zero degrees is horizontal. And they can point it behind them. Yeah. We need a chart.

Just picture if it's shooting straight back, that's zero degrees. If it's shooting straight up, that would be 90 degrees. It's somewhere in between those two things because you can't really go more than 90 degrees without pissing on itself. I'm going to just go for a nice even 45 degrees every time it marks it's just like perfect slope right triangle gonna shoot pee in an arc. Man I think they can go I think they can hit 60 if you ask me they can get way up there. Sam it's 60! What the heck? Whoa Sam! Sam, cheetah pee expert now everybody open some tabs and look at those cheetah peeing it's 60. What the heck? Whoa, Sam. Sam, cheetah pee expert. Now everybody opens some tabs

and look at those cheetah peeing. It's wild. I don't know how you make a penis do that, but you do. If you're a cheetah. All right. So that means that Sam, you get to decide who goes first. I think Sarah should go first, personally.

It's all that matters. Pee expert Sam Schultz. So because bringing anything up into space is expensive, it's important to find ways to reuse or repurpose waste products. And turns out urine has a lot of potential, as we learned from Recipe. And one of the most obvious uses in space is finding a way to recycle and purify the water in pee or fertilizing plants because of the nitrogen content in addition to water. But those are boring. everyone knows about that I came across a paper

that argues we could be using pee to construct moon concrete concrete is a really common material on earth it's made of a bunch of gravel or rocks or stuff held together by a paste of cement which is various blends of dust like limestone chalk and other things and and water. So in space, scientists think that moon dust could work as cement and we could get water from ice or possibly pee, but that's not the most important part, because a really tricky balance in concrete manufacturing is the ratio of cement to water, because more water means less strong concrete, but less water means the concrete is hard to mix and pour because it's not pasty. So instead of just adding a ton of water, we

can add a tiny bit, like 1 to 3 percent of per unit weight, of chemicals called plasticizers, which to my understanding are basically compounds that can break certain chemical bonds and or like push cement particles away from each other using repellent charges to make the paste more goopy and easily moldable without sacrificing the extra strength in the final concrete that's been cured and dried. So on Earth, we have synthetic plasticizers that are like waste products from the paper industry or specially manufactured, and hauling them up to make moon concrete would be added weight. So that brings me back to what scientists from Norway, Spain, the Netherlands, and Italy have

been working on with a European space agency in a paper published in 2020, using urea from P as a plasticizer in moon concrete. The urea did better than one common earth plasticizer and no plasticizer trials, and it did the same as another common earth plasticizer and no plasticizer trials, and it did the same as another common earth plasticizer in bearing heavy weights, keeping its shape, and surviving through simulated freezing and thawing cycles which would happen on the moon. So they say it, quote, exhibits promising properties as a super plasticizer for 3D printing of lunar geopolymers, but also, as scientists do, they don't want to promise anything before doing more research.

And it's going to be more complicated than just peeing into the concrete mixture because ratios are so important, and the plasticizer they tested is specifically just a little bit of urea, not all the things that come in pee. But who knows, maybe pee concrete will be a thing on Earth someday as a new eco-friendly construction option, and on the moon I mean the For some reason is much more impressive if we do it on the moon But also like hey, it's just hard to make anything on the moon to get stuff there

So anytime you get to use something that you already have is great news I never thought about how hard getting water to the moon would be. Yeah, I mean, luckily there is some water on the moon and we think maybe more than we – certainly more than we thought. We will probably also not get it to the moon from the Earth because there's water in space. And it's much easier to move stuff around in space than it is to move stuff off of the Earth because it's heavy here. Cool.

Well, we're going to have to build some moon buildings so we might as well be figuring out how to do it right now. Sam, what do you have for me? Animals pee a lot and they pee all over everything, especially on the ground, which is basically the one place that animals of all shapes and sizes can reach. And you might think when you pee on the ground, like Sari did in Boston, that the ground soaks it up

and that's it, end of story. And usually you're right, but there are some creatures out there who can make use of this pea soaked ground and what they do with it could give us a new weapon in the fight against climate change. In 2019, Sophie Petit, a scientist based on Kangaroo Island, which is an island off the coast of Southern Australia,

well has a lots of kangaroos on it, I'm pretty sure, made a strange observation completely by accident. Kangaroo Island is really sandy, I think. And when you add pee to sand, sand does the same thing that it does whenever you add any other kind of water to sand. It gets all clumpy. So one night, Petit observed some nocturnally scavenging

sugar ants swarming a patch of urine soaked, clumpy sand. Hmm, that's interesting, she must have thought to herself because she continued observing over the course of the next few weeks and found that the ants would return like in greater and greater numbers every night and basically mine the pea sand, like they were little pea miners, even after it all dried up.

So Petit and a team then ran tests to see what the ants liked so much about the pea. They soaked sand with human urine and kangaroo urine and sugar water and concentrated urea. And there's other documentation of ants being attracted to urine, especially urine that has extra sugar in it because of complications like diabetes. But what this team found was that the ants consistently went

for the sand soaked in whatever compound had the most urea in it. And why would the ants be so into urea? Well, many ant species, including these specific kind of sugar ants, have a bacteria in their digestive system that allows them to process urea into nitrogen, which is a vital part of lots of functions of life,

like making proteins and probably lots of other ones. But we knew about the ants' ability to process urea. But this is the first time that we've observed them excavating dry urine for its urea content. Which seems weird. They must just always be doing it. We never thought to look at pee-pee ground. So being able to process urea means that the ants can survive in harsh places

like deserts and sand dunes that don't have as many resources because as long as there's kangaroos and other weird Australian animals to pee, then the ants have an easy source of nitrogen and they can live their little lives. But how can this help against global warming? Another compound present in urine is ammonia, which breaks down into nitrous oxide. And nitrous oxide has 300 times the heat trapping potential of CO2 and it depletes the ozone layer, but it isn't banned or like it doesn't have any official sanctions on it or anything like other ozone destroying chemicals do. And emissions of it have gone up substantially because of increasing peeing, not very regulated use of fertilizer and people just pe because of increasing... Peeing.

Not very regulated use of fertilizer. And people just peeing everywhere in my backyard and stuff. So researchers speculate that sugar ants could be used to incidentally gather the ammonia while they gather urea before it breaks down into nitrous oxide. You just like throw it on a field, I guess, and the ants would just eat all the urea up and not let it escape into the atmosphere I guess, and the ants would just eat all the urea up and not let it escape into the atmosphere. So thank you, sugar ants. And in return for this, we promise to keep calling you sugar ants, even though you are more like pee-pee ants.

So here are my choices. I've got space buildings made of pee. That's pretty cool. Oh, Hank. That's pretty cool. Or I got ants that like to eat pee. Yeah, fun. Peepee ants. Cute. And I don't know if there's like a big come from behind moment here for you, this episode, Sam.

What? Why? Sam and the sugar ants are crying. But with hers, you're going to a distant world and building on that and with mine, you're saving the one we already have. Man and beast join together to save the planet. Come on.

I was wanting you to fight for yourself a little bit. So thank you for doing that. Regardless, Sarah is the winner of this episode of SciShow Tangents. Why? You just wanted to see me wriggle around like a worm? Yeah, you proctodeum. Geez, Sari just called you a proctodeum. I know, I know.

You're both getting meaner and meaner to me every episode. Oh no. Sam, you're a sweet sugar ant, but really that means you eat pee pee. Oh no. Oh no. Oh. This is the meanest I've ever seen Sari, for sure. This is great.

Well now, it is time to ask the science couch. We've got a listener question for our couch of finely honed scientific minds. It's from at rmlin24, who asks, is pee consistently yellow across the animal kingdom, or is that just a mammal thing? I know that it's definitely not consistent across all animals, but I do not know if it's consistent across mammals. There must be some mammal that has got weird colored pee. But birds basically have white pee, technically, right?

Yeah. It's urine or something. I guess it's piss. It's urine or something. I guess it's piss. It's bird piss. So the reason why pee is yellow is because of a compound called urochrome or urobilin, which is what hemoglobin gets broken down into and becomes the waste product, and that's yellow pee. So if you have hemoglobin in your blood, which I think most animals do, with very few exceptions, then pee is going to be at its standard color yellow. And I tried my best to look for non-yellow pees.

I recruited Deboki, and we both used our Googling powers. Like, scientists don't document pee colors. I would imagine that somewhere there should be a spreadsheet that's just like, what color is this animal's pee? No one has made that. And it could be you. Yeah. Please do because the descriptions across the internet

are wildly inconsistent. So don't just mess around. This is serious business. I couldn't find anything about mammals. Deboki found something about tortoise pee. Urine was mostly clear or colorless to pale yellow. So, like, you got the clear side of the spectrum with small amounts of white urates, caterpillars to pivot in a different direction, poop little black bags, which I assume also includes their

urine inside. I don't know. Spiders, though there was a website that described the little uric acid spots as either white or colored, which is not helpful. Like, tell me about spiders. The two options. Yeah. Like, human urine can vary in colors depending on, like, other byproducts that are in it.

SciShow has a great video about it. And I really, really tried to look into an organism like a horseshoe crab, which has blue blood and hemocyanin in it. And I learned that I don't know about horseshoe crabs, but a lot of crustaceans have their pee glands by their antennae. So they spit pee out their front. But I guess because that pee goes straight into the water, no one's ever collected a vial of it and been like, oh, this is weird green pee. But I imagine that the byproduct of humicidin breakdown is different than hemoglobin. Well, we just need to grab a lobster

and we need to strap some bags to its head. Put a diaper on his face. Yeah, a little piss diaper on his little piss face. Looks like snowshoe hares have orangey red pee because of the vegetation that they may be. Oh yeah. These guys are all on the warm end of the color spectrum. I want some blue pee.

Well, you might have to go to a different planet. If you want to ask the Science Cow to your question, follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents where we'll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes every week. That's at SciShow Tangents. Thank you to at KatherineShoe47, at Lil Chris and everybody else who tweeted us your questions for this episode If you like this show and you want to help us out a super easy to do that You can lose a review wherever you listen that helps us know what you like about the show and it's probably good for some Algorithm somewhere second you can tweet us your favorite moment from the episode at SciShow tangents again

Third you can go to patreon.com Slash SciShow tangents and become a patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episode is very fun and we are aiming to get up to 500 patrons. That's where our first goal is. So please join us on the path to 500 patrons so we can keep making this show and be making it better and have cool special guests and we're really excited to expand the kinds of stuff that we do. But we do need your support.

Finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hofmeister and Sam Schultz,

who edits a lot of these episodes along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistant is Taboki Trakovarti. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish, and we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. The Satacosaurus was a small dinosaur that lived about 100 million years ago, but just recently scientists were able to use fossils in comparison with existing species to create

a 3D model of its cloaca, that not just butt hole used for reproduction and urination in addition to defecation. That's an amazing headline to be able to write. Like we have the first detailed image of a dinosaur butt. Do you think one of the scientists stuck his finger in the 3D model of the hole? Oh yeah, for sure.

Wait a second, can I put my finger in a dinosaur butt? How much? I think you could probably just show up and be like, Hi, I'm Hank Green. Come here, TikToker. And I'm his communicator. May I stick my finger in the butt hole? I need you to 3D print every butt hole. Because putting my finger just in a dinosaur butt, that's not going to tell me anything.

I need something to compare it to. It's like the, there's a pain index. That guy's pain index. We have the Hank Green index for how far Hank Green's finger can go in. This episode of SciShow Tangents is brought to you in partnership with GatesNotes. You can go to GatesNotes.com to read about the latest innovations in toilets and sanitation, and to learn more about the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase.

I'm your host Hank Green, and joining me this week and sitting in for science expert Sari Reilly is science expert and Tangents editorial assistant and writer and co-host of Journey to the Microcosmos, it's Deboki Chakravarti! Hello! Hello, how's the Olympics going for you? Do you care at all? I care when I want background noise. It's been great to be able to like turn it on just like when I need something, but I've been having a hard time with sports this year where I've been getting into it and then hating myself for it because I get so stressed. It's just too much. You get too into it.

An interesting thing about this Olympics that I have enjoyed is following all of the athletes on TikTok where I realize that that's just like party time village. Yeah, and they're like all 18 and going insane. I've definitely like read all those like secrets of the Olympic Village articles in the past when they've come out and now seeing it live on TikTok. I'm like, this is great. This is like seeing how they test out the cardboard beds. I'm like, yeah, that's perfect.

That sounds about right. Yeah, it used to be NBC would give you like these mini documentaries on the athletes. And so you'd see like the trials and struggles. And now instead of that, it's just like thirst traps and using audios and funny Olympics ways. Anyway, we're also joined by our resident every man, Sam Schultz, who has already spoken up a little bit.

And also I'm sure has Olympic opinions. Oh, I love the, I love the Olympics. I feel bad that I love the Olympics so much, but I do. And I was supposed to go to these Olympics. You were supposed to go to these Olympics? For my honeymoon. Oh. Double whammy, huh?

Didn't have my wedding, not for any bad, just for COVID reasons. We're still gonna have it eventually. And can't go to Japan to the Olympics. God, that blows. Rachel's upstairs watching the Olympics right this second. We love the Olympics. So you're more like streaming your own honeymoon. I guess we didn't think about it that way, but that's a nice spin on it.

Yeah, I'm not actually sure how to watch the Olympics. I've only been watching highlights because I don't know how to get it into my home. Well, you can either have an antenna on your television or you can have cable. Well, I'm not doing that. I'll tell you that much. No, it's too late probably also. They're over like the middle of next week. So really, I thought it was like, I thought it looks like six weeks long or something.

I think they're two weeks long. No, that's ridiculous. You can't build a city for two weeks of sport. It seems like a lot, but we are very inventive and very clever species. So I guess we can make anything happen, which is basically what this podcast is about. Because every week here, we on Tangents get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts while trying to stay on topic. Today, the facts are not about the Olympics, they are about something else, which you've

already gotten several spoilers about what that is, but we're not going to tell you quite yet. Our panelists are playing for glory, but they're also playing for Hank bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. And at the end of the episode, it will either be Sam or Deboki taking home the medal. It's made of Hank bucks this week, the Hank bucks medal.

Now, as always, we're gonna introduce this week's topic with a traditional science poem. And this week it's from me. Joshua Everly Anthony Tripe laid 2.2 million miles of pipe to bring us fresh water and take it away after we'd added a bit of our waste. Joshua Everly Anthony Tripe has every reason, maybe, to gripe that he took on the world's biggest villain and saved more people than Penicillin. So why, oh why don't we know his name? Why aren't there statues, parades, and fame? Well, a simple reason, really. Joshua Everly Anthony

Tripe. He didn't exist, though it would have been nice. One person could not do all those things and save us from the diseases that water brings. Instead of one man, he was many millions, everyday unappreciated civilians. Diseases of water tried to spoil it, but instead, thanks to them, we just hook up our toilet. But since our brains, like simpler myths, where one hero saves us from all of this, thank Joshua Everly Anthony Tripe every time you wipe. Wow, I thought he was real. That was such a real name for a guy. That was a great, great poem. Thanks.

I'm very curious about the process behind this poem about how the name came about. Was it, did you were like, I got Wipe. What's the best fake last name that I can make? I think he must've had laying pipe first. I had pipe first. Oh, got it. Yeah.

No, I lucked, wipe was 100% luck. I was like, holy shit, wipe, it's right there. Yep. That's amazing. So our topic for the day is not pipe, though that would be a good one. Instead, it is toilets. Toilets, one of the most important innovations

in the history of humankind. They save a tremendous number of lives, and they are basically holes that go into either the ground or a sewer. Deboki, are you gonna tell me what a toilet is? Yeah, so basically I think a lot of times, like if we're talking about what a toilet is, we kind of have assigned it at this point in our life to, or in humanity's life, to a fixture that's

being used for defecation and urination. Oftentimes it is a water-fleshed bowl with a seat. So I think that's what a lot of us are familiar with, but obviously there are many other types of toilets out there that we use. There are porta-potties, there are squat toilets, there's a lot of different forms for basically collecting our waste and sending it somewhere else to be disposed of. And any of those as a toilet? So I would want to say that if it gets collected, like, and just kind of like being designated as a spot for this collection, then I would argue it's a toilet. I mean, throughout history,

we've had like a lot of different ways of basically kind of assigning like a pit-like structure for toilets. Romans are usually credited with like the early sewage system innovations. One of the first city-wide systems was called the Cloaca Maxima and was built around 600 BC or so,

plus or minus a few hundred years. So I think there's both like the toilet as like the toilet thing, and then there's also the sewage system that we connected to. So those are kind of like both parts of it, but I would think of the toilet as the actual instrument for collecting the waste.

Yeah, it tends to be porcelain, though I think that there may have been a time when there was a thing that you would call toilet that had a number of elements of ceramic and wood to sort of do the work. But yeah, the sort of all of the stuff, all of the sewage collection stuff is certainly not the toilet. And in fact, a lot of toilets are just hooked up to a septic system and don't connect to a sewage system at all.

Yeah. And I mean, if you're in space, you're not connected to a sewage system. That's a great point. And they still have to figure out how to make space toilets so that, you're not connected to a sewage system. That's a great point. And they still have to figure out how to make space toilets so that there's a way to help out astronauts. And so there's a lot of innovation still going on with toilets. We are not done with toilets. There are ways to make them better.

There are ways to make them more accessible, more environmentally friendly. This is where the Gates Foundation's Reinvent the Toilet Challenge comes in. And also, there are researchers studying old toilets to see what we can learn from those about toilet technology and its long-storied history. Do you know where the word toilet comes from? Because there's like, ode to toilet. And that's not like, toilet water.

That's something else that used to be called a toilet that we don't call a toilet anymore, right? Yeah, so the word had nothing to do with like originally with waste It was used in the 1530s in English as a cover or bag for clothes It originally comes from the French toilet meaning a cloth It originally comes from the French toilet, meaning a cloth. So I think it was like a cloth thing, but then it apparently went on to refer to upper class dressing rooms. So things like mirrors, brushes, like that sat on like a table and that you would cover in cloth.

And then around the 1800s, toilet referred to combination dressing rooms and bathrooms. And I think that's where it kind of started to shift. So Americans then took that and by the end of the 1800s just kind of referred to any inside bathroom as the toilet. So that would be like a bathroom that's inside versus like an outhouse or water closet. And then in the early 1900s, we Americans started calling the porcelain poop thing the toilet. So it just kind of got like reduced from there from the room down to the actual thing. That's very weird. What the hell? I mean, I guess like this, this, this makes me feel like when it comes to naming things that are a little bit taboo, all bets are off.

People are like, I don't know, I'm very nervous. Yeah, we have to pick the fanciest French word we can think of. There's this additional note that toilet paper like came around in like 1884, but the Middle English equivalent was arse wisp. Arse wisp. Yeah. So, yeah, I think there's just when it comes to the toilet, like the vocabulary is just, there's a whole myth about how the guy who invented the toilet was named Thomas Crapper, and that's why it's called the Crapper.

But that's not true. There was a guy though named Thomas Crapper, and he was a sanitary engineer and businessman in England in the mid 1800s. But his real innovation was rebranding toilets to be a thing that you could like show off and sell. So he would actually like show them off in showrooms to try to like get people to be excited about buying toilets.

So were there Crapper brand toilets? Apparently you can actually still see T. Crapper on manhole covers in England on their like sewer infrastructure. But does that have anything to do with the word crap? Not that I know of. Oh wow, okay, wow, that is weird. I mean, coincidence is... It's gotta, right?

No, it's not related. It's not? What the hell? No. He's just like, well, that's my name, so I guess I have to do this. That happens all the time. He's just like, well, that's my name. So I guess I have to do this. Yeah. That happens all the time. I got my tendon reattached in my hand by Dr. Hand.

I guess you're right. So I feel well informed on what a toilet is now, though it turns out to be broader than maybe any of us imagined, especially as we consider how to distribute these things and make them more equal. But that means that it's time to move on to the quiz portion of our show. This week, we're playing a game designed by Sari Reilly, actually.

It's called Toilet Technology or Carnival Contraption. That sounds like something she would come up with. Yeah. So. The rules are very simple. I'm gonna read to you an invention and you're gonna have to guess whether it was created to upgrade a toilet or to enhance

a carnival going experience. You are not allowed to ask me clarifying questions. All right. Invention number one, humans have built all kinds of architecture to satisfy our needs. For separating different rooms, death-defying stunts, or simply nice views. In the 1400s, through at least the 1700s in Russia, people would regularly climb a wooden tower as high as 70 or 80 feet and sit on a hollowed out block of ice filled with straw.

What happened next? I'll leave that up to your imagination. So is that a toilet technology or a carnival contraption? Man, imagine having to climb 80 feet in the middle of the night. Yeah, I mean, like the ice and straw seems like, because like you can go to like a dive bar and still pee in like a

urinal with ice in it. And I'm sure that there must be bathrooms with straw in them somewhere. What is the ice for Sam? Well, I don't know. Does it stop splashing maybe? I thought it was just like the flushing was the ice. Oh right. So you don't have to flush it just melts a little bit.

That's what I always assumed. But I think that's what it is. Maybe nobody knows. And it's just a tradition that lasts to this very day. But yeah, in Montana, there's plenty of big metal long toilets with ice in them. Ice troughs. That's the climbing for me. Yeah, you don't want your pee and poop to be that high up in the air, I'm pretty sure.

And you don't want to have to fall that far. You mean your poop and pee. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a carnival thing. I don't know how this could be a toilet thing You mean your poop and pee. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a carnival thing. I don't know how this could be a toilet thing. It's a trick. This is a trick. It's a carnival thing.

I want to go with a carnival thing too. You are both correct. It is a early roller coaster-like contraption for winter festivals, of course, because it's Russia. It's a giant ice slide. So you would sit up there and then you would slide down the 70 to 80 feet down a slide. The block of ice with straw in it would be your sled. And people would then careen down a 600 foot long icy slope with a sand patch at the bottom

to slow them down once they got there. Did people die? We assume. I think they must have, yeah. And to be fair, like, someone probably peed on it at some point. Yeah, that's true. Oh, well, that's, I mean, yes. What carnival contraption hasn't had pee on it?

The sleds did get more advanced over the years and Catherine the Great built an ice slide with actual rollers on it to make the contraption closer to a roller coaster that we would recognize today. Regardless, it was super dangerous and don't put your children on flocks of ice with straws in them 70 to 80 feet in the air. There was however, a medieval toilet

that was kind of like this. There was just a hole cut into a stone. The toilet was called a garter robe and the hole dumped a long way down into a hole or a cesspit or the moat, depending on the structure of the building. So you'd be pretty high up when you poop and your poop would go like, whee! Wow, so you would have to hear it fall. It would whistle like a bomb. I assume. All right, invention number two. Humans

are social creatures, so you want to hang out in groups. So this invention helps you do just that. though not all of the tubs have to be occupied for the device to work. That sounds like some kind of Roman thing to me. LAUGHS The problem is it also sounds like it could be a teacup ride. Oh! LAUGHS I feel like you cracked it with the teacup thing. I think it's gotta be those teacups. But it's gonna be so embarrassing if it's something a bunch of people are pooping in at the same time.

And then they're watching all their poop like flow into a common hole of some sort just for fun. Yeah. But I think you're right and I think I'm gonna go, I think I gotta go with teacup. That sounds like a seiry way to describe that kind of situation. Now I'm wondering if I should go with toilet. This is the classic trap of the smart person on the show. Yeah, I can go full Sari on this and change my mind and then be wrong. You know what?

In honor of Sari, I'm going to change my mind and I'm going to go with the toilet. The answer is carnival contraption. Of course it is. It's not like the teacups though. It's more like a weird long Ferris wheel, like a short oval Ferris wheel, but it could load four cars at once. So there's less time sitting around.

So it was a way of like shortening the Ferris wheel time, but it also wasn't as high as a Ferris wheel. So it's probably a little less fun. There were only 15 built So it was a way of like shortening the Ferris wheel time, but it also wasn't as high as the Ferris wheel, so it's probably a little less fun. There were only 15 built because it was bulky and hard to assemble and disassemble for traveling carnivals. There were, and probably still are in some parts of the world, communal toilet bath houses

that aren't separated by stalls like we see these days. A lot of imagery online that shows ancient Roman toilets. You just got everybody sitting next to each other on holes. And I imagine chatting, right? They probably were having a really good time. So I don't see any reason why you wouldn't do a circle just so that we could see each other. Yeah.

Hey, Jeremy. It's good to see you. Is that a Roman name? I don't know. Actually, I really don't know. It's good to see you. Is that a Roman name? I don't know. Actually, I really don't know. It could be. Our third invention. Part of the fun of decorations

is creating immersive experiences. So inventors have taken the boring old back here chair to new levels of fun. This aquarium tank, patented in the 1900s, is designed to attach or detach from your seat back, and it can hold aquatic animals, plants, decorative objects, or whatever you can dream up to create an underwater paradise wherever you are. So is that toilet technology or a carnival contraption?

So like your toilet tank, hypothetically, if this is a toilet thing, could be filled with fish and stuff. But that water goes in the thing. It goes in the bowl. But is it separate? Well, I guess it could be. Because the other thing is like, wouldn't it be really bad to have fish on a roller coaster? Yeah, but I'm well, no clarifying. This could be at some kind of like,

I mean, maybe there's like a restaurant at the carnival where all the seat backs have fish in them or like a river cruise or something. That sounds like way more trouble than any carnival would ever go to though. But it does sound like something a weird person would make the back of their toilet look like to me. This definitely sounds like a rich person's toilet. Yes, the richest person's toilet. That's what I'm gonna say.

Yeah, I'm going with toilet. The correct answer is toilet contraption or toilet technology. There are actually multiple toilet tank aquarium patents with the same general concept. You replace the standard toilet tank with a two tank system mounted to the toilet bowl. One chamber works like a normal, though small tank for mounted to the toilet bowl. One chamber works like a normal though small tank for flushing the toilet bowl. And then the larger chamber is an aquarium that can be removed as needed, presumably to care for your fish or whatever. They're connected by the same lid and the handle is attached to one side.

So it looks sort of like one giant aquarium toilet, but you don't have to worry about flushing the fish. So I guess people, lots of people have been like, you know, there's a tank and tanks. One thing I know they do is hold fish. So why not? You're going to like cover it with the toilet seat, right? If you put that up, like there's a lot of them. You can't look at it while you're going to the bathroom.

Yeah. And your fish are going to watch poops come out of your butt. Basically. Weirdly, that doesn't bother me at all. Oh. Does it bother you to be watched by actually does? I feel like now that he's said it, it does. To think that they're behind you

and they're like, hey, it's that guy. Yeah, I can't even see them watching. Yeah. Yeah. Do you guys sit on the toilet facing out? Oh gosh, don't trick me on this please. Yes. All right, well that means the Sam Schultz has come out with an astounding three of three correct

and is leading to Bokeh a three to two. If there's one thing that the common man knows about, it's toilets, so makes sense. Next, we're going to take a short break and then it will be time for the fact-off. This episode is made in partnership with Gates Notes, the blog of Bill Gates. For the last 400 years, toilets haven't changed that much. But that does not mean that toilets are perfect.

There are communities all over the world living with unsafe sanitation conditions, or living in places where traditional toilet and sanitation methods aren't practical. The challenge remains to make toilets that are safer, more efficient, and more accessible to people all over the world. And there are scientists and engineers trying to tackle that challenge every day. The Reinvent the Toilet Challenge was founded in 2011 with the goal of finding the most innovative ideas for safe sanitary toilets that don't need water or electricity and that transform human waste into useful resources. In the ten years the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge has been around, researchers have come up

with tons of ingenious toilet innovations that are helping keep people everywhere healthier. You can learn more about the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge and some of the amazing toilets it has inspired at GatesNotes.com. ["The Toilet Challenge Theme"] Welcome back, everybody. Now, get ready for the fact-off. Our panelists have brought science facts to present in an attempt to blow my mind.

After they've presented their facts, I will judge them, and I will award Hank Bucks any way I see fit. But first to decide who gets to go first, I have a trivia question. The question is, the S-bend in flush toilets is designed to permanently hold water in the curve of the pipe, creating an air seal that stops sewer gas from entering buildings through the toilet. The S-bend and its successor the U-bend represent a simple solution to a dangerous problem. However, these solutions rely on being connected to a sewer system which isn't possible in

much of the world. But here's your question. When was the S-Bend invented? Oh, when was the damn toilet invented? When was the sewer system invented? I have no idea. 1450. All right, 1450 is Sam's guess.

That's not right at all. I'm going to change it. You want to try again? Can I change it? 1850. 1850 is Sam's guess. That's not right at all. I'm gonna change it. You wanna try again? Can I change it? 1850. 1850 is Sam's guess. That was a big difference. That was originally gonna be my guess. So I guess, I guess I'll go with 1800.

Oh, and Deboki pulls it out. 1775. Oh, phew. pulls it out. 1775. Oh, phew. Well done. Good job, Sam. You did feel around that one correctly. All right, Davoki, who do you want to go first? I'll go first.

Hit me. The white-footed sport of lemur of southern Madagascar is a family animal, but it's more like kind of like a loose family. They'll hang out in the same territory, but they wander around on their own. They sleep on different trees. And like a lot of other primates, they won't even groom each other. But they do share one thing, a toilet.

So like humans, there are other animal species that will designate a spot for defecating and urinating. We call these spots animal latrines. And in addition to their immediate and obvious use as a toilet, these latrines can serve other important functions like protecting the animal from predators or helping them mark their territories. In the case of the white-footed sport of lemur, these latrines are likely kind of like a family bulletin board, helping lemurs communicate with each other

using smell. So in 2014, scientists from the German Primate Center reported the results of watching a family of lemurs for over a thousand hours. And they observed that for their latrines, the lemurs usually pick a group of trees in the middle of their territory that's like not immediately close to where they eat or sleep. And all of the members in that family

will use those designated latrine trees. And, you know, when they need to go, they'll just like hold on to the tree trunk, lift their tail and do their business. But while they're there, they'll also sniff and lick the tree, which allows them to communicate with each other via scent cues without actually having to directly engage with each other. I just like the idea that they don't want to see each other, but they will do this. But they'll lick each other's feet off the tree.

That's fine. I don't want to hang out with you, but do pee and poopie. And so these cues can include information about their sexual and individual identity to the rest of their family. And in addition, the scientists observe that the male lemurs from that territory, they would make more visits to the territory's latrines when a potentially invading male

from another territory was like a bit too close to comfort. And in those cases on their more frequent pit stops, the males from that territory, they'd mark the trees with their scent glands, which is kind of like demonstrating, you know, their willingness to protect their family. So all that using their little latrines. I mean, I can relate that there are a lot of people that I don't want to spend any time with, but I would love to know all the gossip in every little part of their personal life. Yeah. Yeah.

We're not so different. Yeah. I mean, don't we kind of do the same thing? We write on bathroom walls. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah, there's always there's a there's a social component to the bathroom that I think is, you know, maybe not ideal But it's definitely there there always isn't movies and TV shows like people are like in high school They're always hanging on the bathroom like being a naughty ways to do that

Did you I didn't ever know anybody who used to do that? So well, maybe it maybe it went away Maybe it's more of maybe it was sort of I was on the tail end of that being a thing that people did. Well, I like that. That's very weird. Does this have any impact on the tree getting peed and pooped on all the time? I mean, I assume so.

They didn't report anything, but I just assume like all poop and pee, it all goes back to nature. Like it all has lots of nutrients in there, lots of nitrogen in there. So there's plenty of- Do they, is there a reason they choose a particular tree? I think they choose the ones in the middle so that it's like in that, like kind of marks the designated center. There are other animals that will choose actually like the opposite.

They'll choose trees that are, or like locations for their latrines that are on the borders of their territories. And that helps mark that for their species So I think some of that's a little bit species dependent cool I like the idea of there being sort of a central pillar of the community Like you just sort of have a ring around it I don't know that I like it being a poop tree, but yeah, but it's the one thing everyone's gonna do. It's true. I Like that a lot Sam. What do you got for me? All right So do you know and I am hoping that this is a universal experience that sometimes when you poop and

You flush the poop your poop leaves a big streak in the toilet bowl Do you know I'm talking about? Yeah, I do and that sucks right because what the hell are you supposed to do? Like if you aren't at home, especially leave the street You can just walk away or keep flushing a million times and hope that the streak will go away. And then you're like, why aren't toilets just non-stick anyway at this point? Like they kind of are, but come on. Tough on Pooper. Well, in response to that last question, a team at Penn State has developed a liquid, Oh my God.

quote, sludge and bacteria repellent spray that can be applied to the inside of a toilet bowl, making the bowl incredibly smooth and poop streak proof. So the treatment is a two-step process. Step one is a spray-on coating of silicone molecules that, when they dry, arrange themselves into little, pokey-outy strands that are one million times thinner than human hair.

Then step two is a spray-on siliconeant that kind of gets trapped in the hairs and that keeps the inside of the toilet bowl nice and lubricated. The silicone plus hair lubricant combo is what's called a liquid entrenched smooth surface or less. The spray sets in about five minutes and the treatment lasts for 500 flushes. And I'll link a video in the notes of them doing experiments with liquid, but then with synthetic fecal matter where they just drop these big globs of, it just looks like poop. It's disgusting.

Why didn't they just use poop? Well, Hank, I don't know. It's a different color than poop, but it does look like poop. What color was it? Yeah. Oatmeal colored? Oh, no. Yeah, was it? Well, oatmeal colored. Oh, no. Yeah, it's kind of gross.

I was hoping it would just be like purple or blue. They should have made it a nicer color, huh? Yeah. Well, anyway, so a streak-free bowl is nice, but that is not the primary reason that they developed a spray. So every day, 141 billion liters of water get flushed down the toilet worldwide,

and according to the American Ceramic Society, only about half the water that goes into the toilet bowl with each flush is actually needed to make, like, the flush happen, and the rest of the water is released just to force tenacious poops down to where they can get carried away by the water. But with the super slippery surface, the poop slides down to where it needs to be. Yes. Did they call them? Was that your language or theirs?

Mine. That was mine. Okay. I just like the American Ceramics Association being like, the scientific designation for this kind of problematic fecal matter is tenacious poops. No. No, that came out of my own brain. problematic fecal matter is tenacious poops. Yes. No. No, that came out of my own brain.

Okay. So with this slippery surface, no extra water assistance is needed to get poops where they need to be. The researchers suggested that with a combo of their spray and then properly calibrated toilets, each flush could end up needing half the water. And on top of that, toilets treated with this spray were found in lab studies to have way less bacteria on them and need way less cleaning, which would make toilets safer. And then there are lots of things that they were taught, like many of the articles also

said that this treatment had other applications, but the toilet thing must be like really what they're banking on because I couldn't find any other applications, but it's probably nice to make a lot of stuff really slippery. So in the future, we might not have to worry about particularly sticky poops, and the future may also hold toilets that are more ecological and sanitary. Well, I love that. I do push back against anyone who cares about the bacterial content of a toilet bowl. The one place in the world I am least likely to touch. I think that comes into play more in places

where a toilet would be helpful, but maybe cleaning the toilet is much more difficult. Or like in hospitals and stuff where you just never know. You just never know if a patient in the hospital is gonna just put their face into the toilet bowl. Well, one thing I was reading about when I was researching was that they found some bidets in a Japanese hospital that were spraying out like some really virulent thing.

And now people are kind of like, maybe we need to rethink bidets. And since those are more common in the rest of the world, it might be helpful to have a cleaner toilet environment. I was feeling like they were pretty dang equal until I found out that Sam's weird toilet spray might save like a tenth of the water used by households in America.

Yeah, but the lemur toilets save the lemurs. And the lemurs aren't using any water. The lemur toilets use no water. They're water. So that's amazing. Yeah. Is that tree coated in a super slick spray that means that the lemurs don't have to worry

about getting sick? No, they're going to lick that shit. They're going to lick it with their mouths. They're going to slide down while they're pooping. I think if you combine our facts, you have the perfect fact. But since Sam was already in the lead, I've got to give this episode to Sam because he's looking out for science and the environment while these lemurs are just looking out for themselves as far as I can tell.

And that means it's time to ask the science couch. We've got a listener question for our virtual couch of finely honed scientific minds. It's from at happily who asks, would it be more water saving for everyone to switch to those airplane sucking toilets and would that even be viable as a public system? That's an interesting question. I feel like it would certainly use less water, but I think there might be more to it than that. So there's the blue water ones where they just like use the blue water.

And I feel like that's just, there's going to be a lot of, that's just like recirculated blue water. But then the sucker ones, I feel like that would certainly save water, but you'd need some way of creating the suction. Yeah. So the way it works, like so our, I mean, our normal toilets are non-airplane toilets use gravity to basically when you're flushing, it's like part of what's happening is the gravity is carrying your water into like the sewer system. But on planes, you don't want a bowl full of water while you're going to the bathroom because you're just gonna slosh around.

Same if you're like on a bus or anything, like it's just, it's not particularly comfortable. So that's why instead they use vacuums. So they're called vacuum toilets. You'll use the vacuum to basically suck everything into the tank after you flush. So in one thing I found where they were comparing the amount of water that these different systems use,

older toilets would use up to five gallons of water per flush, water saving toilets that are, I think more recent will use about 1.6 gallons of water per flush and then vacuum systems use about half a gallon. So what you're saying is we don't need Sam Super Spray anymore. Yeah, or you might be able to like make a combo because there are actually like vacuum assisted toilets out there where like they are flush but they have like an additional kind of vacuum assist to basically help not use as much water.

But there's just not a lot of buying options out there. I guess the market's just not great. But in terms of like using vacuum toilets overall, there are actually places that have not necessarily a lot of vacuum toilets, but they have vacuum sewage systems or vacuum sewers instead of like our water sewers. And apparently they do particularly well in places that have flat terrain because for our gravity systems, you kind of need a certain angle to be able to get things to keep flowing.

Also the water sewage systems don't work great in places where you need to protect the water, places that get really cold seasonally, places with low or seasonal population density, because those kinds of places, you're not getting regular use of the toilet. So people might be flushing a lot one time of the year, and then the rest of the year, it's pretty infrequent. So that can lead to sedimentation. So in some of these places, they've turned to vacuum sewer systems because they're a lot easier to maintain.

They have smaller pipes and they're a lot shallower, so you actually don't even need manholes for them. And so even though they're more prone to breaking, they're also easier to fix because they're super shallow. It's very easy to replace things. So people generally seem to like them, but I think because we have a lot of places with the sort of existing sewer infrastructure is just sort of a matter of like, well, is it worth it to completely take out

the current sewage system and then replace it? Well, I had not ever thought about that being used outside of the traveling vehicle circumstance. I had always assumed, and I guess probably somewhat rightly, that there are reasons why they do it that way on buses and planes, but not on houses, because it works pretty well.

We've got it right now. Especially if we could get a special poop stick coating spray. We just need slipperier toilets. Thank you, Sam, for saying it the way I should have said it in the first place. If you want to ask the Science Couch your question, you can follow us at SciShow Tangents on Twitter, where we're going to tweet out the topics for upcoming episodes every single week.

Thank you to at Pat Kelly Teaches, at XBree Ash, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions for this episode. Deboki, thank you so much for coming on SciShow Tangents. Deboki is often operating behind the scenes, making our games and making our trivia facts and making sure that we don't lie to you. Or except for when we're supposed to lie. Yeah, right, unless we're supposed to lie. And it is a pleasure to, as always,

to have you pop in and out sometimes and share your wit and wisdom with us. Thank you for having me. I've heard that you're also on another podcast that you is about to happen or just came out. Yes. So this week, the week that this podcast is coming out on Friday, August 6, I have a four-episode series coming out each week of August for Scientific American's Science Talk podcast.

In each episode, I'm going to be talking about basically science books. I'm going to be talking about two science books at a time that are on like a similar kind of topic and just talking about like what I learned from reading them and what I enjoyed about them. So if you like reading about science or you're looking for some science books to get you through all your science needs. Tune into that and we can talk about science books together. I do love science books. What's the first one you're talking about? So the very first episode,

we're gonna be talking about fishes. So I'm gonna be talking about the Book of Eels by Patrick Svensson and Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller. God, that one's weird. Oh yeah, it is. I loved it. It was so good. God, that one's weird. Oh, yeah, it is. I loved it. It was so good. I thought it was going to be a very different book than it was.

Yeah, yeah. I thought it was going to be a book about why fish don't exist. Yeah. If you liked this episode and you want to help us out, it's super easy to do that. You can go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents to become a Patreon patron and get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes. For example, our first episode of Poopy Peepypedia came out today. Our only episode of Poopy Peepypedia.

It's our first episode of Poopy Peepypedia. Like look, it went fine and there's more to cover as this very episode makes clear. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's very helpful and it helps us know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, you can just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green.

I've been Sam Schultz. I've been Deboki Chakravarti. And SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who edits a lot of these episodes. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia-Pieto, our editorial assistant is Tabuki Chakravarti, with additional research this week from Sari Reilly. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish, and we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon.

Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing! We are trained from a young age on how to use a toilet. You put your butt on the seat and then you do the thing. But in 1982, William O. Holmes patented an invention that connects the other end of your digestive system to the bowl. This is a fresh air breathing device method, and it was for emergencies. Like if you're trapped in a fire or in danger of carbon monoxide poisoning,

it's basically a toilet snorkel. It's a long tube that you stick into the toilet bowl until you reach the air gap in the water trap. And that air gap may be filled with some residual farts, but it's better than breathing in smoke while you are being slowly asphyxiated before the rescue team gets to you. That's the wildest shit. Well, I mean, I gotta admit,

it's a pretty ingenious thing to think of. Yeah, well now if I'm ever dying in a burning building, I'm gonna be like, there's fresh air right on the other side of this toilet and I can't get to it. Well, you could bring a hose. You could put a hose by your toilet. I mean, I guess there's no reason not to just use a hose,

but I don't have a hose by my toilet. Well, okay. I'm bringing one over right now. Hello! And welcome to SciShow Tangents. It's the Lightly Competitive Science Knowledge Showcase. I'm your host Hank Green and joining me this week as always is science expert, Sari Reilly. Hello. And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz.

Hello. I'm thinking that we may need to pivot here at SciShow Tangents. I'm thinking that the thing that gets attention is talking about whatever not is the most interesting science thing, but the internet is currently arguing about. Because last time we did that intro about NFTs and I think it did fantastically and I have to tell everyone that there is an illustrator named Rachel who has made a bunch of bored Pelican Yacht Club NFTs, I should just start out by saying that. They're beautiful. I want one.

Well, it may be too late because she had a sign up sheet that I think got a little overwhelmed. Well, I should be on there by default. Now you're talking with a podcaster privilege, Sam. Yep. Look, maybe I will splurge and I will commission a Pelican for each of you and for Tuna if you want one. Do you want one, Sari?

Sure, I would do it for the bit. I'll change back for sure at some point because I don't want anyone glancing at my profile and really thinking that I'm an NFT person. Well, as long as it's not a hexagon, you're good. Yeah. They look too good. They look too good to not a hexagon, you're good. Yeah. They look too good.

They look too good to be real NFTs, unfortunately. That's true. They're very stylish. Anyway, did I introduce you both already? I think I did. Yeah, you did. Okay. And you once talked about something

the internet's fighting about. Yeah, so these days the internet's, I don't know if you've caught this, but it was mad about Wordle for a little while. Mad about Wordle? Cause Wordle's gonna be, it was mad about Wirtle for a little while. Mad about Wirtle? Cause Wirtle is gonna be, it's gonna become part of the New York Times now. Oh yes, I hate that.

Because we all thought that of course Wirtle was just a sort of community co-op communist experience. It's a natural resource. It's a natural, it's just a force. And the New York Times of course purchased it, which I think means really what they have purchased is the right to do a wordle without people being as mad at them

because they of course could have just done one. You can't copyright the idea of a wordle. I think it's great that they did that, but Sam disagrees with me. Because what if it costs money eventually? I don't want to pay money for my wordle. You don't want to pay money for my wordle? I would watch a little ad before it for a fine sponsor.

Either you pay money for Wurdle or the Wurdle answer is always a brand. That would be fine with me too. However many five letter word brands, it's just Pepsi over and over again. So I'm saying the New York Times can do whatever it wants and so can the Wurdle guy and I that's my and no stupid. You're stupid.

Yeah. And then Sarah, you're the voice of reason. Go. I stopped playing Wirtle anyway. I got this. This is what the internet goes to the voice of reason. It's going to exit. Public consciousness.

Very soon. That's it. Keep those public consciousness. Very soon. That's it. The end. Yeah, but you know, we can all be happy for the wordle guy. I'm happy wordle exists. It's made my life better. I love co-wordling. I wordle with Katharine.

No way. I saw my dad and my mom doing a wordle together. That sounds nasty, doesn't it? And I was like, no, you had to do your own word. Wordles are sacred. You can't have somebody looking over your shoulder being like, try an A, try a B. Are really good together at wordle. Our score goes up if we're working together.

Interesting, Rachel won't show me the wordle. She like makes me go in a different room when she's doing it and I can't look at it. Wow. Yeah. Sylvia also hides the wordle from me, but we crossword together because that gives us a significant advantage. Crossword is all like, I hate doing a crossword by myself. A social crossword is the only way I crossword.

Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory, but they're also playing for Hank bucks, which will be awarded as we play, and at the end of the episode, one of them will be crowned the winner. We have finally arrived at the end of season three. It's the season three finale, and I mean end fairly literally as the exploration of our body parts concludes with this episode. And so, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from, I think it's from me, right? It is from you.

Thank goodness, because I did write a poem. Okay. There's a topic we're always talking about. Even if the whole episode's about trout, we can't keep ourselves away from it, the thing on which you are likely to sit. Not a chair or a couch or a bench at the park. This thing, no, I fear we keep it in the dark. You see, you don't see it that much. It's quite hard to see, if only because it's where your eyes can't reach. But you know that it's there and you really do care.

You wouldn't ignore it. No, you wouldn't dare. It has to stay healthy for you to keep up your strut. That thing, you know, you're you know what? You're cushion for sitting the end of your gut. You're wonderful, marvelous, beautiful, but. I love that. That's a kid's book for sure. I can't do any kind of poem anymore.

I read a lot of kid's books. The topic for the day is but. Sherry, what is a butt? Because I have some strong opinions, as you know. So a butt? I guess a butt as we discuss. So a butt? Turns out Sarri hasn't known this whole time what a butt is. I've just been making it up. I Google butt and then whatever fact pops up.

But that's why I want to start with, we end each episode, as Hank said, with a butt fact. And for that, we usually lump it into anything that involves an anus, which is like a hole at the end of a digestive system, or cloaca, which is a different hole, also at the end of the digestive system and reproductive system, or poop, which is the stuff that comes out of that hole, or any sort of like opposite of head end of an animal. Like, I think we've done butt facts that are just about tails

or like anal glands that are next to the anus or like anything in the rear rump booty area. Yeah. But the word butt specifically is mostly used for human anatomy. Like technically a lot of animals have butts because it's where the gluteal muscles are. So like the gluteus maximus, the gluteus medius and the gluteus minimus muscles. And in humans, the gluteus maximus muscle,

so like the big butt one is extra developed because of us walking on two legs. So like a cat has a gluteus maximus, but it's just a tiny little pathetic one. They don't have big cheeks. I think at least apes, like great apes, have bigger proportionally gluteus mediuses and gluteus minimuses. But the size and strength of those muscles is relative to like pelvic position and how

they intertwine with the leg movement. So yes, all animals, I think, or all mammals, I would say, have all three muscles, but just in different arrangements. And humans are the one where the gluteus maximus is, as the name suggests, amped up to big. Do we call it the gluteus maximus in the other animals because it's the analogous muscle, but it isn't the max? We still call it that in other animals because I think it's useful.

So what I'm hearing here is something that I have maintained for a long time, which is that regardless of whether butt is legs, butthole is definitely not butt. I feel that way. I guess though, yes, butthole is a subset of butt. No, butthole is not butt. Butt is the fleshy flesh. Butthole is just an area. It's just incidentally where it is. It's just a thing that exists around the butt.

Sarah's not gonna allow this. Yeah. You seem to be saying that butt is like a person thing. And then when we look at other animals, we say like a fish doesn't really have a butt because it has a butthole. Got a butthole for sure though. Has to.

But it doesn't have like the fleshy lumps. And a horse has a big butt. They have big butts. You see it's like, that's a butt. But it's because it's the big fleshy round things. They have a butthole too. But they also have a butthole. I'm just saying that like, you can have a butt

and you can have a butthole. You have to have a butthole. Everything has a butthole, but not everything has a butt. Yeah. Not everything has a butthole. There are some butthole, but not everything has a butt. Yeah. Not everything has a butthole. There are some animals with no excretion. Well, okay. Okay, yeah, you're right.

You don't have to have a butthole. Yeah, you don't have to have a but. But that's it. I think it's like butt cheeks and butthole. Yes. So all of them share the word butt, whether or not they're connected. So you're saying there's butt cheeks and there's butthole and then there's butt and butt includes butthole and butt cheeks

Yes, but we don't have butt cheeks cuz yeah, it's like a Venn diagram cheeks hole in the middle, but It's even butt shaped But shaped oh the Venn diagram is and in the middle. There's a butthole no and the side there's a butthole. No, and the side there's a butthole. That's too bad. Not a perfect analogy, in fact. Where did that great word come from? What, butt?

Yeah, everywhere. I think butt meaning like our physical butt came after the word, the root word for butt. So the root word for butt. So the root word for butt in English is the Proto Indo-European root, B-H-A-U, bow or something, which means to strike. And so like, like headbutting, it's like that, that meaning of butt.

Or like two things butting up against each other or you're re-butting an argument. So like all those words are related. But then at some point, attested by 1860 in US slang at least, so like pretty recent, it became used. It's like the most recent word. It's like, this is the last one we came up with.

Buttocks came slightly earlier. I think that's just they like the fancy version. No one thought to make it shorter because it's like you got two buttocks there. Same thing, butt cheeks. You're referring to both of them. Yeah, it's a plural. Was used around 1300 maybe in Old English. Why is the word for strike a but word?

Why were they like, oh that word is for like supporting or hitting something and that is what we will call the big round flesh globes. Is it because you got two cheeks right next to each other? They hit each other? So they strike. Yeah. My first thought was because he spanked him. You know like that, you gotta give a little pat.

That's what those are for. That was also my first thought, but I think, unfortunately, I think it has to do with the support factor in that, like, you push two things up against each other, and so your butt's kind of like what you push against things. It's like a butting itself. It's keeping us standing up. So what the medieval people want me to do is to hit things with my butt. Yeah, I won't say no to that. You can do a headbutt, you can do a butt butt,

you can do like whatever you want, I guess. I guess with consent. Consensual headbutts. They happen all the time. It's very common in human society. Pro-social behavior. All right. I feel as if I am now an even more of an expert on butts than I already was. We're going to move on to the quiz portion of our show. This week, we're going to be playing a game related to all the other games that we've been playing for the last few weeks. It's called Whose Butt Is It Anyway? Butts have a lot of amazing purposes in our lives,

whether it's something as simple as sitting on or something as essential as creating an exit for all of the stuff that went into your mouth. And yet there are so many possibilities for what butts can do, possibilities that other animals have uncovered. And unfortunately we have not yet. Let's work on it everybody.

We gotta unlock the power of our butts. For today's edition of Whose Butt Is It Anyway, we will be drawing on some of the creative posterior choices that have arisen in the animal kingdom. I will describe to you a feat of ingenuity that involves an animal's butt, and it's up to you to guess what animal I am describing. Whoever gets closest to guessing whose butt it is,

will win the point. Are you ready? Yeah. Yep. All right. Our phones come with face ID now, but these animals, if they had a smartphone, maybe it would come with butt ID because that is how good they are at recognizing butts, including the red butt of an ovulating female.

This ability might help this animal because it often walks closely together in groups and on four limbs, putting each other's rear ends close to each other's faces. So they got really good at identifying each other by butt. What animal is it? Whose butt is that? What's that?

Some kind of ape, right? A monkey, a baboon. Is that the one that has the red butts? Yes, there are a lot of apes that have like weird bulbous butts, calloused butts to sit on and whatnot. Not as fleshy as humans, but colorful, et cetera. It's like a little toe pads of a dog, but it's on the butt.

Yeah, yeah, very... Do they smell like corn chips? Do they smell like corn chips? I don't know, you'll have to ask an ape scientist. I must know. Well, baboon seems too easy, but I'm going with it. He's going with baboon. I feel like a different direction.

I'm going to go with a goat. Still in the mammal family, but I feel like I'm not going to play the monkey game. Well that makes it easier for me because the answer is chimpanzee. Very close to a baboon. Very close, certainly closer than a goat. Research has shown that chimpanzees recognize each other through both their faces and their butts, though the specifics of how that recognition happens

isn't really well understood. Maybe it's just because they look at the butt and they say, that looks like Steve. In 2016, a team of researchers in Japan and the Netherlands investigated one specific property of this recognition by drawing on a very human behavior called configurable recognition. In humans, this refers to the way that we process

the entire structure of the face to recognize other people. That's why it's harder for us to recognize faces when they're upside down than when we're looking at other objects when they're upside down. Or like the face has to fit into our idea of what a face looks like. The researchers wanted to see if chimps experienced

something similar when looking at butts. So they showed them pictures of primate butts to get them to match identical butts together. And when one of the butts was flipped upside down in the picture, the chimps took longer to match them, suggesting that they processed butts in a similar configurable fashion to how we process faces. That's very cute.

They've got a little butt computer in their brain going, that's the cheek link. Yeah. So round number two, the butt as a tool of seduction is not unique to any particular species, but this animal takes it one step further through a very thorough inspection. When mating, the males of this species will gather together in groups to display themselves. When a female approaches, he will boldly display his rear, allowing the female to poke around

in what researchers hypothesize may be a diagnostic tool to check out the male's health. So whose butt is it anyway? Huh, poking, eh? You can poke with many different parts of the body So this could be literally any yeah, I would believe it about so many things like they just look at butts sure Okay, I feel like I have something fun to poke though You know like a bird doesn't have anything fun to poke back there. Do they? Look around I guess they got big feathery butts

Do they? Oh, you can go poke around. I guess they got big feathery butts. Mm-hmm. Okay. I'll go first. I'm still gonna stay in the mammal zone, I think, because I feel like they more defined butthole and butt cheeks.

I'm gonna guess goat again. You still gotta say goat every time, okay. I do it. I'm making this the thing now. Stand around, poke the butts. Hyenas. I'm trying to think of something that the males would be comfortable

standing around with each other. I think hyenas are more female dominated. We had goats and we had hyenas. Which of those is more similar to the great bustard, a bird in the bustard family? Nothing. You'd have to go back to the primordial, a bird, in the bustard family. Nothing. You'd have to go back to the primordial ooze, I believe. So who's got goats?

Neither of these live in the same, well, I'm gonna go, you know, I'm gonna go with the goat. Cause I feel like the bustards live sort of in places that they don't live where hyenas live, for one thing. I think they sort of have like a more similar kind of like stuff that they eat, like habitat and such to a goat than to a hyena. Congratulations, Sari, you got lucky.

You didn't deserve it, but okay. I'm a sad person, let me have this win. Wow! Okay, Sari gets all the points from now on, because we don't want to be a sad person. Yeah, that's okay with me. So the great bustard is the heaviest flying bird. And when it comes to mating,

the male puts on what researchers have called a reiterative and almost obstinate exhibition of the cloaca. Oh, that's, ew. Seems to suit the demands of the picky female greatbustard who will look for a white, clean cloaca with no signs of diarrhea that may indicate infection. Isn't that what, that's the least you could ask for really. To try to present the least infected cloaca possible, the male greatbustard might even

be self-medicating. Researchers from the Spanish National Museum of Natural Sciences studying the bird found that around mating time, the great male bustard ate a surprisingly large amount of blister beetles, surprising because the blister beetle produces a poisonous compound called cantharidin. And when the researchers tested the compound, they found that it was able to kill bacteria, leading them to hypothesize that the male greatbustards might be eating the beetle to kill off diseases and increase their odds of mating.

Wow. That's wild. It's like, I know my butthole is really stinky and bad. I'm gonna eat these horrible beetles so that I can find a girl. Yeah, I need a better butthole. I desperately, desperately need a better butthole. Bro, your butthole is wack.

Number three, these animals have a thing in common with Sir Mix-a-Lot, which is their inability to lie about their big butts. In fact, during a period of their life cycle, these animals will line up from biggest butt to smallest butt for an important part of the next step in their life, which I think is adorable. Whose butt is it anyway?

So this is like the, instead of showing them their anus, they're just like, kind of like you line up kindergartners. It's like line up in alphabetical order, line up in butt size, and let's get ready to rumble. That's what they do. And there's a reason, but I'm not telling you the reason because it's going to give it away. And they gotta be friends, I'd imagine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not butt fighting. They're just arranging themselves by butt size. That takes a lot of coordination, that you're not going to cheat. You're not going to lie. You don't want to. You're not going to lie about it, I guess.

I think I know. You think you figured it out? I think I know too. I think I know a little guy that was very butt-centric and likes to have a lot of friends. And is, yeah, deep inside of the SciShow Tangents lore for some reason. Yeah. It's associated with me very deeply, even though I don't really care about them all that much.

Our friends. The hermit crab is my guess. The hermit crab is Sam's guess. This is also my guess. Sam's best friend and favorite animal of all time. Carved into stone, the hermit crab is my guess. The hermit crab is Sam's guess. This is also my guess. Sam's best friend and favorite animal of all time. Carved into stone, the hermit crab. You got it! They arrange themselves by butt size so that they can switch their shells more efficiently when they grow out of them.

Well, we should maybe start arranging ourselves by butt size. Maybe we'd find something in common with our fellow people. If when we went to a new place, we were just like, ah, similar butt. Yeah. So shells are precious real estate for hermit crabs. So when a large shell appears, they will gather around to see if it fits.

But if the shell is too big, that's not a big deal to the hermit crab because it knows another larger hermit crab might come along and need it. So the small hermit crab will sit and wait as more hermit crabs gather around the new shell. And as they wait for the right-sized hermit crab to appear, the crabs will form a line arranged from smallest to largest so that when the right-sized one does appear and take its new shell, the next crab in line can discard that crab's shell and then pass it down to

the next and the next and the next and the next and the next. What the hell? How are they so aware of their bodies? You tell me, you are the one who loves and knows everything about hermit crabs. Okay, I'll hit the books. It's wild to me that they wait too. It's like, I know this is a good show.

Yeah, they're like, somebody's gonna come by and take that and they're gonna leave a great shell for me That's adorable. Well, that was fun And that means that we have a tie Going in next round because you got one and one and then you both got hermit crab because you're a bunch of smarty pants We're just a pair butt cheeks Next we're gonna take a break. You're the butthole Hank Everybody knew that and then it'll be time for the fact off. The Fact Off

Alright, get ready for the fact off. Our panelists have brought science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. Alright, get ready for the fact-off. Our panelists have brought science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hank Bucks to the one I think will make a better TikTok. To decide who goes first, I have a trivia question. A meta-analysis published in the Journal of Pain Medicine found that music has charms to soothe the savage butt.

The average person across fourteen countries had lower heart rate, less pain, and greater satisfaction if music was playing during their colonoscopies. But not during their bronchoscopies. So that's interesting. It's so relaxing that in one study, fewer people asked for extra colonoscopy sedation when they had music. So what percent fewer people needed extra sedation when getting a musical colonoscopy? Huh, that seems like it would just be human nature.

So 75%. That's so many. I guess that makes sense. A lot of people listen to music while they exercise too and I feel like that's just to keep. Yeah, you were one of the 25% sorry. So. I'll say 40%.

Nice safe answer. It was 12.5% fewer people after extradition, after sedation when you having musical colonoscopies. This is very interesting to me because in the US, we always a hundred percent sedate colonoscopies. We put people a hundred percent to sleep. Whereas in other countries, you just stay awake for it. And then if you have a hard time, they'll put you to sleep if you want. Huh, I didn't know that.

It's wild. Because in other countries, they're like, why would we spend a bunch of extra money on that? But in America, we love to spend money on healthcare. Why wouldn't you? As expensive as you can make it. So anyway, that means that Sarah gets to choose who goes first. I'll go first because it's related. So we, that means that Sarah gets to choose who goes first. I'll go first, because it's related. So we'll have the hermit crab transition. So many corals are colonial organisms that stay put

and let biodiversity come to them. They construct sprawling calcium carbonate structures for aquatic creatures to live in, on, and around the coral reefs we know and love. But not all corals are social beings. Some of them don't want to live in a huge community and around the coral reefs we know and love. But not all corals are social beings. Some of them don't want to live in a huge community. They're loners, wanderers, such as the genuses Heteropsamia and Heteroscianthus.

They don't look like much, kind of like an egg, which is the calcium skeleton, with some gooey tentacles sticking out on top, which is the invertebrate organism that can sting and eat and whatnot. Their common name is walking corals, but they don't have luxurious gams to do the walking. Instead, they find just one friend

and hitch a ride on their butt. In most cases, we found walking corals attached to the butt of a small marine worm called a saponculid, or a peanut worm, apparently because they look kind of like a goosey peanut, but I don't see it. And the coral skeleton provides shelter from predators, and as the worm crawls to new places up to a couple meters per day,

the coral attached to its butt gets dragged along. And as an added bonus for its tentacled protector, the worm brushes off extra sand and whatnot from the coral's body, so it doesn't get all dirty and buried. It's a pretty good mutualism, two friends that grow up together over time. However, some other creatures are budding into this relationship and trying to offer the corals

a better or just as good deal. The hermit crab Diogenes heteropsamicola is kind of an oddball. It's super long and scrawny, and unlike most hermit crab Diogenes heteropsamicola is kind of an oddball. It's super long and scrawny and unlike most hermit crabs has a butt that is not an asymmetrical spiral designed to squish into a snail shell. In fact, their butts are symmetrical, perfect for nestling right into a walking coral skeleton and whatever twists and turns lie within. So this is the first time researchers have seen a hermit crab

that uses living coral as a house that it can grow alongside. And on top of that surprise, it's the freaking exact same mutualism as the subpunculid worms. So the hermit crab gets protection and can squish itself up into the coral cavity for protection like any other shell. And in exchange, the coral hitches a ride

on the hermit crab's butt as it ambles around the ocean floor, though I don't have distances to compare with the worms. I assume the hermit crab can go farther, and the real kicker is that the hermit crab brushes off extra sand from the coral to give it a little extra TLC, stealing the worms' signature friendship move. So somehow, this hermit crab has evolved to take over a really specific ecological relationship from a super unrelated species with a very different butt, which is very biologically weird. And walking corals, it seems, will take whatever butt they can get.

So who knows what other creatures might try to offer a better deal in exchange for the coral protecting their backside. Hermit crabs are very perceptive. That's what I'm learning today. I mean, the more I learn, the more I love them. It's just so much interesting stuff about hermit crabs. I have so many questions about, I didn't even know that walking coral existed. Explain again what the heck a walking coral is. So it's an invertebrate organism, and they scatter polyps, quite small. And then once the polyp lands somewhere, so like it can be on a rock, or in this case,

it's usually like a little piece of detritus, like a shell fragment or something, then it just sits there, plants itself, feeds, and then excretes the calcium carbonate skeleton. And so many corals live in colonial organisms where a lot of the polyps plant themselves in one spot. Yeah. But walking corals are where it's only like one or two polyps that plant

themselves on a small shell and then just grow big enough. They get big. Yeah. And then they stay kind of small and then the worm like crawls into that shell and to their skeleton and just drags them along. But they're like way bigger than a normal colonial coral. Yeah. But walking corals, like, you know, like they look like a shell.

Like, it's like almost like a sea anemone, but it's got this like calcium carbonate thing surrounding it. I'm looking at pictures and I'm just like shocked that these exist and I had no idea that they existed. They look like sea anemones, but they're corals. Oh, the hermit crab's so tiny as well. The hermit crab is real little and he's got a funny butt that fits into that walking coral. And did they develop the little hole

for the worm specifically? That I can't quite tell. It seems like it's a combination. It's like as it's growing, as it's exuding the calcium skeleton, the worm is like, ah, protection. And so then it doesn't grow the skeleton for that, like over that hole.

And then the worm does some maintenance too, like keeping it carved out as more gets exuded as the coral grows. Okay. But if you see like the underside of a walking coral Then like there's a perfect little hole looks like someone drilled it in Well, I'm delighted Sari Sam, what do you got? Well continuing the theme minds about little worms Wow

Plants branch fungus branch, but you know know it's not generally known to branch? Animals. Yeah. We generally make do with one mouth, one butt. Why fix what ain't broken? Well, a handful of marine worms are brave enough to challenge that prevailing viewpoint. They're known as branching marine worms due to the fact that they branch. And they're marine worms. And they're also worms and they live in the ocean. Everything seems pretty normal when you look at their heads. Got normal, just worm heads. Move up the body, still pretty normal worm body.

But then when you get to where you might assume its ass would be, what you find instead is an expansive branching structure of tubby worm hind parts. And not just a couple, but hundreds, or potentially even thousands of butt branches, each connected to the same main digestive system and each with its own anus. Why?

Well, hey, that's what I wrote next. Why so branchy? These little guys live inside of sea sponges and they grow to fill as many of the holes in the sponge as they can, which sounds disgusting. They wanna poop around the whole sponge. Feels like the wrong end to fill the holes in the sponge. I wanna poop everywhere.

You guys don't even know, and I'm about to tell you why you don't even know what you're talking about. Most likely they're doing this to gather food, but there's another weird thing about them. No food has been found inside of these worms, but their guts seem to be fully functional. So what it eats and how it gets energy, if it doesn't eat, is still a mystery. There's some speculation that the outside of the branching worms' bodies could be capable

of digesting food, just as well as the insides of their bodies, based on the fact that their exterior is covered with like the kind of cilia that you find in intestines. In intestines. So basically, their entire body might be dedicated to branching out as wide as possible and touching and digesting as much like free-floating ocean crud as it can. But when you get right down to it, the unfortunate thing is that they've got all these anuses,

but they don't need them for pooping. So it's a total waste of an anus, it seems like. They don't need to, because there's nothing ever inside of their digestive system Well, they must poop but we haven't seen him poop Feel like we would have seen him poop with that many buttholes you're looking at that many butts One of them's got to be pooping. So since we can't figure out what they're eating exactly It's not also clear what relationship the worms in the sponge have like if it's parasitic or symbiotic, seems like it'll be parasitic.

It doesn't seem fun to have a worm and you poking all the little butts out. Every single place, yeah. Yeah, but that's not even all the weird butt stuff because sometimes their butts come to life. So branching marine worms can't leave their sponges because they got a sweet deal going on. So instead they grow a special butt and this butt has eyes

and it has rudimentary guts and genitals. And then their butts break off and they swim off to have sex with other worms' butts. This is my favorite thing about marine worms, is that their genitals become free-living organisms. It's just little guys. It's beautiful. Like, it doesn't mesh with our idea of what an organism is. It's like, so what's that though? And it's like, that's just its genitals.

That's my penis. It's got its own mind. It's got, it's doing its own thing. It has its own life. No, that's the genitals. Don't ask too many questions. Stop asking questions. It's the genitals.

It sounds like no longer a butt. It sounds like floating genitals with eyes. Well, it's a butt adjacent if you ask me. Okay. You got to tell me if it poops and what I'm hearing is it doesn't. It's like, it's a butt. It's a butt. It's a butt.

It's a butt. It's a butt. It's a butt. It's a butt. It's a butt. It sounds like floating genitals with eyes. Well, it's a butt adjacent if you ask me. Okay. You gotta tell me if it poops and what I'm hearing is it doesn't. Well, oh gosh, if it doesn't poop is it a butt? Anyway, I have one more. There's three species of these worms that we know of. One Cilius rhomoca was found by the HMS Challenger in the 1870s when they they dredged up some CBC sponges and they were like, ugh, these are filled with worms. And then another one, Ramisillus something,

Multi-Qdata was found in 2006, so pretty long time later. And then a third was found in January of 2022, and it's named Ramisillus Kingidorae, after Godzilla's three-headed hydra-like arch enemy King Ghidorah. And I had to mention that only so I could talk about King Ghidorah on SciShow Tangents. I don't know. The episode of the day is butts and Sam did bring a worm that has like a dozen of them.

Like a thousand butts. Has a thousand butts. You know it's not cool? One butt. You know it's really cool? A thousand butts. He just did a little dance, everybody. My story had at least two butts. Worm butt, crab butt. And crab butt, it's true.

Worm butt, a worm butt, crab butt, and you had a butt hole on a walking coral. A special butt hole that for an animal, it doesn't even have a butt hole. It's not a butt hole, it's athole. It's not a butthole, it's a butthole. It's a hole for butts. This is difficult. So you guys tied coming into this. So it really is about whose fact is better, which you've made it very difficult.

Sam, I would a hundred percent be on board, except we don't, like I wanna know, I wanna be able to say how these butts work. Okay, if I can find you video evidence of this worm pooping, you'll overturn this decision at a later time, okay? That's how it is. It's the fact that we've never seen them

with anything inside of their guts, which makes me think that that's not how they work. They just absorb nutrients, and so they're like trying to branch out as much as they can inside the sponge to absorb nutrients through their cilia And they just absorb nutrients they don't have to do digestion But you also say that they have a functioning digestive system, but it's never full of food. There's too many questions for me Oh, no That's fair

And also one of their butts breaks off and goes and makes babies. Sari says that's not even a butt, though. Now you're being sad. And now I feel bad. We just I know what you're trying to do. I'm very easily manipulated. Sari, Sari is the winner. We're not going to let it happen.

Congratulations. I love that I now know what walking corals are, and also that they walk only aided by their little friends. Man, I feel like I've been through the wringer. That was very difficult. Congratulations, Ceri, on your win of this episode of SciShow Tangents. And now it's time to ask the science couch, where we've got listener questions for our virtual couch of finely honed scientific minds.

It's from Connor on Discord who asks, is there a scientifically best way to wipe? Like material, stance, pressure, also posture, etc. The only science thing I know is front to back, particularly for people with vulvas. You don't want to get that close to the urethra. You want to get that close to the urethra, you want to get that away. And then as far as anything else beside that, I'm just like bidet. You got like that's it. Yeah, I was gonna say.

Scientifically, it's gotta be best. I recently heard that there's 64,000 times more bacteria on the hands of people who don't have bidets, which is something that I just made up. Well, why would you do that? You didn't make up. I didn't. It was something like that. It was the butt fact from last week's episode.

And it was exactly 64,000. But it wasn't what I said. It was like directly after wiping or something. There was 65. Yeah. Not like generally just walking around town, non-beday people are covered in butt germs. Nasty. Yeah. Not like generally just walking around town, non-Bidet people are covered in butt germs. Nasty.

Yeah. Yeah, so it was after wiping, it was like four sheets of toilet paper compared to Bidet and then the bacteria on the gloves of wiping. Right, there it was. Is there a best way to wipe? Well, I think you hit on some of the big ones. So one of the big ten tenants of wiping is preventing infection and like actually trying to clean it.

So wiping away from your urethra, great idea, prevents the bacteria from going. We learned last week on the butt fact about poopy butts versus bidets. And so in general, what I could find is that all comes back to bidets or a little bit of water or moisture can help get into various crevices and clean up the poop residue better than a dry thing. But you also want to make sure

that you're not leaving your butt extra moist because that creates just an environment for fungal stuff or other irritation in the skin. Also, it might really lead to you ever saying the sentence or the words, extra moist butt, which you never want to do again. Swamp ass. Uh... to use the common tongue.

So that's like one bit of it. I guess that sort of answers material question of like, you want something sturdy, a little bit damp. A caution, I'm not a doctor. So if I want to preface this, I'm not a doctor. Ask your doctor about your butt decisions. But wet wipes, which you might think be helpful with both cleanliness and washing vigor. And they can be in certain situations like babies have so much poop, an unfathomable amount of poop, you got to wipe it up with whatever you can. But wet wipes may introduce chemical irritants instead and create contact dermatitis in both

adults and babies or any aged humans. Specifically ones that contain methyl isothiazolinone and methylchloro isothiazolinone are two compounds. Why don't the wet wipes just have water on them? Yeah, I don't know. There's plenty of them that include like antibacterial or antiviral agents. These are, I think, often preservatives that keep the wipes moist and I don't know exactly, like the ins and outs of preservatives, but keep them fresh on the shelves.

So you wanna walk away from the toilet with a slightly wet butt, is that what you're telling me? No, you should not have your butt be a little wet. You should wipe a little wet and then make sure to dry it. Good. Yeah. The other part of this question is like stance and pressure. Stance doesn't really matter. It seems like experts say whatever is accessible for you,

however you can get your arm or a limb or whatever down there, wiping is better than not wiping. Yeah, I can feel that. Yeah, so wiping too little can lead to skin irritation, but also wiping too intensely also leads to too much irritation. It can mess with- Just gotta find that Goldilocks zone of the wipe.

Yeah. And I thought that the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons has given a name to people, to the condition when you wipe too much and too hard. Can't wait. given a name to people, to the condition, when you wipe too much and too hard. The technical term is called pruritus ony, I think. But also the casual term is polished anus syndrome. Oh, no. Exactly, those birds have that, the busters. Yeah.

We just really overzealously clean, whether it's through blister beetle or through rubbing toilet paper, don't do that. Apparently dermatologists deal with this or like colorectal surgeons are like, you just wiped the heck out of your butt trying to clean it. And so just use a little bidet or a little water and that could solve your troubles more than wiping so vigorously. I just have a question to ask to Hank Green. When you Google polished anus syndrome, why would you click on images? I'm just going to leave that one for myself to be pondering forever. Is that just what I do now?

I'm like, if I'm recording tangents, I'm like, show me a picture of that cute little worm. And then it's like, nope, that's a bunch of irritated buttholes. Well, Sarah, thank you for doing the hard work here today of helping us get to the bottom of the bottom. And we had an absolutely delightful time. If you want to ask the science couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at

SciShow Tangents, where we'll be tweeting out topics for upcoming episodes every week. Or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and Ask Us on our Discord. Thank you to At Boots and Guitars on Twitter, Emily17 on Discord, and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. If you liked this show and want to help us out, super easy to do that, you can go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents and you can become a patron of the show. You can get access to things like our newsletter and our bonus episodes and our Cars 2 commentary. Very silly and very fun.

And also, if it weren't for patrons, we literally couldn't make the show. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's helpful and helps us know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz.

SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz, who edits a lot of these episodes along with Hiroko Matsushima. Our story editor is Alex Billo, our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistants are Debuki Chakravarti and Emma Dowster. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our executive producers are Caitlin Hoffmeister and Hank Green, who is me. And we couldn't make any of this, of course, without our patrons on Patreon.

Thank you and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lit. ["The Mind Is Not a Vessel to be Filled"] But one more thing. The Hoopoe bird is a beautiful striped bird who lives a very butt-centric lifestyle from cradle to grave. The female Hoopoe has a big sack under her tail feathers that swells up with liquid during breeding season.

Oh no. It's not just any old liquid. It contains chemicals that make it smell like rotten meat and eggs. Oh, worse. So what could you possibly want to do with a butt sack full of stinky liquid? Well she rubs it all over her eggs of course. The butt goo acts as a protective layer against bacteria and also as a way to signify to its mate that it's a good mother.

And that's not even the only way that these birds use their butts. Hoopoe chicks are able to shoot a stream of liquid shit right into the faces of predators super soaker style. And there's videos of it and it's great. It's H-O-O-P-O-E. If you want to watch a baby bird, just laser shoot some crap. A snake right in that face. It's great. Oh boy. I think if you just like coated your eggs in this, in like foul smelling goop, it would be good for a lot of things.

Like I would not, for example, try to make an omelet out of that. Yeah. I don't want this egg. No. Great. Congratulations. I don't know why we all haven't evolved that.

We need to do more with our butts. We haven't figured it all out yet. There's something going on down there. Of the powers that we heard about today, which one would you want to have? Well, our power is having a big butt, which is not a very fun power. It's fine, it's fine.

We can walk. You gotta trade walking. Trade your big butt. I would like to have a corkscrew butt that fits into a shell. I actually like my butt just the way it is. I wouldn't choose to switch it for the world. Even if you could shoot a big laser beam of shit out of it?

I don't wanna do that. Sorry. I think I would want a wombat butt. Oh, really hard. Because they're just really sturdy and strong. Lots of stuff off of it. And I could smash people with them if they got too close. Hahaha!

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents. It's a lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, and joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Ceri Riley. Hello. And our resident every man, Sam Schultz. Hello. I always say hello and you always say hi. You've messed up everything, Ceri. Wow. Wow. It's all broken now.

I have a question. So say you're in a situation where it's not unusual for there to be a lot of guys, and there's a bunch of guys around. What percentage of them being mostly to entirely bald, do you start to think this is a collection of men who have gathered together because they have this thing in common

I think that you could have 10,000 bald men together and they'd all be this is gonna be mean they'd all be in denial and not realize any of them They'd all think each other was well, and none of them would think I'm bald no I think bald guys know they're bald I think that it's above 75% I notice where I'm like These are all a bunch of bald guys. Have you started seeing a lot of this happening? I know I'm just kind of curious I'm always curious about the thresholds at which we start to think things are weird because weird things happen all the time But like it's only weird if we think it's weird somebody once once made this great example to me, I don't remember where it came from, but it was like

sometimes you think what are the odds that that would happen? So for example, what are the odds that like a person would stop in front of you who has the license plate one number more than yours? That's so weird. It's just like exactly the same, but the last number is one up. It's very unusual. It's just like exactly the same, but the last number is one up. It's very unusual. But like every license plate you see at the car in front of you is a bit of a marvel. Like the odds that it would be exactly that number every time are very low, but the odds that it would be some number every time are very high. So what makes something weird is entirely just sort of a human experience of what is

coincidental and is coincidental and not coincidental. And so I decided to explore this through the lens of bald men. I think for me, over 50%, whenever a room is over 50% ish, and I know there's all kinds of problems with human estimation of what 50% is, then I think something is going on. But also I have been in enough rooms where there are mostly bald men and they're just like scientists. And like the thing that they're gathering

is not about their baldness. It is just, that is the composition of scientists at elite institutions. And so I like look at it and like, yeah, this checks out, hate it, but. Right, right. Where like, if you saw like a group of doctors and they are wearing white coats,

that wouldn't be weird. Cause that's what doctors do. But if you're at the grocery store and everybody was in an orange coat, it would be very strange. And so I think that we should go to the grocery store and we should all wear orange coats. We should all check out at the same time and no and be like how long is it gonna be?

Before how many people in a row wearing an orange coat is it before that person? Checking out the booth in the middle Orange coat going on. It's an orange coat thing in town. Yeah, I don't think I'd ever notice Personally, I don't think I'd ever notice. Personally. I don't know. I'm having trouble with this question because I think I could just walk, I could go through a whole day seeing 100% bald people and then come home perfectly, peace of mind.

No, not here in the world. Just have some mac and cheese and watch Daredevil. Yeah. Yeah. And run my hands through my luxurious hair. Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic, but for some reason talking about large groups of bald men instead.

Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank bucks, which I will be awarding as we play and at the end of the episode, one of them will be crowned the winner. But first, as always, we have to introduce the topic with the traditional science poem, This Week, It's From Me. You think you know what happens to food. It goes in your mouth and then it moves right through, from your face to your tummy and to your intestines, eventually all the way to your rectum. But actually, that's not true. That is not what happens to food. Well, some stuff we eat is not nutritious. Dietary fiber can still be delicious.

And that's part of our food that we can't digest. And it does come out along with the rest. But food is mostly caloric stuff that helps you think and get real buff. Mostly that doesn't get all the way through. It's absorbed and it becomes new you. Your eyes and your bones and your thoughts and your fears, your biggest toenail and your cute little ears, it's metabolized into thoughts of your past.

And the waste from that process, it turns out, is gas. And so, this is incredibly fun. The waste from your food comes out of your lungs. So if poop is not what becomes of your chow, then what is it, Sari? Please tell me right now. Wow. Oh, I didn't even get to what poop is.

You got stuck on carbon dioxide and then just really. Well, the first thing, I wrote another poem at first, and then I realized that it was wrong because it was about food turning into poop, but that's not really what happens. Your poop's a bunch of stuff. Mostly it's not food. For some animals, they can continue to digest the stuff

that's in the poop and indeed do, so then they will re-eat it. But you know, it's a bad sign if your poop, for a human, contains a bunch of nutritious stuff. That means your digestive system is not working well. In some way, undigested food is food to something else. And the things that are in poop are partially food in that everything is once food, if you think about, like based on your poem.

Sure, sure. The food becomes you and then you become the poop, as in poop is cells that are leftover from like the lining of your intestines, muousy stuff, dead bacteria from your stomach, so a lot of microbiome components, which I guess that is the least you part of your poop, but they still eat the food. But it's wild how much of your poop is just living organisms

that aren't you. But at what point does it enter that and become start becoming poop? All throughout. Yeah, all throughout. So like in your esophagus, like your digestion starts in your mouth, you got bacteria in your mouth, you have saliva, mucous, kind of stuff. And so as soon as you start mushing that into the food, some of that stuff is going to come out in your poop, inevitably. And then as the food travels through your digestive system at different points, as part of digestion, different waste products

get injected. And so somewhere in your intestines, those epithelial cells shed. And then that just becomes like part of the poop ball, kind of like a Katamari in that game, Katamari Dimashi, where you like roll it up more and more. Yeah, the poop is going through and it kind of sloughs off cells and gathers them up into the poop ball. Some of your organs contribute. So like your liver and your gallbladder contribute bile and that contributes to poop. So any metabolic waste products from the rest of your body get funneled into your intestines and get added to the poop ball that is accumulating.

And the bacteria are growing the whole time and they get caught up in there, but they don't all come out. Some of them stay behind and I guess they're growing. They're like eating the food, eating the nutritious stuff and growing. And then it's like 30 percent of the solid mass of a healthy poop is bacteria. I don't like this. This is too complicated. It should just be food.

I feel like we've sent you into an existential crisis. It's not existential. You just made it not fun anymore. It's all in science now. Oh, I see. Well, yeah, I mean, so there's also just like poops, whatever comes out the butt. Does that make you feel better, Sam? Much better. What's diarrhea? What's going on there?

You're just not feeling very good. It all comes out too fast. Water. Yeah, it's usually that the whole thing is moving quickly. That's not the only thing that can cause diarrhea. But oftentimes it's like your body's like something's wrong. Whatever is in here, we need to get is moving quickly. That's not the only thing that can cause diarrhea, but oftentimes it's like your body's like, something's wrong, whatever is in here, we need to get it out quickly. And that's what happens is it just doesn't have enough time

to absorb all the water, but there are other causes as well. The definition, correct me if I'm wrong, Sari, is whatever comes out the butt. Or cloaca. Yes, thank you. Asterisk or cloaca. But yes, whatever comes out the butt because animals also, and like that's where the idea of poop gets squishy or uncertain for some animals because like an anemone or a jellyfish, they have one whole mouth slash butt.

And so any indigestible food comes out the mouth. Or like owls, they poop, and they have owl poop, but the owl pellets, which are the indigestible fur, bones, other cred or whatever that you dissect in third grade science, they vomit it out. So that's not poop. It looks like poop because it is indigestible material that made its way partially through the digestive system, but it comes out.

Well here's a question. I know what you're going to ask. I think you do just by the your face. Sometimes. I hate thinking about this, but go, go. Sometimes a person can get so impacted that poop will back up into their stomach and they will vomit it out. This is obviously a very serious health condition.

It's obviously also extremely gross. And in that case, it comes out the mouth, but it's poop. So it doesn't come out the butt. It doesn't come out the butt. I think once it has made its way that there must be a threshold, much like your threshold of bald men, it has to make it like 90, 80% of the way through your digestive system, that no matter what hole it comes out of, it's poop. If it's like...

Once it's in the intestines, I would think, like past the stomach? Post stomach stuff. Certainly large intestine. Sarie, do you have anything else that you know about the etymology of poop? I do. I have two things that I know that I think are worth sharing.

So poop, meaning excrement, is a fairly recent word. It's from the late 1700s-ish and was started by children, which I think is very funny. It's a word that kids started saying because it sounded funny and it's probably another one of those imitative origins and so you do a little poop and it means like a fart or a poop like any sort of excrement anything that comes out of the butt is a poop right we forgot about farts when we were talking about anything comes out of the butt any solid or liquid thing that comes out of the butt it's poop farts used to be poop like break like fart the word poop used to mean fart or like gas or solid or liquid whatever came out

That's great. That's just the noise your butt makes when it comes out makes a poop I want a list of words that kids made up that that sounds like a good one I don't know if there's any others besides poop. I'm sure there are I want to know them anyway. Yeah So that's great. I love that. And it also, it comes from similar words as to make a short blast on a horn. So like a toot and a poop.

I think we're in the same range of linguistics. But the other thing that I learned, so I was like, oh, poop's recent. What did we call poop beforehand? Feces is what we called it beforehand. Boring. Boring, don't do that. Boring.

Don't do that. But it's, But it is feces is from Latin and it's a plural word from the word feces or fex, which I thought is very weird. F-A-E-X, the plural is feces. And it just means the sediment or the dregs. And so it'd be like at the bottom of your wine glass,

you've got the feces. And then for some reason you're like at the bottom of the human tummy and butt, you've got the dregs of the human system. Sure, I can see that. It's the stuff you don't want that's left over afterwards. It's almost like a polite way to say it. And then all the kids saw it in the nastier ways later. That is always the way.

All right, that means now that we're really informed that it's time to move on to the quiz portion of our show, supposedly nothing in this world is certain except death and taxes. But also, there's poop. Not the most certain thing in the world, but still a constant that is with us from the time that we are born to the time that we die. And while poop does serve the very important purpose of allowing us to pass waste from our body, it's also a very versatile tool that can be used in a myriad of ways even in the early moments of an animal's life. So I'm going to tell you three stories of babies and poop in the animal kingdom, but only one of them is going to be true.

I'm going to play the truth. Which one of them is the true poop fact? Story number one. Babies don't always make the wisest choices. For example, lobster larvae like to eat jellyfish, putting their unprotected insides at risk from the jellyfish's venomous stingers so the larvae wrap their fecal pellets in a membrane that lets them absorb nutrients from their meals while preventing the stingers from poking their guts. So there's a special little poop packet for for

lobsters. Or it could be fact number two. Figuring out the right diet for your newborn can be tricky. So for the small Tibetan animal known as plateau pikas, parents have to go through an extra hurdle to make sure their young ones are well fed. They have to go out and gather yak poop. Scientists have found that pika babies whose parents fed them yak poop were better able to digest grassy meals thanks to the microbes present in that yak poop. Or it could be fact number three. Both of those could have been lies.

So young animals can be vulnerable to attack, so finding a way to protect them can be very important for parents. Armyworm moths keep their young safe in a protective nest made out of poop. Their poop contains a special protein that makes their larva smell like a poisonous berry after they hatch, which wards off hungry birds. There are three facts. Lobster larva wrap their poops to protect their intestines from jellyfish stingers. Pika parents feed their pika pups yak poop in order to help their digestive systems handle grassy meals. Or armyworm moths make protective poop nests so their larva can smell fresh as a poisonous berry when they're born.

These are really good slides Yeah Yeah, I don't know how much I don't know what you're gonna do you guys this last one is especially like That's a hell of a lie. If that's a lie. I'm most dubious about the third one because poop is kind of a constant in life, but there are because poop is kind of a constant in life, but there are some creatures that don't poop. They just get constipated and then die before they have to worry about it.

So like some mites, which are little arachnids, and I know some mayflies live short time, and then some moths. Like I think silk moths. A lot of moths never eat. Yeah, they can't eat. They don't have mouthpieces, and they don they can't eat. They don't have mouthpieces and they don't have their mouths. Shubby. Yeah.

But they have mouthpieces, but they don't like they're not usable. So basically they don't have mouths. They have like they just don't eat. They do one thing. Big, big chunky plump breeding mechanism. That's why that's another way of what I was going to say. So I don't think the third one's... Well, I guess it would be very weird if a moth pooped to form nests, but I'm dubious

about it because I think there are so many moths that don't. Are you pretty sure no moths do or you know some do? I have no idea. Okay. I only looked up the ones that didn't. I'd assume lobster larvas swim around. Do they? Because how are they going to get jellyfish otherwise?

Right? I don't know. Yeah. I imagine they can swim. I don't know what lobsters do. I don't think I've ever seen a lobster or conceived of a lobster not in a fish tank. I think I feel the same way, but I think they just walk on the ground. Yeah. But they've got a little tail. They can maybe wiggle the same way, but I think they just walk on the ground.

Yeah, but they got a little tail. What if they swim elegantly through the water? They can't. Shrimp swim. Lobster swimming is super cool and weird. It's like, cause they go backward. So it's fairly kind of counterintuitive. The hell?

How have I worked here for 10 years and I don't know that lobsters can swim. They look very silly. Yeah, they do go backward. Okay, this is your next TikTok, Hank. Just show them. They're so cool. I'm so delighted. Okay, so lobsters can swim. That means baby lobsters can swim. Can swim. That means they can probably catch up with a jellyfish. They look faster than a jellyfish. They have more presence of mind than a jellyfish too, I think.

So they go, there he is, let's go get him. Yeah. And then the pika one, I know that animals feed their young, to seed their gut microbiome. So like koalas do. They feed them like their own poop. That's it, right? I think so Like give them some of the digestive bacteria Specifically that they need but I don't know why pika would eat. Yeah, I don't know

I guess yak bacteria probably superpowered and the pika bacteria. They're just like oh my tummies But maybe why wouldn't they just have this the bacteria if they ate the yak poop to like. Yeah, that's true. Well, Sherlock Holmes logic for you. We've sure locked our way to lobster. I think I'm going to say it before. I'm going to lock in the last two. I think we're right.

You're both locking in on lobsters. Yeah. Well, we're starting out with this with a sweep. You've both got it. Look at that teamwork. We're so smart. Lobster larva, which are super cute. So there's a lobster called phyllosoma, phras, as good as I'm going to do. They're only a few centimeters long and they float around in the ocean and they also will attach themselves to jellyfish. So they are much smaller than a jellyfish but they'll latch on and the jellyfish help them get around, find a different place to

be. They also are a convenient meal. So they like to eat their tentacles specifically and scientists at Hiroshima University wondered how the lobster larva were able to eat those tentacles without dying from all that venom as parts of the gut should be vulnerable to those stingers. And the lobster larvae died if they were directly injected with the venom, so the scientists knew it wasn't that they were just immune to it. There had to be some kind of mechanism keeping them from getting stung. So they fed them a diet exclusively made up of sea nettle jellyfish and studied the poop, and they found that the fecal pellets were wrapped in a semi-permeable membrane

that allowed nutrients to pass through, but prevented the stingers from getting out. I just saw a picture of a baby lobster that made me tear up. So, look up some pictures of baby lobsters. They're really cute. Look at baby poses on top of a 17 pound lobster for photo shoot.

How do you feel about that? Wait, is this real? Yeah. I'm looking at it. Which is cuter? The baby lobster. This one's gruesome. I guess this lobster is about to be boiled, probably.

All right. So congrats to you both. There were nuggets of truth in the other ones. It is true that animals will eat each other's poop for microbiome reasons. Baby elephants and hippos eat the feces of their moms. But the plateau pika does eat yak poop. This behavior, however, is not restricted to the young. It just appears to be a survival strategy during the winter and might explain why the pika likes to live in the same areas

As the yak even though they compete for the same food. So it's it is a It's like a meal. They're like they're like cute little dung beetles Yak doesn't want it anymore. I'll eat that. I need that. Yeah, absolutely armyworm caterpillars Do use their poop? But to trick plants armyworm caterpillars like use their poop, but to trick plants. Armyworm caterpillars like to eat corn plants, but corn plants don't like getting eaten

and they have some defenses against that, including a chemical that repels the caterpillars. However, the corn plants can't multitask very well when it comes to attacks. So armyworm caterpillars divert the plant's attention by pooping. The caterpillar's poop contains a protein that makes the plant think that it's being attacked by a fungus, and that causes the plant's attention by pooping. The caterpillar's poop contains a protein that makes the plant think that it's being attacked

by a fungus, and that causes the plant to defend against the possible fungal infection, leaving it wide open for caterpillar worm attack. That's crazy. Sneak attack. They tricked Korn. Poor Korn. He's trying his best.

Korn never did anything to anybody. I was like, please don't eat me. And then they were like, hey. I'm gonna shit on you instead. And eat you. Yeah. All right, we're gonna take a break, and then we'll be back for the fact off. Welcome back, everybody.

It's time for the Fact Off. Our panelists have brought science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hank Bucks any way I see fit. To decide who goes first. I have a trivia question in 2005 the ignoble prize and fluid dynamics was given to a team of researchers who published a paper in the journal polar biology titled pressures produced when penguins who calculations on avian defecation calculations on avian defecation. The ignoble described their work as quote using basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up

inside a penguin. The scientists studied chinstrap and the del penguins calculating that a fully grown penguin generated about 60 kilopascals to push out materials with a similar viscosity to olive oil. That's a fun thought. They calculated that number using three main parameters. One was as they themselves described it, the shape, aperture and height above the ground of the orificium venti, which I think is the hole. The second was the density and viscosity of the material.

And the third was the distance the poop travels before hitting the ground. How far did they estimate the poop traveled before hitting the ground? I know we just like just did a sideshow about this. Yeah, we talked about these penguins that shoot their poop away from their nests. Five, six feet. I'm like almost six feet. I'm gonna say 15 feet. Two saris, two and a half. Three, yeah, two and a half to three saris.

That's really far. The answer is 40 centimeters. So that one goes to Sam. It's about the length of the penguin. Sometimes it's a wild answer so far away, and then when Sarah guesses a wild answer, we all laugh. For those wondering about the aperture from which the poop was fired, the maximum diameter was eight millimeters.

So that was some fun research. Who do you want to go first, Sam? Oh, I guess I'll go first. Diarrhea, one of the clearest ways your body lets you know that something ain't right. And that extends from you being sad and sweaty on your toilet after eating something that doesn't agree with you, all the way to entire communities suffering from diseases like cholera that impact the gastrointestinal system. But diarrhea is also a pretty personal affair and people tend to keep it to themselves,

which can make it really difficult to tell when more people than usual are getting diarrhea, which can make it hard to notice quickly when there are outbreaks of diseases like cholera. But a team of scientists are hard at work on a solution to that problem. And part of that solution involves making artificial intelligence

listen to a lot of people taking a shit. That's probably the best way to do it, right? That's gotta be the best way to do it. Because otherwise it's just like knocking on people's doors and being like, I'd like you to share your poop details with me. How's it been lately? That can't be the solution. Perfectly normal. That's what I would always say, no matter what.

LAUGHING So this team based out of Georgia Tech had initially set out to research if the sounds of farts and urination could be used to identify whether a patient had cancer. So the line of thinking is that when people fart and pee, they do so out of tubes that are generally pretty uniform across all of humanity. So if it sounds weird when you fart and pee, you might have an abnormality in your rectum or urethra, which could make the shape of it different and point to a larger problem like cancer. But they also came to the conclusion during this research that listening to the sounds of pooping and peeing tended to be just as effective as looking at video and more reliable than self-reporting, not to mention less unpleasant

for everybody involved. So they also figured out that peeing, farting, solid pooping, and diarrhea all sound very different. Different enough that they can train an AI. We have discovered, I want to read that line in the paper, what we have discovered is that peeing, pooping, farting, and diarrhea all sound very different. Yeah, yeah, I know. If you're the first person to write it in a paper, then you're the one who discovered it, you know?

It's a new game. Pee, poop, fart, or diarrhea. You listen to it and then you click the cue. I can't believe that a computer could tell the difference between peeing and farting. Two very different noises. So the sounds are different enough that they could train an AI to listen to bathroom sounds

and identify what was going on in there. I assume that they figured an AI would be quicker and more efficient than a human, but I also have to believe on some level that they were just sick of listening to pooping noises. So, the researchers pulled as many, and this is a weird sentence, publicly available video and audio clips of people going to the bathroom as they could find. I wonder what APIs they used where they found all that good video data of pee and poop. Well, okay. So they fed all, they started feeding all those videos to an algorithm. And once the program had all that information

It was introduced to a very special machine called the synthetic human acoustic reproduction testing machine aka the shart so God You've got nothing. I thought mine was pretty good, but Sam just keeps hitting it one after another. So the SHART is a series of tubes and soda bottles assembled for one purpose, to replicate the sound of humans pooping and peeing in all kinds of different ways. It can poop, it can pee, it can diarrhea. And when the AI listened to it do all these things, it could identify the type of excretion event that the shark was replicating with 98% accuracy.

So using this near perfect to identifying artificial intelligence, the team hopes to build simple devices that can be installed in public toilets in communities at risk of cholera outbreaks to help them identify the outbreaks early. And now in honor of this fact, I've prepared a game called what the shit

Or we'll listen to pooping sounds and decide So you can use them in the video This is great. The thing is, this is great. It's a nice thing to do. Totally good thing to do. I don't know about the necessity of building the shart. That seems like-

That seemed weird to me too. I don't know why they just wanted to do that. Yeah, it seems like a lot of work to get diarrhea noises when those are available. I almost feel a little disappointed that it can only tell the difference between a poop and a diarrhea 98 percent of the time. They've never had farts or diarrhea, so they don't even know what it's like. Sometimes I feel like the people don't even know.

It's probably like a mysterious one that like switches between. That's true. I guess sometimes you do look and you're like, that's what I was doing down there? Wow. Is that what you I was doing down there. Wow Yeah, okay, yeah without so much personal inflection in there, but exactly that Sam I don't know what just happened. Then you turn around and you're like, well like oh That's a different right than I expected. That's a good point. Sari. What do you have for me? That's a good point. Sari, what do you have for me? Okay, well, there are a couple anecdotes floating around in popular culture about a human fashioning

a tool out of their frozen poop as a solution in a cold, desperate situation. I have recently heard about one of these. Yeah, I can find a good fact too. It's no short, but... I'm pretty good good fact too. It's no short, but... LAUGHS I'm pretty good at this podcast. Uh-huh. So, maybe the fact you heard was there's a Danish author

who explored the Arctic and claimed to forge some type of chisel to free himself from a makeshift snow shelter that got frozen in an ice storm or avalanche. And there's a story about an Inuit man's grandfather who, in a winter storm, made a knife out of his poop, killed and skinned a dog to make a sled that could be harnessed to another dog, and then traveled away. And to be fair, Wade Davis, who is the anthropologist who first recorded the Inuit man's story, has said that it could have been a, quote, classic case of local people having some fun with a visiting tourist slash anthropologist.

But as with many fun or weird anecdotes, the story has taken on a life of its own. So much so that in October 2019, a team of experimental archaeologists published a paper in which they tried to create and test their own frozen poop knife. They regularly try to reproduce other human-made tools and tech, so why not this one? Sure. So the lead researcher, Matin I. Aaron, ate an arctic-like diet that was high in proteins and fatty acids for eight days

and started collecting and freezing his own poop around day four. He and his team formed knives using molds or shaping them by hand, storing the poop knives at negative 20 degrees Celsius, sharpening the edges with a metal file, and then blast chilling them in negative 50 degrees Celsius dry ice

right before the experiment. And to test whether these poop knives could cut refrigerated meat, they tried them out on various cuts of pork, pig hide, muscle, and tendons. I will quote the paper directly for the results because this one's also a great read. Instead of slicing through it, the knife edge simply melted upon contact, leaving streaks of fecal matter.

Ah! Oh, boy. That's not better. It's good. And so they acknowledge that this is a silly study, but generally conclude that we should be dubious or think carefully about poop knife anecdotes or any sort of pop science things. But that's not the end of the story. Wade Davis, that anthropologist that I mentioned at the beginning, interestingly enough, posted a response article also in October 2019, and in my opinion, respectfully questioned why this

research team went as far as to create poop knives in negative 20 and negative 50 degrees Celsius conditions but didn't test the anecdote on dog hide muscle and tendon per the story because it's very different from pig and so in the grand scheme of things you can apply a pair of experimental science to anything but there are a ton of considerations even when you're making knives from your own poop. Yeah, I mean, hey, dogs can donate their bodies to science, right? You just ask, and they have one of those little pads where they put their foot down and they say, yes, mama, science, my dead body, science, yes.

Poop, knifeife. Poop. Knife. Bye bye. So that's, and probably the same situation with using like the poop chisel to get out of a, I mean maybe not. It seems like it's anything hard. Like, it seems like the problem is that the poop knife was melting. So you need to make sure things aren't too warm. And that wouldn't be the case for chiseling out of a ice shelter. So maybe that's real.

Yeah, we don't know until you make a poop knife and then go to the frigid Arctic and then try it out there. So lots of experimentation still be done if you want to experiment on your poop. And if you do, we're on Twitter at SciShow Tangents. We just have 10,000 followers. Now, I think that Sam has to come out as a winner there.

There was just too much. There was too much. And also I hope that it results in better public health helping the world for our world now it's time to ask the science couch we've got a listener question for our couch of finely honed scientific minds. Elient Jepinche on YouTube asks why do lots of people get diarrhea or extra stinky poops while on their period. I know that this is a thing, and that is as far as my knowledge goes. Usually I can bullshit something, but hormones...

As a certified guy with a wife, I do know as well. This is true. That's as far as I can go. Yeah. Well, as a person with a uterus, I can also guarantee it's bad, folks. Everything about periods are bad. I hate them. So hormones is correct, and I can just specify the types of hormones so that everyone can know about this thing, especially people without wives

or uteruses who have never heard of this before and now get to know the horrors of period poops. So menstrual cycles are regulated by hormone levels that change throughout them. And basically the general cycle is that you build up uterine lining, you ovulate, which is you release an egg, your body's all prepped to be pregnant if you want it, and then if there's no fertilization of that egg, then your body's like, well, screw that, I'm going to get rid of it all. And there are hormones that control all different parts of this cycle.

And different predictable phases, everyone's is a little bit different. It's also not something that's super rigorously studied because scientists are scared of uteruses or something like that. I don't know, deemed them less important to study. And so there are two main things that can happen to your poop across this cycle. The first thing is that after ovulation, you get increased amounts of progesterone and estrogen, and these hormones, in addition to prepping your body to be pregnant, if that's a thing, it also has been linked to increased constipation during the menstrual cycle's luteal phase. So right before your period, as you're building up to the pre-menstrual time,

you're getting really constipated because of hormone contributions to it. When it comes time to shed the uterine lining, there is a group of lipids, so those are like the fatty acid compounds that act kind of like hormones. So they're not quite hormones, but they signal to cells. They're called prostaglandins. they signal the cells. They're called prostaglandins and your body makes them for lots of different things like sites of healing if you get scratched and scraped inflammation. But also when it comes to menstrual stuff, it helps signal to the smooth muscle around your vaginal canal and uterus to start contracting, to shed all that built up skin.

And so the prostaglandins trigger smooth muscle contractions in the downstairs area. And there's also smooth muscle around your large intestine, intestines in general. Which is close by. Which is nearby. It's like close enough by, this is wild. Yeah.

And so when you got stuff signaling in that general abdomen area to eject your uterine lining, you also get signaling to eject whatever is in your bowels at the same time. The stinkiness, it's a mystery. People say that it might have to do with a variation of your diet changes. So the hormone cycles of period may mean that you eat different things than you normally would right beforehand because you get cravings. But that is the part that I think is most mysterious.

I could not find any literature on fart or poop smells with periods. And so that's open taking. Lining up for that one, but we could get an AI on. You've got to get AI on. Yeah, we could. We got to get the AI not just listening, but also smelling.

Smelling. I think there's actually not a lot. I mean, this is a very common sort of line of questioning for children and everyone else. That does not overlap a lot with the line of questioning that scientists tend to do. So there's just not a lot that we know about fart smell, which seems like a real mess. One step away from all this like microbiome research that everyone's into right now. It seems like it would be useful.

It's gotta go from, yeah, what is the composition to gotta get a AI nose in there. Yeah, you gotta get those health influencers talking about fart smells and how important they are, and then the research will begin. So if you wanna ask the the science couch your question also on twitter at SciShow Tangents where we'll tweet out the topics for upcoming episodes every week or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on our discord. Thank you to Brian Henrichs on YouTube,

Ariel the biologist on discord and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's very easy to do that. First, you can go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents, you can become a patron, you can get access to things like our newsletter, bonus episodes, which are very fun and always a little bit weird with regular tangents. Special thanks to patrons John Pollock and Les Aker. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen, that's super helpful and it helps us know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your

love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz. Our associate producer is Faith Schmidt. Our editor is Seth Glicksman. Our story editor is Alex Billo. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz-Bazio, our editorial assistant is Debuki Chakravarti, our sound designer is by Joseph Tuna-Medish, our executive producers are Caitlin Hoffmeister and me Hank Green, and we couldn't make any of this, of course, without our patrons on Patreon. Thank mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to enlighten. But one more thing. The northern curly--Tailed Lizard eats almost anything from insects and smaller reptiles to French fries and cheese scraps.

So they're known to have some pretty gnarly poops. But when a University of Florida PhD student performed a CT scan on a lizard with a really big tummy, they were in for a record-breaking surprise. They found a fecal bolus, aka a big poop, that comprised 80% of its body mass but wasn't being digested, leaving the lizard to starve with its other organs atrophying. The poop was made of congealed pizza grease, sand, insects, and an anole lizard all clumped together in a mass that couldn't fit out of its cloaca. So unfortunately, the story doesn't have a happy ending. They euthanized this lizard to put it out

of its constipation-induced suffering. They couldn't cut it out of him? I don't know that we have good systems for stitching a lizard back up. For surgery on a lizard. Get him in the ER right now. Help him out. Dad! SciShow Tangents is brought to you by Henson Shaving, which is a family-owned aerospace parts manufacturer that's bringing precision engineering to your shaving experience. Visit hensonshaving.com slash tangents to pick the razor for you and use the code TANGENTS and you'll get two years worth of blades free! INTRO Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host Hank Green.

And joining this week, as always, is science expert, Ceri Riley. Hello. And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. I'm back, baby. He's back, baby. All right, you two, what's your teen name? What does that mean? Ceri, just tell me and the people will figure it out. Don't explain this to them.

Okay, don't explain it. Don't. Everyone's favorite thing and inside joke that no one knows. Yeah. My, my teen name is Mountain Dew Grape Fanta. Mountain Dew Grape Fanta is a surprise to me, because of how Grape Fanta is so gross. It's so delicious is the thing about it. And all cool teens know that Grape Fanta is the hidden gem of sodas.

Oh yeah, and all cool teens know that Mountain Dew is bad. I don't know, actually. Maybe these days they don't like Mountain Dew. Maybe Mountain Dew is a Gen X treat. Well, I guess the other thing is I'm very, I was very uncool teen. So maybe that's even more appropriate for my teen name to be so counterculture and just oblivious to it

because I'm in my own little bubble. Samuel Schultz. Okay, my teen name is Squirt Lime Coke. That's a little raunchy though. is squirt lime coke. That's a little raunchy, though. My name is. Say that on the on the science podcast. Nice to meet you. That's one of those nicknames for children that sounds quite innocent, but actually isn't.

Well, when it was invented, yes, when it was invented, it was fine. Since then, the Internet's existed and, you know. I used to be Dr. Pepper, Pamplemose, yes, when it was invented, it was fine. Since then, the internet's existed and you know. I used to be Dr. Pepper, Pamplemousse, La Croix, of course. I think I've come around on Dr. Pepper and I might be more just like straight diet Pepsi, Pamplemousse, La Croix. Diet is almost cheating because diet anything is disgusting, but. I don't think you're right, Sam. I think a lot of people really love diet Pepsi and especially diet.

Oh, that's true. I know people who drink so much diet Coke. That's true. I think maybe more people like diet Pepsi than real Pepsi. Who likes real Pepsi show of hands. Sorry to Pepsi. The only time I really, yeah, they're really, I think Pepsi tastes better than Coke. So if you're at a restaurant and somebody says,

we don't have Coke, Pepsi's okay, you go, absolutely, I love Pepsi. Even better. And then they kick you out of the restaurant. I'm thrilled. This is a social experiment, you're not supposed to say yes. Sari, you have said so many things that have shocked me. Just about your sort of like,

the way that you perceive the universe differently from me. My perception of beverages. I prefer Pepsi is really throwing me for a loop. Every week here at SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one up, amaze and delight each other with science facts and also teen names, which we still didn't explain to you. And I guess we're just not going to.

I don't even know if you can watch the thing that explains what it is anymore. I don't know if you can. There's probably clips. I bet there's clips. Just search teen names. Our panelists are playing for glory, but also for Hank bucks,

which I will be awarding as we plan at the end of the episode. One of you people will be crowned the winner. Now, as always, we're gonna introduce this week's topic with a traditional science poem this week from Sari. A central quest of being human is to somehow delay death. And today that has turned into an avoidance of bad breath. Is there something more innate

that's going on behind the scenes or does culture dominate all of our rise and shine routines? It seems that the root of hygiene is fighting off disease by wiping up or washing hands off after you have sneezed. There is something biological, behavioral in genes. Ants and cats and birds and apes all take the time to preen. But then there are subjective things like shaving off your hair. Is it for bugs or social pressures that shape what we bear? Mammals cleanse their

fur of dirt or grime that leaves a sheen, but how much soap or elbow grease even counts as clean? So when it comes to hair or skin or teeth and caring for you best, a part of it is science, but then we make up the rest. We just make up the rest. It's the topic of the day is hygiene, which what you're saying is, I probably do more than I need to, is what I'm hearing. And I'm gonna take that to heart. God. It does seem like you can look around

at all the rest of the animal kingdom and be like, we're doing something wrong. Cause they aren't doing any of the stuff we're doing. And they don't stink too bad. I smell my cat every day. She smells great. Yeah, but cats do wash a lot, but just in their own way. I wouldn't want to do it the way the cats do

by just by licking myself. But also just so you know, animals experience a great deal of negative consequences from not having hygiene. Okay. I often hear this as like, why don't dogs have to brush their teeth? And hygiene. Ah, okay, okay. I often hear this, it's like, why don't dogs have to brush their teeth? And it's like, well, eventually they get dental disease

and it's very bad and they die off of it. Okay. Especially in the wild. Well, you can see, you can like open up your little dog or cat mouth and you can see them, they're kind of gooey and gunky. They got stink mouse for sure. Definitely.

And you do gotta brush their teeth at some point, if you like want them to maintain like their teeth not to fall out. I have never brushed my cat's teeth. I guess I haven't brushed a cat tooth. I've used to brush my dog's teeth. I wouldn't I'm scared to go in there with the cat teeth. Pointy and small.

Yeah, I was recently told that it was kind of cool for my cat like cats biting is just like part of you know fun and play and so And so I should just let him do it. I'm like, no. Who told you that? Did a cat tell you that? I don't remember. Did your cat tell you that? Yeah. It was just cats on a podcast.

Yeah. Pretending to be people. That's probably what it was. It's fun. Just play. Mm-hmm. With your cat. Has anybody ever actually seen the McElroy brothers? I think they're just three cats.

Hygiene though. Sarah, what's hygiene? Yeah, I couldn't think of a segue, so that works great. Yeah, I think there is a lot of misconceptions around hygiene, but there are also a lot of unknowns about hygiene, which makes room for those misconceptions. Colloquially, it's any sort of cleanliness around yourself or your surroundings. That can mean microbiologically fending off germs or disease in various ways, washing hands or cleansing yourself of dirt or grime that could become breeding grounds for bacteria or other things. Medically or societally,

it can mean sterilization of equipment or like water or sanitation systems, waste disposal systems. But then I think a lot of times when people talk about hygiene, they're talking about like morning routine stuff. So do you bathe or do you like wipe your butt when you poop? Or are you modifying your keratin in some way?

Are you like cutting your hair or trimming your nails? Are you brushing or flossing your teeth? And then, and like those in general have a relation to medicine. In general, taking care of yourself in those ways can reduce the chance of abrasions or infections or whatnot. But then also layered on top of that are societal or cultural pressures for hygiene and what is hygienic in one society can vary or not. Some cultures encourage beard

growth and maintenance in some ways. Some cultures are like clean shaven is more hygienic. Different smells are considered more or less hygienic. Deodorant is a fairly recent invention and push to society and covering it up with perfume or other artificial or concocted scents, as opposed to having natural body odor. Oh, and I guess to the argument that hygiene, we don't have to do it. We've been doing hygiene for a long time. I tried to look back at human history, what's tricky is that like you can't necessarily

fossilize hygiene. Like you can't tell how someone smelled based on their bones. Those aren't stinky Hank bones. Those are fresh Hank bones. But we have evidence through artifacts, so like combs or stones that we think were used as like abrasives to remove hair or like old versions of razors or like art and texts of people describing things. Al Jizari, who is my favorite Mesopotamian roboticist, he made all kinds of this whole book of mechanical devices with these elaborate illustrations. Is he the only Mesopotamian roboticist?

No, probably not. OK, probably not. But he's the famous guy. OK, yeah. I mean, there's a bunch now. Yeah, sure. Yeah, that's true. But in an older times, times, you know.

People living in that part of the world, working with robots. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He did it a couple thousand years ago, and he designed an automaton for ritual hand washing, like peacock, or spout, or things like that. Interesting. In the Bible, they're always anointing people with oils and they're washing each other's feet. The hand washing thing is like, robot is interesting to me, I guess, because I know about like the doctors who were like, hey, you don't got to wash your hands,

don't worry about it. Is that just like something that we had gone back and forth on? Or were they washing their hands because they were sticky? Then germs were another thing that we didn't think about yet. I guess your hands would always been sticky and honey all the time probably. Yeah, probably. I think we went back and forth on it. I think a lot of earlier hand washing from what I have gathered was more intuition based. So like something disgusting happened and I must cleanse myself. My hands sting. Yeah, yeah, I'm stinky. I got to

fix that. Or there was a lot of association with like you can't use unwashed hands to pray at an altar in various religions or a lot of like religious significance or spiritual significance. There was a lot of like you must wash before you interact with a sacred object. And that was probably because when people didn't wash their hands, they got sick. And so then there was some correlation

between unwashed hands and the devil. Yeah, sure. But then I think to cross over from religious intuition or personal intuition into scientific practice, there was a level of doubt of like, well, why are you making this do this? That makes sense. So, and I assume that the word hygiene comes from just the guy named Gene and we just like say hi to him at why...

He's the guy who washed your feet. Hi Gene. While we do our teeth. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he did your feet. He did your hands it was from a guy from the Greek word hygiene which is the healthful art from high geese which is healthy or sound or hearty or living well who is person and

all these like concepts were personified as the goddess Hygieia. So there was There was a guy lady. There was a lady. Yeah a lady guy. Um So I could go back in time to ancient greece and say hygiene and people would be like you're from here. Welcome. Welcome home You're like she's that way And they just be following you around being like, you want me to wash your feet? I don't know why we do that, but we do that a lot. Not again, thanks though. They're pruned up. Anyway, uh, let's make more podcasts by playing this week's game. Are you ready to do it?

Yeah. Yes. Humans are always finding new and interesting ways to approach our grooming and going through history shows us all sorts of examples of our hygienic ingenuity. So today we're going to be going back in time to revisit some of those developments with a game of the scientific definition. I'm going to name some kind of item to you, and you're going to have to both describe to me what you think that item is, and whoever comes closest to the actual answer as judged by me wins. Word number one, phrase number one, thing number one is the mustache spoon.

I feel like I'm at a disadvantage having never had a mustache. I don't know if Sam has ever had a mustache. I can't. Sam's never had a mustache. Well okay Hank, you never know me. You've never known me my whole life. But that is true sadly, I tried to grow a mustache at the beginning of the pandemic, much like many people did. Didn't work out. That was a safe time to try to grow a mustache. Because nobody was seeing you had a mask on all the time. Nobody was seeing you. It's great. But I cannot confirm cannot. I tried for months didn't work So my facial hair is finally growing back after chemo and the I swear that I have way more facial hair than I did before And I'm like should I try and grow it out and see if I have facial hair now I think you should go out mustache for sure the mustache spoon

Maybe it's not even have to do anything with the mustache, but it probably does. I bet it gets boogers out of your mustache. Cause I bet you get, I don't know. Maybe you get boogers in a mustache. I would be worried about that. Okay. A mustache spoon. I think it is. I like, this is real stretch of my empathy. I can't imagine what it's like to have a mustache. I'm going gonna say it is something you use to like apply. So instead of removing something, you applying something like how you apply beard oil, you apply mustache oil with a mustache spoon. And it's just like a little tiny guy that you're like,

dee dee dee, dee dee dee. All right, I think that though you're both wrong, Sari is closer because the thing is going in, not coming off. The mustache spoon was designed to help men with large mustaches eat food without getting dirty. So obvious. It's so literal. So literal. It was very common in the Victorian area in many countries for men to have big, elaborate mustaches, but that of course comes at the cost. Eating was particularly perilous.

If they were consuming something hot, the wax holding their mustache shape in place might melt. Oh, no. They could end up with food in all of their facial hair. So they had the mustache spoon, which was a spoon with an added piece of metal called a mustache guard. The guard was set above the bowl of the spoon. So that is the user brought the spoon to their mouth. The guard would prevent anything from touching the mustache. And in addition to mustache spoons, there were mustache cups that featured various guards to protect the user's mustache from hot tea or other beverages.

You could also not slurped. You could have just gone like like here comes the airplane. Oh, and then that's it. No, no sipping, nothing tilting into your mustache at all. Teas too. Just these are fancy times. Just drink your tea like the guy from the man show with two beers. Yeah, the guy from the man show with two beers Guy from the man show

He probably had a must remember that God, I'm old. I'm still old you guys. I'm just as old as I was at the beginning of the podcast a little bit more even All right the man show port number two if is Shagnikins. What? Sphagnikins? Sphagnikins. Sphagnikins. Wow.

Would you pass that sphagnikin? Hey there. Nice sphagnikin you got there. I'm trying to like test it out, see the taste of the word. Applied makeup. I'm going to say applied makeup of some sort. Applies makeup. You apply makeup with a sphagnican.

I do think it's like some sort of like napkin. Oh, shoot. Or something like that. I'm going to say it's like to wipe off a seat before you were going to sit. It's like a a specific handkerchief, a heavy duty handkerchief where you're like, I'm going to I'm going to do something. I'm going to sit here, wipe it off with a sphagnum. Sam, just for clarity, you're still on makeup, right?

Yeah, I know it's a butt thing, but I'm still on makeup. It's not a butt thing! But that might have gotten you closer than Sari, but Sari, certainly with a heavy-duty napkin, has got it because it was an early commercial feminine hygiene product which gets its name from one of its main materials which is sphagnum moss. I don't know if you know about sphagnum but it's a moss and it's absorbent. So prior to the development of sanitary napkins, people who menstruated would use pieces of cloth to absorb the fluids. Instead, the first disposable product for menstruation was sold in 1896 by Johnson & Johnson, so they were up to it even back then. But it didn't sell particularly well. The creation of better surgical dressings during World War I led to the creation of better menstruation products as well, including the Sphagnikin,

which was created by the Shagnum moss products company. It's like, what do we do with this moss? I just got to come up with more ideas. We got so much damn moss. A sphagnum moss can absorb more than 20 times its dry weight in fluid and also has antibacterial properties. As a sanitary napkin, the moss was wrapped up in gauze and sold with safety pins that you could use to attach it to undergarments. The package featured a girl dressed up in a uniform similar to those that Red Cross nurses wore.

Ultimately, Sphagnakins didn't sell that well, though losing out to Kotex and its cotton equivalents that showed up in the market around the same time. I think the marketing strategy was wrong. I think you don't dress them up as a little nurse, you dress them up as a little like forest gremlin. A little bog creature. You wanna be one with nature?

Use moss. Of course you're not gonna win with cotton if you have a little nurse. You have to lean into your demographic of who loves moss. The lady curling out of the swamp. Yeah. Well, Sarah's killing it so far. And our final word, word number three is a beard token.

I, I'm probably going to lose this one, but it popped into my head and I love it. A beard token is like a locket for a beard that you loved very, very much. Once you shave it off, you collect all the little shavings and you put them in a beard token and then you're like, ripped to that beard. Man, I love that guy. Like, keep it close to my heart. Yeah.

I don't know. I'm not even gonna try to top that. It's like a thing you'd give to a barber and they'd cut your beard for free or something like that. One free beard trimming, please. That is definitely closer to the true fact, Sam. Wow. Okay. In that it is like related to money. And it's a kind of currency. So beard tokens were a coin given to Russian men in the 18th century to show that they had paid their beard tax. So you could be like, the official would be like, you got a beard and you'd be like, Nope, I'm good. I did it. I paid my

beard tax. Because in 1698, when Tsar Peter the Great returned from a trip to Europe, that inspired his plan to Europeanize Russia, in part through style changes like removing facial hair, he gathered various diplomats and aides, and then he bought a barber's razor so that he could shave all of their beards himself. Wow. Shave it by the Tsar.

Amazing. Presumably, he could not be the personal barber to all of Russia, so he instituted a beard tax to incentivize people to shave their beards. To keep your beard, you had to pay 100 rubles. If you were a peasant, you could keep your beard until you went into a city, at which point you might have to pay a hundred rubles. If you were a peasant, you could keep your beard until you went into a city, at which point you might have to pay a small fine.

What the hell? But to show that you'd pay your tax, you'd be given a token of copper, or if you paid more, you could get a silver one. The coin was embossed with the image of lips, mustache and a beard. The tax was eventually repealed, though, in like a hundred years. It's a handsome repealed though. And like a hundred years. It's a handsome token though. Yeah, I want one. I bet they're very expensive.

Maybe we can fake them. We can make a fake beard token. Make fake beard tokens. This company right here already is doing that. You can get them for $10. You can buy them from the Smithsonian as well. So. Dang it.

Other people had the idea for the beard token of the month club. That's Hank's new club. All right. Sarah is still in the lead with two to Sam's one. Next up, we're going to take a short break and then it's time for the fact off. Sideshow Tangents is brought to you today by Hinson Shaving. I am a beard shaver and as such I gotta tell ya, shaving can be not fun. You can go to the store and get some cheapo razor that's gonna clog up with every swipe and go dull almost instantly or you can get a subscription razor and be stuck with a razor that only takes like one kind of razor head and

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And by using aerospace-grade CNC machines, Henson makes metal razors that extend just 0.0013 inches. Which, if that sounds pretty small, that's because it's pretty small. It's less than the thickness of a human hair. And that means a secure and stable blade and a wobbleless shave. And the razor features built-in channels that make clogging virtually impossible. Even better, the Henson razor works with standard dual-edged blades that you can buy any old place to give you an old-school shave using new-school tech. Once you own a Henson razor, it's only like $3 to $5 per year to replace the blades. Henson Shaving wants to make the best razor not the best razor business, which means no

plastic, no subscriptions, no proprietary blades, no planned obsolescence. That's wild. Who would do that? Only a mad man. Look, I shaved with a razor from Hinson for this very episode. Look how smooth. Am I silky smooth? Baby bottom smooth? Absolutely. The thing that I really like about it is that there's no plastic handle. There's no nasty little plastic cartridge that gets all gunky and you have to throw away every few weeks. It's all metal, baby. So it's helping me cut down on my plastic consumption, which hosting the show has made me very anxious about.

It's time to say no to subscriptions and yes to a precision engineered razor that will last you a lifetime. Visit hensonshaving.com slash tangents to pick the razor for you and use code tangents and you will get two years' worth of blades for free with your razor. Just make sure that you add them to your cart. That's 100 free blades when you head to henson-shaving.com slash tangents and use the code tangents. changes. INTRO Now get ready for the fact time. Our panelists have all brought science facts to present in an attempt to blow my mind, and after they have all presented their facts, I will judge them and award Hank bucks any way I see fit.

But to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question. Fish can't just rely on the water all around them to keep them clean. Sometimes they need help removing ectoparasites on their bodies or bits of diseased skin. Luckily, in the ocean, there are small fish that help with that problem. These fish occupy small areas called cleaning stations that other reef fish can show up to for inspection. Between 2005 and 2009, scientists studying an area near the Philippines watched as pelagic thresher sharks approached a cleaning station run by a fish called the blue-streaked cleaner wrasse. How long was the average shark visit to the cleaning station? I love that you said run by like he's got a little business, which he does.

Yeah, he does. Got a little business. Come on by. Visit me. I'm a fish. I think they're getting these sharks out. I think they're in there for four minutes tops. I think they're luxuriating. I think this is a, well, sit on down.

We're going to wash your feet, clean your ectoparasites. I think it's like 30 minutes, like a full spa session. Oh, wow. I don't think a shark has 30 minutes to spare, but okay. Yeah. Sam is much closer. It's six and a half minutes, 6.27 if you want to get all the significant figures in. In the paper, the scientists called the visiting sharks clients, which is even better. So cute. During the period they were watching the cleaning station,

they documented 97 visits. See, they got a lot of sharks to get through. You're right. They take walk-ins. The longest visit, though, was 23 minutes. Oh, that's the king of sharks. Like the deluxe treatment. That was a nasty shark.

That stinky, stinky shark. The shark was like, you didn't get the bit back there. Oh, boy. Yeah. It's like when you want to run through the car wash a second time. They always say that these like, do you want to go around a second time? And I'm like, nah, I don't actually care. All right.

That means that Sam, you get to go first. Alright, here I go. Health, hygiene, and beauty tips are basically inescapable. For better and worse, things doctors hate, mind-blowing beauty tips of the stars and today's hottest hairstyles make up a not insignificant portion of clickbait headlines and banner ads. And even before the internet, magazines full of the same kind of tips sat and continue to sit in probably every grocery store in the entire world, I would guess. But just how far back does the human urge to give other people hygiene advice go? In

2016, a team of scientists were excavating the ancient city of Lachish, located in modern-day Israel on the Lachish River. This area was first inhabited by humans approximately 5,500 years ago, and one of its early inhabitants were a group of people known as the Canaanites, I think, a Bronze Age ancient Near East civilization that was around during the second millennium BCE. So that's some time between 2000 BCE and 1001 BCE. So this team is digging up some Bronze Age structures. They're finding all your basic archaeological type stuff like jars, pieces of jars, etc. But they also found a little ivory comb, which as we have maybe mentioned at some point, I don't think we ended up doing it. Combs aren't that uncommon an artifact, I assume. We probably used a lot of combs in the species history,

but the team recognized this comb as a lice comb hygiene So they sent this comb back to the lab determined it was from about 1700 BCE And they found a fossilized louse nymph on it. So that's pretty cool after that the comb sat around in the lab I guess sometimes they would check it out again to see if they could find more lice or something I don't know but then in 2021, a researcher took a good look at some of the engraving and texture on the comb and noticed that the comb was in fact,

engraved with 17 one millimeter tall letters, forming seven words in the Canaanite language. In English, it translates to, may this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard. Ancient hygiene advice from the distant, distant past. But here's what you gotta know about the written Canaanite language. It's thought to date back to enslaved and lower class people of ancient Egypt who weren't allowed to or able to learn the large and complicated hieroglyphic writing system used in Egypt.

But eventually they were like, oh, we need a way to write our language down. So they adapted a few select hieroglyphics into symbols which translated into specific sounds, thus creating what many researchers consider to be the original alphabet from which the Latin alphabet descended from. So, back to the comb, archaeologists have found examples of Canaanite writing on other artifacts and ancient graffiti, and they've been able to piece together the language from those and other ancient documents about the Canaanites. But this comb was the first time a full sentence from a primary source written in the Canaanite language was found, which also makes it most likely the oldest sentence that we've ever found written in an alphabetic script.

And much like the magazines and clickbait of today, it's giving unsolicited hygiene advice. So, you know, things don't really change that much if you think about it. That's fantastic. And I see how that would be helpful for the removal of, like it's very specifically purpose-built for the removal of bugs. And now we've got a very similar device today

with those like super close together times that you use with your child when they get lice. But they don't have fun messages on them. I feel like that's a missed opportunity. They should. This may this separate you from your gross bugs. Kid, you nasty little kid. You nasty little kid.

Or like, you know how popsicle sticks have jokes on them? Oh yes. You have that on it. Yeah. What did one lice say to another lice? I don't have a punchline. This sucks or something. I don't know.

I don't know what lice do. I guess actually. Oh, yeah. This sucks. All right, Sarah, what do you have? So despite the fact that so many humans deal with menstrual hygiene directly or indirectly, the scientific literature is pretty scarce and public knowledge can feel even scarcer. So in 1980 when the Centers for Disease Control

and Prevention, the CDC, pointed to super absorbent tampons as a cofactor in causing a brand new illness called Toxic Shock Syndrome, there was quite a public health scare. And I don't know about other people, but instilling fear of toxic shock was a key element of my teenage health education. And this incident is actually the origin of all that. So for context, toxic shock syndrome is a pretty rare illness, but it can be life threatening if you don't get treatment quickly. It can happen in any person infected with enough Staphylococcus aureus bacteria that there's a buildup of specific toxins in the bloodstream, which causes an overreaction from your immune system that leads to things like fever, low blood pressure, and organ failure or possibly death.

There were hundreds to thousands of cases of toxic shock syndrome in the US in the 1970s and 1980s, many of which were in menstruating people using super absorbent tampons, which is why the CDC sounded the alarms. And after years of research, I had to include this because I wanted to know. We learned why this happened, including things like the newish synthetic absorbent materials, introducing pockets of oxygen into a typically anaerobic environment, or causing abrasions to the vaginal wall, and the higher pH of menstrual blood. All of that kind of combined to the perfect storm that let already existing staph bacteria in some people multiply to dangerous levels.

And mucus membranes allow things like toxins to absorb into the bloodstream more easily. But at the time, we didn't know any of that. And the CDC and FDA were just like, oh no, to be safe, people should avoid super absorbent tampons because they seem bad. But then they realized that companies were all making different claims about absorbency. And thus, the Tampon Task Force was assembled in 1982 by the American Society for Testing and Materials. It is a truly wild name for a group of companies, social activist organizations, and researchers that together had to try and

agree with each other on menstrual hygiene, which is the wildest assignment to give that giant group of people, including Johnson and Johnson was there too. No SMAGNAMOS. Yeah, the SMAGNAMOS people, however, had just gone back to the swamp. Yeah, where they should be. But basically, they came up with a standard scale of whether a tampon is regular or super or super plus by measuring the grams of fluid it can absorb. To do that, they designed a wild contraption called the syngina, short for synthetic vagina.

Oh, boy. They shoved a tampon in and trickled salt water on it to measure absorbency, which is weirdly similar to all those commercials nowadays that people make fun of. And anyone who knew even a fraction about menstruation was like, wait, salt water is nothing like the blood mucus cellular debris goop that tampons actually have to deal with. Then one lab went a little rogue and tested with expired donated red blood cells that they sourced from a nearby hospital and found that tampons actually absorb

a higher mass of blood than saline solution, which you think would be valuable data that other people would follow up on, but it didn't lead anywhere, mostly because the tampon task force was disbanded in 1985 after three short years, and we were left with synginas and saline solutions as the industry standard that continues today. And the whole reason I found out about this

was a study published in August 2023. So very recently that tested menstrual hygiene products with expired donated human blood and said that was unusual in their press release. So basically, there's a ton of room for research and important health public health knowledge with this sector of hydrain. And we need more tampon task force and other types of task force. I mean, blood isn't hard to get, especially non human blood, which definitely seems like it would be better than saline. So I just feel like that should be the thing that we

did. That seems like a pretty obvious conclusion to draw, but. But now did this have something to do with toxic shock syndrome? That like, did it turn out that like it was, it was like, we just had to change the way we were doing it and it became less of a problem. So toxic shock syndrome like spurred the formation of the tampon task force and it allowed people to choose less absorbent tampons and like standardized them. So people could choose ones that are more suited for them. And then separately from this,

there's just been like better education on it. And I think better materials used where like, don't use super absorbent and leave it in for 12 plus hours. You wanna like use a less absorbent tampon and change it more regularly. But scare people appropriately, which is very hard to do. Scaring people appropriately is so hard because there's a bell curve of scared. In order to get everybody to appropriately scared, you have to push a lot of people into

too scared. I don't know how to solve that problem from a public health perspective. Synginus. Synginus are the answer. That's what we need. Yes, just make whole human bodies without brains and we'll do stuff to them Yeah, what can we scare people bad enough with that that'll become normal and good? We'll figure it out. Oh, I have to choose a winner. That's a weird gesture. I have to make sense to me.

Yeah, just let the truth flow through me. Pray to Hygiene, the Greek goddess. Yes, you're communing with Hygiene. Hygiene, how's it going? God damn. Okay, I think it's wild to me that this is so new and that we have so recently, I mean, this is both quite new,

but that we have so recently found the first ever sentence and that it's related to hygiene. That's gotta be the winner. That's gotta be the winner. And I think that it puts Sam over the top. I was gonna say, I think it's not the first, it's the first sentence in an alphabetical thing. I think there's probably a, yes, a different dialect

or a different writing system that has it early. But yeah, it's our first sentence. In our alphabet and something related to our alphabet, which is dope. All right. Now it's time to ask the science couch where we've got a listener question for our couch of finely honed scientific minds. Lukealook on Discord asks, how bad or not bad is aluminum and deodorant or antiperspirant? If it's bad it's very hard to tell. We have not found a lot of evidence that it's bad and that usually indicates that if it is bad it's very a little bit bad but I actually don't know

well enough to say that with any confidence. You don't know you can't say very a little bit bad with any confidence. Is that what I said? Yeah. Yeah, that's what I mean, though. You know what I mean. Yeah, I do. You hit the nail on the head. Anyone coming to Tandance for a clickbait headline answer is going to get

sometimes very a little bit as the answer for sure. Yeah. as the answer for sure. So the first antiperspirant was called Ever Dry and trademarked in 1903 in the US. And Ever Dry's active ingredient was aluminum chloride. And the way that aluminum salts work in antiperspirant is that they cause an obstruction of sweat gland ducts. And so what we think happens is the metal ions react in some way with the mucus polysaccharides, muco polysaccharides and clog them up. Um, and they kind of damage the epithelial cells, the skin cells around the glands and they form like a gooey plug that blocks

sweat output for a given amount of time. Like it seems like something you shouldn't do is how I feel. It's like the body's normal function. Let's stop that from happening. And that was like the main anti-sentiment when antiperspirants first came out was that blocking sweating, sweating is natural.

Blocking sweating is unhealthy. And I think that kind of snowballed into even after we found formulations that let the aluminum salts exist. And the three big ones that like people are worried about with these aluminum compounds in antiperspirants are cancer, specifically breast cancers, because you're applying antiperspirants in many cases to armpit area. But there hasn't been any convincing evidence or consistent evidence that antiperspirant or aluminum compounds from antiperspirant collects in breast tissue, leads to cancer, tumor growth or anything like that. Even if they found detected a couple chemicals, there was no link between that and breast cancer risk. The second one was Alzheimer's because in the 1960s, a couple studies were finding levels of aluminum in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.

And people just made the findings, like no findings were replicated, that aluminum and antiperspirant could make its way to the brain in any way or has anything to do with neurodegeneration. It kind of stays goopy in your sweat pores and that's it. And then same thing with the third one was kidney disease. So there were concerns when dialysis patients were given a drug called aluminum hydroxide to help people control high phosphorus levels in their blood and then their kidneys couldn't remove the aluminum fast enough. But taking a drug orally is very different from like rubbing something on

your skin with your sweat glands. And they're two very different, like aluminum hydroxide is very different from aluminum chloride or other compounds and antiperspirants. Again, the aluminum that you rub on your skin or get into your sweat glands, like once that mucus or the dead skin or whatever you're doing to clog up your pores gets excreted and you sweat again, it kind of washes its way out. So according to dermatologists, as far as I have read, I tried to investigate these as thoroughly as I could. There isn't really anything, but I think it's rooted in this idea that it's unnatural to

block your sweat and, oh, metal chemicals around our body. Uh-oh. Um, which I don't know, is always, is always like really complicated when you're communicating health and medicine. Like I, I'm poking a little bit of fun and maybe being a little bit mean because I know our audience is also like trust science, but I think this can be really scary for people who don't necessarily understand, um, and hear messages like because I know our audiences also like trust science, but I think this can be really scary

for people who don't necessarily understand and hear messages like aluminum in my deodorant could be bad for me and my brain or could cause cancer. It is remarkable though how good we have gotten at, like you hear about like an increase in the chance of cancer and it's much smaller than it sounds, but like epidemiologists are looking at how do you you're looking at like a hundred people per hundred thousand, you know, and it's like, how do you get that to ninety nine?

Is what they're thinking or ninety seven or ninety five. But eat fiber, eat healthy exercise. We know what works. We don't have to do fat diets. It's been the same fat diet forever. Eat less sugar, eat plants, eat protein. That's it. Fiber. There should be fiber in the food. This is what my doctor was telling me yesterday. It's like you need to be healthier now because you're you got all this shit wrong with you because we poisoned you. And I'm like, what does that mean? It's like just eat, you know, it's what it sounds like, man. But what about the what about the Cadbury eggs you find on the ground?

I don't know. YouTube just sent me a bunch of Pringles. Great. Anyway, I don't know YouTube just sent me a bunch of Pringles Anyway, let's end the episode if you like this show you want to help us out super easy to do that first you go to patreon.com slash size show tangents become a patron get access to our newsletter our bonus episodes and big news we have hit Patrons on the tangents patreon which means're going to be doing our minions commentary. I don't know when we're going to do it. Get ready. It's physical. You're a whole lot of bits.

It's physical. If that sounds good to you, be sure to join our Patreon at any level to get access to that commentary as soon as it's released. Second, leave us a review wherever you listen. That's very helpful. It helps us know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love

for SciShow Tantrums, just tell people about us. We'll see you next time for our first episode of our annual Trick or Treat money plus surprise guests. But for now, thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Ceri Reilly. Uh, and I've been Ceri Reilly.

Sorry, I panicked. I was like, am I next? Sideshow Tantrums is created by all of us and produced by Sam Schultz. Our associate producer is Eve Schmidt. Our editor is Seth Glicksman. Our story editor is Alice Billow. Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz-Bazio. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarthy. Our sound designer is Joseph T Tunamettish, our executive producers are Nicole Scheme and me, Hank Green. And of course, we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you and remember, that mind is not a vessel to be filled. It's my heart. But one more thing.

In many cases we learn about personal hygiene because our parents tell us, wash your hands or don't like that. And a study published in February, 2023 suggests that the same might be true for mandrills, the biggest kind of monkey. These researchers observed mandrills grooming each other socially with one exception. When many group members were infected with gut parasites, some females avoided grooming the perianal region of other monkeys. The researchers classify this butthole avoidance as hygienic behavior because it helps these females avoid parasite-related illness.

Over the six years of observations, they notice that mother-daughter or maternal half-sister pairs of mandrills share similar hygiene when it comes to perianal grooming. So basically, it seems like the moms are telling their daughters not to touch someone else's parasite-ridden butthole. Great advice if I ever heard it.