SciShow Tangents - Bonus Backlog Bonanza - Ep. 11

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

This bonus episode was originally posted on Patreon on January 31, 2022 titled "Tangents Bonus Pod Ep 11: New Year New Poopoopeepeepedia."Original Patreon description: Find out intimate details about Gummybear's poop, Professor McGonagall's anus, and the psychology of New Years resolutions!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents!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

🎵 Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents! Tune of that helicopter that was going over your house is going over my house now. It just arrived. So I guess we live in the same town. It's our bonus Patreon podcast. We're going back to basics here on this week's episode of Poopy Peepypedia, and we're going to answer some questions for you, our beloved patrons.

But first I have to talk about my cat's shit. Help me. Perfect. People are paying good money to hear this. But reach out on Twitter if you know how to handle this. My cat is a long-haired cat. He's a beautiful boy. But occasionally he has a soft poop and it just gets all over everything. And then, so I have two questions. One, how do I stop? Can I shave my cat's ass?

I guess is question number one. And two, what do you do? How do you clean a cat? Especially by yourself, because Catherine and I did it together this morning and I have no idea how I would have done it alone. Because it is a, it was a, the cat was not happy about the process. Is it cause he's a baby that has got soft poops or is it? I'm hoping that as,

but like he's not that much of a baby anymore. He's six months old. What you feeding him? A variety. We haven't settled on a food yet, unfortunately. Okay, soft or hard or? He's getting a mix of both and he's very picky and it's frustrating because I'm like,

you can't be picky, you're six months old and you're giant. You need to eat, you need to eat. You're growing lad. You're growing, yeah. You're like. My cat has perfectly solid bowel movements, so nothing I can do to help you there. She's in fine health.

That sounds great. Hail and hearty. This is what we all want for ourselves and our loved ones is nice solid poops. Speaking of though, I recently was exposed to the knowledge that when Professor McGonagall turns into a cat, we get to see Professor McGonagall's anus. Wow. Because that's how cats walk around. And also just the students of Hogwarts get to see Professor McGonagall's anus.

And the question is, like, is this a power move where it's like, look, I'm Minerva McGonagall and you're going gonna live in this universe where you've seen my butthole, or is it just like, we have to not think about it because a cat's a cat, even if it is a person. I think it's that one. Are the rules like, can she turn into a cat without a butthole if she wanted to?

Or does she have to turn into a cat with a butthole? Does she need to like sort of maintain the whole anatomy of a human, of a mammalian body? Yeah, exactly. to a cat with a butthole. Does she need to like sort of maintain the whole anatomy of a human, of a mammalian body? Yeah, exactly. I feel like you gotta maintain all the physiology. Where's your butthole gonna be if you don't put it on the cat?

You can kind of hide it in a different spot than under the tail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just put it at the top of the tail where it's furry. Yeah. And then you have a poop tube. Yeah. It comes right off the spine.

We really settled everything. And this is what you get on the Cars 2 commentary. For two hours. It's us being really upset about the meat inside of cars. Where's the poop come from? We find out in the movie, actually, so we know the answer to that. Let's do what we're here to do, you guys. So we've got some January-appropriate questions about New Year's resolutions.

This first one comes from Kit, who asks, since we all joke and acknowledge that New Year's resolutions are made knowing that they will be broken, is there evidence that shows that goals and resolutions set around the new year are less successful than those set at other times that don't have so much pressure or cultural significance attached, or do more people follow through with their new year's resolutions than we hear about?

That's a good question. And I know nothing about this except that I personally have to set three new year's resolutions and going in, I need to know which ones I'm actually going to fail on. What are yours this year? That's my strategy. If you wanna talk about them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's Work Out More, which is one of the ones I'm not gonna do. Don't Drink Soda, which is one of the ones I'm not gonna do. And then the other one is Go Out, either with friends or with Catherine once a week. Wow. That's the ones I'm not gonna do. And then the other one is go out either with friends or with Catherine once a week. Wow.

That's the one I'm gonna do. That's a lot of going out with friends. So tiring. Or one or the other. Not both. So it could be a full week where it's just wife. I guess so. It's wife life really, isn't it?

Or a full, yeah, just like do like six weeks in a row where it's all just me and Catherine and then be like, oh, we'll throw in somebody there. That's nice. How do you do you make them and then instantly go, that's not the one I'm going to do? Or do you sit with it for a couple weeks and you're like, that's the one I've decided I'm not going to do. Well, it's more like I think to myself, hey, I want to do these three things.

And then I look and think about who I am as a person having lived in my body for 41 years. And I think, well, that's not gonna happen. I just don't understand why you set yourself up for two failures when you could just, do you eject those ones from your mind or at the end of the year are you like, I failed those two? Yeah, no, I fail at them as soon as I fail at them, which I've already done. I'm literally on the last, the last like little dregs of a liter of Coke here. Though this one did take me three days to finish.

So you're drinking less... No, you're drinking soda slower. It's so gross now. Which I don't think is a good resolution at all, because then it tastes worse. It seems worse for your teeth. And you're not drinking any less, really. It's called the slow soda movement. That's my slo-da. It tastes like very sweet cold tea. Disgusting.

So gross. The fizz, no fizz, no cold. You're taking all the good parts of soda and drinking the bad. I guess it kind of is like eventually you can maybe be like, soda's disgusting and then you don't want it anymore. Yeah, soda's actually pretty gross. It doesn't taste good at all. It's warm, it's flat. So that's me though.

There's no signs behind any of this. And I might also fail at the going out once a week, which currently I have not succeeded at because I haven't figured out childcare, but my son has been sick. Have you done it this week yet? No. You're screwed, buddy. It's Friday afternoon. Maybe it doesn't have to be every week.

That's what people who make New Year's resolutions say, as far as I can tell from the literature. And there are four studies out there, and I was only able to find three of the four. So it's not a... That seems like a huge, huge deficit. I would think that there's be way more study than that. No.

So this is like a tricky to answer about people in general, because we don't ask about New Year's resolutions in the census or anything like that. There were some surveys. And I think what I'm gathering here is we don't care about New Year's resolutions nowadays. There are so many more important things to survey about that it's just dropped off everyone's radar. Because even the surveys that I found,

the American Medical Association did one in 1995. The Epcot poll did one in 1985. The Gallup survey did one in 1992. This is pre-2000. After the millennium, we gave up. There's an Epcot poll? What's the Epcot poll? I don't know. I like the idea that we gave, we just gave up on studying new resolutions. Just like everybody's like, this is, this is just sad. I think it was actually done in, in Epcot. Electronic Forum Epcot poll. Attraction in Communicor East at Epcot from December 23rd, 1982 to March 16th, 1991.

Wow, they're doing important work over there. That was a long study. That was like nine years. Yeah. And for several years, I should have say this for a freaking fact off, for several years, they compiled results of the Epcot poll and they were distributed to newspapers throughout the country. So like the pre-show area, people just were shown short films and then opinions were solicited

and guests like push buttons to talk about their opinions. Interesting. Wow. So. That's, I mean, that's like, that's not a good methodology because you're testing people who can afford to go to Epcot. Yeah. And you would choose such a boring exhibit.

You're getting the most boring of the middle class. I certainly wouldn't shop there. If I spent my money going to Epcot, I would be on a roller coaster. There aren't any roller coasters in Epcot, first of all. Nah, nah, nah. This should be a thing where you get in a line and like one in every ten people, they're like, here, have this like data pad, tell us a little bit about yourself. And then like science is done. Yeah. Like we did science and scientists can like apply to Disney and be like, hey, I want you

to do research on this. Because look, what are we doing? We're not doing anything. We're in that line. So sorry, I didn't let you talk about any of the other results. I'm just kidding. No, that's okay.

So according to those surveys, they didn't talk about success or failure, as far as I can tell, or the data is lost to time from my eyes. But about 40 to 50% of those groups that were surveyed also participated in making new year's resolutions. So I guess the people who are more willing to respond to surveys are also the kind of people who

make resolutions. That's kind of the conclusion you have to draw. And so that's in general, making resolutions. But then independently from those three broad swaths of people pushing buttons, do you make resolutions or not? There was a study in 1972 on college students for 15 weeks for the success rate of New Year's resolutions. I didn't have the least information about that. There was a study in 1989 that tracked 213 adults making New Year's resolutions and the variables that predicted success and failure. And there was a study in 1989

that tracked the self-change attempts of 200 people who made New Year's resolutions over two years. Self-change attempts is one way of saying that. Oh, God, that's exhausting. Just those three words together. So many self-change attempts in my life. And that really is the essence of New Year's. Before I talk about the factors, that's the essence of any research in New Year's resolutions.

It's like, what is the psychology of people saying, I want to change something about myself and what factors psychologically, socially, et cetera, play into that being effective or that being something that you throw out the window, like Hank not drinking soda? At what point do you say, I'm not going to change? For Hank, it is instantly. I once had a news resolution to not eat meat for all of January. I was like, I'm going to go easy here. I'm not going to eat meat in January. Like I'm going to try this out. And I was at a new year's party and we were like, happy new year. And then we were all hanging out and I just like, uh,

like five minutes after the ball dropped and I was drinking champagne, I just caught myself with a big old meatball in my mouth. I was like, oh damn it. This is a very quick fail of no meat in January. I don't think you can be held responsible before you go to bed. I did, I did actually do it and I did, did it in January. I don't think you can be held responsible before you go to bed. I did actually do it, and I did it in January. It was a pain in the ass, I'll tell you, to all the vegetarians out there. Jesus! Like, even to now, it's hard to, like, eat food if you don't eat meat.

I'm like, this is the year 20. It was, the year, like, 2017 or whatever. But I'm still like, I can't get a sandwich anywhere. Yeah, this is the year 20, it was the year like 2017 or whatever, but I'm still like, I can't get a sandwich anywhere. Yeah, you gotta cook it all yourself basically. Sorry. Or eat salads. What you're describing is a quality that they describe in these studies as readiness to change,

which is that people who instill change in themselves and psychologists who study this progress, see that people progress through a series of stages when making self-change. So there's like your pre-planning, your pre-contemplation, contemplation where you're thinking about changing, preparation, which is when you prepare to change, action. Step four is where you actually change. And then maintenance, which is when you keep to change, action. Step four is where you actually change. And then maintenance, which is when you keep up with the change.

That's too many steps. So there's a lot of like thought. What if you're so sleepy? Yeah, well, this is the thing. All those thoughts that you're having are like, ah, it feels like I'm doing something, but you're not. Yeah. You're doing nothing.

Yep. And you could be psyching yourself out, but like that's part of it is thinking through your resolution. And so it seems like with your soda drinking one, and I don't even remember the other, oh, the exercising one, you've gotten to the contemplation stage, Hank, and then you're like,

do I really wanna go past this? No, no, I'm not gonna prepare or act on this. And so that lack of readiness is what people report or what researchers distill as like a reason for failure because people are like, I'm just going to act, but they haven't done those like mindful thought about how they're going to change their behavior or replace it. Something that like a lot of art, like people on art Twitter and stuff are like, don't talk about your projects, just show them when you're done with them.

Because when you talk about them, then you're like, ooh, that was fun. I talked about it already. So I have the satisfaction. Is it similar where you're like, I could work out more. And then you picture yourself on the little StairMaster and then you're like, great job. I got, I got the, I enjoyed the reward of thinking about doing something hard. Yeah.

Is that, is that what is happening you think? I think so. I think that that's some component of it. And like as a person who has written two books, I see like if I talk about it, I write less that week. It's amazing. It's like there's a direct correlation. So I need to shut the hell up.

And also I'm very tempted to write about, to talk, to like tweet about writing when I'm while I'm writing, because it's like the easiest way to procrastinate. It's like, oh, I'm writing. I should tell people. And then I'm like, oh, I'm not writing anymore. Wee, I'm writing. Is that what you tweet with me? No, I go on Twitter and I'm like, God, writing books is hard.

And then. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which it is. It's like, I go on Twitter and I'm like, God, writing books is hard. And then, Oh yeah. Yeah. Which it is. There's a lot of that on Twitter. Yeah. That's a big component of it. It's...

So you're saying I have to write a word like tens of thousands of times, but like different one every time? Different ones, yeah. And they all gotta make sense together when you're done. Yeah, they make so much sense. So that, what you're describing is not only, so readiness was one of the big predictors

of positive outcome. But the other one, which you're getting at with like, can I write a word? Can I write 10,000 different words or some of them seem to make sense is a quality called self-efficacy, which in psychology circles, I'm not a psychologist, but to my understanding is it refers to everything about your cognition and behavior and belief in yourself about whether you can do something. So if you have high self-efficacy, then if you think you can do something, you're more likely to follow through. And if you have low self-efficacy, then you're like, oh, I'm garbage. Like, I can't, I'm going to think something. I can't do that. And so

like this idea that you can think I'm going to write a book and then actually get to writing as opposed to like dicking around like that That is a measure of self-efficacy or like a reflection of self-efficacy, I guess and people with higher self-efficacy generally turned out to Follow through with their resolutions more often. How do I get nice for them more self-efficacy? Where is that come from? What? I don't know Do they put it in Coca-Cola cuz Must be nice for them. More self-efficacy. Yeah. Where does that come from? I don't know. I got me a bottle of that.

I don't know. I don't matter. Do they put it in Coca-Cola? Because I will get it if I, if they put it in Coca-Cola, I will get it. We don't know that they don't, so I guess you should keep drinking it. I feel a little bit jittery from my last dregs. From your old coke. From my old coke.

From your concentrated coke. So that old coke. From your concentrated coke. So that's good. I just have to get a lot of self what? Efficacy? Self-efficacy and readiness to change are the two things. Then there are the other, we've gotten derailed, hello tangents. But the two that don't seem to play as big of a part, but people include in their New Year's recommendations are social support.

So like telling other people that you're going to do this thing or having other people to do the thing with you. That can be helpful and it can be helpful like later on in the year, but right away if you're just like, oh, I'm going to join a running club, that doesn't help you. Like it doesn't correlate with your overall resolution success. And then behavioral skills are another category. And I couldn't quite suss out what this one was, but I think it is being okay with failure. So being okay with the lapses in the way that you were okay with eating a meatball.

So it's not as much of an indicator of resolution success because if you're too, my sense is, this is where I'm spitballing on the study, if you're too okay with the failures, then you're just like, I'm not going to do a resolution at all. I'm just gonna fail. But if you're okay with some lapses like, oh, I miss, I was having a really bad week. I don't wanna exercise as often or things like that. And you're okay with the slips and you don't take the slips to mean that you've derailed yourself completely, then you're more likely to say

that you've succeeded at the resolution. But asterisk to all these studies, they were all like phone calls with people or college students who were probably giving gift cards. And so if I was someone who is not good at completing resolutions, I just wouldn't show up to that either. So I think a lot of the people,

like a lot of these studies are like, of these 200 people, half of them succeeded at their resolutions, which seems quite high. And it's probably because the people who succeeded at their resolutions also answered the phone when the researchers called and were like, oh yeah, I'm proud of myself. Where if you fail, you're like, I don't want to have that call. I don't want to talk about how much I suck and I have no self-effects efficacy, how mainlining

Coca-Cola straight into my nose veins. Is this just New Year's resolutions or is this any resolution that they were saying? This is just New Year's resolutions. I couldn't find anything on other resolutions. I think the psychological community doesn't know how to quantify other resolutions. Like there's plenty of research about motivation

and like this idea of self change. Like that's what you want to look into if you're curious about other resolutions. But I just wanted to hone in on these couple new year's resolution study because I thought they were very weird and funny. Do you make resolutions, Sari? Oh, I think I set intentions,

but they come at any point in the year. I don't really hold any significance to the new year, but it's like some months I'll be like, like I've done Inktober before where you do an ink drawing every day in October. And I'm like, ah, that's a fun thing to do. And then I do it and then I stop. Or I, like this January, we're doing 30 days of yoga,

me and Sylvia, but I don't know if we're gonna do yoga every day for the whole year. It's just like, oh, for these 30 days, we're gonna do it. And so far we're so good. We're 21 days in, we've done it. Every day. Yeah, ain't bad. All right, so have we, I feel. We're 21 days in. We've done it. Everything's... Alright, so have we... I feel fairly well informed on this. I mean, my sense is that a lot of like self-change type stuff is sort of gone over ad nauseum in a lot of pop science.

But the hard science is like, we're not sure. Which is very human, I guess, where what we do know is that it's hard to change ourselves. Yeah, it seems like this is such an incredibly nuanced question is why people go to individual therapy. And rather than just, of course, there are things that resonate broadly, which is why pop science exists and is why like self-help speakers exist. But for most people figuring out what motivates you and like what you value in a more careful setting and a

more individualized setting is what causes behavioral change. And so it's hard to do these kind of big research about these kind of questions. And it does seem like if you have the sort of, if you have the space and the resources, it's a lot easier to do self change. That's what I was gonna say too. It's so hard to know how other people do it

and just to be like, well, this person posts art every day on Twitter, but then it's like, turns out that they're rich or something And you're like, oh well, they can just sit around to do art one post every single day of like a whole album Yeah, because that's all that they do. Yeah what I need I need like a personal trainer who is also a therapist so I can like lift weights And also he's a great drummer and so he can teach me drum and he speaks Spanish too. So we only talk in Spanish so I can get better at Spanish

and then get therapy. That actually sounds doable. And who, do you know this person, Sam? This like ex, this percussionist and expert weightlifter. I feel like if you drummed enough, then you would be working out. I guess if I drummed enough. So that kind of takes care of itself.

And all you gotta do is find a drum instructor who speaks Spanish, and then you're working out, learning drums and learning Spanish all the time. But I need to get therapy at the same time, which is gonna be hard because it's pretty loud. Well, he's a very, he's a very empathetic person. Do it through the eyes. It's through the eyes.

Think of your problems as the drums that you're hitting. Just bash them down. And that's the only piece of advice that he can give you. But it works. Okay, we got another question from Cheesesteak, who, spelled the weirdest way you could imagine, who asks, since you're talking about the James Webb Space Telescope,

because this time, we've got to keep talking about this, because this is exciting, after calibration, what will be its first observation? So the JWST is right now, all of its mirrors are aligned, they all worked correctly, which is great news, but now it's very soon going to be inserting itself into its stable L2 orbit, or semi-stable, and then cooling down and calibrating all of its instruments so that it can actually take good pictures. And I do not know if they've said what their sort of first target is.

It seems like it would be a, you know, somebody has to think hard about that decision. But I know that there is a kind of a committee that decides who gets time on the telescope. So I don't know if that decision has been made and if it has what decision it was. Do you know, Sarah? As far as I can tell, I don't think. So in my email to Sam about this, I was like, I don't have the best answer for the James Webb telescope one, but I bet Hank will have plenty of feelings slash historical knowledge that I don't.

So it's kind of relying on you to fill in the gaps for this one. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so I, uh, in my notes, I say Hank talks and then, yeah, hopefully for longer than 45 seconds. But what I could find is like what you said, but then I tried to look into this calibration and completion of like starting things and it seems like they're not going to take. So there will be the first image that's like released publicly on the NASA website and things like that.

But I, my guess is that like any new camera, like the first picture that you take with a new phone, it's probably gonna be kind of shitty. It's gonna be like a little bit blurry picture of your cat, or it's gonna be like a selfie where you're half sneezing cause you're like, oh, how do I look in this new phone? I don't know what angle to hold it. And my guess is that will be the same

for the James Webb Space Telescope, because in one of NASA's reports, they say we will demonstrate the ability to track moving targets, which are nearby objects like asteroids, comets, moons, and planets in our own solar system. So that makes me think that these early, early observations are just like, can we see nearby things?

Can we see things? Which will be within our solar system from that staple Lagrange point. But in the mission of the James Webb Space Telescope is all sorts of stuff, like formation of galaxies and stars and planets, our own solar system, like the first light, and like using infrared to analyze that, so like truly could be a crap shoot and it will probably be something like socially significant is my guess, like coming to be like, oh, let's do something that Hubble did and see it in a new light.

So that will probably be the first published image, but the first image ever is probably gonna be like a bad selfie of Earth, you know? Yeah. And this is like a challenge for the web team because like, you know, getting light to hit the sensor and taking that and sending it back to Earth on its own is like a big accomplishment, But like, probably the mirrors won't be perfectly focused

for that photograph, because they're just trying to make sure all this stuff works. So the question is, do you release the first light image, the actual first picture that the web takes, or not? Because if you release that image, people are gonna be like, wow, what a shitty telescope you guys got.

Like you can picture what happens on Twitter when it's like the first photo from the James Webb Space Telescope is just like a blurry picture of Mars. And you're like, wow, okay, I could see that with my telescope in my backyard. And so like, do you not do that? Do you just not do it?

I think you probably don't do it. I think what you probably do is you get like five good photos. You like wait the extra two weeks. You get five good photos and you release them. And it's like the pillars of creation. And I don't know if you do a deep field photo because that would be very good where you sort of like

take the same square of space from the Hubble deep field and you do it with the web and like see that. That's a hard picture to take because it requires focusing on one area of the sky for a long, long time. Or what? What do you do? What do you do? What's the Pillars of Creation? It's a stellar nursery. So it's like a leftover from a big, big explosion of a big, like supermassive supernova or something, I think. And there's a bunch of gas that then has come together to turn into it's like one of the most beautiful space photos that's now turning into new stars.

That's probably what I'd probably go with the pillars of creation if it was my choice. Cause you can make, and then also like you got to, cause you get the picture and then you have to like do the, like make it look good. Like they don't, they don't like, don't, they do some Photoshop on these boys. It's not actually what it looks like if you use your eyes. You mean they don't show up all green and orange and pretty?

That was the most disappointing thing I ever learned in my life. That's not what space looked like. So mad. Well, it would if you had different eyes. I guess if I had some kind of weird bug, I could look at it and be like, wow, that's cool. So wait, this is something I don't understand about the James Webb. Is it orbiting? So it's at its Lagrange point.

Is it orbiting around the Lagrange point also? How does that work? It's imagine like a hill and you're sort of like, so there's like the middle of the hill and then you can stand at the top of the hill and that's like, you're stable there. But if you are like a few feet down from the top of the hill, you can walk around

in the whole hill without changing elevation. Right. So that's sort of what's happening. It's orbiting around this gravitational place. It's just like, there's nothing there that it's orbiting. No. It's just exploiting some kind of weird.

It's a stable place in space. Yeah, where it can move around in a circle, but it does not space, yeah, where it can move around in a circle, but it does not ever, well, it only experiences very slight gravitational pulse because it's at this basically a contour of gravitation that is equal all around that circle. And if it was a very slightly different circle, it would experience changes in gravitation. So it has to be a really precise circle so that it stays at that exact same contour

of the gravitational hill. Okay, and they know this will work or it's not there yet? They know it'll work. They know it'll work, okay. Smart guys, smart people, eggheads. Yeah, I think that we had a couple other things that have orbited L2, so it's not the only time we've done that.

Have you gotten through all of your deep sighs or whatever on Twitter? No, there's a few more sighs of relief. The orbital insertion at L2 is one. I think that the last one will probably be the first picture. That's when I'll officially call it. I'm done being nervous. You should write them and be like, hey, guys, guys, I know you're not going to release the actual first picture because it'll be kind of bad, but I'm paint green. Can I see the first picture? I promise I won't tell show anybody.

I won't show anyone and tell them how weird and blurry it is, but like, then I can breathe my sigh of relief. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I got an email and I'm done worrying. Uh-huh. Well, I'm sure there's some, like, like a bunch of nerds at, like, who are monitoring the James Webb Space Telescope and move over from this project. Oh, exclusively nerds.

Where it's like, yeah, they're, they're like waiting for that first blurry image and like, oh yeah, we get to calibrate now. Like, that's the best day. All right, I'm excited for these first photos from the JWST and we've got one more question. It's about body hair from Michael Eidhall who asks, why does my hair and beard hair stop growing at a particular length?

Michael, thanks for noticing this because most people think that facial and head hair grow forever, but in fact they do not. There is a length at which they stop growing. We've answered this question a number of different ways over the history of SciShow. It's usually asked, not, why does my head hair always grow, but why does my arm hair not always grow? And this you'll notice sometimes you get a mole and you have a hair that does always grow and you're like, now I got like these cute little arm hairs and this one hair that's

like three feet long. And I'm like, how did that, when did it do that? It's not good. It's not right up on me. And yeah, all of your body's hairs have a whole cycle that they go through. And some of them just have longer, different phases is how I understand it. That's the one. That's the answer.

See you guys. Bye. Do you know the phases? I do know the phases. Yeah. I did some research beforehand because I don't remember them off the top of my head either. Anaphase, telophase, no, that's different. That's different, cell cycle baby.

But similar, the growth phase is called the antigen phase. A-N-A-G-E-N. That's what I was thinking. And that's what most of your hair is in, is in the antigen phase. Is that when it's growing? Most of your hair is actively growing, I think. Yeah.

If you see it on your body, because once it's done growing, it falls out and then more hair grows. It doesn't, hair doesn't like stick around for a really long time, I don't think. That's what I'm unsure about and where I didn't dive in. Right, if it stops growing, does it just like hang there for a while? time, I don't think. That's what I'm unsure about and where I didn't dive in. Right, if it stops growing, does it just hang there for a while?

Yeah. Yeah. Undetermined by me, the science couch, but other people who know more about hair may know. But the antigen phase or the growth phase is when your hair bulb, like the follicles, are generating new protein and new cells that stick together and harden and create that strand of hair. And they just generate from below the surface of your skin, and it's gradually pushed up

out of your skin. So if you've ever shaved, then new hair comes up from under the skin because that's from which the hair is growing. And the rate of growth is different for hair in different places of your body because that rate of hair growth and like cells assembling, being produced and assembling is controlled by a variety of genes. We don't know all of them. We haven't identified all of them. But like for example, we think the LHX2 gene is active during the hair follicles growth phase and is turned off during the rest period. And people have studied like different eyelash thicknesses or things like that. And the FGF5 gene or the fibroblast growth factor 5 gene

has been shown to be in people with like thicker eyelashes. And so there's all these different things, like proteins, hair is made up of proteins. And so like all of these different genes combine to create different length thicknesses and textures and lengths. And the length is determined by, as far as I can tell, the growth phase. And because once the growth phase is over, the hair, like the root separates from the

place called the papilla, which I think is like part of what gives it that materials and like the energy to keep creating more cells and pushing it out further. And then this is where I get kind of iffy, a transitional phase called the catagen phase starts, which is where the like everything is kind of cutting off and you're like, okay, we're done growing the hair guys, time to pack it up, move it out. Those are your cells speaking. And then when the hair is separated completely

from the papilla, there's no blood flow. There's no like, no way of, of interacting with it anymore. That's the resting phase, which is also the telogen phase. And that's where your hair just kind of hangs out. And everyone is losing a little bit of hair every day. I think it's really noticeable if you have long hair because you brush through it and you're like, ah, my hair is falling out. That's normal. That's just hair that's in its telogen phase that eventually falls out because your skin is is like I'm done holding on to

it. And so like even healthy folks constantly lose hair but then that's where other factors come in to hair growth as well where people... so you have like a maximum-ish hair length but there are other factors that can make your hair shorter than that maximum length. If you damage it in some way, so if you heat treat your hair, a lot of head hair as it gets longer gets broken or damaged, you can see split ends at the end of it. So your hair just gets broken off before it reaches that like maximum growth length or you cut it or other

things happen to make it shorter than that maximum length. Or you can have skin conditions, whether it's like scar tissue or some sort of like hair follicle death or something like that that leads to like balding patches or things like that. And that happens as we age, which is why people's hair does thin because at some point the hair follicles and that whole structure just stops shooting out new hair, stops synthesizing and making it. And all that to say, hair is very complicated, but the short answer is genetics. In the way that you have different cells that are kidney cells and skin cells and like facial skin cells, you have different hair follicle cells all over your body. They're just a little bit different.

And they do a little bit different thing. Yeah. And how did how does it figure out where they should be? Magic. should be? Magic. I made a TikTok about that very thing that somebody was like, it's weird, I didn't realize this, but your hair like stops growing back behind your ear. Like it doesn't grow all the way up to your ear and how does it know how to do that?

And I'm like, same way that you elbow knows how to not be a heart. Like it's just the body plan stuff. And it's really amazing that it works and it's an active and intriguing area of biology and biochemistry and physiology. And then like 30% of the comments were, and that's why I know there's a creator. And I was like, oh, Jesus Lord, this is, this is... Where did... How did I get here? No, there was just millions of years of itchy cavemen getting slightly less itchy. But yeah, what's the... Like, did there need to be an evolutionary advantage

of the hair not growing all the way up to the ear? Probably, there probably is a little one. Too itchy. People are like, ah! Like, I can't meet with you, you're so itchy. This guy's not itching at all. Too busy itching and then get eaten by something, like, oh man, I was just itching behind my ear.

Jerry got gobbled up. I got all ended. All ended for Jerry. Next generation won't have as much hair back there. Well, what a delight it is to hang out with you two, and also with all of our Patreon patrons. Thank you so much for supporting the show. What about Tuna? Tuna, I'm sorry that I didn't mention your duck as also a delight to hang out with.

Tuna's got a taxidermy duck that's just watching. It just stares at us. Whoa, he zoomed in! And he has a button he can push that Tuna needs to go over to my house and set up my live streaming setup Also was what I've learned from this Are you doing live stream for the I just for project for awesome getting ready for P for a yeah You're starting a twitch career, too

Twitch twitch streaming is as everyone knows, not very time consuming at all. Not very time consuming. One of the lowest lifts. Extremely lucrative. And your wife doesn't get mad at you when you try to do it. Never. Perfect. All right.

And thank you, Tuna, for producing and hanging out with us. And all of our patrons together make it so that we can make our show, so thank you so much and I hope that you like our silly, stupid bonus podcasts. And that we did get to talk a fair amount about poop at the top. So too much. I'm going to cut a little bit of it out. Release the tape, Sam. Release all the gory butt talk. People can pay extra for that. All the gory butt talk. Okay, that's the worst three words I've ever heard Sari say.

Have a lovely night everybody. Goodbye. Bye. you