SciShow Tangents - Bonus Backlog Bonanza - Ep. 32

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

This bonus episode was originally posted on Patreon on December 22, 2023 titled "Dust Questions, Lightning Round (and baseball sounds)."Original Patreon description: We're back at it again with more fast answers to all the questions that wouldn't fit in our normal episode, and we got some fun sound effects to boot!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 once again to the Sci Show Tangents bonus podcast, which I already forgot what we called it half an hour ago when I call extra snacks, I think. In my head, it was extreme snacks, but extra snacks is good. Extreme snacks. I don't think we can live up to extreme, probably. So we're going to stick with extra. Is that okay? Unless you can be extreme, Sarah.

Can you be extreme? Would you describe me if you had to pick three adjectives to describe me, which one of them be extreme? Would extreme ever enter into the conversation at all? You're extremely smart. You just toss it around. How about that? That's nice. Now I don't know what to say.

I was like, yeah, no, I'm very dumb. Yeah. Oh, yeah, I forgot. You're an extremely huge idiot. That's what I'm going to say. That's it. So it's a good thing that you're here to answer a bunch of questions for people since you're so stupid. It's going to be really valuable for them.

Because on every. Well, what? You're going to give me questions, and sometimes I don't know the answers. So it could be very disappointing for these people. We got to load up a booing sound effect for Sarah too for when she fails everyone. Yeah. Because on each episode of tangents, in preparation for each episode of tangents, I should say, we ask for questions on the theme. And we get a bunch of great questions, but we can only answer one of them per episode.

But we don't want those good questions to go away. So each episode of this bonus podcast will answer some of your questions that didn't quite make it on the show. Lightning round style. So here are your runner-up questions from our episode on Dust. All right. Number one, Michelle H-9 on Discord asked, what material constitutes the largest percentage of dust? We kind of think we talked about this on the episode a little bit.

Did we? Once again, I've locked it out. Big idiot, Sari Wright, was here. What do you think makes up the largest percentage of dust? I feel like people I used to say as like skin cells or something, which seems like there's like too much wood. It's poop. It's little guy's poop.

Is that what it is? That's like what makes people allergic to dust. But I would say it probably doesn't. It's probably some piece of wood. It's probably some wood related thing, I would guess. Why do you think wood? Because I'm in a wood paneled room right now and I'm looking at a lot of wood. And it's really dusty in here.

Dusty and wood. Yeah. I guess it depends on where you're looking at. I think in whatever, so in whatever environment you are in, because you are in a like woody house environment, then it is probably like whatever stuff you have around you and your house. So your dust may be wood or whatever drywall particles or paint particles or lilufer or, you know, all kinds of stuff in your house. In our cities, a lot of dust comes from vehicles, so exhaust fumes, tires rubbing on the roads and, like, grinding up the asphalt, but then also, like, the rubber from the tires flying out, like building construction, so all the dust from wood and stone and metal and whatnot. Wood. See, I told you so. Wood dust. But if you're looking at the whole earth or space, I did not look up space because I think it's hard to gauge space dust.

But the earth, by volume, most dust is actually in the atmosphere. It does not, I think once it settles and piles on the earth, then it's like, well, what is dust and what is just like the ground? But most dust is scooped up from the earth's surface and swirling in the atmosphere like dirt and sand and other like small particles of whatnot, like microbes and things like that. And the largest source of this kind of atmospheric dust is the Saharan Desert. Somewhere around 400 to 700 million tons of dust per year gets blown around the world from the Saharan Desert and redistributing things like iron or phosphorus. Because it's a sandy desert, then the chemical composition of that Saharan Desert dust are mostly silicates, like 64% silicates because sand is made from silica, followed by sulfates, which is at 14%, and carbon-containing material. So, like, wood, pet fur, et cetera. But just, like, the carbon stuff in deserts.

Desert wood is 9%. So basically just really tiny rocks is what most of dirt is. Is that? Yeah. Dust, rather, is what most of dust is? I think so. Okay. Like, that would make sense.

For Earth, definitely, like, that's what's swirling around the atmosphere. Like, anything that is in a rock or in sand, particularly, is dust. And then in space, same. thing where I don't know you have like enough molecules. Everything in the space is kind of a rock isn't it? Yeah basically I think a rock or a gas but there aren't like you wouldn't call a gas a dust necessarily. I think we argued about this in the episode. Is fog dust? I don't know. You know Hank he'll call everything anything if given the opportunity. He called cows dust in that episode in fact so I do remember that yeah but I think the most quintessential dusty thing is is

is rock dust. Desert dust. That makes sense. Desert dust. And there's a lot of it on earth and in the rest of the universe. Huh. All right. Perfect.

Thank you. Next question. Horns and roses on Discord asked. Why is dust fluffy in texture? Hmm. I feel like a dust bunny isn't dust in a way. Like... Why?

It's too big. It's a bunch of dust in something else that isn't dust, you know? And lint is not dust, in my opinion, exactly. I guess lint is dust, kind of. It straddles the line, but I don't know. I don't think all dust is fluffy, I guess, is really what I'm trying to say. Dust bunnies are fluffy and, like, clumps of hair and pet fur and stuff are fluffy. I answered the question.

Yeah, you answer the question. Play me the baseball snap. But, oh, if you want me to talk a little bit more, but I don't have to. Go ahead. You're done. Oh, shoot. What did I do? Okay.

I locked this out. Well, there's like, if you want, you're right, that is hair and lint and whatnot. But, like, indoor fibers, clothing fibers, carpet fibers, plant fibers, if you've got plants around or, I don't know, eat things. Do you say or eat things? plants I don't know you have plant fiber you leave a little spinach leaf and it dries up and becomes fibrous I don't know that's that's true yeah yeah I know what you mean could be could turn into dust at some point um and then outside fluffy dust is also probably organic like plant seed like dandelion seeds or bird feathers or whatnot that gets tangled up or or for just outside and I guess whether that's dust or or not is up to your own opinion, but it is, like, all the fluffy dust, all the dust bunnies are just made of things that were originally fluffy or originally really fibrous, which means that they don't, like, unlike rock dust, which is pretty compact.

Yeah. It doesn't have a lot of, like, it doesn't have like a porous structure or anything like that. You can stick together so good. Yeah, it doesn't stick together as well. And I think that's just because fibers have these really, really rough surfaces and they're also really light. So they're not, I don't know, as compact. They're not as mass-wise.

They're affected by gravity, obviously, but more easily blown in the wind, more easily tossed around and rearranged and becoming fluffy than like a pile of sand. You wouldn't describe a pile of sand as fluffy. And that's just like the material that the dust is made out of. and the fact that there's, like, air interwoven between the fibers. I don't know if that, you can just cut all that. I feel like that was just a longer version, a Sam's answer. The thing that I said.

Now play the baseball sound, tuna. I've had enough of this. Disrespect. All right. Next question. Why does old people dust smell different from young. people dust and that was asked by at muppet lamp huh i mean i guess just in general old people smell different is that true i think we did an episode about dust too we did do an episode about this

and this is like definitely during the seri era of sci show which is further and further and tune any of cover for me where are you going my vet's calling my vet is calling one second oh Oh, okay. All right. Well, I'll just talk and then it'll be the same as always because you'll have my monologue in the middle. I'm going to be Sam. Why do old people smell weird? I think you've got to keep in the Sam impression now. So body odor changes with age and investigative dermatology papers seem to pinpoint a specific chemical change.

And this is probably what we wrote about in the SciShow episode. specifically the breakdown of omega 7 unsaturated fatty acids which is just I don't know a type of fatty acid we have fatty acids all over our bodies and the omega 7 just tells you about where the bonds are less unsaturated so I think that's really interesting this is like very much a tangent but like an omega 3 fatty acid just tells you like where the the double bond is that makes it unsaturated as opposed to like completely having high like the maximum number of hydrogen sticking out on every carbon like omega-3 is the fish one right yeah omega-3 is the fish one omega-7 is so we're four better than a fish yeah nice well uh the so like body odor i don't know a lot of different chemicals one of them is maybe these type of fatty acids but when you're older um there is more of a breakdown of those fatty acids into two non-enal, which has only been detected in people over the age of 40. So there's this compound, it's odor compound, that once you get older, your body starts producing it.

And it seems to be responsible for like that quintessential old people smell. So our bodies just don't produce it at all. It's not like it takes that long to break down. Yeah, no, no, no. It's just like young people, for some reason, we don't. know why dermatologists have just like gotten to the point of identifying it but not understanding like why besides the fact that our bodies are like our bodies change with time and hormone levels fluctuate and other things in biology fluctuate um so there that might be part of it is

just like your body odor smells different as an old person and then inevitably like the surfaces in your house uh will take on some characteristic of that odor if they're dead cells or just by like leaning on the couch or whatnot. And then there may be a piece of it too is that like young people homes to some extent may have like newer or cheaper furniture or objects like buying something from IKEA or Target as opposed to like having this family dining table that's been here for 50 years because you own a home and like have this table. I think that varies depending on who you are.

Yeah. So you have these aromatic compounds, these aromatic. organic compounds in old books and old wood that give old books their smell or potential like on the flip side of that like mold or mildew issues or things like that that come with less frequently cleaned surfaces those little decorative soaps that are always in the shape of something

that's not soap yeah like a shell or a shrimp yeah my grandma went for like roses so like a dust dust in whatever environment you're in is just like an echo of what already exists on a bigger scale just gets broken down into tiny pieces and then that's the dust that you live with so now are getting philosophical i like that yeah past me wrote that down and i was like i was feeling inspired i guess so so yeah i think young people and old people just also surround themselves with different things um and then that becomes the dust smell yeah

All right, next up. What happens to the dust that makes it to the lungs? Asked darker matter on Twitter. It gets covered in goo and coughed up. Is that right? Yeah. Or it just stays there. Yes, those are the two options.

It's either out or in. Either way. So, yeah, usually the bigger particle. So you're not going to inhale. unless you do a really bad job breathing a whole dust bunny or something like that. At that point your mouth catches that. Oh yes.

It's very wet in there. Very wet, very goopy. Atmospheric dust so like thinking of in a city, I have a train car going by me if I'm inhaling the dust from that or like going for a run on a dusty trail

or things like that. That kind of bigger atmospheric dust does get caught by mucus. You have mucus membranes all over. eyes are mucusy, your nose is mucusy, your mouth and throat are mucusy. And if you breathe in that dust into your lungs, then it gets caught by mucus in your lungs or moved by little structures called cilia towards that mucus. And then you cough and sneeze it out. Or if it just like squooshes out into your esophagus, then you can just digest it. It gets like swallowed and digested and pooped out. So you get rid of it one way or another. And

And then the problems with, or when you get kind of like slightly bigger into your lungs, like slightly bigger, sharper. So silicates or fiberglass, where they are too big to be scooped into the mucus. And they actually start damaging the cells in your lungs. So that's like the problem with like fiberglass insulation. When people inhale it in, it doesn't get gooped out through mucus. it like scarifies lung tissue and that affects how it functions. It affects how it handles other dust particles.

It affects how you inhale and transfer oxygen into your bloodstream and things like that. So that's where like you run into some danger is like specific types of particles that make it to the lungs can cause medical problems. And then also on the flip side of that, very, very small kinds of dust can sometimes cause problems. And that's like thinking about wildfire smoke or other particles that are at like that 2.5 micrometer or below. I think that's usually the PPM reading that we talked about in the dust episode. But I don't have reference in front of me right now. In some cases, they get into the lungs and pass into the bloodstream. And we're like, fine, because that's been happening for all of human history.

we are constantly being berated by the environment and our bodies are just trying to survive. But the more of the reactive chemicals or toxins that our cells react poorly to in some way that build up, so like if you're breathing in wildfire smoke multiple days at a time, weeks at a time, etc., then you have the higher chance of something immunologically that's going wrong.

Like your immune system's going to overreact. You might have DNA damage, in cells that leads to cancer or chronic inflammation or, again, some problems with your lungs or something else in your body because your lungs are a conduit to your bloodstream. So basically anything imaginable can happen to the dust in your lungs. But it's either out of your body immediately or it stays in and something probably not good. Did we say smoke wasn't dust in the dust episode? Smoke's definitely dust.

I don't know. After hearing this. I think it is. I think so. If a cow is dust, then smoke is absolutely dust. That's got to be right. Yeah. But then, and like smoke feels different than like fog is the mystery to me of like is water in the air, is a cloud dust.

Wow. Is it gathering around a nucleation site? No. Is it? The nucleation site is dust, I would say. So maybe like a cloud is dust, but with water. Does fog have a nucleation site? I think so, because it's the same thing.

Fog is just cloud closer to the ground. You're right. Gosh, I think it's dust. And cloud is just dust with a fancy hat. That's right, with a nice coat on. It's dust with a fancy hat. Okay, well, now we have one more. We're going to do it starting right now.

Why does dust gather in unused rooms and houses? Ask Laura Starr 2009 and Crystal R. 99. So, room, empty room in a haunted house. Nobody's been in there in a long time, but you walk in and it's so dusty. Why? Because of all the stuff we talked about before. Yeah. This is really like a cumulative episode.

Yeah, I mean, it's like a combination of all the things we've been talking about, right? Like dust is an echo of your environment. So like look around you in your haunted house. What do you got? You got bats in the ceiling, pooping. Haunted ground. grandfather clock or what it breaks down haunted grandfather clock that's wood wood dust old victorian sofas the old victorian sofas uh fabric the peeling plaster cracking plaster uh paint dust plaster dust that's rock rock dust everything's just moldering and rotting around us basically is the is the long and short yeah everything like it's the idea of like entropy everything entropy is increasing um so things things

that are ordered, so like an ordered structure, like a whole grandfather clock or Victorian sofa, are eventually going to get, the atoms are going to get more disordered and slough off into the environment. That gives me not to think about. Yeah. And the other thing is, is that as much as humans try to make buildings airtight, like a haunted house airtight, but you've seen like a rickety old building. Or you've heard, like... I'm from Butte. There's only rickety old building. buildings in Butte, right, Tuna? Yeah. So dust particles are really small, right? Like smoke is

really small. And a lot of buildings aren't airtight. There are cracks around openings like windows and doors, but also in lighting or in floors or in walls or things like that. And if there is any airflow inside or outside, like from the outside to the inside, then dust can get in from the outside world in some way and then settle in that like fine coating on objects in abandoned areas so it's just like where there's airflow there is also dust people spend millions or billions of dollars getting like clean rooms for nano fabrication or space technology or things like that where it's really truly an airtight chamber and we're not spending that kind of money on our houses so they're going to become a haunted house someday

And that sound can only mean one thing. It's time for Eve's Thing. Hello, I'm Eve, and this is Eve's Thing, where I rely on artificial intelligence for comedic purposes. Now introducing the Would You Rather segment, brought to you by ChatGPT. Okay, would you rather be able to telepath, communicate with dust bunnies forming a secret alliance for household conquest or possess a magic wand that can turn dust into gold but only in small glittering amounts well it's gold is gold come on you can vacuum it up you get your special gold vacuum out you got a big pouch full of gold before you know it right you have your dust vacuum garbage vacuum and then your money

vacuum. Very heavy, very heavy vacuum, but worth it. And I'm already king of the castle over here. I don't need household conquest. I feel like with gold, you could go on household conquest. Like, that could fund a war against the house. Yeah, absolutely. I have enough gold to burn my house down. If that's what I wanted to do, then I would win the war. I feel like it was. I feel like it was. I feel like it would. It would be, I feel like it would be so time consuming if you only had one tiny little glittering amount at a time to get enough. You haven't seen the amount of dust in my house. Yeah, I'm looking at a lamp right now because this thing was covered in a small glittering amount of gold and I just wiped it up. I have $7 or something. I don't know how much gold is worth.

How much is gold worth? I think enough for a candy bar. Quite a lot. Yeah, well, I think maybe I just, when I'm looking at, learning about myself what I'm learning about myself psychologically as I answer these would you rather questions is that I don't like um I'm very selective about my friends people that are allowed to be around me I don't want to ally with dust bunnies because you could hear all that yeah okay but what if the antithesis to this was that instead of being your

allies they were your enemies this is like the dust in my house is my enemy for sure yeah I was going to say that's my state right now yeah yeah yeah But then I have to hear So then if they're my enemies And I'm vacuuming them up I'm going to telepathically hear their screams I don't want to think about that But you could just ask them politely to leave

I think dust is just existing in a form No matter what you do to it There's really nothing you can do Like if it's in the vacuum it's with all its friends So I think it would be okay I don't think you'd hear it screaming I think it would just give it a cool place to hang out Exactly

A wee I was thinking like a whoa You don't want to have a bunch of little friends who are talking to you all the time, basically. Is that right? A little guy is in your house who are just like, hey, what's up? Yeah, I think I've got enough friends, maybe. I told my partner, Sylvia, the other day, that I feel like I have a rich social life. And then they were like, we have who? I bet you can have some good conversations with Enki.

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Sarah, comes to Missoula to visit all of us once a year, and that's enough for... That's plenty. Yeah, I don't need dust monies. That's like... You'd never get any moments peace. They'd see everything you were doing it.

They'd watch you out on the toilet. It would be bad. That would be bad. But they're your friends. I don't necessarily have to say that, especially not every time you're in the toilet. Even depending on whatever you're into, every time you go to the toilet, there's going to be a time where you're like, oh, this is just for me. I have to.

Sam, I thought you owned a cat. That is, again, that is like very close to my experience. I can't even close the door. She'll headbutted open so that she can like, watch me at the toilet and scream. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah, I'm not telepathically communicating. Whatever judgmental thoughts my cat's having about my bathroom usage is not, I'm not privy to, so it's okay.

She's mad that you won't return the favor and watch her while she uses. the bathroom. That could be. I don't want to know that, though. Okay. So it sounds like we're all going to be slightly richer. Oh, yeah. I think magic wand.

Yeah, and even if I don't use it, it'll just be like, here's this part of your. It would be pretty cool to have even just a magic wand, no matter what it did. You could be like, I have a magic wand. Yeah, does it change it dramatically if it's not like actual gold? It's just like confetti gold, like gold glitter. This is the part of the show where you change the. Okay, I'm sorry. I'll just move on to the next one.

Okay, one more. Would you rather become a superhero with the ability to control dust storms, using them for both environmental good and epic dust battles, or have the power to turn dust into a delicious, nutritious snack with a single touch? Ew. What the hell? But it would be delicious and nutritious. interesting

I'm snack town all the way I think really as someone who hardly ever feeds herself I am snack town all the way too yeah I consistently forget to go to the grocery store until I am out of food and then I'm like oh shit I have to order a pizza because I don't have time to go to the store today

whereas if I could just like jam my hand like underneath the fridge and come out with a whole bunch of like it's still floor food Like creme brulee. Yeah. I guess creme brulee is not nutritious. Cremblele is your idea of a snack and nutritious.

A delicious, nutritious snack. Yeah. Well, it's fortified with all sorts of minerals and vitamins from being under the fridge. Oh. All of the, all of the vitamins that fall out of the fridge. All the other rotting food. They're collecting on the creme brule. Yeah.

Okay. Huh. I mean, if I could have a very dusty plate that was otherwise, clean and say you are snack now to the dust on that plate that would be okay but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna like go in my living room and be like hairball bonk my cat's hairball now popcorn for me I'm not gonna do that that's gross I wouldn't be able to basically I wouldn't be able to I couldn't do it but it's not it's not a hairball anymore it's popcorn I suppose it's delicious every time I give my little kitty a kiss on her head it'd be I could have

popcorn you have a little popcorn and crumbs on your beard yeah yeah okay that was what that is what I would be genuinely worried about though like a King Midas situation you just got snack all over you instead of everything turning to gold everything's turning to snack around me just covered in chito dust constantly I touched my cat it's snack I touched my fridge it's snack I like wipe my hand along a counter and there's like a smear of snack yep the same It's free. Yeah. Where if I was a superhero controlling death storms, I'm sure there are plenty of things that could go wrong.

But maybe I could help once and be like, that tornado, bye, it's just going to the ground. Or you need more Sahara Desert? Okay, come this way. What? Let's rain a little bit. What a strange. I guess you're using it for ecological purposes. So maybe, yeah, you would be like.

Yeah, you've specifically said environment. for environmental good and epic dust battles you would also be a superhero show yeah yeah you'd be storm that would definitely do that one because you just whip up reduce people to skeletons with all the dust whipping by them it would be great yeah you wouldn't have any more enemies I think these things can synergize like you you start making up a dust storm and then send it my way and all of a sudden we got dried mangoes for years. Perfect. Oh, I like this. This is how we'll take down the billionaires and solve world hunger ourselves by bringing

the dust and turning into snack. It's rainy beef jerky on this village. That's right. They're going to be eating for days. All right. I'm kind of warming up to the snack one actually. Right. Yeah.

But what if you did? Like, yeah, but if you went to the desert and you were trudging through or the beach or whatever, it's like where does that line get drawn? between dust and sand so you're just trudging through behind you there's cashews which actually sounds amazing hmm a beach minute well then but then like what will the cashews then do you go back and collect your little footstep cashews leave them there's someone else that's that's between you and your own thing you know i bet a duck loves a cashew yeah the ducks would be really they'd be true you make a lot of it'd be a lot of

It's following you around all the time. Oh, I'm so on this. Yeah. Just make friends, like, throw peanuts everywhere just by waving your hands. The crows will think you're a wizard. Yeah, I'm extremely out. Oh, yeah. More things following me around.

No, hard, no. Okay. Well, what do we decide? I'm going to be a superhero. I'm not going to pass up an opportunity to be a superhero, unfortunately. Especially after the idea of being followed by Bernie. I'm going to be snacky Pete over here. Well, we each have our sidekick.

All right. Yeah. We've got two exactly same superhero sidekick you have. Yeah. You know, you never see that in the comics where someone's like, oh, man, your power, exact same is my power? Spider-Man and Spider-Man, the two Spider-Man. Yeah. They have the same power.

Or just like any business. Like, you see a truck driving around that's like Franklin and Sun's plumbing. Okay, never mind. How many songs to Spring would have, you know? All plumbers are the same superhero sidekick. Yeah. That's true. I see.

Yes. Every plumber is just Mario or Luigi. Yeah. There's like three Wolverine Seri. So. Okay. Well, usually they like succeed each other. One friend's immortal.

Right? Sometimes they team up. They're best friends. Okay. Anyway. A big olivian, Sari doesn't, I guess, I guess she's really proven her thesis from the beginning of the beginning of the episode as if she folks, that she's really stupid.

Yeah. No, you're a genius. You're extremely smart about most stuff, but just not about superheroes. Yeah, not about anything that you know a lot about. But you know who is? This is why we're good friends. All of our Patreon patrons in a way. They're supporting us.

They're helping us with our crusade against ignorance. or ignorance is too strong a word uh science misunderstanding all right well we're going now see you everybody see you next time bye bye bye bye Thank you.