SciShow Tangents - Bonus Backlog Bonanza - Ep. 34

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

This bonus episode was originally posted on Patreon on April 25, 2024 titled "Bonus Episode Hygiene!"Original Patreon description: Rapid Fire Quesitons coming in HOT!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 the Syshotanget, the Patreon podcast, maybe called extra snacks, maybe called who knows. What was that? What's happening? Hanks playing a video. I can't stop it You were making the bad You were making the bad kid in school phase Bring your phone up to the front of the class, Hank You're not supposed to have them out So this is our bonus Patreon

Podcast And it's me and it's Cary And it's Hank And we got Whoever that was That TikTok that just started playing on my computer It wasn't you The most frequent starts playing out of

Nowhere voice on my computer is you saying, why can't we throw all the trash in the world into a volcano? We can maybe make a new intro video. It's got to start with that, though, because it's a great question. But it also makes me so mad at you. It is an old video because I think I wrote it. We reused some of the lines the last time we made it. So it's been, it's been since you've. been gone, but we just reused your work

because he did such a good job. Well, you own it. I'm going to deliver the line different next time, though. I'm going to be like, why can't we throw trash into a volcano? Oh, wow. That would be awful. I'll pull it just on April 1st and that's it.

The new trailer is just you doing that in all the impressions that you, Hank Green, can conceivably do. your Australian accent, your Gilbert Godfrey impression. You're kind of like New York, you're like New Yorker guy accent. I like that one. Yeah. Hank suck.

I don't know if we could do it right now. Why don't we throw trash into volcanoes? People might like that. That might be the fresh new direction that we're looking for. All right. Well, let's just jump into it. For each episode, I didn't finish introducing everybody. Tuna is here. He might pipe up. APE's here. She'll have her classic thing at the end of the episode. For each episode of Tangents, we ask our audience for science, couch, questions, and every week we get a whole lot of them. But we can only answer one per episode. However, we don't want good questions to go to waste.

So each month we'll answer some of your questions that didn't quite make it on the show here on this podcast, Lightning Round Style, an important addendum. Sari only has about four minutes, four minutes from whenever Tuna remembers to start the timer to answer each question. I've been doing it explicitly as soon as Sari starts talking after the question. So I can get away with anything. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not even going to try to time, Hank. There's no way.

Oh, interesting. Okay. I've been getting a little worried about her sometimes because Hank did take up a lot of her time last time. But, okay. I think it's a fun challenge if I have mystery amount of time after. Well, here's the thing. Sometimes you start talking and then Hank talks again. And at that point, the timer's just going.

And I'm like, I don't have enough cognitive power to get metagame this. So I will just truly spew words out. And when her time is up, this is the sound that we'll play. All right. So let's get to it. Here are your questions from our episode on Hygiene. uh red locker on discord asked what kind of microorganisms are really growing on those electric grooming tools i don't understand that question all the normal ones that grow on everything else are they particularly nasty in a way that yeah is there like a commercial that's like look at all the nasty things that grow on your electric grooming tools because i also don't know so i'll let sari say her first word do you use any electric grooming tools hank or sari uh no I don't like an electric razor or nothing.

But I think the idea is, and maybe this is me imagining it based on other commercials I've seen, that there's probably a tool out there where they're like, it shines UV light on the blades and on your skin to disinfect based on the amount that my mom sends me listings of like the home shopping network said to get this like UV container for your cell phone to sterilize it every day, things like that. um so that that is my guess but yes the answer is just like whatever is growing on the other parts of your body i don't know like on the other any tool any like wet area um so i mean the things that people are generally concerned about with razors are uh any sort of microorganism so viruses that can cause things like warts

So that's like human papillomavirus, but I don't know, other viruses hang around. Also, there are many, many of them. There's bacteria that stick around and can grow and amplify and cause skin conditions. So like staff bacteria can cause folliculitis, they get in your hair follicles and kind of breed, cause a little bit of inflammation and whatnot there. Or like fungal infections that can cause like either. like yeast infections depending on where or any sort of like dermatophytes which are if you look at the the name broken down dermato is like dermatology so skin and then fights means they like to eat skin um so just fungi that infect any sort of like keratin-nish tissues um and cause things

like jock itch uh which i don't know if it has a medical terminology besides that um But they're just, I don't know. The ability for these things to grow on whatever tool depends on the material. If you sterilize it at all, I guess that's where the UV light comes in. I didn't research how effective those are. And then how long they're sitting in humid environments like the bathroom. And it's inevitable because microbes are everywhere. Germs are everywhere.

Factory are everywhere, good and bad. that anything you leave in a bathroom or anything that exists in the world is going to be covered with microorganisms at some point. So it's like, are you sterilizing it or replacing it? Yeah. Yeah. Because like electric razors can get like stuff in them,

you know, like all the little hairs and skin cells. You don't want that to be sitting around in there. That's food for microbes. So just clean it out. That's food. You could be eating. Don't share. share. And don't eat it. Don't put

razors in your mouth. Yeah, that would be bad. Your tongue is a little, it's not as strong as your skin, I would say, when it comes to. I just imagine shaving my tongue. Oh, that could feel nice under the right circumstances, I think. If done by an expert, I think that could be good. I don't think it could. See, we've never disagreed on something this intensely.

I do like the idea that there's like a tongue massage out there. There's just like a person who's like, uh, it's important for your chakras, possibly. Yeah. Just really squeam. I mean, there are like tongue scrapers. Uh-huh. Yeah. Which I guess is a some is a kind.

Not by a professional, but by an individual. They tilt you back on the dentist chair. They go to town on you. Then at the end, they, shoo, shoo, shup, shrap. Sharpen up that razor. It would just take one good swipe. Get all the gunk right off there. I think that would work.

Let's look into it. Next subscription service. Hank's tongue shavings. Problem is if you shave your tongue too many times, the hair grows back way thicker. Oh, I didn't think of that. All right. Next question.

This one's from the one we teased last week, green eggs and ham. Last month, I mean. Here it is. finally at last, how different are the soaps we use for different parts of our bodies? Is it all a scam by the Madman of Madison Avenue?

I don't know. I don't know. No, probably not. It seems like it's not. It seems like there's a difference. I mean, I use normal soap on my face all the time. And I can, I can tell that when I use the good face soap, I have a better,

like, I feel better. on my face skin. Uh-huh. Then, but that's like, and like, shampoo, just soap, but for the hair. But, like, it's different. And I know that. I say, as if I don't. Actually, as you said it, I was like, I don't know.

Maybe it's just goopier. Yeah. But, like, now they got, like, five and ones, too. So. Yeah. What is the five? I don't know, but they always say it's like five. shampoo, conditioner, body wash, face wash, face wash, foot wash,

a butt wash, you know, area, the area wash. The butt. Yeah, the butt. This is for your butt. That's six in one. Maybe you had a bonus part. We just invented the new kind. Yeah.

Market it. Brand it. Let's go. I think this ties into the next question that we have on our list. So I'm just going to say it out loud so that we get in more. patrons, but which Volger on Twitter asks how necessary is shampoo, which is related to this question, I think, because shampoo is a type of soap. It is. You were right. As far as I can tell, I'm sure some marketing person at a shampoo company is like, no, science communicators are against

us. But they all work the same way. Like soap molecules are all surfactants, whether it's in face wash or hand soap or shampoo. They have a polar end, which, which attaches to water molecules and a non-polar end, which attaches to, like, dirt and grease and non-polar compounds. So the idea of how soaps work is that they grab onto the gunk, the soap molecules grab onto the gunk, and then can be rinsed away with water when you're ready for it to go. And basically, the different soaps that we use for different parts of our body

are at their base level a surfactant, and there are harsher ones that grab onto molecules more intensely. so if you want really get a lot of oil away like don dish soap or something those are really good at grabbing onto oils and we'll wash a lot of it away which is maybe too harsh for your skin which needs some level of oil on it for protective coating like you have sebum for a reason it's to keep your skin moist it's to keep bacteria and viruses out like the ones we were talking about things like that and so it's just like the strength of that surfactant molecule and then any other additives So some of them are just marketing tools. Like we, as humans, in addition to, like, finding things cute or pleasing, we also have an idea of what clean looks like because of marketing. And clean being equated to, like, extra foamy or sedzy or bubbly things, we're like, it's got to foam up really big for it to feel clean.

Like, I'm actually doing something. Oh, yeah. And so oftentimes, that. doesn't actually affect how clean you get, but they just add foaming agents to the shampoo or hand soap or whatnot to make you feel like you're getting clean. They can add fragrances, they can add other ingredients, and this is where a lot of skin care science gets detailed that I'm not diving into because I'm not an expert. But basically a bunch of ingredients that interact more or less with the skin compounds or the dirt that's around you

to moisturize or replenish some of the oils that you're stripping away or, I don't know, balance out pH stuff by being more acidic or more basic. I think there are a lot of things that people say are helpful. I think there's a very small subset of those things that are probably actually helpful. But just like you have a gut microbiome, you have a skin microbiome. And so to some extent, everyone's natural production of oils and the types of cleaning that you need are different because you might have oilier skin or drier skin or whatnot. And so that's where I think some soaps can come in handy where you can find them with ingredients that match, like complement what your body is already doing. but then there's like a handful of or more than a handful of soap marketing that's just

the illusion of clean with nice smells and bubbles so the foamyness doesn't the foamyness doesn't necessarily do anything you said not really no yeah that sucks it's so fun that be foamy why did we learn that foamy makes us clean then where'd that come from because it looks like soap Uh, because soap does make, does make bubbles, I guess, especially like bubble bath. So more bubble means more clean. Yeah. That's what it feels like.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. I, yeah, I've always been like, it felt a little wild that it seems that soap does a bunch of stuff to me. And then I have to put more stuff on afterward because it washed away the stuff that I had before. Yeah, you got a lot of them back up. But I also, I got too clean. Now I have to put stuff on to.

unclean my clean an aquifer this whole situation otherwise my skin will turn into paper especially nowadays when the winter yeah

no good so the short answer to how necessary is shampoo is yes yeah like yes because

it depends on what you mean you could use bar soap and you would survive you'd be fine okay or you could not or you could not wash your hair like you don't need

to use soap at all, like, unless you're doing surgery, uh, but it's awful, it's awful nice to not be super grody and stinky. That's true. Okay. Well, okay. We'll move on. And the biggest problem is the dirt. Like, that's it.

Like, if you're, if you were in a vacuum sealed environment, your, your oils would be fine, but by interacting with the world, then you get dirty. And so that's why, like, water is useful and some, some level of hygiene is useful. Yeah, I didn't mean to say that hygiene's bad. Hank said, Hank Green said. You don't eat soap. Eat razors. Hank Green, famous soap seller.

I'll cut that. And I have learned a lot about soap and soaps are very different from each other. It is true. All right, one more quick one. El can on YouTube asks, are there any animals that use tools to quote get ready this is interesting oh i think i think there must be like an ape of some sort because there's like the ape like put a stick in her hair and was like look how cool i look down so there's got to be something get getting ready is a funny thought because like for what

like go out on the town um and i feel like yeah this i feel like animals get ready they they groom they preem they they they i don't know if they like take a little bath? I don't know. There's lots of animals that adorn places, like their nests, but are there any of that adorn themselves? I guess is kind of part of the question. I feel like we've touched on the edges of this question on tangents.

And mostly you have Sam because it's like the crocodile or alligator wearing a little hat, the chimpanzee wearing the little stick in the grass in her ear. Then there's like, so that's like, fashion adornment, maybe getting ready for a big, a hot date. There's, like, cleaning with assistance, so, like, the dolphins that go to the cleaning coral and rub against it, or cleaner rasses, which are those little fish that sometimes eat the goo off of sharks or things like that. Or, like, apes cleaning, grooming each other for bugs. Is that kind of similar? Yeah, yes. And so, but I do think, like, apes and monkeys are the closest thing to the answer. to this question of like tools to

and I interpreted get ready as grooming. So like any sort of level of removing dirt or debris or getting bugs out of things. And so there are mostly

I think our examples are apes and monkeys grabbing twigs and doing things either like using them as scrappy tools. That's really kind of all they got to work with out there. Yeah. Just a lot of different kinds of sticks and maybe some bugs.

Yeah. Got not very, very many things going, but there was a recorded observation of a mandrill who picked up twigs and then splintered off pieces and then used the tips of those splinters to clean under his toenails in a zoo. And so I feel like that is the closest thing to like getting ready. I bet that felt so good. Yeah. The first little guy. Featine his toes. Yeah.

What is he getting ready for? To go walk in more dirt. But to see all the people at the zoo. To be like, check out my feet. That's true. Go tell your friends how clean my feet are. Yeah. Since they ever look at our feet and they're like, what is going on?

Each of you has different feet. Where are your toes at? No two people have the same feet. How do you hang upside down out of trees? Yeah. Boo, boring feet. They probably know that shoes exist and that there are feet. underneath. I think. I don't know. Do they? I have no idea. Why would they care?

They probably don't. They don't give a shit. Yeah. Isn't it weird that all of us are wearing different shoes right now? Like, that's a big world. I would guess a lot of us aren't wearing shoes. Oh, you mean in the whole world? Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about people in the call and I was like, I've got no shoes and no socks. I do kind of mean that too. But like, like, I bet of everyone listening right now, there's probably not very many who are wearing the same shoes. Yeah. They've made a lot of different shoes over the years. They've made so many kinds.

There's so many shoes. It's too many. Yeah. And you can go to the shoe store and see 100% shoes you've never seen before in your entire life. Yeah. And then you could go two months later, it'd be the same thing. Like, what? Yeah, whole new round shoes.

Where all the other ones go? Maybe six months. But yeah. Where'd those go? Yeah. Yeah. Time keeps on turning. So is it just the monkey with the toenail thing?

Keep making shoes. What? Yeah. It's just a toenail monkey? It's the toenail one. I don't know what else. He's the only one. He would be, really.

We know the one guy. He's the innovator. It's every human and him. Yeah. I can find, so some articles were saying that there's evidence of monkey. like bonobos or chimpanzees um using moss to make sponges and soak up water um but that is mostly for like hydration rather than like using a sponge for a bath as far as I could tell in the papers so it's more like um to get water rather than using it as like a bath sponge so

that's all I got but yes I think it was only the guy that I could find um as like the most concrete example of is he still around is this a is this in a current thing oh let me see the article we can estimate uh it was published in 2011 um if if he mandrill lifespan captivity 40 years can live up to 40 years and managed care so let's go see a young guy let's go podcast outside of his cage while It's clean, clean feet. All right, that was it. Thank you, Sarah.

That was great. Everybody knows a lot more about a monkey feet now. And now it is time for Eve's thing. A.P. Eve every month has a different thing for us, which is usually the same thing. Will it be the same thing this time? Let's find out. It sure is, Sam. It is asking chat GPT for the most out-of-pocket.

Would you rather? Based off of the theme. A two-in-one shampoo or a five-in-one shampoo? Ooh. All right. Here's the first one. Would you rather have a talking toilet that compliments you every time you use it? No.

Or a mirror that offers sarcastic remarks about your appearance. Wow. So either a mean mirror or a nice toilet? Yeah, but the toilet is talking to you. I feel like a mirror talking to you is fine. Yeah. compliments you. Yeah, mirror talking to you.

That has precedence and fiction and stuff. For sure. Talking toilet does too, I suppose, but. Talking toilet, people aren't brave enough to explore in fiction and feel like. Oh, man. I couldn't handle a mirror being mean to be like that. That would make me never leave my house. So I guess I got to go at the talking toilet.

I would be so embarrassed of the toilet. but what it would just be like hey nice poop there I don't know it's embarrassing that is that embarrassing don't want to know that that's like that's very neutral to me I feel like you'll do better next time no if it says that what is that supposed to mean can you ask it follow up questions? It'll just be like you know what is it what is Eve what does it do when I deserve to be insulted on the toilet yeah when it's like you did a bad job is it still very nice i think it's encouraging it's like well transport college

sary puking her guts out she's drank too much and the toilet's like it's gonna be okay it's gonna be all right everybody makes mistakes take a little nap you'll feel better can the toilet like kind of keep track of things for me too because that would be nice if i could like go to the toilet and be Like, how was I like a week ago? Because it's not great today, but is it, is that been for a while? And it'll be like, yeah, it's been for a while, man. It's been for a while. But it only says nice things.

So it would be like, this time was great. It's always good. I love whatever you give me, sir. Oh, no. I don't like that it calls you, sir. I think that. I'm just a simple country toilet and I'm like all your craps. But yeah, I can't do mean mirror.

I feel like it'd be easier to explain to a guest pooping in my toilet that like, oh, the toilet will, it's just going to say something. As opposed to when you wash your hands afterward, the mirror is going to really ream into it. Yeah. Yeah. I'd punch, I would someday punch the mirror, I think. I'd be like, use the back downstairs basement, I'd say, to all guests who came in my home. Do you not have one on this floor? No, you got to go to the basement.

I can't tell you why, but you do. And then you hear like a muffled like, fuck you. From behind the bathroom door. It was sarcastic. So it would be like, your eyebrows look really good today. Oh, man. take the toilet. Yeah, me too. I take the toilet. I just need, I need to get upped. I need somebody to whatever they say. Here's a thing about, hyped, hyped up. Here's a thing about

AP, Hank. She always says the opposite of whatever we say. So she's at the mirror. Why? Yeah, because I don't want anything talking to me while I'm on the toilet. No, I get it. I get that. That's fair. Yeah. You're tough, though, I think. I think you could give it back to the mirror as as it was given to you. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I have one more for you.

Would you rather have to floss with spaghetti noodles or brush your teeth with a broom? Neither of those things are either of those things. They're not. I'd be lying if I didn't say I hadn't picked my teeth with a spaghetti, uncooked spaghetti noodle before. So I could do it. Uncooked spaghetti noodle. Yeah, that's a great point.

And I love brushing my teeth. I would try to brush my teeth with any and everything available to me. So a very clean broom. I give it a show. Wow, he's a, he's going to chew on a broom, you guys. I could do it. I'd rather floss with a spaghetti noodle because I don't floss anyway and it feels about the same level of efficacy. As long as I brush my teeth afterward.

And if I could get a whole. whole spaghetti noodle between my teeth and floss, I mean, like, I don't mean practically, because then I've got a problem. But if, like, there was, like, a magical thing that allowed the spaghetti noodle to go between my teeth, I actually think that would be a quite nice sensation. That does. That's a good point. That does sound like it would be satisfying. I got almost enough gaffe in my front teeth. I think I could probably pull it off with, like, a linguine. A little hair.

You'll have to come back to us on that, Sam. Yeah. Sarah, you're suspiciously mum on the subject. You've done both of these things, huh? Yeah. Little bit you know, my bathroom is full of spaghetti and brooms. I, like, can't imagine the sensation of either of them. Maybe this means I have no whimsy in my life.

But, like, practically speaking, I would rather have, like, a cart and a spaghetti in my bathroom than a whole room. Storage-wise. We live in a small, one-bedroom apart. We did not have a space for two full brooms to be sitting near the small bathroom sink. So practically speaking, getting the broom wet would be a hassle in that. It would be, I don't think it would fit horizontally. Like if I step back, one step back from the sink, then I touch pipes that in the winter will give me a burn. So our bathroom is very tight.

You have to, like, have a sawed-off broom. Yeah. Like a little hand broom, basically. Yeah, like that's the thing. Not enough space for a broom. Spaghetti, we can make it work. All right. Practical considerations.

Yeah. Got to bring some logic to this. Would you rather? Since I was asking the computer to put in work for us. I also asked it for a little goodbye poem if you wanted to use that. Sam, you're welcome to. All right. I guess I can read it. So thanks for being patrons, which is the poem's going to say in a second. That's the end of our episode. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Here's the poem. The computer wrote, thanks for being a patron.

As we bid adieu with toothy grins wide, know that your backing was our hygienic guide in the bubbles of gratitude we subside farewell dear patrons and cleanliness abide remember when we thought that was impressive it was like a year ago when we were like can you believe an artificial intelligence wrote this terrible poem yep I feel so good about our poetry skills over five years or whatever this podcast we were better than this to start which makes sense because we had so many more years of intelligence training yeah we're actually We're actually beings. Yeah, who have art and creativity.

Yeah. Well, you heard it here first. We hate computers and all they do for us. I'm going to go, I'm going to go have a big fart on my toilet, and it's going to tell me how good it was. Woo-hoo. Thanks, Hank. Have a nice weekend.

Tell me dumplings. Oh, why did you say? Say that. Bye. Tummy dumplings is definitely the new name of this podcast. Extra snacks out. Tummy dumplings in. We digested them.

We digested the snacks. Snacks. Yeah. Horrible. Thank you.