SciShow Tangents - Digestion

Episode Date: June 11, 2019

Everybody eats, and everybody poops, but in between… that’s where the magic happens! This week we’re talking about everyone’s favorite organic method of removing nutrients from food: digestion!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! And if you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:[Fact Off]Throat to small intestine:Phytobezoars:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4400622/https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673384/https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/apt.12141[Ask the Science Couch]Gum composition:https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/102/2/e22.longhttps://patents.google.com/patent/US6986907B2/enhttps://pslc.ws/macrog/pib.htmSwallowed gum:https://kidshealth.org/en/kids/swallowed-gum.htmlhttp://www.vivo.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/digestion/basics/transit.html[Butt One More Thing]Everlasting pill: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/antimony-metallic-cleanse-middle-ageshttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3037053/

Hello, welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. This week, as always, I am joined by Stefan J. Hello. How are you? Good. Stefan, what's your tagline? Beefy tread expert.

Sam Schultz is also here. Hello. Sam, what's your tagline? How about neck warmer? And we also got Sari Riley here. Hi, Sari. Hello. Thanks for joining me on the science couch that is also the fashion couch today.

Oh, yeah. Oh, great. We look very cool. This is a new shirt. I got it on Sunday. This is also the fashion couch today. Oh, yeah. Great. We look very cool. This is a new shirt. I got it on Sunday. This is also a fairly new shirt for me. I got it this year in 2019. So that's pretty recent.

That's pretty recent. Yeah, we're like up-to-date fashion. And what's your tagline? Secret bandage. Whoa. Do you have a secret bandage? No. It's fine.

You don't have to tell me. I feel like a hug is like a secret bandage or something. It's like you feel better, but it's not there. If only a hug could last forever. And I'm Hank Green. Sam didn't like that idea. Let go of me eventually. You have to go to the bathroom. My tagline is purple.

Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts. We're playing for glory, but we're also keeping score and awarding Hank bucks. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging by previous conversations and the name of the podcast, we will be bad at that. If the rest of the team deems one of your tangents unworthy, you will be forced to give up a Hank Buck. Now, as always, we introduce this week's science topic with a traditional science poem this week from Stefan. Humans are just tubes with cheeks at both ends. Tubes that shuttle food towards the colon that descends. Chewing in saliva, then gastric acid. Unlocking the nutrients along the way. And sometimes the process ends up being quite rapid if you had a lot of coffee today.

But your tubes contain 90% of your body's serotonin and trillions of microbes, over a thousand species. What a wonderful place to make a home in, even though in the end, it's all just feces. But I thank you, my tube dudes, with frequent food ingestion so get to work tubes you know what to do digestion the topic for today is digestion which is what you do to get food on the inside of you i guess like eating not not to get no to get food on the inside

because the tube is outside still oh process of digestion is getting it from inside the tube is outside still. Oh. The process of digestion is getting it from inside the tube to inside your body. Topology arguments now here. For clarity, I maintain that your digestive tract is the outside of your body. I think the esophagus... We're a weird donut.

...you could say is outside. No, the whole thing's outside. But there's sphincters at the end of the esophagus and then at the anus. But they open. Yeah, the whole thing's outside. But there's sphincters at the end of the esophagus and then at the anus. But they open. Yeah, they open. Doors open, but you can still go

inside a house. Okay, fine. Great metaphor. I see what you mean. But what if there's a hallway in the house? Hank's just too dug in on this one.

I feel like if all your sphincters were all open at once, then you're a donut. Then you're topologically outside everywhere. But I think that a sphincter doesn't count as a body door. I think the body door is like the skin, and there is no door into the body. A body door opens, you need a doctor.

Dang, that's a good point, too. Sari, what's digestion? Basically, it's a good point too. Sari, what's digestion? Basically, it's breaking stuff down. There are mechanical ways of digestion. So like your teeth, you chomp stuff. So my teeth, my face bones are part of my digestive system? Yes. And there's

a lot of enzymes involved in digestion. So in your saliva, there's a bunch of enzymes. In your stomach acid, there's a bunch of acid-loving enzymes. Acid-loving as in they just like to splash around in there? Well, the enzymes, they're just chemicals. But they won't get messed up by the acid. Yeah.

They tolerate and thrive as much as enzymes can in that environment. It makes it sound like they're bacteria. They're not. They just function well in an acidic environment. They wouldn't function in a non-acidic environment. And I think the gastric acid, like stomach acid itself helps a little bit because like very acidic things can denature proteins, which is a breaking things down. But that's like, that's digestion.

So digestion is the breaking down, not the absorbing. Yeah, I think so. Because digestion is used, I looked up the etymology. So it comes from dis dis which is a part and gerrary which is to carry so like to carry a part um and that makes sense to me because you can have extracellular digestion which is all the stuff that's happening in your digestive tract and then you can have intracellular digestion so it's once stuff gets absorbed into your cells it still can get broken down into smaller and smaller pieces phagocytosis is a

very fun thing because it's like when a white blood cell if you've ever seen like the magic school bus or something like a white blood cell eats the germs and then it breaks this them down inside that's digestion phagocytosis and then intracellular digestion is that where it's like small eating so everybody digests does a white blood cell get something from digesting the virus or is that not really how it works it's part of your immune system so its main goal is defense it doesn't eat the thing it might use that why not use the building blocks? Yeah. Like once they're in there, they're going to get used. There are some white blood cells that ingest bacteria or viruses. And if those bacteria or viruses have proteins on the outside, then they like stick them out or like build something to recognize those particular proteins and then move around your body with like an advanced detection system.

So they like steal the information how do they know how do they know it's all random chance it's amazing i love biology because they don't they don't know do any of us actually so that means i guess that it's time for where we have one of our panelists who has prepared three science facts, but only one of those facts is real. We have to guess which one of these amazing things about the universe is the true fact, or we will have to give Sam a Hank Buck. So Sam, tell me, what is up with digestion facts and stuff?

Okay, so platypuses are super weird. I've heard. They have spurs laced with venom, their beaks detect electric fields, and they sweat milk, and they lay eggs. All freaking weird. Yeah. But the weirdness extends all the way to their digestive system. Which of these weird platypus digestive quirks is real? Love it. I love it.

Both have very smug looks on your faces. I'm a little worried about this. No, I feel like I should know it, but as soon as you say the three things, I'll have no idea. This is why I lose truth or fail. Okay. Number one, baby platypuses have a smelly, sticky digestive oil that they can projectile vomit at anything they view as a threat. Through their little bills. Okay, keep going. Number two, platypuses do not have stomachs.

Their system just goes straight from throat to intestines. Or number three, platypuses poop once a week, and that poop can weigh as much as one-third of their body weight. Oh. They do a big duke. A big old poopy. I saw a chicken poop one time, and I was astounded. Uh-huh. Because, like, you see bird poop, and it's just like, there's this little poop.

But then chickens, because they're very big birds, I forget how big chickens are. It was like the size of a chicken egg. Yeah, it was kind of the shape of one, too. I was staring right down its butt when it did that. Well, Sam and I witnessed the same chicken pooping close up, and I was like, a little upset by the whole thing. I'm just saying this because I'm thinking about egg laying animals

and their poops. Sure. I guess I could see that that a platypus would have a real big duke. I'm now imagining humans laying eggs in the shape of our poops.

Oh, come on. But why? Do chickens have poops that are this shape of eggs? Yeah, obviously. So humans would have eggs that are this shape of poop. They're little tadpoles. Wait.

What? Are you? Wait. Step on poops are shaped like tadpoles, everybody. No, they'd be the shape of feet. That's the actual shape of human poop, right? They look like little feet. Wait, what?

You poop feet shapes? This is a trap. This is a trap. I don't know what's happening. I was like, what? Okay. There are weird things with feet, so for some wait we're talking about feet now careful girl your foot is the same length as your forearm cool that's a body

measurement boy negative one point that might have been the first one that I've ever felt like was actually unworthy. Oh, man. Okay. I won't share my fun facts anymore then. You gotta take the risk. I did. It's all about the risk. I really like that fact, so

I thought it was worth it. Okay, fine. Negative one. So we got one, baby platypuses can projectile vomit their sticky digestive juices at potential threats two platypuses do not have stomachs their esophagus just connects to their intestines is that what you said or three platypus poop once per week and it can weigh as much as a third of their body weight i'm immediately drawn to big du But I'm wondering, what do platypuses eat? Like, do they eat a kind of food that would allow or that they wouldn't need to digest that much?

I think that platypuses eat, do you know that? I think that they eat like little wormy and bugs that they find inside the soil. That's what I think. Like small grasses, small bugs. It's like a bird-like diet. Do they eat like vegetation too? I want to say yes, but I don't know. I feel like if they-like diet. Do they eat like vegetation too? I want to say yes, but I don't know. I feel like if they eat vegetation, they would have to poop more often

because that's how it is for me. More fiber. More meat and cheese. Less poop. I'm just trying to imagine what additional processes would be required to make the no stomach thing work. Stomach is mostly not for absorption. It's for breaking down. Do they chew with that bill? Is that part of what the bill does? Because if they could chew it up real good, maybe they wouldn't need a stomach. There are also things like chambers that some animals have, so like a gizzard and a bird where they swallow rocks and they

rumble around. That digests stuff. Are platypuses related to birds at all? No. Sorry, I went along that tangent as though they have beaks, therefore they're birds. I mean, they have a duckbill. The name duck is in there.

Of the words in the name duckbill platypus, only one of them is a kind of animal, and it's a bird. I think that platypuses do not have stomachs. I also think that. Oh, that makes me think they know something. I'm going to Big Dukes.

The answer is platypuses don't have stomachs. Yay! Fashionable and smart. Oh, we should have all gone with the same one. We could have deprived Sam of his points. Yeah, but I didn't want a repeat of the molasses pipeline. Oh, God, the molasses pipeline. I told somebody about that recently

when I was in Monterey, California at the aquarium and I was like, let me tell you about the molasses pipeline. Oh, God, the molasses pipeline. I told somebody about that recently when I was in Monterey, California at the aquarium, and I was like, let me tell you about the molasses pipeline, and they weren't amazed at all. They weren't? They were like, yeah,

in Monterey, we used to have sardine pipelines. Oh, my God. What? For dead sardines or what? Yeah, so they, like, catch the sardines on the ships and then, like,

pipe them into the sardine canning cup. I agree. There's a whole new youtube channel yeah like weird pipelines weird pipes weird pipes the weirdest pipe all right so uh let me explain some of these today yeah uh platypuses do not have stomachs uh many fish also don't have stomachs and scientists think that it is for kind of a similar reason platypuses dwell a lot in water fish obviously dwell in water and they eat similar things so platypuses dwell a lot in water. Fish obviously dwell in water. And they eat similar things.

So platypuses eat like shrimp and worms and stuff at the bottom of the water that they live in. And while fish are eating and while platypuses are eating, they probably eat a lot of dirt and mud and stuff. And that scientists think this is just a possibility. They're not really sure. That the mud would neutralize the stomach acid anyway. So just enough of that happening to their stomachs because i think that they did used to have

stomachs but enough of that happening just eventually made it so that their stomachs withered away into nothing but they aren't really sure about that and that they just depend on the enzymes in their intestines doing right work and then the other thing was that things like crabs and crawfish also have a lot of calcium carbonate in them, which is also an acid neutralizer. So how big are their dukes? Okay, so I don't know. Probably just normal animal size.

But the dukes one is sloths. Sloths only poop about once a week. And they're huge poops that take them forever to get out. There's a very good video that I'll link to. It's a time lapse. Yeah, kind of. The sun is setting it's this lady holding this very sad looking sloth and this poop's just coming out

so slow and the lady's like oh no she feels really bad for it so they poop and it's one third their total body weight wow um it takes them like a month to digest things and the way that they poop is kind of a mystery to science they no one's ever chosen to watch they climb down their tree onto the ground right they poop on the ground which is like the most dangerous thing that they could do they should just poop off the tree and scientists aren't really sure why some people think it's a territory thing they don't want to accidentally poop on somebody yeah maybe some scientists think it might be a territory thing or like a mate attraction thing, but other people think

that moths live in their poop and they climb off the sloth while it's pooping. They're called sloth moths. Lay eggs in the poop and then they just keep their more moths and they have kind of

a mutualistic relationship with the moths where they cultivate some kind of moss that grows on the sloths. The moths? The moths? They that grows on the sloths. The moss? The moss? Cultivate moss on the sloths.

This is definitely made up. Yeah, you're reading a Dr. Seuss story to us right now. And the things that vomit smelly, sticky digestive oil are northern fulmer gulls. They eat a bunch of fish and they break it down into oil and that's what they feed their babies. But the adults and the babies can both projectile shoot this goo. It smells really bad and scares stuff away. They used to be hunted for the goo so that they could use it for oil lamps.

That's wild that we used to just suck a bunch of oil out of a seagull instead of having a light bulb. Next up, we're going to take a bunch of oil out of a seagull instead of having a light bulb. Next up, we're going to take a short break, and then the fact off. Welcome back, everybody. Hank Buck totals, Sarah, you'd have one, except that your foot thing happened and everybody else is tied with one.

I don't like that you called it my foot thing happened. It makes it sound much worse than the actual tangent. We're headed into your chance to redeem yourself here at the Fact Off, where two panelists have brought science facts to present to the others in an attempt to blow their minds.

They each have a Hank Buck to award. The fact that they like the most, it's going to be me versus Sari. Who's going to go first? We're going to do it by who has the most teeth. How do you go how many teeth? So I have 28 teeth. You have 28 teeth? Yes.

I have, get this, 29. Ooh. They left one in? They left one in. They forgot about it? Well, they went in to get it, and then they were like, that was too hard and didn't get it. They gave up and left one of my wisdom teeth in, and it has never given me trouble. It knows.

If it gives you trouble, it's out of there. Yeah, it got taught a lesson. Yeah, you showed that to. It watched his three brothers be cracked in half and yank's out of there. Yeah, it got taught a lesson. Yeah, you showed that to three brothers be cracked in half and yanked out of their homes. So I guess I go first because I have 29 teeth. My fact off contains some gruesome injury

and suicide. Skip forward if you don't want to hear about those things. Sam, tell them what time code to skip to. You should skip to about 2050. You guys, tell me all the organs of skip to. You should skip to about 2050. You guys, tell me all the organs of the digestive system. Teeth. Mouth.

Esophagus. Is esophagus an organ? Yeah. Okay. Yes. The stomach. Stomach. Small intestine.

Large intestine. But. But. Last but not least, but. So what of those things can you not live without? Small intestine? That is correct. You only need the small intestine.

And in fact, there are people who live regularly without their large intestine. That happens all the time. It's probably the most common digestive organ to be removed except for like the spleen maybe. You can live without a stomach. And in fact, gastric bypass is kind of like living without a stomach but also there is a gene that is so likely to give you stomach cancer which is an extremely dangerous cancer that some people who have that gene elect to have their stomach removed so there are people who have elective stomach removals there's also people who lose their stomachs or esophagus to cancer you cannot live without a small intestine my fact is that in 1989 a man wanted to kill himself and he drank oven cleaner and he destroyed his stomach and esophagus

and the doctors saved his life and allowed him to continue eating. He didn't have to be on life support all the time by connecting his small intestine directly to his throat. And because of this, he was not able to swallow anymore, but he could place food into the small intestine through his mouth, and then it would take over from there. He was still fairly disabled. It was not an easy lifestyle. Like you can keep someone alive if they don't have a small intestine, but you have to constantly be putting nutrients into their bloodstream and it's sort of a short-term fix. But you can indeed connect the small intestine to the mouth and have that work. How small food chunks did he have to

stick down the tube? He would have to pre-puree. Yeah, pre-do the food. So can you talk more about why the small intestine is so important? Is it just because it's like where the nutrients get absorbed? It's like the longest stretch? It's weird. I think a lot of people imagine, and this is how I used to imagine it, that my stomach is the thing the food goes into, and so that's where the nutrients get absorbed. But very few nutrients get absorbed anywhere except the small intestine. Like there are some sugars that can go through the wall of the stomach, but most of the stomach is there to break stuff down so that it's easier for the small intestine to get the nutrients out.

That's why it's this extremely long thing with a huge amount of surface area because it has all these bumps. And on the end of the bumps, there are more bumps extremely long thing with a huge amount of surface area because it has all these bumps. And on the end of the bumps, there are more bumps so that you can get all of the nutrition from the food into the body. And then the large intestine is basically there like as a packaging plant more than anything. There's storage so that you don't have to poop all the time and that it comes out in sort of like a manageable chunk.

It also absorbs water, which is helpful. Is that where all of your water absorption happens? No, the water absorption happens in the small intestine too. I think probably even before then. Do you know what they made the tube out of? Because that seems like

a very weird challenge to have something that will connect your mouth to your small intestine, stay sealed, and not react badly with your immune system. As far as I can tell,

there was no tube. Oh. They connected the small intestine. They just sewed it onto his esophagus, like his the back of his throat there's no thing so when you remove an esophagus you can sometimes shape the stomach into a sort of esophagus like thing and also you can now do esophagus transplants where like you get another person's esophagus but in this case like there was no thing that got connected. They just ran the small intestine up from the belly through all of the area

where the stomach and esophagus would be. And it just like does the peristalsis that it would normally do. And apparently, according to this, like I saw an interview with the guy and he was like, it's a fairly rapid thing. He has to eat like six or seven times a day. And each time, like the food does not spend

a great deal of time inside of him. Would you fart and burp without a stomach? Or does that all happen elsewhere? I don't know how burping would work, but you definitely fart. Okay. Would you fart out your mouth also? You can fart out your mouth, but only when things go wrong, I think. Like when there's like significant blockages.

Okay. So speaking of blockagesages we rely on digestion working properly to live but interesting things happen when it goes wrong especially when a clump of junk like food or soil or seeds or even medications build up and it's called a bezoar and in humans a really common type is called a phytobezoar phyto meaning plant so it's mostly cellulose and lignin and tannin and other chunky indigestible plant material eating too much kale yeah it's medically speaking super annoying it's painful messes with your digestion your bowel movements you have this big

chunk of stuff inside you how long is this thing in there uh as long as it takes to dissolve or be taken out so surgery is usually a last resort. But there are two potential treatments for phytobesores that involve sort of unexpected liquids. And they're usually delivered through gastric lavage. From which way? From the mouth, I think. It's like a stomach pump. So it's like a neti pot, but like all the way.

Yeah. Just a way to like deliver large amounts of fluid so number one it's a solution with enzymes in it one of them is called cellulase which breaks down cellulose that's not the weird one and the other one is papayan which is papaya proteinase one that's found in the fruit papaya and it's a popular ingredient in meat tenderizer because it helps break down proteins, which I just thought was very cool. Like we took a chemical from a fruit, put it in meat tenderizer because it's so good at busting out proteins. And like that's the goal is tenderizing your phytobesor. So we're going to stick some meat tenderizer in there.

And number two, the other liquid is Coca-Cola. Oh, yeah. That stuff's great for everything. How much? What do they hit me with? Three liters. Three liters! Oh, I am lavaged.

Yeah. So you can either do a gastric lavage with three liters of Coke or drink three liters of Coke over 12 hours. Oh, that's fine. 12 hours oh that's 12 hours that's easy i lavage on a weekly basis you're so clean inside yeah but there's a review paper that looked at 24 studies from 2002 to 2012 including a total of 46 patients using coke dissolved phytobesors completely in half of those patients and 19 more of them with a little extra mechanical help like endoscopy tools so they would stick that this is the butt

stuff they would stick stuff up in in there and like knock it around swizzle sticks yeah and so only four of those patients had little enough dissolution to need surgery over 90 percent of these 46 patients were treated successfully with Coke. And the why, we're not entirely sure. And I don't know if people have tried other sodas. I tried to look into it. Coke is very acidic. It has the carbon dioxide bubbles, which probably help move things around.

And apparently, sodium bicarbonate helps dissolve mucus. So like some combination of the factors and the ingredients in Coca-Cola. And the fact that you drank three liters. So it's good at dissolving things in our bodies. And so it's a recommended treatment because it's safe.

Like people drink Coke all the time. It's easy to acquire. It's not an expensive like medical thing or an enzyme that you have to isolate. Yeah, trying to get a bunch of

like cellulase and papaya. So I've Googled phytobesor and the Google image searches have supplied me with probably, you know, 80,000 things I didn't want to see. But it is available if you would like to take it out yourself. We're not going to supply this for you. We're going to make sure that you go to discover this on your own without our help. There are also extreme versions of these. Like if that isn't extreme enough, there are extra planty foods like persimmons and pineapples. I don't know what part of the pineapples these people are eating, but they're called diospyrobazors that have compounds that react with the hydrogen chloride in stomach acid to form a mass. So they're like

even tougher to break down. And so they think that the Coca-Cola treatment works less well for these because there's some other chemical reaction making these visors even worse. So yeah, Coke is good for normal phytovisors, but if you've got this extreme type, then maybe not as much. Like these are the ones that you usually need surgery for. To the point where I think there were PSAs warning people of like, please don't eat too many persimmons because these like digestive masses form. And even though we're like joking about drinking Coke and it is as easy as doing it, like don't do this without a doctor. We're not doctors.

This is not real medical advice. If you have a plant lump in you, go see a real doctor. Now that's good advice. If I had three liters of Coke in a day, I would be so so wired. Yeah. Oh my god, I would be useless. You could do so much gaming if you had three liters.

Like D&D? What do you mean? No, no, like video games. You can play Halo so hard. Yeah, like Ticket to Ride on my iPad? Sure, whatever. Whatever old people play. I don't know. Old people definitely like Ticket to Ride on my iPad. Sure, whatever. Whatever old people play. I don't know. Old people definitely play Ticket to Ride on their iPad. Biggest problem with me playing Ticket to Ride on my iPad

is that when I play with my friends, I'm way too good. Cool brag. Maybe you lose a point now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, do it, do it. Definitely do. Why am I talking about Ticket to Ride right now?

Why am I bragging about being good at a board game? Oh, boy. All right, well, now you have to decide who you give your point to. Not that it matters. Now that we're both losers. Dug ourselves back down to zero. So here's what you have to choose from. Coca-Cola can cure weird plant masses that are inside of you.

Or there's a man who had his small intestine connected to his throat. I'm going to give it to Sari. I think I am also going to give it to Sari. I feel that. And now it's time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds. Stefan? At Sir Wonk O. the Sane asks,

Would gum really take seven years to completely digest if it somehow managed to not get flushed out? Can I get a gum, Beezor? It's a plant material, isn't it? No. It's not. Most gum these days is synthetic. The heck? You're just chewing on rubber.

Interesting. So the question is completely digest. I don't think you can. A lot of the chewing gum nowadays, I found a patent from Wrigley. They use mostly polyisobutylene, which is a synthetic rubber, also called butyl rubber. And I think it's used in a lot of things. I found like maybe on the inside of basketball lining, it's really airtight rubber. So it seems like a very sturdy polymer. I can't imagine anything that we ingest or our bacteria can do would break down.

Right. If you swallow a piece of gum, does it make it through mostly intact? Entirely intact. In gum, there are like sugars and flavorings. And I think there's like preservatives or other, I don't know, chemical things. The sugars, when you chew it, your saliva helps dissolve and like pulls out. But that's like when you stop tasting your gum gum then mostly you're just chewing that synthetic rubber humans are so freaking weird we're just like you know what would be great is like sweet rubber i want to chew on

some minty fucking rubber so i guess no like it would take more than seven years like it would basically never happen i feel like the only thing that would break down gum is like sunlight, like high energy particles. But you can't get any of that on the inside of you because you're opaque. Unless you just called it the inside of you. That's why you got to have poops. Get the gum out. Yeah, that's the thing is like our digestive system is really good at flushing things out.

So this question is smart to ask if it somehow managed to not get flushed out because that's what our bodies do. We have the tube in us and it gets stuff out of us. So to be clear, people shouldn't be worried about gum getting stuck in their bodies forever. Did you look into where this came from? The seven years specifically? Seven years is just like a number that people... Pretty common number. Yeah, it's like when you break a mirror.

I imagine it was like something that just was a big enough number to scare a kid. Sure. Right. Seven whole years? One year? Yeah. But like older than you are. Well, and also, yeah, like seven kids are like, that's two syllables.

Yeah. That must be a big one. If you want to ask the Science Couch your questions, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents, where we'll tweet out the topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at Bozaster, at Daniel Baciu, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions this week. Final Hank Buck scores.

I have nothing. Sam has one. Stefan has one. And Sari leads. Even with a tangent. Even with a tangent. With two Hank Bucks. Wow has one. Stefan has one. And Sari leads! Even with a tangent. Even with a tangent. With two Hank bucks. Congratulations. I didn't keep track this whole

episode, so this is genuinely a surprise. You said wowee. Yeah. You could have had three. Yeah. I stand by my foot fact. Someone is going to tweet at me and be like, wow, cool fact. And I'll be vindicated. Everybody tweeted Sari. Tell her how great her foot fact was. going to tweet at me and be like wow cool fact and i'll be vindicated everybody tweeted sarah tell her great her foot fact was tell her that you support her foot thing

if you like this show and you want to help us out i had to transition into that so you have to keep it it's really easy to do that first you can leave us a review wherever you listen that's very helpful and helps us know what you like about the show. Second, tweet out your favorite moment from this episode. And finally, if you want to show your love for Taisho Shanzhins, you can just tell people about us. And if you want to read more about any of our topics today, check out SideshowTangents.org to find all the links to our sources. We promise we didn't put any pictures of Fido Beezors on the page.

Thank you for joining us. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stefan Chin. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and WNYC Studios. It's created by all of us

and produced by Sam Schultz and Caitlin Hoffmeister. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon.

Thank you. And remember, a mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. In the 1800s, we still had the idea that your bowels have to be purged to balance fluids to help with health. And one way to do that is by swallowing an everlasting pill made from antimony, which is toxic to us.

So you swallow it, puke or poop your guts out, and then recover the pill to reuse over and over again. Please don't. You can use it forever. But don't. It's like a gobstopper except it's poison. Yeah. Yeah, they also had it in cups.

So you put like wine in an antimony cup and then swirl it around and then the acid from the wine dissolves some of the cup and so you drink it and then it's an emetic so it makes you puke.

What a great time for everybody. Mm-hmm.