SciShow Tangents - Textiles

Starting point is 00:00:00 INTRO MUSIC Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your host Hank Green and joining me this week as always is our science expert and Forbes 30 under 30 education luminary, Sari Reilly. Hello. And our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Howdy. What is your favorite shirt? It can be anything that you put on the top of your body.

Starting point is 00:00:39 It doesn't have to be a shirt shirt. It could be a hoodie. It could be a jacket. Well, no, not a jacket. A jacket is not allowed. I'm drawing a line of jackets. Oh, immediately I thought of a jacket. I know jackets are too easy.

Starting point is 00:00:52 A good jacket. Easy, easy to latch on to and keep for many, many years of your life. And you have an excuse to wear it every day. Like no one's going to be like, oh, you're wearing that jacket again. But if you wear your favorite shirt too many times, people will be like, what's going on with you? Katherine recently hit me with the hoodie. She was like, that's too many days for that hoodie. And I was like, it's a hoodie. And she was like, no, that's it's been, it's been 90 days. I mean, I'm a big favorite shirt guy.

Starting point is 00:01:22 I have, I go through favorite shirts and then wear them until they disintegrate off of my body. So I've been through many. Right now I have a shirt that has, probably I've worn it on the show before. It has a little fish on it. Love my little fish shirt. When I was in middle school,

Starting point is 00:01:35 I had a shirt that was from Banana Republic, which looking back is a very weird name for a store. And it had on it a dog, like a hunting dog and a hunting cap. And it was just like randomly arranged. Like there was the dog and then there was the hat. And the hat was not like in proportion to the dog. And I liked this shirt. And someone made fun of it for some reason. I don't remember why. But it made me so sad. And then I found it years later. I had stuffed it behind the hamper. Oh Poor little Hank. I don't remember doing it, but I remember finding it you blocked it out It was oh god her little house. It had like it had this one room

Starting point is 00:02:19 That was the hall but it was just a room and it had like it had a door you could close. I think it was maybe for like hurricane safety. And it was the darkest room in the house, but it opened onto every bedroom in the house. And then the hamper was in there. And that's where the that's where the shame shirt lives. Three stuffed the shirt. How long was it back there for years? Years? Nobody ever moved to the dang hamper. What's going on?

Starting point is 00:02:44 My mom hear. We didn't leave behind the hamper for years. Dusty, dusty hamper. My favorite shirt ever. I had a shirt where I was Marvin the Martian and he was at Area 51 when I was a kid. I loved that one. I had a lot of great Looney Tunes shirts back in the days of the Warner Brothers studio catalog, you know? Great times. Yeah, no I don't, but okay.

Starting point is 00:03:06 Okay, well. That was like my childhood shirts too. A lot of whatever cartoon or comic or whatever I was into at any given time became my new favorite shirt. Do you have Pokemon shirts? I had Pokemon shirts. I had a really good like Snoopy shirt. Oh, okay.

Starting point is 00:03:22 I had a really like whatever video game I was into. If we went to like a Comic-Con or a PAX or something, I would like save up my money and get one shirt with some video game reference that I thought was nerdy and funny and good. I think I saved up for like a Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney shirt. I was just like them yelling objection.

Starting point is 00:03:42 I was like, this is the best design ever. And like, what a niche interest. No one else will know what it is. Or if they do, I know they're a real one. I bet you had lots of friends in school is what it sounds like, Sari. Well, as we've talked about on the podcast, I certainly did not. I was a late bloomer and now I have friends. Children can be so cruel.

Starting point is 00:04:04 Every week here on SciShow Tangents, we get together and try to one up a maze and delight I was a late bloomer and now I have friends. Yes. Children can be so cruel. Every week here on SciShow Tangents we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science topics while also trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. At the end of the episode, one of them will be crowned the winner. Now, as always, we're going to introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem, this week from Sam.

Starting point is 00:04:26 A long time ago, an ancient fellow sat on a cactus and let out a bellow. He said to himself, this I cannot abide, and invented pants to protect his backside. Is this true? Maybe not. Heck, who can say? But pants are something we wear to this day. And while that first pair was probably made out of skin, we've invented lots of things to make pants of since then. From denim to silk, from burlap to satin,

Starting point is 00:04:51 there's a whole world of textiles that can cover your wagon. And along the way, you'll never guess what, we found textiles can do more than just hide your butt. Like be used as a sack to lug around corn, or as a soft blanket draped over a newborn. So if you're glad you don't spend all live long day nude, give it up for textiles and that one pants inventing dude. The topic for today is textiles, which I'm gonna guess isn't too hard to define. Also I think that leather doesn't count. Well, the first pair of pants had to be made of leather.

Starting point is 00:05:29 Then we improvised from there. Then we went to textiles. Yes, created from fibers. Is that maybe like fibers woven together somehow? Ceri's done a bunch of work on this. We should let her. No, speculate. It's more fun.

Starting point is 00:05:41 You just guess. We are going to take a quick break and then we will be back to figure out what the heck is a textile. [♪ INTRO & MUSIC PLAYING [♪ INTRO & MUSIC PLAYING [♪ INTRO & MUSIC PLAYING [♪ INTRO & MUSIC PLAYING [♪ INTRO & MUSIC PLAYING

Starting point is 00:06:00 [♪ INTRO & MUSIC PLAYING [♪ INTRO & MUSIC PLAYING [♪ INTRO & MUSIC PLAYING [♪ INTRO & MUSIC PLAYING Sari, I have a feeling that textiles are not going to be super hard to do. Like oftentimes it's impossible, but this seems this seems possible to me. So Sam said that leather was the first pants, but that's not a textile, right? I don't think so. But I bet you can turn leather into a textile if you chop it up real small You'd have to weave with it

Starting point is 00:06:27 I think the textile is when you take something very long and you make it into something flat and the long thing is a fiber Well, okay. Yeah, but like it could be any long thing. It can be any long. Yeah, it can be like a plant It can be an animal hair. Oh Like a wool, right? It can be threads. It can I just be the extruded plastic, which a lot of clothes are now. Uh-huh. It can be metal. Metal filaments are a thing.

Starting point is 00:06:51 It can be carbon fiber. Wait a second. Is chainmail a textile? I think chainmail is a textile. I think it's like anything that is made from any sort of fiber. Could I do it with a burrito? Could I just slice a burrito very thin. Weave it together. I think I could. I think you could. Not a burrito, a tortilla.

Starting point is 00:07:12 I was like if you lay out the tortilla and you roll it up, it's very like a taquito. Yeah, really smoosh it up together. And then you like lay it like Lincoln logs. That's almost weaving, I think. So a textile is the product of weaving. Weaving or non-woven fabrics, because like felt. Oh, there's non-woven fabrics, felt. Felt is non-woven.

Starting point is 00:07:35 And a lot of what we think about our pants or shirts or clothing. Wait a second. What, yeah? If I braid my hair, am I making a textile? That's a great question. Yeah. Boom. It is weird.

Starting point is 00:07:47 I found the way that's hard. I feel like it's not a textile until I cut it off. So if it's attached to my head still, that's just a hairstyle. That's a coward's thinking, Hank. But if I cut it off, then it's a textile. You could grow yourself your own hat. Living hat. I do grow myself my own hat.

Starting point is 00:08:10 It sits there all the time. Be more formally recognizable as a hat. Textile art comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Once you weave it into a textile, then you can make whatever you want, I guess. The sky's the limit. I have woven. Do you weave?

Starting point is 00:08:29 I have in the past. I was like a hobby kid, you know, where you go to the dollar store and you find those craft kits that's like... Yeah, you're a hobby kid. ...kids' first plume. I feel like there's like a above 80% chance that Sari can do like a more than one yo-yo trick. Oh, with more than one type of yo-yo to I got into like normal yo-yoing

Starting point is 00:08:55 and I got into like, I don't know if it has a better name, but Chinese yo-yoing. Oh, yeah. I know what that is. The sticks and the big. Oh, yeah. Yeah. OK. That is exactly the big... Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. The thing is... That is exactly the kind of kid I was.

Starting point is 00:09:08 Yeah. Did you have devil sticks? Where you have two sticks and then a third stick on it. Yeah. And you do like throwing... You did that? You did that too? Oh, 100%.

Starting point is 00:09:18 Think of a hobby. You're a deeply strange person. I had all this time on my hands. The fact that Sari has turned out okay is great news for my son, who is a hobby kid who does not have any interested friends. Do you weave, Sam? I just bought all this stuff to do hobbies and never actually tried to do them. So, no, I don't weave.

Starting point is 00:09:40 I took like a sewing class in middle school. My mom's quite an accomplished quilter, but I never really fell into the fiber arts. Yeah. Sari, I have another thought. A basket, a textile. Another roast. Oh yeah. Yes, I would say so.

Starting point is 00:09:55 It's as much a plant fabric. If you look at Rayon or any of those bamboo pants or whatever, that's just, you take the wood pulp and you process it a bunch. But if you took bamboo and wove it into something, I would say that's still fiber arts. Right, and if I just like stretched like a fabric over a frame and into a basket shape, that would also be a basket.

Starting point is 00:10:20 It would also have textile. So like it's a basket component of the basket and then a textile component of the basket. This word sounds like a word, textile, that somebody invented in like the 1900s to call a factory that or something. Before that, like the 1600s, sort of, is when it started being a real thing, but the root word is Latin, textilis, which means woven or from the word textere, which means to weave or to fabricate. So I think it meant cloth probably,

Starting point is 00:10:57 or something, or baskets or whatnot, but was more general, it seems like, because the word text, like a book text, also comes from the same root word of texterae. Because we weave the words, is that it? Is paper a textile? Could be. Yes.

Starting point is 00:11:18 It was, sometimes not paper, but like we used to write on textiles. But the words are kind of like joined or fit together. And so that is your text. I bet that's got a religious piece to it, would be my guess. From medieval Latin, so if you go slightly closer to our time, textus meant the scriptures in addition to like a text or a treatise. So yes, it is a little religious.

Starting point is 00:11:44 I looked up the word fabric just because I was curious and it was originally used to mean any sort of like anything fabricated. So metal, stone, wood, et cetera. Yeah, that's just any product. I never thought about fabricate and fabric, obviously related words. And then in the 1700s, I think starting around 1753 is one of the earliest uses, it meant like a textile fabric or something woven in addition to that. They needed a new word because textiles is a deeply boring word and fabric is a much nicer word for what it is, I think.

Starting point is 00:12:18 Fabric sounds so cozy and textile sounds so cold. Yeah, that's right. And there are some textiles, that's right. And there are some textile and that's like the difference between them. I think all fabrics are textiles, but not all textiles are fabric because like if you have chain mail, that's not a fabric.

Starting point is 00:12:34 Oh, gotcha. It is hard and cold. Or if you have, I don't know, there's like geo-textiles, which are the stuff that around sandbags or beneath like landfills or things like that. Like Those are textiles, but they aren't necessarily fabric. Yeah, I wouldn't want to wear one No, we don't want to wear garbage the landfill garbage line. I Don't think it would keep me warm. I'll say that. All right

Starting point is 00:12:58 I feel informed on what a textile is and now it's time to move on to this so the quiz portion of our show where this week we're gonna be playing a little game of Truth or Fail Textiles. Textiles play an essential role in our lives, shaping just about every aspect of our day through the clothes that we wear and etc. So the manufacturer and trade of textiles has played an important role in shaping the economy of many countries throughout history. So today we're gonna be to be playing a game of Truth or Fail Express, textiles edition. I'm going to be presenting you with a story about textile regulation, and it's up to you to decide whether it is true or false. It is so hard to remember how important

Starting point is 00:13:40 clothes are and how rare it is that they are this easy to get. But we're going to learn about that right now. Fact number one, tariffs are taxes that have to be paid for different products that are being imported and exported into and out of the country. And as U.S. manufacturing increasingly goes overseas, many of those products are subjected to a tariff when they are imported to the US. To reduce the tariffs on shoes, some U.S. companies will add a thin bit of fabric

Starting point is 00:14:10 to the sole because shoes with fabric soles are subject to a lower tariff than shoes with a rubber sole. Is this true or false? I mean, it sounds just evil enough to be a thing that people do, huh? But no, I don't think it's true because it doesn't make any sense to have the thin layer. And then someone has to cut it off or something. I don't know. I guess it doesn't seem like practical to me. It does not seem practical, but it seems just dumb enough to make it into law. Because rubber as a material may have been rarer at one point. And so it's like, oh, it's just a fabric shoe. It's a ballet slipper. It's cheaper. I think it's true.

Starting point is 00:14:50 It is true. In fact, the New York Times published a news article about Columbia Sportswear and the use of this process called Tariff Engineering, where garment designs are modified in very small ways to shift the classification of the product into a cheaper tariff. The company has designers work with trade experts to help them make these decisions. One of the examples was a boot or shoe that might have a very thin layer of fabric added to it because it will reduce the tariff from the 37% taxed on rubber soles to the 12% taxed on fabric soles. The fabric is supposed to wear off super quickly

Starting point is 00:15:26 so that customers just end up with the rubber sole. What have we built? What society have we built? What a massive waste of time for everyone involved. I know, I remember reading about like shirts that are, like scrubs are classified differently for tariffs than regular shirts, but the way that they classify them as scrubs are classified differently for tariffs than regular shirts, but the way that they classify them as scrubs

Starting point is 00:15:47 is that they have a certain pocket at a certain height, low to the waist. And so people just started making shirts with like low pockets. You know, business must move on and forward. Nothing can stop it. Now I'm gonna be a little conspiracy theorist when it comes to clothing.

Starting point is 00:16:03 It's like, oh, my shirt's got a weird pocket. It must be classified under a different tariff, huh? You should. I mean, every time anything looks a little bit weird about a shirt, it's probably because somebody's trying to save money somewhere. Trying to make a buck. All right, thing number two.

Starting point is 00:16:17 In the 13th century, the Flemish cloth industry was immensely successful, which led to an unfortunate rise in others producing their own counterfeit Flemish textiles. To counteract this fraud, Flemish spinners developed a fiber for weavers to integrate into their products to market as theirs. The fiber would dissolve in water, allowing it to be removed after the textile was sold. Is that true or false? Huh? So like it was visible until you like dipped it in water or something or? Yeah, so it was like in the textile and then when you...

Starting point is 00:16:48 People would buy it and be like, yes, I can see, but like it wouldn't defect the overall long-term look of the... A Flemish original. Uh, sure. Uh, this seems like very similar to the last one, which means maybe that it's true. I'm just going to go with true this time. I should have trusted myself last time.

Starting point is 00:17:05 I think this one, this one seems fake just because there's water too many places. People are sweaty. You're going to sneeze on this shirt. I'm such an idiot. I don't think it's meant to last a long time. Yeah, it's not meant to last long. It's got to make it a little bit far. It's got to make it to the point of sale.

Starting point is 00:17:21 And so we spill a couple of water on the pile of shirts. Yeah. You don't, you don't walk around with your open water bottle as you're browsing Banana Republic and like, Flemish clothing. Well, it is in fact false. Congratulations, Sarah. You're running away with it. It is inspired by two things, though. The first is the fact that apparently saris made from mysore silk are given an ID number that is embroidered into that sari. So you know where it is and where it comes from. The second is a recent project developing a fiber to serve as a barcode on fabrics that can help identify the contents of the fabric. Because it's important to be able to identify the contents of the fabric for recycling purposes.

Starting point is 00:18:07 But that can be difficult when labels are usually worn out or removed. And techniques to study the fabric chemically might not be able to identify the exact blend of the fabric. We can actually like somehow weave into the fabric an identifiable way of saying like what exactly this fabric is made of, which is wildly complex now. All right, last thing, last chance to come back, Sam, is story number three. To encourage the growth of its own industries in the 17th century, England wanted to find a way to get its citizens to buy wool in place of other fabrics, particularly linen that was imported from France. So Parliament passed the Wool Acts of 1667 and 1677,

Starting point is 00:18:50 which stated that people had to be buried in a wool shroud in place of other fabrics, and that failure to comply would result in a fine of five pounds. Anything to stick it to the French, I bet they would do. So I'm going with true. Even dead English people have to stick it to the French. I can also see them having too many sheep and being like,

Starting point is 00:19:13 freaking hell, we like sent all the people to Australia and now they're sending us wool. We've colonized too much. We've had too many sheep all around the world and now we need to trick our people. To bury some wool. Bury some wool, yeah. Put it somewhere. We need more single-use wool. So yeah, I think it's true also.

Starting point is 00:19:34 All right. Well, it is true. They did do this. The act, and I have a quote from it, said, no corpse of any person except those who shall die of the plague shall be buried in any shift sheet or shroud or anything whatsoever made or mingled with flax, hemp, silk, hair, gold or silver or in any stuff or thing other than what is made of sheep's wool only. Somebody at the end there was like they were making a list and then they're like, just put in any, anything. Stuff or thing. Yeah. Any stuff or thing. That's like you're going to your friends to be like, okay, name all the things you'd wrap a dead person in.

Starting point is 00:20:14 And then they're like, I can't think of any more. Well, well, put in stuff. It's kind of a surprise to me that in 1677 they used the word stuff. Stuff feels much more modern to me. It seems like we just now realized that like we could have stuff. It's a vital word. You got to have stuff. What else are you supposed to say? Things. I guess you could say things. Do you think it maybe was stuff in like fluffy things? Like how Winnie the Pooh is full of stuff and fluff so I don't know I can't DM them they don't have Twitter yeah they're all buried in wool and sex. We'll have to do a tangents episode about

Starting point is 00:20:53 stuff so you could tell us you know where it came from where stuff came from like we could also do some necromancy and like ask them be like what did you mean by stuff here so the exception for people who died of the plague was apparently because they were concerned that the wool might stay infected for three to four years. And now I'm thinking that you would take the wool back, which I don't feel like is what happens. Linen was the common shroud of choice

Starting point is 00:21:20 for both traditional reasons and because linen was accessible to the poor and to the rich, but the government wanted people to buy more wool and the shroud ruling was one way to make that happen. We don't know how it went, really, but the law was repealed in 1814, probably because England's economy was not super wool reliant by then. All right, Ceri got all of those right, Sam got just one. We're going to take a quick break,

Starting point is 00:21:45 then we'll be back for the fact-off. ["Fact-Off"] All right, everybody, welcome back! It's time for the facts. Our panelists have all brought science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they have presented their facts, I will judge them and I will award Hank Bucks any way I see fit.

Starting point is 00:22:19 But to decide who goes first, here's a trivia question. Sumptuary laws are laws designed to regulate consumption, including people's clothing. And in England, one such law was passed with the goal of trying to protect the cap industry. The Cappers Act, this is real, of 1571 required males above a certain age, except for nobles, to wear a woolen cap on Sundays and holidays.

Starting point is 00:22:44 Oh my God, they were obsessed with this stuff. The wool! Once again, 300 years in the past. Everyone's so toasty and itchy. This is like a guy who was friends with the king, and he was like, buddy, I want to make some money today. What was the age above which males were required to wear a woolen cap? What is an appropriate age for a fella to start wearing a cap?

Starting point is 00:23:06 No, for a fella to be forced to wear a cap. At one point. Please. Can you force a two-year-old to wear a cap? No. Probably not. No. Just even just as clueless.

Starting point is 00:23:22 Come on. You can't find a two-year-old. Yeah, I suppose who's young enough for them to have said, you're in financial trouble now, young man. I would say it's probably pretty young, like 12. That's the range I was thinking too, like a little newspaper boy. Yeah. You got to wear a wool cap and you are only nine years old.

Starting point is 00:23:42 The answer, It's six. That's too little. Six year olds wear caps. That's too little to bully and find somebody. No, the king can do whatever the king wants to do. Yeah. The act was however repealed in 1597. So it was only around for a couple dozen years. But, you know, there was a lot of good caps at the time. Apparently,

Starting point is 00:24:07 by the time this law was repealed, hats were had been sort of forced to be so in style that they didn't really even need it anymore. Oh, I just left hats. It worked. It worked. They did it. The fashion changed. We tricked people into liking hats. I love how they just like left out the nobles. They were like, you guys who have lots of money don't have to buy the extra thing. You got you crazy kids are buying all kinds of hats, probably. You're not the problem. You don't wear it.

Starting point is 00:24:34 You probably your hats probably from France. Yeah. Oh, boo boo boo boo. All right. That means Sarah gets to go first. So one of my much repeated takeaways from studying biology is that it is a freaking miracle that anything in our bodies works because there are so many ways for things to go wrong. For example, in developing human fetuses,

Starting point is 00:24:55 there's a hole in the heart called the ductus arteriosus that connects the pulmonary artery, which typically carries deoxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs with the aorta, which typically carries oxygenated blood from the heart to the rest of the body. That's like one of the main places you wouldn't want to have a hole. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. You don't want those bloodstreams to mix in our adult bodies because those are very different types of blood. But this opening is a normal part of development because a fetus's lungs are not breathing air yet.

Starting point is 00:25:30 They are filled with amniotic fluid and the fetus gets oxygenated blood along with nutrients and other important life things through the umbilical cord from the placenta. So in many cases, this hole closes up after the baby is born and it's no longer fluid-filled lungs start doing their thing. But sometimes it doesn't close and babies are left with what's called patent ductus arteriosus or PDA, which is one of several kinds of holes that are considered congenital heart defects. And it turns out that these sorts of enclosed heart holes are more prevalent in children who are born at high altitudes, possibly because of the lower atmospheric pressure and lower concentration or saturation of oxygen molecules in each breath. Plus, the shapes or sizes of these high altitude congenital heart defects

Starting point is 00:26:09 can't always be fixed by the commercially available medical devices out there, which generally are permanent implants that are designed to be inserted with a cardiac catheter and then expand to fill the gap. They are a woven wire mesh. So I've gotten to the point. My fact is on topic. There's just a lot of biology context first. And you can look them up. They're generally called PDA or ASD or duct occluders, which are fancy names for these like wirey structures. And coupled with that difficulty, different high altitude places have different access to medical technology, supply chains and financial resources and trust and various procedures. So a doctor named Franz Freudenthal, who lives in La Paz, Bolivia, which is around 12,000 feet or 4,000

Starting point is 00:26:54 meters above sea level. He's a pediatric cardiologist who often treats indigenous Aymara children with these kinds of heart defects. And he published a paper in 2018 about how he worked as part of a team of doctors, biomedical engineers, and Imara weavers to co-create a new device to fill these heart holes. So specifically, they settled on a traditional textile design called the Andean Cross or Chicano weaving pattern. And the device is woven from a single strand of nickel titanium alloy called nitinol by Imara Craftswomen. The paper says they undergo about four months of training to learn the exact device specs, and then they weave on a circular

Starting point is 00:27:32 mold instead of a big flat loom. Small devices take around three hours to weave, but larger devices can take around a day and a half. The researchers also say that this specific pattern is too complex for current machines to replicate. So far, these devices have successfully passed regulation and have been used to seal up congenital heart defects in children and adults in these high altitude South American places. And the paper also calls out the cultural significance of having these handmade medical devices and combining traditional textile skills with modern medicine, which is like very lovely to think about. These people get to carry that blend of science and art with them quite literally like in their hearts.

Starting point is 00:28:13 Sarah, that is so cool. Thanks. I've been slacking this season. I've been so sad this season. I came in with a banger this episode. I'm in with a banger this episode. I'm so proud of finding this fact. That is so cool. That's that's got everything. It's like New York's hottest club. Yeah. Duck decluders.

Starting point is 00:28:35 It's got babies with holes in their hearts. It's got high altitude Indian mountains. It's got it's got indigenous crafts. Women got nickel titanium alloys. It's got everything. And indigenous craftswomen, it's got nickel titanium alloys. It's got everything. And no one's talking about it. There's like this guy did a TED talk in 2016. And there's like one or two articles since then.

Starting point is 00:28:54 But it's like the paper was published. It's like a miracle that I found this. The internet offered it up to me in my manic Googling and was like, please share this story on your podcast because no one else. Wild. What a thing to be both conscious of the need to be, who are you going to trust? This random person from out of nowhere, but also to be conscious of like how, like, you know, like, can, can we use the like abilities of this community that we don't have to help

Starting point is 00:29:31 like solve two problems at once? Working with the people you're trying to help. It's the, it's the way to do things. Way to do things. Well, Sam, what's the thing that's going to not change your fate? Well, I don't know. You don't know. You don't know. I don't. You're right.

Starting point is 00:29:46 Space travel is one of the pinnacles of science, technology and the indomitable human spirit. Exploring space can offer us insight into the very origins of our universe and humanity's role in it. Space travel is also on a practical level, pretty disgusting because astronauts are up in the space station. They're crammed in a tin can with a bunch of other sweaty nerds. Everything's floating around. Bodily fluids are floating around. Your ass is floating around when you're trying to take a crap in

Starting point is 00:30:13 the toilet. There's a mold. There's dust. There's grime. We've covered a lot of this on previous episodes of SciShow Tangents, by the way. Explore the back catalog, everyone, won't you? But there's one indignity of space exploration that we haven't really talked about on tangents and that which I've never really thought about before. And it's the fact that astronauts can't wash their dirty undies. And that makes sense. So first of all, I feel like a spin cycle on a space station probably is a bad idea. It doesn't seem like it would work.

Starting point is 00:30:42 But also, you think so? You don't think? My washing machine always goes like this. If that started happening on the space station, you're in trouble. Okay. Okay. That's how gravity, that movie Gravity happened. But also water is really heavy. So space agencies try to launch only as much as their astronauts will need for like drinking and stuff. But you know what isn't heavy? Standard issue, astronaut underwear. So instead of washing anything, astronauts are sent up with all the socks and the shirts and the pants and the underwear that they'll need for the duration of their stay.

Starting point is 00:31:18 They wear them until they're too gross to wear them anymore, which seems to be about a week according to a NASA press release, and then shoot them off to burn up an Earth's atmosphere, along with like all the rest of their garbage. Man, that was like, that's basically how I did it in college. Yeah, right? And like I said, there's a certain freedom into shooting your dirty laundry into space. That sounds great. But the idea is that someday astronauts will be establishing permanent bases on the Moon and beyond,

Starting point is 00:31:43 so throwing away all your dirty laundry is not really going to work in the long term. Plus, while everybody has their own personal underwear, spacesuits have a sort of communal pair of high-tech long johns that go on over your astronaut diaper when you go out for a spacewalk. Everybody's got to share this one pair of long johns, and that can get both very nasty and can't be shot into space. It's important. So finding a way to eke out any semblance of hygiene is paramount to astronauts. So one way that various space agencies are trying to fight the plight of crusty undies is by developing new fabrics to make them out of, of course. In 2009, astronaut Koichi Wakata was sent

Starting point is 00:32:22 up to the ISS with experimental antibacterial underwear that he could wear for a month at a time. All the articles. He did and he did choose. He also said that he didn't tell anybody that he was doing it. Like they gave him like a secret mission almost. Where at least for a long time. That's funny.

Starting point is 00:32:41 He definitely told other people it's like, it's a secret. So sorry. They're not just always asking each other about their underwear up there. I mean they might be. They're finding a lot to talk about. All the articles that I could find about this said that the used underwear were currently being studied to gauge their effectiveness but I never found any follow-up about that at all so I can assume that they either didn't work at all to a catastrophic degree or they worked so well that it was boring and nobody wanted to write about it. I mean, how do you test?

Starting point is 00:33:12 Yes. Because I know how I test. You scrape it. You put it in a machine. Give it a little sniff. Give it a little sniff. So then more recently in 2021, the ESA teamed up with the Vienna Textile Lab to make a textile with microorganisms integrated right into it that create antimicrobial, antiviral, and antifungal compounds to get rid of other, more stink-causing microorganisms. But that still seems to be undergoing testing to see if it can survive in space.

Starting point is 00:33:40 But I will point out that there are things that can dirty your underwear that aren't just microbes. So I feel like, you know, you're not going to do anything about the streaky's or whatever. And finally, NASA is just trying to build a washer dryer unit that can be sent to the Moon to do laundry. But since everything in space needs to be a little bit disgusting, they also need to develop a water treatment system that would be able to make the detergent and grime filled laundry water drinkable again. So, after hearing all of that, learning all of this, my solution to the problem is this. Naked astronauts? I mean, somebody's had to evolve by now, right? It seems very logical

Starting point is 00:34:17 that you'd just be floating around up there naked to be. As long as you can make sure everybody smells okay. Sometimes I think that the clothes provide that service. Yeah, maybe you're right. Keeping the inside smells inside a little bit. Yeah, do the inside smells float out of you because there's some gravity though, anyway? I don't know if that affects it, but I am convinced that a spin cycle

Starting point is 00:34:40 on a space station is a bad idea. At first I was like, what? That's fine. But you'd really have to balance that centrifuge because you don't want a bunch of jiggles. And my washer and dryer, if that's anything to go off of, I'd be dead in space for sure. Yep. Gosh, stinky underpants or the best fact ever. That's fine. I could did a bad fact on purpose this week so Sarri could win. So there you go. You're a gender Oscar winner.

Starting point is 00:35:10 Congratulations, Sarri, on taking this one home handily. I'm gonna go ahead and send 500 Hank books right your way. Wow, I'm rich. You can send me anything. I never get nothing when I win all the time. I forget that they exist, okay? And now it's time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask a listener question to our virtual couch of finely honed scientific minds. Hale on Discord and at Mars, Tina on Twitter asks, Why can't machines crochet? We've been making knitting machines for hundreds of years.

Starting point is 00:35:40 Boy, you definitely found an area that I could never pull this one out of my hat. I got nothing. You didn't do knitting or crocheting as your type of textile making? Well, knitting, yeah. But I think that, like, first of all, sewing machines, I don't even, I don't really understand how they work And I know that they are very weird and complicated Because it doesn't like pass the needle through over and over again I'm like it like goes through and then it like Pushes something through and then it pulls it up and then it goes through again, and then it pushes

Starting point is 00:36:19 So it's it's it's different from like, you know, like a normal whatever that's called I forgot the name of the stitch. Hand stitch or something. But like a stitch where you just go in and out. Well, I'll do my best. I've knit, I've also knit before. I've not crocheted before. So knitting machine is different than a sewing machine

Starting point is 00:36:35 and crocheting machines don't exist. Interesting. That's awesome and weird. So sewing, you are taking a thread and you have fabric. So you have a textile already and then you're kind of like joining things together. With knitting and crocheting. You are making a fabric.

Starting point is 00:36:53 You are making a fabric through like taking a thread like yarn and weaving it or knotting it to itself. Yeah, and I've seen like knitting machines, like knit sweaters are obviously made by machines. Oh yeah, sure. And I've seen the machines that make socks, which are also knitting machines. But I did not know that you could not make a crochet machine.

Starting point is 00:37:17 Yeah, and it's because of the difference between the way that you like weave the yarn in and loop it in itself in knitting and crocheting. So the way that you weave the yarn in and loop it in itself in knitting and crocheting. So the way that knitting works, and the problem is this is a very visual thing and I don't know enough about textiles, but I'll try my best and then hopefully people

Starting point is 00:37:35 will either understand or look it up in our sources because I included some people who talk about it better than I do. So knit fabric is basically formed by pulling yarn through a row of previous existing loops. And knit fabric, if you look at it really closely, you see pretty regular rows and columns of stitches. So in those hand crank knitting machines, there are a circle or something or a straight line, and you go row by row and you create more fabric. And so there's always like a closed end of it where it won't unravel from, and then there's

Starting point is 00:38:11 an open end where all those loops on that end, if you dropped the string from it, it'll unravel pretty quickly. And you can make patterns to some degree while knitting by adding loops in different ways. You can remove loops, you can use cables to change the order of the loops, which makes those like crisscrossy patterns and those wool sweaters or something. But regardless of what you do, there's still going to be this like raw edge from which like everything can unravel. Crocheting on the other hand, is a different form of loop building that works with

Starting point is 00:38:46 one needle, like one hook, as opposed to two needles, and you go one stitch at a time. So every time you make a loop, you close it off. And so whatever you're doing, even if you're making a row of a bunch of loops, it'll unravel much slower than a knit project because you have to undo one knot at a time. And because you're working with one hook, there are also a bunch of different crochet stitches that you can do. So you can like pick up three loops and wrap around backwards. So you can wrap around forwards, like you're manipulating the yarn with one hand and you're manipulating the hook with the other. And so while knitting is this like big row, you're doing basically the same thing. You're just making more loops upon more loops upon

Starting point is 00:39:29 more loops. Crocheting, there are so many different hand movements and ways in which you can create more stitches and like the things that you can make with crochet can hold more 3D shape because you can just decide to add loops, like one-off loops, more flexibly than with knitting. And that is much, much harder to program a machine to do. Like machines are so good at like repetitive processes. So you can make knitting machines, but a crocheting machine is much harder and it's not profitable to make a crocheting machine because you want like a fancy border or a custom,

Starting point is 00:40:06 like you want to make an infinity scarf with cat ears on it or something, you can use a knitting machine to make the scarf part or the hat really, really fast. And then for the custom, like 3D parts, you can crochet those extra little bits by hand. Are you saying that it is possible? Depending on what kind of crochet

Starting point is 00:40:25 stitches you use. Like there are some simpler I think. I've not again not crocheted but I think there's some simpler like chain stitching that would maybe be easier to to have a machine do regularly. But like all of those like 3D stuffed plushies or anything, those require so many different stitches that it would be really prohibitively expensive to program a machine to manipulate things in that way. That's, I mean, you really don't want your machine to make a single mistake. So it makes sense.

Starting point is 00:40:59 Like I feel like everything would just completely fall apart. Knitting, I guess, is just much simpler, but I will not understand until I crochet, I feel like, to some extent. Are you still a hobby guy? Do you still ever pick up any new ones? Oh my God, Sam, what do you think I do

Starting point is 00:41:15 with like all of the time? What do you think this is? Okay, okay. I guess I was really trying to gauge what level of thing you consider a hobby. Yeah, no, I became a stand-up comedian for a little while. If you want to ask the Science Couch or questions, you can follow us on Twitter and threads at SciShow Tangents, where we will send out topics for upcoming episodes every week,

Starting point is 00:41:39 or you can join the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on our Discord. Thank you to at Bucky's Revenge on YouTube, AtJCYB on Twitter, and everybody else who asked us your questions for this episode. If you like this show and want to help us out, it's super easy to do that. First, you can go and listen to five episodes this week. You can also go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents to become a patron. You're wondering about that. Why we're saying that is because Apple changed some rules and so.

Starting point is 00:42:08 Yeah. We're behind on really busting all our beans. Which is why we also have extra advertising impressions right now. We'll go back to normal soon. You know what J.C.Y.B. stands for? No. Juh Country's Yes Bogurt. No. Juh, countries, yes to Bogart.

Starting point is 00:42:32 That's why you stick around to the end, everybody. You can join us on our Patreon. You can get access to great stuff like our movie commentaries, which do exist. Some bonus episodes, which are very good. Shout out to Patreon Lessacre for their support. Or third, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That helps us know what you like about the show and it helps other people find us. And finally, if you wanna show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank you for joining us.

Starting point is 00:42:56 I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Jess Stenberg. Our associate producer is Eve Schmidt. Our editor is Seth Glicksman, our social media organizer is Julia Buzz-Bazile, our editorial assistant is Dibbo Petrocarpardi, our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Venish, our executive producers are Nicole Sweeney and me, Hank

Starting point is 00:43:16 Green, and of course we could not make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. [♪ INTRO & MUSIC PLAYING The Mind is not a Vessel to be Filled, but a Fire to be Lighted The Mind is not a Vessel to be Filled, but a Fire to be Lighted The Mind is not a Vessel to be Filled, but a Fire to be Lighted The Mind is not a Vessel to be Filled, but a Fire to be Lighted The Mind is not a Vessel to be Filled, but a Fire to be Lighted

Starting point is 00:43:38 The Mind is not a Vessel to be Filled, but a Fire to be Lighted The Mind is not a Vessel to be Filled, but a Fire to be Lighted But one more thing! Cellulose is a structural polymer in plants that comes in lots of different forms, But one more thing! Cellulose is a structural polymer in plants that comes in lots of different forms. For example, cellulose fibers from flax plants can be spun into linen, or fibers extracted from wood pulp can be processed into semi-synthetic rayon fabrics. And in 2016, the Dutch artist Jalie Assaidi decided to engineer fabric from the cellulose

Starting point is 00:44:08 in dried cow manure. She showed off some dresses made of this poop-derived fabric in a fashion show, but it understandably has not taken off in the textile industry. Classic art student shit, right? You would know better than us. Stuff like that. I'm sure I saw multiple things made of poop in my time at art school.

SciShow Tangents - Textiles

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