Stuff You Should Know - 8 Reasons Why Your Body Is So Gross

Episode Date: May 20, 2014

Your body right now is home to a liter of mucous, countless fat-loving mites, acid that can dissolve metal and plenty of other gross and interesting stuff. Learn all about your body and its functions here. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation, he's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all, and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times, it'll be funny, we'll push the envelope, we have a lot to talk about. Welcome to the Most Dramatic Podcast Ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant and this is Newsflash. Is that the wire coming through? Oh, I'm watching the wire by the way. Oh yeah? The TV show.

Yeah, yeah. Wasn't it either recommended that to me? I don't think so. I've only seen like one episode of it. Oh. Which is the show that you said started it all? The Shield. Oh.

No, no, Oz. I'm sorry. I think the wire was... I like the shield. Okay. So it was like the shield would be like, you like the stones or the beetles, you like the wire or the shield. Way before this was Oz.

I thought the wire was before Oz, Oz was before the wire. Oh yeah, by like a decade. I'm digging the wire. Yeah, I've heard nothing but good things. I think it was like Deadwood. I saw an episode of it, I was like, I don't have room in my life for this right now. Deadwood is so great. Yeah, I'm sure.

Yeah. But yeah, I was just like, I can't commit to this. The wire is a slow burn. It's like, that was before they were trying to like blow you out of the water every week with some like amazing final scenes. Right. It's almost documentary-esque. Oh, nice.

Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, I guess I kind of picked up on that, although the episode I saw was exciting. Well, now I got to watch Oz too. Yeah, you do. I was all pissed off. I thought I was going to impress you and you'd be like, your homework is done. Yeah, no. No.

You have a lot to do, Chuck. All right. With Oz. I think there's at least like three or four seasons. Well, that's an odd start to this episode. It is because in this episode, oh, Jerry's here by the way, in this episode, we're talking about your body. Yes.

Which I guess the human body was on display to some degree and in different ways in Oz. But that's not what we're talking about really in this. We're talking about how like you sitting there, you probably feel pretty good right now. You may be showered. You just got a haircut recently. No, I showered. Your hair smells like... Yes, haircut.

Your hair smells like pencil shavings. Yeah. And let's see, what else? Did you know that like a haircut to Yumi smells like a recently sharpened pencil? I did not know that. Isn't that weird? Every haircut? Yeah.

Weird. Like a haircut. Does like cutting the grass smell like butter-pican ice cream? Smells like almonds. And then she has a seizure. Interesting. Well, I hope she's okay. Yeah, she's fine.

All right. She just smells pencil shavings with haircuts. But you're feeling pretty good back to my little intro. And by you, I'm talking to everybody out there, but what you don't realize is this. You're disgusting. You're a disgusting bag of nastiness, basically. Wow. If you really want to get down on a granular, cellular, even just internal level, you're

gross. Thank you. Yeah. I'm gross too. Okay. I'm not sitting in judgment like I have all of these things as well, most likely. That's what I'd say. So are you?

Well, yeah. I mean, it's not like I lack perspective. I just... Yeah. It's when you say you, it's like a Jay McNearney novel. You know, it's like put you in like the first person of the action. So all of a sudden, you're the one who has a coke problem and it's like four in the morning on a Tuesday in Manhattan and you have to go to work in two hours.

You know, it has more impact when you're saying that. Yeah. I'm going to nod and act like I know what that reference was. It's a bright lights big city reference. Oh, okay. I've never read that. I never read that. Well, you haven't read that?

No. Is it awesome? Yeah. It was good. Okay. It was good. It was in that... Saw the movie.

That whole, yeah. It's in that whole Bret Easton Ellis vein. Sure. Like, yeah, partying too much. Less than zero kind of thing. Yeah. I read, well, I read American Psycho and Less Than Zero. Okay.

Yeah. Well, this is one of his contemporaries who's still around. Jay McNearney or Jay McNearney? Something like that. They're drugs and loud music and dancing. And Michael J. Fox is in the movie. Uh-huh. Bright lights big city.

Anyway, it's a good book, but it's all in like that first person. Or is that second person? Yeah. Second person familiar. Anyway, you're gross. Let's get too wide, Chuck. Okay. So we're going to talk about some of the gross things going on inside the body.

And I think this article had 10, but since we've covered bacteria and poop so thoroughly. Plus, it's a longstanding sufficient of tradition to never do all 10 of any 10 lists. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. And we should also say it's arbitrary that all lists on how stuff works in at 10. I think it, yeah, it's a nice round number. Yeah.

All right. So I guess we'll start with eyelash mites, which I didn't know about until now, did you? No, I didn't either. Mites are little arthropods. They're in the same family as ticks. And they, if you are generally an older person, are living on your eyelashes. Yeah. And not just your eyelashes.

There's actually two types of what are called Dermadex mites or Demodex, I'm sorry. Demo is, it's basically Latin for lard and dex is a boring insect. So it's a fat, boring insect, a Demodex mite. And you have two kinds. Ones that live in your hair follicles and one that live in your pores, basically from what I understand. Yeah. Dogs.

There's another kind for dogs, too. Well, there's like tens of thousands of types of Demodex mites, but there's only two that live on humans and they live on our faces. Yeah. And like I said, more likely if you're older, because as you age, you produce more oils like sebum. Kids don't produce a lot of sebum, so you're probably not going to have a child with eyelash mites.

Right. And social services is probably going to come out. Right. Although they won't be able to tell because these things are very tiny. They apparently move around at night. There's a really good, very exhaustive article on Demodex mites by science writer Ed Yong. Are you familiar with him? The Yongster?

Yeah. Yeah. Dude, speaking of stirs. Yeah. You know, Ed, the Grabster, Ed Grabbinowski, who writes some of the best articles that have formed the basis for some of the best episodes of Stuff You Should Know, he finally came out and claimed his birthright on Twitter. I saw that.

He said, I am the Grabster. I'm coming out and saying hi. Yeah. And he did. And I had never seen his face before. I had once because he commented on some other, like a Dungeons and Dragons forum or something like that. I came across a comment and it was pretty much the same picture.

Yeah. It's definitely kind of weird because, I mean, if anyone, the Grabster is almost like the fourth Stuff You Should Know team member, you know, like we probably covered more of his articles than anyone else. I would guess so. So welcome, Ed. Anyway, yeah. So Ed Yong had a good one on Demodex mites on Discover Magazine's blog.

It's basically everything you could ever want to know about him. And I think that's even the title of it, too. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, they, like you said, they move around at night because they don't like light at a very slow pace, 8 to 16 millimeters per hour. And you can't see them. No.

They're microscopic. They're below the threshold of human sight. Yeah. And while it might sound gross for your grandparents to have mites in their eyelashes, there's really no trouble with them. They're not going to cause you any pain or suffering, generally. Yeah. They think it's possible that one of the two varieties are responsible for rosacea.

Yeah. But who doesn't have that in their sixties? Right. If you're particularly sensitive skin-wise, you may find them irritable. But for the most part, you probably have, especially if you're over age 60, you probably do have Demodex mites living in your face and just don't even know it. And they're crawling across it at night while you sleep. And I found another little interesting mite fact today that was just in the news.

There's a Southern California mite called the Paratarsotomas macropalus. Played by Brendan Fraser. No, I think it's Shia LaBeouf. Brendan Fraser, man. I remember he was in Hensino, man. Yeah. That was a good one. With Polly Shore.

And Sean Austin. Had like the early nineties triumvirate. Sean Aston wasn't that. Yeah. I believe he was the straight man. So this mite has just been recorded as the fastest land animal beating out the cheetah. Wow. This mite moves 322 body lengths per second.

So obviously it's tiny, but that's super fast because the cheetah only moves 16 body lengths per second. Yeah. So it's the new fastest animal. Well, remember, I think it was the cockroach episode where we figured out like that's the true measure of speed when you're comparing different sized things. Because remember the cockroach could move like 50, I think body lengths a second. Yeah, which is way faster than the cheetah.

300 and what? 22. That is fast. Well, my hat has been taken off for this mite. It's a Demodex mite? No, it's not. Oh, I got you. No, but that would be a lot of eyelash to cover.

Okay. Well, let's see, we move on. All right. We'll go from the eyelash over a little bit to the ear. Yes. Here, you may or may not know, you have something called cerumen. Gross. Inside.

Cerumen. I like it either way. I think anything with the word S-E-R sounds sort of oily. It's C-E-R. Oh, is it? C-E-R-U-M-E-N. Huh. Yeah.

Which I guess you can make it with a hard C like kerumen. No. I don't think so. If you're a German, you could. So, you're talking about earwax though, in layman's terms. Cerumen. Earwax. Right.

Everyone's got it. And we don't like it. Americans spend about 60 million North Americans, so I guess that includes our hat and our pants. Spend more than 60 million dollars a year on ear cleaning products. Yeah. What's crazy is a lot of those ear cleaning products, including cotton swabs attached to sticks, generic, generic, those actually supposedly are detrimental to or counterproductive to cleaning earwax out because your earwax is produced in the outer third of your ear.

When you use a cotton tip or anything. Cotton swab. Yeah. When you're finger and you push it into your ear canal, you're not removing earwax. You're pushing it further in and it's not meant to be in there and it doesn't go in there unless you jam it in there. So when you're using some sort of swab or anything to clean out your earwax, you're doing the opposite.

You're creating what can become a hardened buildup and then you really have problems. Yeah. Like real problems. The ear is pretty much self-cleaning. Real blockage only occurs in about 6% of people. But you might know that you have an impactation if you have decreased hearing or dizziness or pain. Yeah.

Or if it sounds like you've got your fingers in your ears or ringing or itching or drainage, that means you've either had it happen naturally and you're one of the 6% or you've stuffed it in there with a cotton swab and not done yourself any favors. Yeah. You have an elbow grease mixed together, not good. Can we talk about ear candling too? Sure. You know the deal with ear candling, right?

What they claim is that you have this cone of paper, what is it, like a waxy paper? You light it on fire, stick it in your ear and it's supposed to create a vacuum supposedly that sucks out this wax that is not true. Right. It's a big, big falsehood sold to you by the makers of ear candles and they can actually be dangerous and they do not create a vacuum and they do not pull wax out of your ears. Right. So if you're an ear candler, you're doing the wrong thing because doctors say it can

be dangerous and it's actually illegal. They have them in the U.S. but it's illegal to sell them making any claims. Oh, I thought you were going to say they're just straight up illegal. No, but you can't, like if you notice, ear candling packages can't say anything about like, has, like increases your hearing or is medically sound. If you've seen the candles rolled open and all that disgusting stuff, they didn't come from your ear. That's a product of the burning of the paper.

Is that right? Yeah. Wow. So it's just a bunch of bunk. So apparently if you do have, if you believe you have a hardened buildup of ear wax in your ear canal, the first thing to try is just a couple of drops of mineral oil. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

Because basically all that ear wax buildup is, it's dried ear wax. Like you said, ear wax is part of a self-cleaning process. Yeah. Anytime you chew or move your jaw, you're actually moving the ear wax further and further out. So gross. Side your ear and then you can just kind of, you know, rub it out or if you're a gross person, you just leave it and let it get caught up in your ear hair for some reason.

But if you have a buildup, you just, just a little bit of mineral oil will kind of reconstituted a little bit. And so it drains out? Yeah. Gross. I guess it'll work itself back out again. Yeah. Yeah.

I use the cotton swabs occasionally, but I try to be responsible and like be aware of not jamming things down in there and trying to just like swab along the outer, outer thing out of your ear. I do not use swabs and my ears are perfect, perfectly clean. Yeah, they are. Do you use the end of a football though? That seems to work. Yeah.

I have great memories about my mother treating me with warm oil for ear aches when I was a kid. For some reason, it's just a very comforting feeling. I remember that warm oil like filling up my ear and it closing. Yeah. Yeah. And it worked? Yeah.

It's just one of those soothing like mom things from when I was a kid. I didn't have, I mean, I have had ear aches before, but I didn't have them chronically. You me did, I guess too, and that just seems so awful to have like chronic ear aches. Yeah. I had bloody noses and ear aches. Weird. Did you fall down a lot? No.

And I haven't had a bloody nose since I was a kid, but... Yeah. I remember kids who had bloody noses like chronically. I wouldn't say mine was chronic. I wasn't like... But it seems like, you know, now when you look around, if there's somebody with Kleenex like sticking out of their nose, you're like, oh my God, are you okay? Yeah.

But when you're a kid, it's like commonplace. Like half of your class has Kleenex sticking out of their nose at any time. It's just, I wonder what that is. We'll have to do how bloody noses work. Yeah. Or we could do a follow up to this of why kids are so disgusting. Yeah. Kids are especially gross, even though they lack Dermadex, your Dermadex mites.

Yeah. True. All right. You ready for another one? Yeah. So gross. Lepoma or fatty deposits is something that you have in your body. Well, why don't you go ahead and explain about fatty cells period and why these might want

to leave that scene? Actually, we don't even know what causes this still. No. I mean, like you accumulate fat in your body through your metabolic processes, like different macronutrients are converted in the liver, I think, to fats, right? Yes. So the fats are generally stored in like certain areas like around your gut, like in your lower back, in your buttocks, in your breasts.

Yeah. Like there's just places where fat normally goes. Right. That doesn't mean like that's where it has to go. And technically, fat buildup can happen anywhere. And when it happens in a place that just seems kind of weird, we've dubbed those lipomas or fatty deposits, which are technically a benign form of a soft tissue tumor. And it's just a bunch of fat cells that have like come up on your face or your neck or

something where you're just like, man, this is not a good day. Yeah. Your neck, shoulders, arms, upper back, upper thighs and your butt are where you're most likely to get them. And it's between the skin and the muscle. And it's just like a little sort of soft, doughy lump that you can move around with your finger. Yeah.

And touching, squishes around because most of the time it's not painful. And if it is painful, it's recommended that you go have a doctor check it out pretty quick. Yeah. It's probably not any cause of alarm if you have one period, like you said, if it starts to hurt though, or if it ruptures and oozes anything, then yeah, that's when you should go to the doctor. The problem is, is they don't tend to really go away. They don't, once they, once they arrive, they either won't grow much beyond that or they'll

grow very slowly, but the problem is they don't reverse course and just pushing them isn't going to push them back down and spread them out. So you generally have two options when you have a lipoma that you don't want. And that's liposuction, which may or may not be effective. And then surgical removal, which is apparently like an inpatient local anesthetic procedure that you can just go and have it done. If you have a high pain threshold and a lot of gauze, you could technically do it yourself, but you don't want to do that.

And let me just reiterate, you don't want to do that. That was a total joke. Do not remove your lipomas yourself. No. Although my, I go to the dermatologist occasionally to get the little skin tags removed. Is there any kind of local anesthetic for that? Yeah, they do just a quick little injection, but I don't even think they need to. And my doctor, the point I was making was my GP said, you know, you can do that yourself.

I said, really? Yeah. If you want, just get some super sharp, you know, pliers or scissors or something. Not pliers, but you know, snippers. Right. Get some bolt cutters. Yeah. Oh man.

Yeah. I was kind of surprised to hear him say that. Yeah. Just do it yourself. Yeah. Because doctors love money. I know. You know, they want your money.

Well, he's not my dermatologist. My dermatologist probably be like, no, no. Was he like your plumber or something? No. My GP. Oh, yeah. They love money. They're doctors.

How about mucus? Mucus sounds great. Let's cover it right after this message. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist?

So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. You ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one.

Uh-huh. You know, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Okay, mucus. Let's talk about it. Boogers and mucus and snot. Let's. Are you a snotty person? You're not very snotty. I'm not snotty because I don't have allergies and I think that's people with allergies are definitely snottier. Oh yeah, for sure.

Emily sadly is very snotty. Yeah, well snot is a snot production, mucous production is part of the immune response to things like irritants, a.k.a. buffalo wing sauce and people who drink milk can be activated by that. Oh yeah? Sometimes, yeah, milk can make people kind of snotty. But mucous production is not strictly the result of an infection or an invasion or an irritation. It's a very natural, beautiful biological process that's ongoing every day.

Yeah, I mean we need mucous in our body. It acts as a lubricant and a liner of things like your stomach and we'll get to stomach acid later, but if it wasn't for mucous, then you would be in big trouble in your stomach. Your body makes about a quarter to a half a gallon. That was good for a shadowing check. A quarter to a half a gallon of mucous a day. Say that again. Yeah, your body makes a quarter to a half gallon of mucous a day.

I think you swallow like a liter of that or something. Yeah, I think so. I can't remember. I remember reading that earlier though. And we should say for our friends who are listening outside of the U.S. and Liberia, it's one to two liters a day of mucous that your body produces. Yeah. Yeah.

Which I have to say, and I feel like a chump for not looking it up and not thinking about it until now, like where does it go? Do you pee it out? No, I mean if you're swallowing it, it doesn't go into your stomach. Okay, but then you expel the stuff that's in your stomach one way or another. That's probably part of your poop. I'm sure it's part of it, but I mean like, I mean, where does your mucous go? Yeah.

Oh man. I wish I would have thought of this before because that's a great question. Well and the age old question, if you're sick, is it make you healthier or not as healthy to swallow your mucous? I don't know. Do you know? Yeah, I think I looked it up and I think it's not supposed to make any difference. So I've found that, you know how mucous turns green and it's a sure sign of an infection?

Not necessarily true, right? No, it does mean that you probably do have an infection going on or at the very least your body thinks it does. Right. Okay. But it doesn't indicate the presence of bacteria in your mucous, that's not what turns it green. There's a type of white blood cells that have a greenish tint and when it's fighting off an infection, when they accumulate in your mucous, they turn it kind of greenish color,

yellow-green. So it's actually a type of white blood cell that's making your mucous green, but it probably means that you have some sort of infection there. Yeah, and if you're sick and you're hacking up that yellowy greeny brown stuff, then it's disheartening at least. Yeah. It's disconcerting. That's the time to apply mind over matter and be like, nope, I'm not getting sick.

I don't care if my mucous is yellow, I'm not getting sick. Yeah, well, that's your whole thing. It works. Yeah. Knock on wood. Yeah. So dried mucous is called a boogers and those are in your nose and... You're going to tell them about the video?

Oh, yeah. If you want to see... I almost posted it to the Facebook page and I was just like, no. Yeah. Yeah, there's a video on YouTube, it's something about Dr. Ramuz Booger from Hell from Man's Nose. Yeah. And I'm not recommending you watch it.

That you'll never forget. I can say this. I was not prepared for how large what came out of that man's nose was at all. No. I thought, well, I'm sure this will be interesting. I didn't know anything could get that large and either one stay in there or be brought out. It's rough.

It's really rough to watch. Like it's a cathartic, nauseating experience to watch this thing. It is. And I didn't listen to the video, so I don't know if it was... Was it a booger? Do you know? Did he say? I mean, yeah.

Okay. I believe so. Yeah. I didn't listen to it. They just are like... He's like, wow. Now you can see why I was so uncomfortable. I'm sure.

But boogers are nothing but dried mucus and they're actually... I tried to look up why children eat their boogers. Yeah. Mucophagi. Yeah. That's right. That's a great word. Or if you're really into it, rhino tellovomania.

Oh, so it's a mania? Well, I guess it can be. And I think they found people with obsessive compulsive people pick their nose more, which sort of makes sense. But why do kids eat their boogers? I couldn't come up with a definitive answer other than they think it's like our natural instinct because it may make you healthier and that eating your boogers could be like an injection of immunity for your immune system because of the bacteria and stuff.

I don't think little kids are smart enough to think this. Well, no, that's insane. They're not smart enough, but they just... It's their instinct to do so and it is all people's instinct if you believe... To eat boogers. To believe some people to eat your own boogers. Who says that? The people that say that's why kids do it is because it's our natural instinct as humans

to do so because it helps keep us healthy. Yeah. Hey, it's new research. I'm not making this stuff up. I got to check that out. Yeah. And I'm not endorsing it. I'm just saying.

No, I know you're not. Tissues are the way to get it out. Supposedly picking it can cause more problems because of the bacteria on your fingers. And doctor says I wouldn't get so many nosebleeds if I kept my finger out of there. I'm a fan of the snot rocket, though, which I'm trying to teach Emily to do, but she's not very good at it. Oh, yeah. It's so gross, dude.

Do you really like doing that? Not if I have a choice, but if I'm out for a run in the wintertime, I don't let snot just run all over my face. I blow it out real quick. I would just rather wipe it on my shirt. That's not gross? No, it's gross, but at least it's gross. No.

That's gross. Man, you just turned my stomach. It's not rocket. I'm going to bring back the hanky. Are you? Yeah. That seems so uncivilized. It was so gross to me as a child.

I remember seeing the old men in church that would just blow just copious amounts of snot into that thing, fold it up and put it back in their pocket. You're like, you're not going to eat that? Didn't you know I help you immune system? Then my nose will bleed and I just walk off. All right. You're not going to eat your sugars and mucus, huh? Yeah.

Again, my stomach is not okay right now. All right. So we should talk about gas because, and I was fascinated with the notion that everyone farts as a child, I used to think about the least likely person in the world to fart and just laugh and laugh. Who'd you come up with? Gandhi or something? Yeah.

Gandhi or the Queen of England, stuff like that. But now it's more like Cape Lancet or people that I consider to be refined. But everyone farts and everyone burps. Yes. It's a part of health. Right. Supposedly, if you try to hold your flatulence in, there's an urban legend that it's very bad for you.

Is that true? No. It just makes it better later. All right. Well, the gas comes out one way or another. And your belch and your flatulence are not the same thing. It's not like the same piece of gas or volume of gas coming out one way or the other. A piece of gas?

A piece of gas. Yeah. Yeah. It's not coming from the same pocket. No. There's a belch comes from your stomach and flatulence comes from your intestines. But they do come from the same thing. And that's incompletely broken down food.

Right. So like if your food is totally broken down, I guess technically you wouldn't produce any gas, but our bodies, our digestive systems aren't 100% efficient. So as a byproduct of this breakdown, the gas is produced by these bacteria that break down our food for us. And I guess there's some chunks that they have problem with and it's like, forget it. I'm just going to create some gas. I'm done here with this London broil.

All right. And so it comes out one way or another. Yeah, at the rate of between 14 and 23 times a day for both burping and farting together, which might seem like a lot, but over the course of 24 hours, because it does happen while you sleep. I think we've all experienced that. Not me. You sure?

No, I'm sure that I have. I know that I have. And of course, I'm not shaming you. You're like everyone else. The Queen of England or Cape planchette. I'm like those two mixed together. So you're Judy ditch. Yeah.

She farts. G.C. Filomena. No, not yet. My God. That's a good movie. Yeah. That's on the list.

There's a good movie. I think that one in 12 years of slavery. The only two like a big, you haven't seen 12 years of slave either. No, not yet. Man alive. Well, I need to see that that Oz. You basically, you have to go home after this. Well, I'm trying to, you have to get up for a movie like 12 years of slave.

Oh yeah. It's not like anytime mood movie. No. And you just kind of have to like walk into it, like walking into a thresher or something like that. Yeah. And when I say get up for it, I don't mean get psyched. I mean, like getting the right frame.

Tailgate first. Yeah. Not so. No. It is a very brutal experience watching that movie. Yeah. And I tend to avoid those when I can, but you should see it. No.

I mean, it's still just like an amazing movie. Yeah. Yeah. So what is actually in burps and farts besides oxygen? Yeah. There would be oxygen. There's methane, CO2, nitrogen, hydrogen, sulfur and farts only. Yes.

And all of this is, well, like I said, part of it is from a breakdown of food. I think I might have said all of it. It's not entirely true. Yeah. A lot of your gas build up in your body. It can be simply from swallowed air. Oh, sure. It can be from a change in pressure.

Yeah. Like how you tend, not me, but everybody else tends to shoot ducks on airplanes more. Oh, really? Uh-huh. Interesting. As a result of the just the change in pressure, even in a pressurized cabin, it's not dead on with whatever atmosphere you're used to where you live. Yeah.

So you can get a little gassy on the plane, but it's the worst place to ever be gassed. Gassy. It is. Luckily, though, with airplane flagellants, a lot of times it doesn't have any attendant smell to it because it's not true methane or sulfur based. It's just air. Yes. It's just that the amount of gas volume that your body can hold right then has decreased

so you're having to evacuate some of the air. And you're like, hey, it didn't smell. Yeah. Or no, you're just kind of looking around furtively and looking to see if anybody's like, oh, and like turns to the side away from you in their seat. And if they don't, then you're fine. Yeah. I wouldn't risk it.

It also helps to ask for a blanket first. And yeah, you can make yourself burp too. I guess that makes sense about the swallowing air. Right. Yeah. Like that's a big discovery as a young boy when you can master that technique. Right. And because there's methane in your farts, they are flammable.

And I would not recommend you do this, but I think if you're a college age boy, you've probably tried to light your farts. Your dad is not a lawyer. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it can be great fun and, but it's also dangerous. Have you done that, Chuck? Well, sure.

Not in the past like 20 years, but yeah. And I think some of the times it's just approved to other people that like, no, that's an urban legend. That's a big fact. Yeah. Watch. Exactly. Well, it is.

Yeah. I'm sure YouTube is loaded with videos of that. Yeah. You see, you know, you have to do it yourself. Right. If you're interested, you can look it up. Um, and I, I, I recommend that we move on to the next thing, but first, Chuck, before we get into it, how about a message break?

Huh? Yes. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it.

And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Is that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. Hello my husband. Michael. Hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step.

Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye bye bye. Welcome to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, so we have a few more here. Vomiting? Yeah, the word vomit has always been in my top five most hated words. Oh yeah. I mean, it seems to really kind of capture what the process, the feeling, the end product. Yeah. Vomit. Yeah.

It's gross. I mean, it's a natural fact of life. It's in you now, potentially, whatever your stomach contents are, could turn into vomit. So it's not... Is it only vomit when it's expelled? I believe so. Okay, good. Because you're expelling like bile, gastric juices, saliva, food, liquids, whatever.

And all of those things were once just a happy part of your stomach contents and now they're not. They've, by definition, become vomit. Right. And your stomach, the average stomach holds about three quarters of a gallon of whatever you've ingested, food and beverage. And it is possible. It's super rare.

But if you've ever said, you know, I feel like I'm going to burst, you can eat and drink so much that your stomach will rupture. But it's really rare because what happens is your body's gag reflex takes over and you vomit if you get too full. Like if you've watched the eating... We did a show on eating competitions. Yeah, we did. Like 80 years ago.

Yeah, it was a good one, though. And sometimes those guys just spontaneously puke. Yeah, remember they're called gergetators, which is the opposite of regurgitating. But if they regurgitate, they have to swallow it back down or else it doesn't get counted. If I remember correctly. So gross. But luckily you have that gag reflex, but there have been a couple of documented cases. There was one in Japan in 2003 where a man was found dead in a public restroom and they

found that his stomach had ruptured in two places. Plus that movie Seven. Oh yeah. Yeah. It is true. He was force-fed. Mm-hmm. Until his stomach ruptured.

Now, if you don't vomit, there is another like plan C that your body has where the lining of your stomach starts to just kind of leak contents out into the rest of your body, which is really bad, but it's not at least a full-on rupture. What you are designed to do, if you believe in intelligent design, I guess, or what you will do. Yeah. But I just walked into a minefield right then, didn't I, is to vomit up your stomach contents as a result of your chemoreceptor trigger zone being stimulated.

And there's a bunch of ways that can be stimulated. This little part of your brain, it's also called the area post-streama. So that's what triggers the vomiting mechanism? That's the vomiting center of your brain. And it is... It's function? Yes. It's function is it receives signals from your vagus nerve, which is attached to your

gag reflex. Right. From your nervous system. So when you're in chemotherapy, this thing kind of triggers your vomit reflex. From your stomach, your gut, there's like four or five different places in your body. Your inner ear is one that can send chemical messages to your chemoreceptor trigger zone to say, hey, we need to vomit here because this guy's either going to... This guy just ate poop.

And as we know, you're not supposed to do that, so we need to get it out of him. There's something wrong with this guy. So let's just go around him and get that poop out by making him vomit. So what happens is the CTZ, the chemoreceptor trigger zone, is stimulated one way or another. So you start to salivate a little more. You're breathing increases. Oh yeah, that salivation. That's a dead giveaway.

Yeah. You start to get real queasy. Yeah. Like pull the car over. You start heaving or retching. That's going to take place before you actually vomit. It's almost like your diaphragm's like getting ready. Yeah, yeah.

Like jack-o-laner or something. Right. Well, sort of a violent action. Yes. The pyloric sphincter, which guards the lower end of the stomach, it becomes relaxed and the pressure in the abdomen rises. So the pressure in your chest or thorax is lowered, which is basically... What happens is the pressure below increases, well, the pressure above decreases.

So it's like what was once below can come back up, right? And the sympathetic nervous system is activated, leading you to start sweating and all of a sudden you just vomit. It's like a contraction. Wow. It's not pleasant. No, it's not. And while the end results, like if you have a stomach flu or if you're just nauseous, well,

could cause some relief, I don't know many people that look forward to the experience. No. You know. No. That's like, that is not something you ever want to do. No matter, even if you know, like it's going to bring you relief, you still don't want to throw up. Yeah.

And then you'll put it off and put it off because it's just the worst thing in the world. It is. But what has always fascinated me is the idea that something nausea, which is kind of like the body's warning, like, you want me to make you throw up? Right. Well, then stop looking at this. Stop eating poop. You know?

Yeah. Stop thinking about eating poop. Yeah. Yeah, we have an emotion called disgust that is primed to trigger nausea and then possibly vomiting if it's bad enough or threatening enough so that like we have an instinct to not eat boogers or to not eat poop or to stay away from vomit or decaying meat or something. Right. We have this emotion that primes us to stay away from things that will make us vomit.

I just find that fascinating. It is. But in movies, I should add this to the movie tropes, if you're just too emotionally distressed about something that will trigger in movies, that'll make you vomit. Right, yeah. You know, like if you see the wrong thing and all of a sudden you just have to run over and vomit behind a tree. Right.

Right. Or that cop, the working cop vomits, you know? On the body. Yeah. That's a movie trope. Yeah. Yeah, that is a, that was a really good list you came up with. Yeah.

2026 overused movie tropes? I think so. I did a gallery on the Stuff You Should Know website and it was fan-sourced like I asked people on Facebook. Oh, yeah. And, man, people just went nuts for it because they're just so overused. Yeah. You should check it out on Stuff You Should Know about cop.

Maybe I'll do a part two because there was a bunch of more and I'll add the vomiting cop. Yeah, that's a good one. You can't handle the murder scene. All right, here's one we missed in our halitosis episode and we heard from people that have tonsil stones or chronic tonsil stones. Another word for it is, what is it, tonsilolus? Yeah. So hard to pronounce.

Like sololiths. Tonsiloliths. Liths. Like it ends in L-I-T-H-S. Yeah. It's a terrible, terrible word. It is. But we heard from people who suffer from this and it can be a cause of halitosis.

And those, if you've ever, like, you know, if you don't have a chronic version, you might have just coughed one up occasionally, a little like white, whitish-yellow chunky thing that is one of the worst smells that you can ever imagine in the world, that's a tonsil stone. All of this, that funky smell you get whenever you floss your teeth, but combined into a ball, it looks a bit like cauliflower. Like super concentrated. Yeah. Well, remember in the halitosis episode, we said that the back of your tongue is like

this trap for dead cells, the bacteria that eats those dead cells, and then whatever other gunk. Well, these tonsil pockets where the tonsil stones form are like, make your tongue look like a pristine wonderland. Like they just accept these deposits that build up and up and up and then, yeah, those things stink. I wonder if the guy that was sitting next to me in the movie theater had those now that I think about it.

Maybe. Because it's possible. Yeah, I feel sorry for people that suffer from it. Well, it's pretty fixable, supposedly. Yeah. You can do this at home. It's not like a lipoma. So how do you fix it at home?

Well, you can do a tonsil irrigation, basically from what I understand, like a little squirt bottle, you know, the ones with the 90-degree straws that football players use? Like that. You can just squirt your tonsils and it can clean them out. I believe brushing your tongue can help because it helps prevent the accumulation, scraping your tongue, too. And then what else was there, Chuck? I think non-alcohol-based mouth washes can help.

Or if you have a chronic case of it and you could get your tonsils removed, which I would like to do if I had a chronic case of tonsil stones. Sure, because it's not just the bad breath that comes along with it. Like you can get earaches, sore throats, inflamed tonsils. It's not like your body's just like, whatever, tonsil stones. Who cares? It hurts it. Yeah.

And this is another one. All these gross things, for some reason, like childhood is where you discover a lot of them. And I remember distinctly my brother the first time he coughed one up and smashed it and made me smell it. Oh, my God. Yeah. Because I'd coughed them up before, but I'd never smashed it and smelled it.

Oh, man. He's like, you've seen these things? I'm like, yeah. He's like, smell this. Oh, man. Yeah. What happened to you? Did you vomit?

No, I didn't. But yeah, it made me realize, wow, that's what those are. And that's what they smell like. That's really gross. Man. This whole episode, I'm just kind of like, I'm over it. And we talked about some funky stuff before, too, but this is the first time where I've had kind of an ongoing stomach ache.

Yeah. And I guess we'll finish it up with something not super gross. No. That's stomach acid. Yeah. Which is hydrochloric acid, which is the same kind of hydrochloric acid that you can use to dissolve metal. Yeah.

Got a gun you want to get the serial number off of? Hydrochloric acid. That is in your stomach. And like I kind of spoiled earlier, because your stomach is coated with mucus on the inside, that is the reason that hydrochloric acid isn't burning through your stomach. Yes. That was some great foreshadowing. It was.

Do you have anything else on that? Stomach acid? No. It's in there? Yeah. I mean, it's just there. It's a combination of hydrogen and chloride. When it combines, you get some HCl action.

And there you have it. Some of the grossest things in your body as we speak. Yeah. I guess probably that's why it burns to throw up, because you have a tremendous amount of mucus lining your stomach to keep it from dissolving, and you have some along your throat and airways in your esophagus, but not as much. So that's why bile burns. Yeah.

And I know if your stomach bile. If you suffer from bulimia, that acid can end up having like bad teeth because of it. Because you're just wearing them down? Yeah. Wearing down the enamel from the inside out. And supposedly the stomach rupturing is more common if you suffer from bulimia, because you may have a bad gag reflex as a result. So it may not like react when it should if you're overeating.

Gotcha. Yeah. Man. Lots of stuff going on in the body, huh? I said it before, and I'll say it again. Your gross. Yeah. Thank God we're wrapped in skin and hair.

Yeah. Because that's lovely stuff all the time anyway. Yes, it is. If you want to learn more about 10 gross things in your body, we didn't cover two of them. So there's two more for you to check out at least. You can type gross body into the search bar at howstuffworks.com and be sure to check out Chuck's Movie Tropes Gallery too at stuffyoushouldknow.com. And since I just plugged two sites in one, you know it's time for listener mail.

I'm going to call this high five from a feminist. Nice. Hey guys, my name is Wendy. I'm the editor for the feminist website, Good Good Girl. I just wanted to drop you a line and see how much I enjoyed the podcast on burlesque. To be honest, I'm not the biggest fan of neo-burlesque. Not for any feminist reason. It's just not my bag.

But I was surprised how enthralled I was with its history. More than your background, the part of the podcast that really stood out was how well you two handled the two feminist perspectives that surround it. I thought you did a really banging job of presenting the argument, framing each side, but respectfully acknowledging that as men, it's probably not your place to make a definitive statement on it. Feminism and gender are tricky subjects, but they're also so interesting and exciting to talk about because I'm always sad, and I'm always sad when guys feel like they can't

take part. I think a lot of dudes feel it's not their place to comment, but you just showed that anyone is welcome in a talk about women's rights, it just needs to be approached with a bit of tact. It's a great job. I love the show. It's one of the highlights of my week. My friends are always joking that I start every second sentence with talking about blank.

Did you know? Don't worry. I always make sure to name, check you guys as my source. That is from Wendy Cyfrit, and she is the editor of Good Good Girl, which you can find at goodgoodgirl.com for all your feminist needs. Nice. I highly recommend it. Yes.

Thanks for writing in, Wendy. We appreciate that. We appreciate the accolades. Sure. Yeah. And if you want to get in touch with us for any reason whatsoever, you can tweet to us, right? Yes.

S-Y-S-K podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. You can send us an email to stuffpodcastatdiscovery.com. And again, check us out at our website, stuffyoushouldknow.com. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable

happened to me, and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic

podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all, and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. We have a lot to talk about. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.