The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Why Do Mosquitoes Bite You And Not Your Friend?

Episode Date: May 27, 2026

It's a Wednesday End Bits Special, and that means some news you can use. Especially as we all get ready for summer, this little nugget about mosquitoes is worth a listen.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It is Wednesday. It is an N-Bits day. And we've got lots of interesting stuff for you today. That's coming right up. Hey, a little extra theme music today to start things off. Peter Mansprich here, happy Wednesday, happy hump day, happy middle of the weekday.

This is the week where we're going to be eventually crossing over from May to June. Just saying it brings a smile on your face, right? I mean, we're getting close to summer. And we all look forward to that. We're also getting close to the end of the hockey season. Believe it or not. One team now in the finals,

the Vegas Golden Knights. They're there having swept their series with Colorado, and that's certainly surprised. lot of people. Still trying to determine who will win the other series. Will it be Montreal or Carolina? Which brings me to yesterday's program, which seems a very popular,

a lot of big audience there for our Moore Butts conversation that dealt a little bit with sports. We were trying to, you know, we were tongue in cheek a lot there about how they were auditioning for the Hockey Night and Canada panel. Now, some of you were concerned about something that happened during that program. And I'll concede perhaps we poorly phrased a couple of things, being non-sports people like we are. But here's what we were trying to do.

This was the premise of the discussion. It's been more than 30 years, 33 or 34 years. since a Canadian-based team won the Stanley Cup. Now, there are a lot of Canadians on all the teams. It's our sport, right? But there are only the Canadian teams that are based on our side of the border. And so what we were trying to discuss was that every time a Canadian team reaches the finals, It becomes this sort of Canada's team discussion.

You know, we've had it for the Oilers quite a few times, two or three times, since Montreal won the cup in, was it 93? What other Canadian teams have been there? Well, the Canucks were there one year. The Ottawa Senators were there one year. The Calgary Flames were there one year. Montreal was also there during the COVID years, right? who's not on that list of Canadian teams?

The Leaves, they never made the finals. They never made the semifinals. Okay, somebody's going to push back on that. Maybe they did one year, I'm not sure. But nevertheless, they've never made the finals in the period of time we're talking about. So that's what our discussion was. Now, some people took that, and once again, I concede we may well have phrased something poorly.

That no Canadian teams have made the finals since the last time they won the cup. Well, that's not the case, as I just went through the list. Many teams have. But they haven't won the cup. That was the point. And I'm sorry that some people seem to be quite wound up about the way they heard their discussion. Only a few. I mean, we've got a lot of letters to people who loved the discussion, loved hearing more and buts in a format and a discussion subject that they're not used to hearing from those two guys.

All right. So that puts that aside, you know, let's see what happens. Let's see what happens when we get to the finals. Who's in him and who wins? All right. Let's leave it at that. Okay. end bits you know what end bits are there are stories that have you know popped up in the news that we haven't talked about and but they're interesting they're interesting subjects and this first one is definitely an interesting subject for those of us who are getting ready for the summer it's from a website called fizz.org so p h y s dot org and the headline is this and this is why you'll be interested in it

Why are some people mosquito magnets? Clues are emerging. So let me read a little bit of this because, you know, we're into mosquito season now, right? In some areas, it's really bad. And it's mosquitoes and black flies, but we're focusing on this discussion about mosquitoes. Ever felt like mosquitoes bite you while ignoring everyone else?

Scientists are now making progress in deciphering the complex chemical cocktail that makes particular people more enticing to these disease-spreading bloodsuckers. It's not a misconception. Mosquitoes are attracted to some people more than others. Fredik Sima, a France's Institute of Research for Development, told AFP. But we are not all magnets all the time. the medical entomologists added. A range of sensory cues can cause mosquitoes to pick one human over another. Mainly the small and heat our bodies give off and the carbon dioxide we exhale.

Female mosquitoes, which are the only ones that bite. Now, I did not know that. I probably should have known that. I'm seeing a lot of you and hearing a lot of you out there going, come on, you didn't know that? No, I didn't. I didn't know that. Female mosquitoes are the only ones that bite.

They detect signals with finely tuned receptors then choose their target accordingly. We've known for over 100 years that mosquitoes are attracted by the carbon dioxide that we exhale. This is the first signal that triggers their behavior when they are dozens of meters away. Swedish scientists Ricard Ignell told AFP.

Within around 10 meters, mosquitoes will start detecting our odor and in combination with carbon dioxide, this attracts them even more, said the senior author of a recent study on the study on the subject. As they get closer, body temperature and humidity make particular humans even more enticing. Now, there's a common misconception out there, apparently.

The blood type, your blood type, matters in the choice that mosquitoes make and who to land on and start sucking your blood. the idea that mosquitoes prefer particular blood types has no scientific basis, said one of the researchers. There have been some studies, but only involving very few people, nor is it related to skin, eye, or hair color. Odor, on the other hand, matters greatly. A soup of molecules produced by our microbiota is more or less appealing to mosquitoes. mosquitoes, says another researcher. Humans released between 300 and 1,000 different odorous compounds, research is shown, but scientists are only just beginning to understand which ones attract mosquitoes. The researchers released Edis-Agypti mosquitoes, known for spreading yellow fever and dengue, on 42 women in a lab,

see which ones they preferred. That must have been a real fun time. We have shown the mosquitoes use a blend of odorous compounds. We identify 27 that the mosquitoes will detect out of the possible 1,000 for their attraction to us. The woman, the mosquitoes most like to bite, which included pregnant women in their second trimester produced a large amount of a particular compound made by a breakdown of the skin oil sebum you know hold on a minute do you believe this they got a lab they got a lab that's closed off and isolated they put people in the lab including pregnant women in their second Simester and why are they

Trimester and why are they there? They're there to get bitten by mosquitoes. There's something really bizarre about that image. But, you know, all in the desire for science. Okay, let's get to something that we understand. You know, if you have a summer backyard barbecue

or you're lucky enough to have a cottage so you're out at the lake and maybe you have a beer. We're Canadian, eh? Drinking beer has also been linked to attracting mosquitoes because it raises body temperature, increases the amount of exiled CO2, and changes skin odor.

According to several studies, for research conducted in Burkina Faso, some brave volunteers drank beer, then several days later, water, to see which mosquitoes preferred. Seems they preferred the beer. For a 2023 study in the Netherlands, 465 volunteers put their arms in cages filled with female mosquitoes.

The volunteers who had drunk beer in the previous 24 hours were 1.35 times more attractive to the mosquitoes than those who didn't. Discovering why mosquitoes prefer particular people who has become a more pressing issue as climate change expands the range where they roam. Okay. I think we've heard enough about the mosquitoes. and how much they enjoy targeting us and why. Okay, here's your question to go with this story. How many subscriptions do you have? Remember, it used to be you had a subscription to the daily paper. Might come in the morning, might come in the evening.

But that was about it. You had a subscription. You paid your weekly subscription rate to the paper boy or paper girl who came to your house, who delivered the paper every day. That was your subscription. What about today? Do you even know how many subscriptions you have? You know, online you end up, you know, I really like that article and I'm going to subscribe.

and then a month later you've forgotten, except every month on your credit card, Bing, Bing, Bing. Now, a lot of people have a lot of subscriptions. That's what this story's about. It's in the New York Times, published a week of two ago. Here's the headline, streaming, toilet paper, underwear, subscription fatigue is setting in.

As companies look to build cash flow and loyalty, everything from heated car seats to earthworm deliveries can become a recurring charge on your credit card. So let's read a little bit of this. It seems as if much of your life has a subscription now, your TV, your car, even your white noise machine. If that's true, you're right, it is. Take Eleanor Lewis, a 35-year-old software engineer in Brooklyn. who's paying for a video game she's no longer interested in. She has subscribed to D&D Beyond an accompaniment to the original role-playing game for what to her feels like forever.

I haven't played Dungeons and Dragons in like five years, Ms. Lewis said. I literally do not even like Dungeons and Dragons, but I'm stuck with the stupid Dungeons and Dragons beyond on a subscription. I can't figure out how to get rid of. Yeah, I have some time for her. I've had subscriptions that I foolishly got into, and when I finally realized I got to get out of this, I couldn't figure out how to get out of it.

It didn't matter how much I looked online for the cancellation policy. Some, it's tough. Anyway, Miss Lewis's story is just one example of products or services that can take up long-term residents in credit card statements. There's your streaming channels, shopping sites like Amazon Prime, Wholesale clubs for household goods like Costco. The ink for your printer. I have one of those.

And I can't stop it. I keep trying to figure out how to stop it. And I can't. Cloud storage. And the tools that make your computer useful, like image editing software. It could even be your underwear. Car washes.

The bed where you sleep. The networks where you watch professional sports. Earthworms to feed your salamander. dating apps, exercise bikes, your child's math games, fitness trackers like ura rings, pet cameras, your pet robots. And don't forget the subscriptions to particular products like toilet paper from a company called, Who Gives a crap? Never heard of that one.

Some of your subscriptions have subscriptions. There's Hulu, and then there's Hulu Premium. I'm not sure you can get Hulu. in Canada. Maybe you can. You didn't used to be able to get it. And of course, there are subscriptions to manage your subscriptions. Subscriptions have become so ubiquitous that they have become a target of lampoonery from the likes of a Boston-based comedian by the name of Joe Fenty.

On a recent trip to New York, he tried to use an exercise bike at his hotel. The bike was a peloton. It required him to create an account to use it. In a sketch widely shared on Instagram, he sends up the new way of doing business. He portrays a modern-day salesman who shouts, this product is for a subscription that's just ads, and you have to pay to make it stop. You have no choice.

In an interview he said, more and more, I'm seeing that things are becoming a service product that really should just be hardware you purchase and then get to use. The problem with some of these things is, The subscription rate seems like not very much, a couple of bucks. But these start to add up overtime. And the more you get, the more you pay, you know the story. So actually, this is a good article and it gives you some ideas in the New York Times

about how to deal with what is clearly something where people are getting a little fed up. So, you know, if you subscribe to the New York Times, then you probably might want to search this article out. Once again, it's in the New York Times. It's written by a fellow named Sopan Deb, S-O-P-A-N, first name, last name, D-E-B. It was published on May the 12th. So if you're in this kind of subscription crunch, I want to take a look at this.

It may take some time if you want to start getting rid of some of this stuff. But it's your money. You know, you may want to have a good look at it. I've got a really good one coming up. There's a lot of myths about water and what drinking water can do for you. Right? we want to deal with some of those. But first up, we're going to take our break.

We'll be right back after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Wednesday edition. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Glad to have you with us. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks. Or on your favorite podcast platform. We're glad to have you with us wherever you are joining us from. A reminder about tomorrow.

was your turn. The question of the week was an it's an Ask Me Anything week. We've already got piles of questions well more than we need. And we still have some leftover from last month's Ask Me Anything section. Anyway, we'll get to as many as we can

tomorrow. And if you still want to send something in, please go ahead. We'll save it for next month, which will be the last one before the summer hiatus. And a number of you've already been asking, really, do you have to take the summer off?

We really depend on your podcast each week. Well, you know, we're only human here, man. And our contract with Sirius XM specifies a summer hiatus. However, there will be some great encore episodes, especially the Moore Butts variety. because they're the most, as we say, green, right? You can run those at any time because they're good advice on the politics of our nation. Everything else is kind of specific to the politics of the day.

So it's a little hard to run good talk over again in the summer because it's, you know, about issues that are well past. However, there will be in this summer to, special good talks. One in July and one in August. We'll nail down the specific date and make sure you're aware of it. But there'll be one in each month. So Bruce and Chantelle and Wah don't get the whole summer off.

We do have work to do as well. And we look forward to those special occasions where there's a summer good talk for you. Good Talk, though. We'll be here this week on Friday. Tomorrow, your turn and the random answer. They'll both be here with a lot of your questions. We'll get to as many as we can.

The Ask Me Anything days are harder to get a lot of questions in because your questions need answers. And you know the way I ramble on. So anyway, that's tomorrow's program. Let's get back to today's. I, you know, before the break, I said got an interesting story here about water.

And this was on National Public Radio. And you can find it if you need to, the long version. We're just going to highlight some of it. The headline is called Busting Five Common Myths about Water and Hydration. And the first one addresses, I guess, one of the most common. according to this article, misconceptions about water. So why don't we get to? Myth number one.

You need to drink at least eight glasses of water a day. You've heard that. You've heard it and you've gone eight glasses of water. That's a lot of water. And what size glass are we talking about? We're talking about like a regular glass, eight ounces of water, eight times a day. So let's read what they have to say in this article.

Is the advice of drinking eight, eight ounce glasses of water a day to start hydrated true? Researchers in 2002 tried to pin down studies that might support the claim by looking through multiple scientific databases, but were, wait for it, unable to find rigorous evidence behind it. Water is essential for our bodies. We all know that. You wouldn't live if you didn't have water. It makes up a majority of our cells and blood flushes out waste through our urine and helps cool our bodies through sweat. Too little water and our cells shrivel up from dehydration. Too much water and our cells swell up from hyponetremia. I haven't heard that word before. so how much water should we be drinking on a daily basis?

It depends on your body size, your activity level, the temperature, and how much you're sweating. Because of these factors, there's no hard and fast rule for how much water you should consume. And, you know, so much of medical science comes down to this next sentence. The best advice is to listen to your body. If you get thirsty, drink water. If you're not thirsty, you don't need to drink water. Now, there's an important part of all this, which is salt, right? Thirst plays a central role in fine-tuning that balance between water to salt.

sodium is necessary for our nerves and muscles to function and it's what our body uses to regulate the amount of fluid it needs to stay hydrated. One of the researchers said there are sensors located in your brain and they are constantly tasting your blood to see if there's just the right amount of salt. If it's too salty, then those sensors are like, oh my God, I need more water.

When that happens, it makes you thirsty. then if you drink too much water and the sensors in your brain detect that your blood is too watery, they signal a hormone that tells you your kidneys, tells your kidneys to pee out the extra water. In short, you don't need an app to tell you how much water to drink or guzzle a gallon of water a day. Just trust your body to let you know when to drink water. That's what I mean. You know, there are so many of these things is, you know, trust your body.

your body will signal you. It tells you when you're thirsty. It tells you when you need to extract some of that liquid. I like this little line, though. Another persistent myth about hydration states that caffeine is a diuretic. Okay, this is the issue about, you know, trying to find the title here, sorry, that caffeine makes you hydrated.

Dehydrated, sorry, not hydrated. Caffeine makes you dehydrated. Listen to this. Another persistent myth about hydration states that caffeine is a diuretic that makes you pee. And therefore, caffeinated drinks like coffee and tea don't hydrate your body. This idea, which has been around for decades, is based on the findings of a study from 1928 that looked at three people. Not only is that sample incredibly small by today's standards,

but the finding has not held up to more recent experiments. So consider this myth, bust it. Let's see if there's another one here. We need sports drinks to replace salt and other electrolytes. You know, Gatorade is a very popular sports drink. and people use it for all kinds of things, including, you know, getting rid of headaches, they think. But I guess what these studies show is that

you might hear that you need sports drinks to replace salt and other minerals known as electrolytes, like potassium and chloride, which are also essential for our bodies when you're active. If you're exercising for more than an hour or so, it's likely you will need to replace the salt you're sweating out along with water, say the experts. but you don't have to do that by drinking sports drinks.

While they can be one effective way to replace the body salt, you can get that salt from other foods and drinks. And like thirst, you can trust your body, trust your body, to tell you how much you need. Okay, here's one. How many times you've been told, drink lots of water? It's going to help you lose weight.

Well, some small studies have found that drinking water before meals can help certain groups of people lose weight. The idea is that water makes your stomach feel full, and therefore you eat less. However, there are many conflicting studies on this topic. For example, one paper found that drinking up to 500 mill 30 minutes before a meal led to weight loss in a group of young men, but another paper found that the tactic did not work for younger people in the study.

only the older ones like me okay moving on we're taking up a lot of time here with a couple of pieces so let me see if there's a couple of quick ones here

no here's one that's interesting I mean they're all interesting I love NBix and a good chunk of the bridge audience likes the NBits too you know Wednesdays aren't as popular as Fridays. They're not as popular as Mondays.

Good Talk and Janice Stein. But they are popular. And I've had people write and say, I only listen to Wednesdays. Well, you're missing a lot of good stuff if you're only listening to Wednesdays, but I'm glad you're listening to Wednesdays. Here's the headline for this one.

It comes from CNBC. This is a particular interest to Canadians, this one. Americans are leaving the U.S. in record numbers and spending hundreds of dollars to learn how to do it. You know, we've heard all these stories about how tourism from Canada to the states is down, upwards of 45% in the last year. This is a different kind of story. A record number of Americans are leaving the U.S.

Once again, this one from CNBC. the country saw a net negative migration of between 10,000 and 295,000 people in 2025, according to research from the Brookings Institution. The widest estimated range was among people who left voluntarily, with Brookings estimating that between 210,000 to 405,000 people did so last year. It's the first time in at least 50 years that more people, moved out of the country than moved in. Restrictive immigration policies and deportation efforts play a role, according to Brookings.

Some U.S. citizens are emigrating for school, work, raising a family, retirement, and everything in between. Ex-Patsy, a company that offers relocation tours for Americans, is becoming a sought-after resource for some. The company launched in 2022 held its second annual movement. Move Abroad Conference in, oh, they call it a Move Abroad Con, you know, like Comic Con and Move A Broad Con, in San Diego on May 9th and 10th. Some 600 Americans from around the country attended. Double the number of people of the inaugural event held in May of the year before.

Ex-Patsy co-founder Jen Barnett tells CNBC Those figures. A majority, 89% said they want to leave the U.S. for political reasons. Go figure. That's according to a sample of 218 of the weekend's attendees. Others say they hope to move for adventure and growth, as well as to save money. Roughly two-thirds of respondents hope to move within two years.

They have an average monthly budget of almost $4,000 to work with, and hopeful movers are split among 44% individuals, 39% couples, and 17% families with kids. Top reason, though, political. I assume they don't like their government. And apparently, a lot of people do not approve of the Trump government at the moment. We're seeing incredible polling numbers. All right.

This may be our last one. but it's it's one that focuses on health. You know, the headline in this is, that's from the Washington Post, why sitting all day is so bad for you and what to do about it. You know, I found myself, especially over this past winter, I was spending far too much time sitting and not enough time getting up and moving around. And so for the last, I don't know, six or eight weeks, I've been walking a lot more than I had been.

It's one of the benefits of getting a dog. And as some of you know, like we have a new dog in our household after going dogless for a couple of years after our great Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever passed. But now we have a little border collie, puppy. and it is like crazy dog loves loves walks loves to run does the zoomies you know races around anyway so as a result I'm walking a lot more anywhere from you know five to 10,000 steps a day which is not a lot but it's considerably more than I had been doing and I've noticed the difference I've noticed the difference in simply the

My breathing is better My weight is better My energy is better Still I'm afraid I'm out of sleep better But all those others I'm ticking the boxes in the right direction So let's get to Sarah Klein's piece In The Washington Post

Why Sitting All Day is so bad for you We've all read the headlines claiming that sitting is the new smoking, even if you exercise. It seems as if there's a regular cadence of research coming out to suggest that anyone with a sedentary lifestyle or occupation is doomed. And as we know, a lot of people sit at their desks for eight hours a day, whether that desk is in an office or whether that desk is at home. So how bad is it really to sit all day? How can you, combat the effects, considering that you may not feel like you have much of an alternative

if your job requires it of you most days. At the Washington Post, we dug into the research and asked experts to explain what sitting all day does to your body and what you can do to counteract. The effects. A lot of sedentary time really is bad for you. We've known this for more than a decade. I started talking about this 10 years ago, and it's only gotten worse at Keith Diaz. the Florence Irving Associate Professor of Behavioral Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, who has researched the health effects of sitting too much. Over the years, various studies have linked too much sitting with shorter lifespans, including higher rates of death from heart disease and from any cause.

How much sitting is too much can vary by study, but generally it looks like more than 8 to 10 hours a day. Sitting for 10 hours a day, once in a while, isn't the end of the world. Rather, researchers look at sedentary behavior over the course of years. When sitting all day becomes a regular habit, it's also tied to a higher risk of cancer, type 2 diabetes, osteoporosis, depression, and cognitive impairment. A February 2024 study in the Journal of the American Heart Association of nearly 6,000 older women found that those who spent more than 11 hours sitting per day had a 57% higher

risk of death from any cause during the 10 years studied period and a 78% higher risk of dying from heart disease compared with women who sat for fewer than nine hours a day. Women who sat the most during the day and had the longest bouts of uninterrupted sitting had the highest chances of dying. This study and others point to two main hypotheses, underlying this association between sitting and negative health outcomes. The first is that when we sit,

our muscles are not working and are not taking up glucose, and that can negatively affect our metabolism, said one researcher. The second has to do with blood vessels. When we sit, the bend in our legs is like a kink in a hose that can affect blood flow. That makes sense. Over time, that can contribute to blood vessels becoming stiffer,

a risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Okay, I'm just going to skip through this and get down to what can you do differently. So let's, what does it say here about how to combat the effects of sitting? So what can you do if you sit too much? The answer is simple in theory and harder in practice for the vast majority of U.S. adults. If you have healthy joints and muscles and no reason you can't move more, then just don't sit all day. Here's some practical tips for incorporating a bit more movement into your life. If your job is sedentary, in other words, let's say you work Monday to Friday and you sit a lot,

make sure your weekend isn't sedentary. Be active. Walk, hike. Do things. Start exercising regularly if you don't already. You know, you don't have to spend a lot of time. You don't have to hit the gym for an hour. In some cases, swapping 30 minutes of sitting for 30 minutes of light activity

was associated with a 17% lower risk of death in a 2019 study they did. Change your position frequently. If you're locked into a sitting position, move around. The fix for sitting all day isn't necessarily standing all day. Standing too long can lead to back pain and still cause blood to pool in your legs, but it can be a helpful way to interrupt longer periods of sitting.

The goal here is don't sit all day. Don't stand all day. Don't move all day. It's really just about doing everything in moderation and avoiding doing one thing for long periods of time. So a lot of this stuff is pretty obvious that we could be doing. You know, build in certain intervals during the day where you get up, move around, walk around the block of your home or your office.

All these things are possible. All these things are our end bits for today. That's going to wrap it up. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you'll be here with us tomorrow. for our Ask Me Anything program on your turn. Plus the random ranter will be by. Don't know what he's talking about this week,

but we'll obviously find out in not too long time. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge. See you again in about 24 hours.