The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week - 10k Steps is a Lie, a Secret Poop Factory, Eleanor Roosevelt's Mysterious Death

Episode Date: September 25, 2019

The weirdest things we learned this week range from robots wiping your butt to a Cheeto-shaped bacteria killing Eleanor Roosevelt. Whose story will be voted "The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week"? The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our Facebook group or tweet at us! Click here to learn more about all of our stories!  Click here to buy tickets for Weirdest Thing Live on October 31st! Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman Eleanor Cummins: www.twitter.com/elliepsies Claire Maldarelli: www.twitter.com/camaldarelli Popular Science: www.twitter.com/PopSci Theme music by Billy Cadden: www.twitter.com/billycadden Edited by Jess Boddy: www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/popular-science/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's code weirdest for 20% off. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton.com. Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. I'm going to do. I can get what I want. I can get pushed away on paper. At popular science, we report and write dozens of science and heck stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not

share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this. week from the editors of popular science. I'm Rachel Fultman. I'm Claire Maldorelli. And I'm Eleanor Cummins. Wow. Welcome back. Season three. Season three. It's amazing. We're so happy to be here. So a couple things to check in about now that we are back in your feed for season three, which is going to be fantastic. As always, we have loved all of your user contributions. I'm sure you enjoyed our special little drop-in episodes. And any time in is a good time to send us voice messages on the anchor app or the anchor website. You can continue to send us your questions, your weirdest thing facts, and we will absolutely do more of those kinds of episodes. We also want to thank you so much for all of your hard work,

typing out those five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts. Even if you don't listen on Apple, it helps other weirdos find the show. And I am sure that this episode is going straight into the ear canals of a whole new bunch of weirdos because you helped the Apple algorithm figure out how great we are. And one more thing is that we are going to have a live show on Halloween. Spooky. Yeah, we're all very excited. I'm absurdly excited because weirdest thing is a show that's already pretty weird, often spooky, I would say. Sometimes, horrifying. We try. So it really, we feel that we are the perfect live Halloween entertainment for

you, New York City. And so we will be live at caveat in New York City on October 31st. It's a Thursday. So even if you usually go all crazy for Halloween, you know, maybe you're a responsible adult and or student. And a Thursday night is not a good night for a Halloween rager. Counterpoint, come to caveat, have a drink or two, be home by 10 p.m. Wear costumes. So it's not too early to start buying tickets. All of our previous live shows have been sold out, standing room only. So you'll definitely want to go to popsight.com slash weird or go to caveat's website,

Google Popsie, Halloween, caveat New York City. You'll find it. Don't worry. And you can snag your tickets right away. Okay, that's it. So let's get on to the show. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a lot of little tease about some kind of fact or story that we came across in the course of reading,

writing, reporting, checking our emails, getting excited about weirdest thing season three, and we decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first. Then, once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Eleanor, why don't you start us off with your tease? I want to talk about how Eleanor Roosevelt, for whom I am named, died. Are you really? Yes. The one, the only.

The woman, the myth, the legend. Yeah, she had a pretty brutal death, and I'm just here to explore that. Great. I have no idea. I remember, was it our very first episode where you talked about Eleanor Roosevelt's baby cages? I can't get it out of her. Yeah, she put her kid in a cage for their health. She really is just a medical marvel.

Wow. Claire, what's your fact? Yes, I would like to talk about. the fact that there is no scientific basis for walking 10,000 steps in a day. Oof. For shame. Don't do it.

Is that the takeaway? Yes. All right. Okay, I'm interested to hear more about that. My fact is more of a series of facts that I learned on a secret tour of a poop factory. Amazing. Excellent.

I love poop. Who doesn't? that car loves poop has honked toot, teet beep beep poop Okay so what do we want to start with? Poop. Okay, yes.

All stories begin with poop and end with poop really if you think about it. Like life. Yeah. It does though sometimes babies are born with poop It's true, and you poop when you die. And you poop when you die. Wow.

Okay, so yes, as some of you who follow us on popside.com or who follow me on Twitter may already know a few months ago I took a trip to Cincinnati. It was my second work trip. One of the greatest places in America. It was my second work trip to Ohio in one calendar year. Oh, ooh, don't say I don't have a glamorous job.

So yes, not to be confused with my work trip to Columbus. My work trip to Cincinnati took me to the Procter & Gamble Charmin facilities, the toilet paper people. I keep calling it the poop factory, which I feel like the people at Procter and Gamble probably would like me to stop doing. They're the Willy Wonka of defecating. Yes. Absolutely. And there are certainly researchers there who understand that and would find that whimsical and delightful.

You may say, Rachel, it's not a poop factory. They make toilet paper not poop. To which I would say, incorrect. That's what they're focusing on. They make poop there too. Got them. Wow. Okay.

So that's kind of the crux of my fact. That's the biggest fact. That's what they use to lure me to Cincinnati. Maddie. So I'll save that for last. But I'm just going to go through some of the things that I learned. Number one, there are robots devoted to wiping your bet. Not literally. I would never want that. So Procter & Gamble has this analytical lab that's just full of super calibrated instruments designed to test various paper properties. And an increasing number of these are autonomous robots. So they showed me this one robot. It was one of those like generic like arm robots that you see. in car factories and stuff. But all it does is pick up little tiny strips of toilet paper and move them over to an apparatus that grabs them

and then slowly pulls them apart so that it can calculate exactly at what amount of force the paper tears. That's amazing. And it just does this over and over again for its entire life. Are all of these robots like just protecting you from your fingers coming through your toilet paper? Yes. Okay.

Ultimately, yes. God's work. So companies like Cractor and Gamble, they're testing their own products, prototypes for new products, and competitors' products to see how things measure up. And so they have one that, like, tests exactly what angle a paper drapes at when it, like, hangs off a roll. And they have, but then they have ones that, yeah, it's like a metal probe the size of a finger. And the sheet is, like, gently stretch just enough to hold it in place. and you're testing exactly how much force the metal probe that's like a finger needs to break through it. And then they do it again when it's wet.

So yeah, it's to keep your fingers from poking through and touching your poop. That's incredible. And it's crazy because we think of toilet paper, at least I do it as being a very, like, simple product. But it has a really hard job. It's a tug of war between softness and strength. That was the thing that the engineers kept. imparting to me. Yes, same relatable. But yeah, like a sheet of toilet paper, it has to hold up really well, even if it gets a little wet, because like it's a very dynamic process wiping a butt and surrounding regions. There can be moisture. And you need to not suddenly be covered in poop, right? Desperately.

But then it also, once it hits the water after a reasonable number of seconds, it has to break apart really effectively and really quickly. Or it clogs up your plumbing or your sewer. So yeah, and the thing is that the stronger you make the toilet paper, the less soft it is. And people really care about toilet paper being soft because it is on your butt. So that's understandable. I really like soft toilet paper. Remember in Legally Blonde when Elle was in her application to Harvard part of the Supercut is her amendment to the sorority toilet paper supply? Altos in paper of double pie say I or whatever.

Yeah. I've been thinking about that so much lately. It really got me thinking about qualities I just take for granted in toilet paper. I just assume it's going to work reasonably well. And like even at Charmin, they have two main products. One is like focused on strength and one is focused on softness. And they're both pretty plush, but they have those two products because there are people who think of themselves as being like more practical. They're like, I want my family to like get the most utility out of our toilet paper as possible.

And so they don't want it to feel too soft. But then there are people who are like, if it doesn't feel as soft as fucking possible, it's not going near my tookests. That's amazing. But then all of this analytical research also helps them figure out how to make these quix. qualities come through while using as little actual paper and as little water as possible. So, like, those printed patterns you'll see on toilet paper are all, like, designed to, you know, maybe make it more absorbent while using less paper. So cool.

Like, cut down on water and the production use. And then also, like, the more effective toilet paper is, in theory, the less of it you have to use. Though then, like, a lot of consumers don't think about that. So another big takeaway from my time. the factory was like, think about how much toilet paper you actually need. And especially if you're buying this really plush toilet paper, you should be like being real with yourself. Yeah. About how many sheets you require. 17. Because, and here's another fact, fluffy white paper does not come from

recycled paper. Yeah. It comes from trees. It's really pretty difficult to make soft and strong toilet paper using recycled fibers because they're shorter than virgin paper fibers. So that's why the natural Resources Defense Council actually did this review of toilet papers, and Sharman's got like an F. And pretty much every toilet paper with like soft in the name got a D or an F, even if it was from a company like Trader Joe's that had other products that got B's or A's. Because, yeah, the kind of like dirty secret that's not really a secret is that no one has figured out how to use recycled paper to make soft toilet paper. It's always going to be. be that product that feels like less good, which is not to say people shouldn't use it. I definitely

buy recycled toilet paper more than I buy fluffy toilet paper, but that's because it doesn't particularly bother me. I guess I kind of feel like I deserve bad toilet paper because we've destroyed the planet. I don't know. I grew up on recycled toilet paper. My mom was like, if it goes on your butt, it needs to be recycled. That's a beautiful philosophy. Yeah. But it backfired because now I buy the plush as possible. Yeah. So I'm like, I'm an adult. I can get what I want.

I can get plush toilet paper. So yeah, it's like, I'm not going to tell anybody what kind of toilet paper to buy. I will occasionally buy a plush toilet paper. It certainly feels less. Treat yourself. Right. But it is important that people remember. It's a much more complex paper product than like the paper you put in the printer at work.

And it's way harder to make it recycled. Yeah, I personally only wiped my butt with old growth forests. I'm so jealous. The problem with me was that I just, I left the house and I went to other people's houses and they had really close to paper. We're going to get more into Claire's childhood in a little bit. Okay, here's another great one. It takes six months to train to be a sensory tester at Procter & Gamble. Oh, my God.

And so these are people who are mostly like students or like stay-at-home parents. or retirees who are looking for just like an interesting way to pick up some extra cash and spend a few hours of their day. There are qualities of toilet paper that you can't measure in an analytics lab. You know, you can't have a robot yet tell you like this one feels squishier and this one looks brighter and this one smells nicer. So there are humans who are trained to rate things like that on numerical scales so that they can get huge data pools and, you know, compare, various products. And yeah, they spend six months training in every sense but taste, which makes sense. And then only half of them actually make it through. Cut throat. Yeah. And other things that can't be done by robots yet. So you know those weird

product demos? Yeah. Where they'll like take a piece of toilet paper and like pile marbles on top of it until it breaks. So it's somebody's, they'll pour the blue. Blue liquid on to it. Always blue liquid. And then lift it up and hold the two up. and be like, look at this superior product that I have. Yes. Yes, exactly. So I got to play around with a bunch of those. And there are people whose job it is to design them.

So like stacking marbles on a stretched out piece of tissue might seem simple, but someone has to figure out exactly how many marbles, a sheet of Charmin can handle versus a competitor. So they need to figure out fun little experiments that will actually translate the superiority of the product, a supposed superiority to the viewer. Like a magic show. Yeah, it is like a magic show. Like a P.N. Teller.

Yeah. And then even once they determine these little tricks, some of them are not fit for television. Like one that I was shown that is top secret and only used internally

called the balloon butt. Oh. They took a balloon and they kind of like stretched the balloon so that it creates like a fold, like a dimple along the balloon. and they've squirted stuff in it so that then it's created a butt in the balloon and now there's

poop in the butt. And so then they wipe the balloon butt and then they release the balloon. So some of the balloon butts still have poop stuck in them. So it's like moment of truth when you release the balloon. Right. Yeah. And it's really as close as you can get to just like wiping a butt crack. And then looking at the butt crack to see how much poop is. left. Exactly. But with a balloon. And I was like, this is amazing. This is the best thing I've

ever seen. It's brilliant. And they were like, yeah, they wouldn't let us put it on TV. And then I asked for it specifically for the article. And I got a one-line response. We cannot send you the balloon butt clip. Oh, my God. So sad. Free the balloon butt. Okay. So now we're going to talk about the poop factory aspect. Yay. Poop. There is poop in the factory. Yes. even though you see stuff tested with blue goo on TV, that's just because it looks the least like something that could show up on your toilet paper as like any color they could think of. Though we have talked about how you can have blue pee in your diaper if you're a baby

on a previous episode of R weirdest thing. Or a vampire. Right, or if you have porphyria. Thank you, Jess. But for actual testing, they need stuff that is like poop. So for a long time, they used NASA's fake poop, called fee clone. I hate that.

The name? Yeah. Yeah. So the fee clone is this very like clay-like substance. And it's specifically designed for testing plumbing systems. But it doesn't really feel like poop. And they were like, what about when we want to actually like wipe the poop? The fee clone was not sufficient.

So then they developed their own fake poop. What did they call it? Did they have a name for it? Patent number five, nine. They call it an art. artificial BM. Oh. Oh, great.

Yeah. There are so many synonyms for poop. There are a lot of euphemisms at Charmin. I will say that. Yeah. So it comes in three varieties to go from like light diarrhea, not like liquid, but like not great. Yeah. And then there's like the perfect, the platonic ideal of poop.

And then there's one that's just like a little constipated. And it's made with all ingredients that you would find in like a kitchen cupboard. And it does kind of smell like spice. So I would imagine there's some kind of like flour in there. So what you're saying is we can also make our own artificial BM. Probably. Happy Halloween. And eat it.

I'm going to bring them to the live show. More reasons to get a ticket. When they said it was all stuff you found you can find in your kitchen cabinet, I really should have just picked it up and eaten it. I don't think. A hundred percent. Been like, oh, really? Yeah.

Let's just see. Trust but verify. I taste some cinnamon. Yeah. So they use this for a few things internally, but it's mostly used on their one-on-one interviews, which is where they will sit with people and talk to them extensively about how they use toilet paper. And I experienced this. The takeaway is that I was unexpectedly asked very detailed questions about how I poop in front of strangers and in front of Jason Letterman holding a camera and laughing.

at me. And so that was, I was flustered. And I was also like, if I'm flustered, me who loves writing about poop and talking about poop, like, imagine a lesser mortal in this situation. But, you know, they'll ask things like, how do you, show us how you grasp your implement, which is toilet paper. Sounds maybe like something else, but toilet paper. And so I was actually, I was like, I don't, I honestly don't know, like how I take

toilet paper. the role. Okay, I have something to add to this. I am a friend that thinks there are two types of people in this world. Yes. One type that takes toilet paper and folds it nicely into like a square situation. And then another group that just takes it like swishing it all together. I'm a squisher. So I fold every single time. It makes sense for you. I'm also a folder. What?

Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's different. And that's why Charmin and Procter & Gamal have these questionnaires. And so, yeah, she was like, show us how you retrieve and grasp your implement. And I was like, I honestly cannot remember. And so there was like a roll of toilet paper. And she was like, okay, well, what side would it be on if you were sitting on your toilet at home?

So she had me like squat next to it in the appropriate spot. But yeah, so you're just like in a room with somebody, hopefully not with a bunch of strings. are watching you and someone who you thought was your friend filming you. And the fake poop comes in when they're like, okay, so we're going to have you create a fake butt. And so you either bend your knee or your elbow to make a little butt crease. Okay. And this.

This is the butt. I'm displaying the butt. It'll just be like in there, in the elbow. In the, what's the inside of your elbow called again? It has a funny name. This is your weanus. Right. I was thinking of weanus.

The opposite of your weenus. You know, round the corners, the weenis. The weenis in the balloon butt. And they squirt, a little turd of the fake poop in there. And then you squish your little elbow butt together. And you're supposed to have your eyes closed and wipe the way you wipe your butt, which I was like, I don't know. It's the wrong angle. And as I was doing it, they were like, wow, you're really getting in there.

And I was like, oh my God. And I was like, I don't know. Do I really get in there? Is that bad? At least my butt is clean. And I did successfully clean my elbow butt. I can't imagine doing that and then looking down and having them be fake poop all over my arm. That sounds like an existential crisis.

Yeah. It was the end of the day and I didn't really know how to cope with any of it. I would have walked away crying. I went to the airport and ate some buck eyes, so that was okay. Yeah, that's all I have to say about the fake poop. What a world. That was incredible. I hope everyone thinks really hard about how they use their implements and how they might use them better.

I've been shaken to my core. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with more facts. Okay, we're back. And Claire, why don't you talk to us about 10,000 steps? Yes, great. I would love to. And how we should never walk again. Yeah, just don't listen to anything.

Anybody says to you ever. Okay, so we all know 10,000 steps. Everyone has seen the fit bit. But, you know, where did it come from is a great question. I have no clue. So a couple nights ago I was brushing my teeth and my toothbrush has like the sensor on it that does it for exactly two minutes. It's the sonic hair, diamond clean plus in case you're wondering. And so I was like, well, where did this two minutes come from?

And when I looked at on the internet, I really couldn't find anything. And so that's another question to look into, but because I literally couldn't find it. find anything. I couldn't say anything for the podcast. So I was thinking, I was like, what are some other things that I do? Sleep 8 hours of day. We've already talked about that. So then it brought me to the 10,000 steps, which is journey. Yes. Thank you. So there's just all these things that we are told to do every single day. So then I looked back at my Apple Watch analytics. And I saw that on the days that I am not running where I take off, because I'm training for some. races right now. And I found that I do not take 10,000 steps on those days. I take no more than

5,000 or 6,000. So am I hurting my health by doing that? So I looked back and tried to figure out where these 10,000 steps come from. And additionally, this made me nervous because I really couldn't find anything about like where it came from or if there were any studies that said like taking 10,000 steps is a good thing. I found this one study in 2019 that basically found that we need to take far less steps in order to achieve optimal health. What? Right. And so I was like, yes, bingo. So I dove in. And one of the first things that they said was they too looked at their data and they were like, we're not taking 10,000 steps. Is this detrimenting our health? And so they basically did what I did, but then scientifically, and I was like, this is great.

In their discussion section, they actually have this whole description of where the 10,000 steps comes from. And it actually dates back to the history of the modern pedometer and that the first modern pedometer actually came out in Japan in 1965. And it was based on this research by a group of heart doctors that saw a bunch of the Japanese society was gaining, and they thought that maybe they were being sedentary. And so by walking more that they would all, it was this huge public health campaign to sort of like lose weight. Right. And when they designed this pedometer to sort of get people to lose weight,

they called it Monpo K, which translates to the 10,000 step meter. That's what it's exactly called. And the reason is that when you look at it in Japanese characters, it looks like a person walking. No way. Yes. And so I have an image of it for you. Oh, my gosh.

That is what it's supposed to. Yeah. So it's supposed to symbolize someone like walking has a sort of like two hands. And he's lost his head. Yeah, it has no head. It's very rough. Oh, no, it's somebody, no, it's somebody walking and he has his arms thrown out behind him. Okay.

And his head thrown forward. because he's having so much fun walking. He's like headbanging. A brisk aerodynamic. A brisk mall walker, maybe. Yeah, a really enthusiastic mall walker. Right, right. And so they were like, this is great.

Everyone in Japan is going to recognize this. And so then we're all going to take 10,000 steps a day. And that's it. And it became this huge public health campaign. I'm so offended. What a lie. I'm so surprised. I thought that you would know this.

No. It's incredible. I'm just, wow. So that... Eleanor's never walking anywhere again. It's going to get someone to carry me on like a demand or whatever those things are. Ariana Grande it. Yes. Wow.

And so the ad campaign went, let's all walk 10,000 steps a day with the little symbol. And they all recognized it. And everyone sort of started walking. And then that caught on to FitBits in the United States. And when FitMids became super popular in the past, you know, Decreed or two, everyone has been taking these 10,000 steps, and it has been driving some people crazy to sort of get their steps in. Like David Sederis. Yes.

If you ever want to listen to or read David Sideris's New Yorker article on it, it is amazing. And not only that, but it's become so synonymous with public health and our perception of what makes us healthy that if you do take 10,000 steps, then you are preventing. disease or something like that. And not just that, but the American Heart Association recommends 10,000 steps a day. And the Kaiser-Prenante Health Group also has a program that's designed to help you gradually increase your fitness physical activity level and work towards a goal of 10,000 steps. Like all these major health companies are associating 10,000 steps with health. I feel actually enraged. And so there have been a couple of studies that have sort of looked into the 10,000 steps and seeing.

if it does help our health. And some of them in the past, not this one from May, but in the past they had found that, yes, like people who do walk 10,000 steps a day. It was kind of an association study. They walked 10,000 steps a day. People who are aiming for that benchmark probably have other healthy lifestyle factors. Sweet green.

Exactly. So what this study did was it just took like a closer look. Like if you take 2,000 steps, if you take 4,000 steps, 6,000, what does that do for your health? And they found that particularly for older women, those who took 4,400 steps a day had the same lower mortality rates as those who took 10,000 steps a day. Wow. And even people who took 2,700 steps a day weren't that much worse off than people who took the 4,400 steps a day. And so essentially the article is saying that this whole idea of 10,000 steps is unfounded.

And on top of that, when they looked a little bit deeper and a bunch of news articles, especially one from the New York Times just kind of looked at, you know, what is this saying? And it's saying that even with just 10,000 steps, all we're doing is counting steps. Now you can walk really slowly, not raise your heart rate at all. and still reach these 10,000 steps, whereas people who are taking 3,000 or 5,000, but are also doing strength training or lifting an infant up or carrying a toddler around all day long are still raising their heart rates. And so it's like very unfounded to say like 10,000 steps is going to help your health.

Wow. Yes. And from like a motivational perspective, if you look at your pedometer and you say, well, I fail. for that day, but you really didn't. Right. So over time, if you, like, keep failing, keep failing, and you have all these health organizations telling you that you should be taking 10,000 steps a day. You can think that you're doing nothing for your health, and that will kind of do the opposite of motivate you and make you say, you know, I'll just, I give up.

Yeah. I mean, we covered one study about getting more exercise that was, like, literally gardening is good cardio, especially if you're older. I remember that. You know, you're, like, bending down and picking stuff up and walking around. Yeah. And then even like looking forward in the future of like how this is all going to be tied to like health insurance and things like that. Right. Yeah.

And all this like health tracking data is becoming so much more ingrained into. Eleanor's upset. I'm so upset. That we really need to make sure that we dispel any of these myths and make sure that they are scientifically sound. So don't create public health campaigns based on Japanese characters. Japanese characters. Japanese characters. Or, you know, just don't.

Letters of any kind. Yeah. I mean, they could have still used it as a symbol, but just been like, look, this person's taking steps. 10,000, 100,000, 1,000, whatever you can do. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then we'll be right back with one more fact. Okay, we're back. And Eleanor, it's time for you to talk about Eleanor. Yes.

Okay, well, I think we all know that there is a proper order in which to read a Wikipedia page, and it's the death section, and then anything else you might want to know. Oh, wow. Wait, so do you read obituaries in? Oh, absolutely. Oh, boy. Love it. Oh, my God. My dad would love you.

One of his favorite games is guess who died, and I literally hate it. When, like, famous people die, he texts, like, a group chat in our family, and he's like, guess who died? And my sister and my cousin love it. They're like, oh, and they usually get it every single time. Whoa, that's amazing. I'm like, I'm not participating. I am living my life. Please invite me to that group chat.

Most of. So recently I was writing a piece for popular science about the preservation movement to protect historic buildings in New York City. And Eleanor Roosevelt, our esteemed first lady, Eternal, was a part of the fight to keep Washington Square Park intact. And because I'm named for her, I feel a special kinship with her. I remember I did like a book report on a biography of her in elementary school. But because I had mentioned her in this piece, you know, I just wanted to take a spin through her Wikipedia page and kind of freshen up on the timeline of her life.

And this is what I found in the death section. Quote, in 1962, she was given steroids, which activated a dormant case of tuberculosis in her bone marrow. And she died of resulting cardiac failure at her Manhattan home at 55 East 74th Street on the Upper East Side on November 7, 1962 at the 8.000. of 78. Oh, God. And I was like, this is insane. But it got even crazier when I looked into the actual medical literature, because as is often the case, Wikipedia didn't get this exactly right. So let's start at the beginning of the end. An important lesson for us all. So in 1960, at the age of 75, Roosevelt was traveling far and wide. She, you know, worked with the United Nations after her husband died. So she, you know, moved from the White House to this role in the international

community. Like, she was super active. And she was known at this point as a the first lady of the world, but she wasn't feeling well. So she went to her physician slash friend and like warning there, like your doctor probably shouldn't be your friend. David Gurowicz, and he diagnosed her with anemia, which is a low red blood cell count. And it can happen for a bunch of different reasons, but he recommended that she have her bone marrow aspirated so that doctors could see what the source of this anemia was. And they did. They found out that she had a plastic anemia, which is a very rare and terrible condition that can happen at any age. And basically, your bone marrow just stops producing red blood cells. And you need your red blood cells. They're very

important. So when the factory shuts down, you do not do well. At the time, there was no cure. Can't get in your steps. You cannot get in your steps at all. So at the time, there was no cure and there weren't even really any good treatments. Today, you can get blood transfusions, which she received. You can get different medications that have only come in the market in recent years, and you can also get stem cell transplants, which were not available at the time. So faced with really few options, Roosevelt, Baller that she was, decided that she was just going to keep living her life. So she kept traveling, agitating for change, hanging out with friends and family, but cut to two years later, and her condition has deteriorated by 1962 to the point that her doctor's at Columbia

Presbyterian take her in again for tests, and they find not only is she low on red blood cells, but she's now low on blood platelets, which help blood clot, and also on white blood cells, which fight infection. So she's immunocompromised, like, the very basic sort of life-giving function of blood, like not working. So it's at this point that she's prescribed prednisone, a steroid that can jumpstart the bone marrow, but also makes you really susceptible to infection, which is, you know, a common side effect of steroids. And she did start to show some kind of infection. She had a cough and a high sustained fever. So one thought was that she might have tuberculosis.

It's uncommon in the U.S. today, but like less than a century ago, it was called the White Plague. It was the leading cause of death in New York City in 1900, where we are right now, so we're not that far removed from it. It's basically this sort of, I was looking at photos of it today. It's like a little chito-shaped bacteria. Wait, chito-shaped? Yeah, like a little, you know, or like ghost poop kind of like looking. Like it's very, it looks sort of swollen with water or something. It's like fun and fluffy.

And it colonizes your lungs. So fun. Just as fun and fluffy. Yeah. Typically after you come in contact with the saliva of an infected person, so you know they laugh on you and then you die. The main symptoms are cough and fever, but if left untreated today, you know, the standard course of treatment would be antibiotics. Sometimes for up to nine months. So there is very low adherence.

But you're a microbiome. I know. And people then don't do it. And then you get antibiotic resistant tuberculosis. Bad. If you have tuberculosis, take all nine months of your antibiotics. Is that because it lingers somewhere deep down? Yeah, it's just brutal. It is a very aggressive and talented bacteria. So basically, yeah, you just fill up with fluid and you can't breathe properly and your lungs deteriorate under the pressure and you die.

But in Roosevelt's case, at this point, the doctors, they take an x-ray and they're looking for that typical TB fullness in the lungs, which is sort of an indicator that there's something going on, but everything looks fine. And all they see are like these old scars indicating that she had TB once in the past. What they think happened was that in 1919 she had this illness that was diagnosed as pleuracy and was probably a misdiagnosis of tuberculosis. And so it made her very sick, but, you know, there was no treatment at that time. And, you know, they're looking at it like five decades later. Like they're like, okay, moving on. Like she doesn't have active tuberculosis. Except then six weeks later, she's back in the hospital.

Her fever won't break and they don't know why. Fun fact. This is called an F-U-O, a fever of unknown origin. Well. There are so many things in medicine of unknown origin. Yeah. And they're just like, we have to just label it that. Or comma, unspecified.

Yeah, totally. And so something of unknown origin or unspecified is very anxiety-producing for doctors. And so the medical team is sort of split now. They're like, half of them think that she has something called milliary tuberculosis. And the other half are like, no, this is something else entirely like tuberculosis is not at play. but we don't really have any good suggestions. So if you thought regular tuberculosis sounded bad, Milliary tuberculosis is absolutely horrifying.

It's when tuberculosis escapes the lungs. And so it goes full body, sort of like metastatic cancer. It can destroy your joints. It causes swelling in the brain. It can destroy the filtration function of your liver and your kidneys. And it also impairs the heart's ability to pump blood. Yikes. Yes.

So it's just, it's named for millet the grain, because it looks like your entire body is full of millet seeds. Oh, God. Yeah. Gross. And sad. Yeah. And so then the thing is, though half of the medical team is now convinced this is what she's suffering from, they can't see any of these millets.

Yeah. Where are the millet seeds geniuses? Yeah, exactly. So they're like, okay, fine. Like half of them are like they're playing the Long Kong. And they're like, look, I'm right. So we're going to send her bone marrow for culturing. So in four to six weeks, tuberculosis will grow.

And then we'll all know that I was. That's how long it took to culture. Is she going to survive that with her unrelenting fever? Great question. So in the interim, they decided to put her on a bunch of antibiotics. Like the care team that doesn't think it's tuberculosis, they're like, well, we can treat her for it, you know, and hopefully it'll help. Like, there's some kind of infection, so we'll just give her a bunch of antibiotics

and we'll wait it out. And on October 26th, Gerwitch's theory is validated. The culture grows TB. And he's like, great, I can save her now. Like, I've done it. But the Roosevelt family is like, this has gone on long enough. Because at the same time, all of this drama is unfolding in the clinic with like bone marrow aspirations and chest x-rays. Eleanor Roosevelt, this very real human being is suffering.

And at multiple times, she's like, I'm ready to die. Like, please stop intervening. She's in her late 70s. Yeah, so like fair, especially at that time in history for her to be like, palliative care, please. No treatments. Like, just let me, like, see my family. Yeah. You know, and she's like such an active person.

Like, I think when it was clear that, like, she wasn't going to be able to do the work that had animated her life. Like, she was just like, I'm really sick and there's no cure. And her doctors were like, no, you are the first lady of the world. And we will, like, prop you up weekend at Bernie style no matter the cost. So it's just been really harrowing for her. And, you know, they're like, oh, we have this new diagnosis and now we'll fix you. And she's like, I don't believe you. So she refuses additional treatment.

And on November 4th, she has a stroke. She dies on November 7th. President Kennedy flies the flags half-mast around the nation. And she's buried for the record, because you know how much I care about this, at Hyde Park in Poughkeepsie, New York, where I have visited her grave. On the clinical side, they wrap up things in their own way with an autopsy, and what they find is truly horrifying. She had not just milliary tuberculosis, but something called disseminated tuberculosis acutisima,

which sounds cute, but is actually an extremely rare and completely, overwhelming TB infection. So it was in her lungs, her brain, her liver, her kidneys. Literally everywhere TB could go, it was there. And there were few granulomas, which are those little cells that indicate that a patient is fighting off an infection. And so because of the prednisone, she was totally immunocompromised and her body had no way to fight back at all. Wow. At the time, doctors concluded that her tuberculosis back in 1919 must have come back. And there is a lot of medical precedence for this. So it's called latent tuberculosis. And it's Basically, when you harbor the bacteria, but you have no symptoms.

So you're not, you don't have that hacking cough, that you don't have a fever. You don't look like, you know, like angelically, yeah, like red in the face. But you have tuberculosis inside you. And about 10% of people with latent tuberculosis will go into active tuberculosis. But the risk is much higher with immunocompromised people because they're not able to keep that in check. And that's why TB is such a serious problem among populations with high rates of HIV infections today. That's where you see, like, a lot of. TB, you know, in 2019.

So my story's over, right? Wrong. I thought it was over. I was ready to be done with diseases. Even though I would like to sleep tonight. Not possible. Everything we've told you comes from the work of Baron Lennar, who's a doctor and historian at New York University.

And in 2000, he actually looked at Roosevelt's medical archives to piece this story together after years of like rumor and intrigue about how she died. Because a bunch of people were saying that she'd been mistreated, you know, that like they should have known it was tuberculosis all along and actually have. helped her with that. And he was struck by the fact that working on the suspicion of milliary tuberculosis, Roosevelt's doctors put her on two kinds of antibiotics, but neither of them did anything to fight the disease. Like the record show. Didn't they say, like, we'll just give it to her anyway in the meantime while TB is growing in the cells. Yeah. Like they in the culture.

Did take the sort of the advanced step to try to intervene. And the thing is, if her tuberculosis this rose from 1919, that was more than two decades before the first tuberculosis drugs were developed so it couldn't have been antibiotic resistant. Wow. So what actually appears to have happened is that when she got sick with apolitic anemia and was immunocompromised by the prednisone, she got infected with a new antibiotic resistant strain of tuberculosis. And those things both untreatable at the time are what ended up killing her. Wow.

So in The Washington Post in 2000, B.H. Lerner writing about this, you know, sort of of academic article he'd published, wrote, why if the autopsy showed drug-resistant tuberculosis has the perception so long persisted that Columbia's medical staff could have saved Eleanor Roosevelt, whether in the 1960s or today, Americans too often view death as a failure. If someone dies, especially of a disease that is often treatable, we assume that a mistake must have been made. But Roosevelt herself had realized the fallacy of this argument.

Some patients die because of medical mistakes, but other patients just die. Wow. And that's why you always click through the little Wikipedia citation. Wow. What was the weirdest thing we learned this week? Oh, man. I'm going to go with the 10,000 step man. I write. The fact that like no one, either people haven't bothered to look into that before using it as like a benchmark of public health recommendations or have found that and been like, it still seems like a good round number to me. Wild.

Really wild. 100% with you. I am all for a cutesy marketing campaign. If it is based on true fact. With scientific background. Even it's just like, I mean, like, no, you know, the people of Japan are not responsible for the rest of the world running with this walking recommendation. The fact. Yeah.

Yes. So, wow. Congrats, Claire. Thank you. Just walked away with it. The weirdest thing I learned this week is a popular science podcast. We're available on all major podcast platforms. So subscribe wherever you're listening now.

And if you like what you hear, please rate and review us on iTunes. It helps other weirdos find the show. You can buy our merch, including Weirdest Thing T-shirts, tote bags, and mugs at Popside.threadlist.com. Our show is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Feltman, and our editors, Jess Bodey, and Jason Letterman. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at Weirdest underscore Thing. Thanks for listening, Weirdos. Ambition comes in all shapes and sizes.

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