March 7, 2025 • 30 mins
It’s the grand finale! Our last four greatest science ideas of the past 25 years include a very hungry super fungus, a chemical-free (but not dubstep-free) insect repellent, a poignant story of agricultural polymers and wet books, and a cure for sleep apnea that may require some negotiations with your neighbors.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
All week we've been counting down the twenty five best
science ideas of the past twenty five years, and today
is exact phonology.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is it.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
We have four stories left, which makes me feel a
little weird that we didn't do exactly five in every episode,
but I've somehow moved on from that. And to give
you a sense of what's coming today, let's say that
you'll never look at a mosquito, a mushroom, or a
wet book the same way. Again, you thought you were
always going to look at those things the same way.
And if you're unlucky enough to have a roommate or
(00:43):
a partner who snores, guess what.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We have found a way to fix that.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Amazing, So I hope you guys are as excited as
we are. Let's dive in.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Hey their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend Mangesha Ticketer and over there in the booth icing
an enormous cake. Like enormous doesn't even do it justice.
It is a gigantic That is our palain producer Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I had no idea Dylan was a pastry.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Chef for me either, But that is one beautiful cake.
There's writing on it too. It says, make sure you're
subscribed to part Time Genius on your favorite podcast app
and if you like the show, please leave us a
five star rating and review. Yeah, which is impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Look, I think it says johnnyus part Time Johnius for anyways.
Close enough. We appreciate the gesture there. Wrote it all
in frosting wine. Know, Paul Hollywood could never.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
All right, mango, be honest.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Have you ever build something on a book or an
important document?
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Not?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Really?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Okay? Well, I was hoping free to say yes at
some point.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
But you've never spilled coffee or like wine on a
book or something like that.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
No, I am one, I'm not really that clumsy. But two,
I'm actually super paranoid about that type of thing. So
like when I have a glass, I tend to keep
my books and my liquid separate. My kids and my
wife do spill a lot of things, so I have
a cleaning up a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Okay, Okay, Well, our next great idea will definitely help
you out in those situations as well. As librarians are
conservators who have had to rescue water logged materials, And
is there a lot of that, more.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Than you'd imagine.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Actually, think of burst pipes or flooding, or damage caused
by sprinklers. If there's a fire in the building and
wet paper is really hard to dry out. You can
blot it, you can freeze dried, you can put it
in front of fans. But these techniques are time consuming
and laborious, and so if you're not careful, you can
wind up with mildew or pages that end up rippling.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
And so someone came up with a way to dry
these books.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Actually, someone came up with the best way to drive books.
His name is Nicki Jaeger, and he is a rare
books librarian, a conservator, and an artist who's had a
long and colorful career in the world of paper arts.
So back in two thousand and two, a friend put
him in touch with a woman named Kate Hayes, who
is an information specialist with the USDA's National Agricultural Library.
(03:23):
She'd been thinking about soggy paper ever since she'd heard
that millions of pentagon documents got soaked on nine to
eleven when all the sprinkler systems turned on. And she
remember the substance that was used in agriculture to help
seeds germinate in dry soil. It's a cornstarch based polymer
called and I'm not making this up, super slurper. And
this stuff holds five hundred times its weight and water,
(03:46):
so it could dry anything out right. She just needed
someone with a conservation expertise to figure out how it
could be applied to paper. So we talked to Nicki
on the phone and he told us that he was
intrigued by the idea. So we asked Kate Hayes to
mail himself super Slurper, which looked a lot like sawdust,
And when it arrived, she gave him a call and
he tested it out while they were talking.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
So I walk over to the sink and put a
book under the faucet soak about fifty sixty seventy pages.
I take a handful of this flake and I throw
it into the middle of the wettest part of the book,
close the book, put it in the screw press, and
talk for another minute. Pull it out and twenty pages
on either side of their bone dry. I mean they're
(04:29):
not like humid, they're dry. Eh, And that's what five
hundred times is waiting water will do. I'm like, this
stuff is amazing. We got to do something.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Kate agreed to help Nicky get a federal research agreement
to turn Super Slurper into a viable paper conservation product,
but right away they were challenges. For one thing, the
super Slurper turned into a goo in the crevices of
wet books, and the sawdust like flakes made dense in
the paper as it dried. So he solved that first
problem by just sandwiching a layer of the polymer between
(05:00):
sheets of lab grade filtration paper, and after destroying a
coffee grinder trying to turn the flakes into dust, he
tracked down a manufacturer that sold a powdered.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Version of the super Slurper.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
But then the question was how do you keep this
fine powder contained in its envelope of filter paper?
Speaker 4 (05:16):
And somebody eventually said something about diapers, and I went, oh, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Nikki checked out some diaper making equipment, but he realized
that diapers are engineered to hold liquid in without ever
letting it out. They use an adhesive that lets the
absorbent filling blow up when it gets wet, and then
it stays puffy. Super Slurper couldn't do that. It had
to dry flat so it wouldn't damage book spines. Eventually,
after a ton of trial and error, he figured out
how to assemble sheets of super Slurper designed for rescuing
(05:44):
wet books. He used the jury rigged silk screen to
distribute the powder on the envelopes of filter paper coated
with an industrial adhesive that allowed the stuff to swell
up just enough to hold water before going flat as
it dried. Plus, he left a precise border at the
edge of the paper so the slurper wouldn't ooze out,
sort of like an overstuffed PBNJ.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
I mean this all sounds so time consuming.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, and this is taking years.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
He's bouncing around rented commercial workspaces and USDA research labs,
getting by with small grants. It was slow going, but
he was homing in on the details that would make
his product, which he decided to call Zorbis, work just
right now. The problem now was finding a way to
manufacture this stuff instead of pasting it together by hand.
(06:30):
But the industrial experts he spoke with didn't understand the
science of zorbis or books the way Nikki did.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
Every engineer I spoke to for ten years kept trying
to re engineer it to their standards. No one was
able to comprehend all of my very specific needs and
challenges and answering their questions. I was learning myself what
(06:57):
the form had to be and why it had to
be the way it was. So during that period I
also figured out that if I put the sheets of
zorbix about every twenty or thirty pages, then I'm not
swelling the spine of the book. I'm not increasing the
books interior space such that it ruins the spine.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Now, the other problem was money.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
So by two thousand and nine he'd built up a
small customer base of librarians and conservation experts. People in
the book business knew the value of zorbix, but finance
guys couldn't quite get it.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
I'd managed to get a couple of people investing in this.
I was able to manufacture small batches of it by hand,
and whenever any library saw this stuff, they loved it.
They were like, this stuff is great. But I had
a hard time describing how it was useful. Like, I
tried to go in front of Angel investors, but Northern
California is a high tech industry and this is essentially
(07:56):
be low tech, and nobody understood the importance. So I'd
done research on how many books get wet in a year.
There's over two million books a year in libraries that
get wet from non catastrophic floods, water breaks, leaking roof,
spilling coffee, whatever. Went to these investors and they were like, well,
that's two million books, that's not that big a deal.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
He ended up having to take a warehouse job to
support himself while he continued looking for ways to mass
produce sorbis, all while keeping up with the orders he
was getting from librarians. By twenty fifteen, he had hit
a wall.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
I called all of my investor and I said, I'm done.
It's you know, it's from two thousand and two to
twenty fifteen. I just I can't do this anymore. And
they went, yeah, well, you prove feasibility, you got a mark,
you built the machine, you wrote the patent, you got
a market. It just didn't succeed financially. Bit just succeeded
in every other way. So I said, all right, I'm
(08:50):
going to celebrate my failure, and I went on a
motorcycle trip around the country.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
On his way through ann Arbor, he stopped to say
hi to one of his longtime customers, Shannon Zachary, the
head of conservation and book repair at the University of Michigan,
and he told her about his decision.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
She goes, what, He goes, see the stack of book series? Yeah,
she should. We had a flood in our rare book vault.
It was a water leak and we had all of
this mostly nineteenth and twentieth century kind of avant garde
types of materials that couldn't freeze dry and they had
to be flat. She goes, that stack is the last
stack of these, you know, seven hundred books or whatever
(09:24):
it was. And we used zorbis and was great. I said,
I can't keep going. I need ten grand just to
buy a paper. She goes, oh, well, you can't go
out of business.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Shannon rallied the conservation community to place ten thousand dollars
worth of orders back home in California. Nicky got to
work fulfilling them by hand. He plugged away in a
Bay Area industrial building with no heat, sharing this space
with a bunch of burning Man fans who were there
building art carts for the plout, and he set up
his fourteen foot modified screen printing system, his racks, his
(09:55):
stock of filter paper, and powdered super slurper. He covered
it all with plastic sheeting because the roof was leaking no,
but he was still no closer to getting Zorbis into
a proper manufacturing system. After a while, he looked around
and was like, why am I still doing this? You
can imagine the frustration.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Do you know what the difference between being stubborn and
perseverant is? Well, stubborn is what they say about you
when you're doing something and it doesn't look like it's
going anywhere. When they write about it after you succeeded,
they say you were perseverant, and I just said I'm stubborn.
Time to quit.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Well, I guess that is part of science, right, I mean,
sometimes the world just doesn't make space for great ideas.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, that's pretty much how Nikki felt. So he called
up an old friend from the book world who agreed
to buy the business, But that guy got busy with
other projects, so Zorbix this incredibly complicated, beautifully simple way
to save what books was put on the back burner.
That means it's been a long time since any Zorbis
was produced, but since it's reusable, it is actually still
out there. So we heard from one conservator who's hung
(11:02):
onto her sheets for years because she says it's just
so good at what it does.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
It's pretty amazing. So where does this all stand now?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Well, there may end up being a happy ending to
this story. So right before we recorded this episode, actually
got an email from Nikki who said that talking to
us reignited his passion for the project. He's decided to
start writing the story of Zorbis for his blog and
put some demos on YouTube so more people can see
how it works. He's thinking maybe it can turn into
sort of an open source effort. And here's some even
(11:32):
more good news. He was kind enough to mail us
some sheets of Zorbix from his personal stash, and we're
giving them away today on Instagram. So people are going
to go start spelling stuff in order to be able
to use least there, right, So go follow us at
Part Time Genius and find out how you can win
some Zorbis.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
That is pretty cool. Hey, listeners, do not go anywhere.
We've got to pause for a quick break. But there
is so much weird science waiting on the other side.
(12:13):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about
the twenty five greatest science ideas of the last twenty
five years. If you've ever gone hiking or camping in
the US, or even if you've just tried to enjoy
a nightcap on your Porsche, chances are you've had an
annoying encounter with a mosquito. But that's usually all it is,
an annoyance. Now, in other parts of the world, mosquitoes
(12:34):
are a serious health risk. In fact, the CDC calls
them the world's deadliest animal. About a million people die
for mosquito born illnesses each year. For example, despite all
the progress we've made with malaria, the WHO reports that
there were two hundred and sixty three million cases and
five hundred and ninety seven thousand debts in twenty twenty three.
(12:55):
Then there are diseases like denge, which are not often
lethal but can make you really, really ill. We actually,
when I was recording my other podcast, Colin Drive, my
aunt and uncle in India caught it and it truly
sounded miserable. But the worst part is mosquito borne illness
is on the rise worldwide, and here in the US
we're actually starting to see more cases of West Nile
(13:16):
virus Zeka and denke.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So why is this problem getting worse?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Climate change is a big part of it, right, I mean,
as temperatures rise and places get more humid, it's a
literal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Also the lack of adequate
healthcare infrastructure in many parts of the world as a factor.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
But the other problem is money.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Like in twenty twenty three, the WHO and It's partner
set a target of eight point three billion to battle
malaria around the globe, but total investment only reached about
four billions, so partners on the ground couldn't buy enough
essential gear like things that are pretty simple like mosquito nets,
also medicines and insecticides, which is why the next breakthrough
is both hilarious and exciting. So in twenty nineteen, a
(13:59):
multinational team of researchers from Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, and Indonesia
discovered that exposing mosquitoes to music can disorient them enough
to tack less and breathe less too.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
So you just crank up the tunes and the mosquitoes
kind of freak out and people are less likely to
get bitten.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Or how does it work?
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yees? I mean the study puts it in much more
official scientific terms, but yeah, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
So is there is there a type of music that's
more effective than another?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
In fact, will there was a particular song that they used. Okay,
this study used the twenty ten dub stuff Smash Scary
Monsters and Nice Sprites by Scrillic Cryllics.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Right, that's a Scrillics hit.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Here is a little reminder of what it sounds like,
which I'm sure takes you back your MySpace days, right,
(15:01):
But for mosquitoes, there's no nostalgia, just confusion. So here's
how the experiment worked. The researchers restrained a hamster in
a mesh cage, then unleashed ten hungry mosquitoes, and they
used a stopwatch to track how long it took the
bugs to start biting and how many times they bit
the hamster. So when Scrilliics wasn't playing, some of the
mosquitos started biting just after twenty one seconds in the cage,
(15:25):
and individual mosquitos bit the hamster as many as eleven
times and ten minutes, but when the music was playing,
they didn't start biting until at least sixty nine seconds
had passed, and the highest number of bites from a
single mosquito was seven. They also found that mosquitoes exposed
to the song were slower to initiate mating.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Wow, So what do we think is the science behind
all of this?
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Research suggests that noise causes stress in insects, like enough
to change their normal behavior. The other thing that might
be causing delayed biting is the vibration from the sound. Now,
in the Scrillics study, the scientists were careful to set
up their equipment so the speaker wasn't touching the cage.
But all sound is vibration, right, And it turns out
that the mosquitoes have to make a whole series of
(16:08):
super precise calculations before they suck your blood. First, they
need to locate you, Then they probe for a suitable
blood vessel. Then they insert their style it which is
actually what it's called, and grip your skin while they feed.
And it seems like consistent vibration, so the kind you
might experience in the twenty ten dubsteps Smash scary monsters
(16:29):
and nice brites can really throw these calculations off. There
was another study in twenty eighteen where some researchers played
acdc's back in Black to a group of beetles and
it reduced their feeding as well.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And when you say group of beetles, I assume you're
talking about insects.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, I don't think ACDC would stop Ringo and Paul
from eating their dinners. But at any rate, it's amazing
to think that blasting music could someday be part of
an affordable and effective global mosquito control strategy.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
All right, Well, at the risk of branding myself as
the fungus guy, and I'm I'm always nervous about this,
I'm championing another fungal breakthrough for our count h and
this one has to do with their eating habits. So
for a long time now, we've known that fungi are
basically the garbage disposals of the natural world. Elie practically
anything from the wood of a violin to asbestos to
(17:18):
even jet fuel, which is super weird. In fact, there
are now at least four different species of marine fungus
that can even break down carbon based polyethylene, the most
pervasive form of plastic waste in the Earth's oceans.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
That's pretty awesome.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
But as helpful as all of this is from a
human perspective, there is one dish on the fungal menu
whose consumption stands to benefit us the most, and that's
actually radiation.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
I feel like I've heard about this right. It's some
kind of black fungus at Chernobyl.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, that's right, And years after the nineteen eighty six meltdown,
scientists discovered patches of black fungus growing on the walls
of the Number four reactor. Surprisingly, the fungi seem to
be growing toward the various sources of radiation, and his
later studies showed it actually the most where the radiation
was highest. Now, for a long time, nobody knew how
the fungus had managed to survive much less flourish, but
(18:07):
in two thousand and seven, two researchers at New York's
Albert Einstein College of Medicine shed some light on the subject.
Their study revealed that the fungus had not only adapted
to what would normally be seen as a lethal level
of radiation, It also developed a way to feed on
the radiation as a way to fuel its own growth,
kind of like the fungal equivalent of photosynthesis. The fungus
(18:28):
absorbed the radiation and then processed it harmlessly to produce
usable energy, just like a plant does with sunlight.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
That's pretty amazing. So so what's their trek?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well, the secret turned out to be the fung guy's
melanin content, the pigment responsible for its dark coloring. These
researchers that I mentioned, Ekaterina Dottakova and Arturo Cascidovol, discovered
that exposure to radiation had changed the shape of the
black fung gui's melanin molecule, making it much more effective
at processing radiation than fungal strains that don't contain melanin.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
It's anathing we've talked about and twice on this yeah,
this series. So does that adaptation exist in other strains
of black fungi or is it just the one that's
found at Chernobyl.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Now we actually know of a few different strains that
can do this. Now.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
They're called radiotrophic fungi, and the hope is that we
can use them to help contain and possibly reduce radiation
levels and other contaminated sites around the world. Now, to
be clear, the fungi's abilities could have useful applications in
far less extreme places than nuclear disaster sites. For example,
there are a lot of medical and manufacturing devices that
safely use smaller levels of radiation. These can be treated
(19:34):
with radiotrophic fungus to further protect workers from ambient radiation
or maybe help to power them, since the fungus produces energy.
There's also a chance that we could someday harness the
genes possible for the fungui's resilience to radiation and then
use them to create other materials with the same ability.
In the meantime, though, NASA scientists have already fast tracked
another important use for the black fungus protecting astronauts from
(19:58):
cosmic radiation.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Cool i sometimes forget. In addition to the lack of oxygen,
spaces radioactive. So you know, whether you're walking out in
a spacesuit or chilling inside the rocket, you're being hit
with some level of radiation.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Right, Yeah, it's not exactly a hospitable environment for humans
up there. And the same strain found that Chernobyl was
sent to the International Space Station back in twenty twenty,
and the experiment conducted with it showed that the fungus
was able to block some of the incoming radiation. The
finding could have major implications for future missions, including long
term voyages in a deep space where radiation levels could
be much higher. If further studies pan out, astronauts could
(20:34):
soon be wearing suits and living in habitats shielded with
the layer of this protective fungus.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
That's really an incredible journey from like the soil to
Chernobyl to outer space. Like it's a pretty huge evolution. Okay, listeners,
you've got to pay for the show with some ads,
but we'll be right back after this quick break. Welcome
(21:07):
back to Part Time Genius. When we're talking the twenty
five greatest science ideas of the last twenty five years,
and we're up to number well, this is it our
last story of the countdown, Dylan, can we get a
drum roll for Lise? All right, let's do it, Mango.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
What is the number one best science idea of the
past twenty five years?
Speaker 1 (21:32):
So this comes from a two thousand and six study
published in the British Medical Journal concerning the treatment of
obstructive sleep apnea or OSA, and this is a huge deal.
According to the National Council on Aging, nearly a billion
adults worldwide are thought to have at least a mild
case of OSA.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yeah, and I know most of us have heard of
sleep apnea, but let's take a minute just remind me
what it does exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
The condition occurs when the upper airway in the throat
collosse during sleep, and this blocks the sleeper's airflow and
causes their breathing to repeatedly stop and start. So you know,
it results in like snoring, gasping, sometimes choking. Not to
mention sleep deprivation and not getting enough sleep really has
serious health consequences. Lack of sleep is linked to diabetes,
(22:19):
heart disease, plus mental health problems like brain fog, irritability, anxiety,
and even depression. But luckily, a team of Swiss researchers
came up with a treatment for sleep apnea that is
totally safe and proven to work. It involves a medical
device that produces a very distinctive sound. So I just
want to play a clip of it for you in
(22:40):
your headphones and see if you can place it. Wait,
is that a digital do I mean, what else could
it be? That one of a kind drone sound right
there is pretty incredible?
Speaker 3 (23:02):
All right, So that's cool and all, but how does
listening to it help with sleep apnea?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Listening to it probably won't help. The sound has been
found to promote relaxation and reduce stress in some people,
but the real medical marvel comes from playing the instrument.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Now.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
According to this two thousand and six study, the airway
collapses associated with sleep apnea can be caused by a
variety of factors, ranging from obesity, to alcohol consumption to
simply having a large tongue. But whatever the case, the
key to treating them is to find a way to
keep that airway open at all times. Now, the traditional
way to do that is with a seapap machine. This
(23:41):
treatment uses a machine to deliver a steady stream of
air pressure through a mask so that the soft tissues
and the wearer's throat won't close in and block the airway.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I guess that's kind of like one of those inflatable
tube guys at the car dealerships right picture those.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I guess so. But the problem is, seapap machines are expensive,
they're bulky, their covers nearly half of all people prescribe
these machines by their doctors eventually quit using them. Plus,
the machines make a worrying white and I sound, which
some people will find soothing but would drive me nuts.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah, it's not nearly as soothing as a digital do.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Well again, listening to a dijerdo will not help you.
But these Swiss researchers found that playing the digitaldo or
the ditch as those of us in the no Call,
it is actually a great way to strengthen the muscles
of the upper airway. And the key to that is
the circular breathing technique used by wind instrumentalists. This allows
them to create a continuous, uninterrupted tone by inhaling through
(24:38):
the nose while maintaining airflow through the instrument. Now, this
is a tricky technique to master because you kind of
have to alternate back and forth between stored air in
your cheeks and air brought into the lungs through the nose. Amazingly,
it's actually how the rapper Black Thought from the Roots
can wrap like ten minutes straight without sounding like he's
taking a big gas for air, and he has like
(24:59):
a steady flow. But once you've mastered the method through
daily practice, the muscles in your tongue and throat will
be much stronger and your upper airway will be much
less likely to collapse.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's super interesting, but I'm curious that, Like, how did
the researchers figure this out? Like what made them think
that digitido might have an effect on sleep apnea?
Speaker 1 (25:17):
So, according to the study, they were tipped off by
a digido instructor who happened to suffer from sleep apne himself,
and he reported that he and a few of his
students snored less and weren't as tired during the daytime
after practicing with the instrument for several months, and that
convinced the team.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
To take a closer look.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
So they recruited twenty five people, all of whom had
a moderate sleep apnea, gave them several weeks of lessons
on how to play, and then have them commit to
practicing daily for about four months. And so, how could
they tell whether it was working? So they used several
different measures to gauge the results, but the primary outcome
was something called the Epworth scale, which measures daytime sleepiness
(25:56):
from zero to twenty four. Now, the average Epworth score
at the start of the trial was eleven point eight,
so pretty much in the middle between zer and twenty four.
But after practicing digidoo for about twenty five minutes a day,
six days a week for several months, the test subject's
average score dropped to seven point four, so almost a
four and a half point difference. In addition, the partners
(26:19):
of the participants reported far less sleep disturbance from snoring
during the same period, suggesting that the collapsibility of the
upper airway really had been reduced by playing this digitidoo.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
And I'm curious how did those improvements stack up against
the SEPAP machine.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
So overall, the effect of the digiidoo was slightly smaller
than the typical results of SEAPAP therapy. But as the
authors noted, one of the major hurdles with SEPAP is
no one really likes using them right, and that leads
to poor compliance. But that wasn't the case with the
digido Like the people who participated were super into it
(26:54):
and even practiced more often than the researchers had asked
them to, so in the long run, the ditch my
be the better choice for some patients. Also, while we're talking,
about the dijid Did you know the name is an automatopoia.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
I did not, actually, just I don't know what I
thought the origins were. I just assumed it was an
Australian Aboriginal word.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah, I actually thought the same thing. But it turns
out the word doesn't exist in any of the local languages.
Like They've got their own names for it. They call
it the yadaki or the mago. So while the instrument
itself is thought to be one of the oldest on
the planet, the name dijidoo was likely coined by Europeans
who settled around the turn of the twentieth century, and
they called it that to mimic the rhythmic sounds it produces. Anyway,
(27:35):
I was so curious if there was any sort of
anecdotal evidence to back this up, so I went on
the sleep Apnea subreddit, and sure enough, there are a
whole bunch of posts from people who report improved sleep
after learning how to play the digerdoo. There's just one drawback,
and what would that be? The digitdoo sound is loud.
So it's true, while your sleep might be getting better,
(27:57):
your relationship with your neighbors might get work.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Oh you know, Mega, We've been doing an Instagram contest
every day of this countdown, and I already mentioned that
we're giving away sheets of Zorbix today, but since this
is the grand finale, we're also going to give away
a digital do sleep Apnea kit comes with everything you
need to become a well rested digital player by our
neighbors Samir Plugs. Go to our Instagram at part Time
(28:21):
Genius to get all the contest details.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah, it's been really fun doing these contests and maybe
we'll do more of them in the future, But that
brings us to the end of our great Science Ideas countdown.
We really hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
And in addition to Gabe, Mary and Dylan, a shout
out to Lucas Riley, who also helped us research a
bunts of this Calypso Rales is mailing out all the
(28:48):
gifts and helping us with social media. And we also
want to thank all the inventors and scientists we spoke
with for helping us make this happen. But from Will
and myself, thank you to all those folks, and thank
you to you. We feel so lucky that we get
to make this show, and we're really thrilled you're listening.
(29:19):
Part Time Genius is the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaishatikler
and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norbel and Ali Perry, with social
(29:42):
media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
and iHeartRadio. Guess what Will?
Speaker 2 (00:12):
What's that Mango?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
All week we've been counting down the twenty five best
science ideas of the past twenty five years, and today
is exact phonology.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
This is it.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
We have four stories left, which makes me feel a
little weird that we didn't do exactly five in every episode,
but I've somehow moved on from that. And to give
you a sense of what's coming today, let's say that
you'll never look at a mosquito, a mushroom, or a
wet book the same way. Again, you thought you were
always going to look at those things the same way.
And if you're unlucky enough to have a roommate or
(00:43):
a partner who snores, guess what.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
We have found a way to fix that.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
Amazing, So I hope you guys are as excited as
we are. Let's dive in.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Hey their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
friend Mangesha Ticketer and over there in the booth icing
an enormous cake. Like enormous doesn't even do it justice.
It is a gigantic That is our palain producer Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
I had no idea Dylan was a pastry.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Chef for me either, But that is one beautiful cake.
There's writing on it too. It says, make sure you're
subscribed to part Time Genius on your favorite podcast app
and if you like the show, please leave us a
five star rating and review. Yeah, which is impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Look, I think it says johnnyus part Time Johnius for anyways.
Close enough. We appreciate the gesture there. Wrote it all
in frosting wine. Know, Paul Hollywood could never.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
All right, mango, be honest.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Have you ever build something on a book or an
important document?
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Not?
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Really?
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Okay? Well, I was hoping free to say yes at
some point.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
But you've never spilled coffee or like wine on a
book or something like that.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
No, I am one, I'm not really that clumsy. But two,
I'm actually super paranoid about that type of thing. So
like when I have a glass, I tend to keep
my books and my liquid separate. My kids and my
wife do spill a lot of things, so I have
a cleaning up a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Okay, Okay, Well, our next great idea will definitely help
you out in those situations as well. As librarians are
conservators who have had to rescue water logged materials, And
is there a lot of that, more.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Than you'd imagine.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Actually, think of burst pipes or flooding, or damage caused
by sprinklers. If there's a fire in the building and
wet paper is really hard to dry out. You can
blot it, you can freeze dried, you can put it
in front of fans. But these techniques are time consuming
and laborious, and so if you're not careful, you can
wind up with mildew or pages that end up rippling.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
And so someone came up with a way to dry
these books.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Actually, someone came up with the best way to drive books.
His name is Nicki Jaeger, and he is a rare
books librarian, a conservator, and an artist who's had a
long and colorful career in the world of paper arts.
So back in two thousand and two, a friend put
him in touch with a woman named Kate Hayes, who
is an information specialist with the USDA's National Agricultural Library.
(03:23):
She'd been thinking about soggy paper ever since she'd heard
that millions of pentagon documents got soaked on nine to
eleven when all the sprinkler systems turned on. And she
remember the substance that was used in agriculture to help
seeds germinate in dry soil. It's a cornstarch based polymer
called and I'm not making this up, super slurper. And
this stuff holds five hundred times its weight and water,
(03:46):
so it could dry anything out right. She just needed
someone with a conservation expertise to figure out how it
could be applied to paper. So we talked to Nicki
on the phone and he told us that he was
intrigued by the idea. So we asked Kate Hayes to
mail himself super Slurper, which looked a lot like sawdust,
And when it arrived, she gave him a call and
he tested it out while they were talking.
Speaker 4 (04:08):
So I walk over to the sink and put a
book under the faucet soak about fifty sixty seventy pages.
I take a handful of this flake and I throw
it into the middle of the wettest part of the book,
close the book, put it in the screw press, and
talk for another minute. Pull it out and twenty pages
on either side of their bone dry. I mean they're
(04:29):
not like humid, they're dry. Eh, And that's what five
hundred times is waiting water will do. I'm like, this
stuff is amazing. We got to do something.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Kate agreed to help Nicky get a federal research agreement
to turn Super Slurper into a viable paper conservation product,
but right away they were challenges. For one thing, the
super Slurper turned into a goo in the crevices of
wet books, and the sawdust like flakes made dense in
the paper as it dried. So he solved that first
problem by just sandwiching a layer of the polymer between
(05:00):
sheets of lab grade filtration paper, and after destroying a
coffee grinder trying to turn the flakes into dust, he
tracked down a manufacturer that sold a powdered.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Version of the super Slurper.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
But then the question was how do you keep this
fine powder contained in its envelope of filter paper?
Speaker 4 (05:16):
And somebody eventually said something about diapers, and I went, oh, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Nikki checked out some diaper making equipment, but he realized
that diapers are engineered to hold liquid in without ever
letting it out. They use an adhesive that lets the
absorbent filling blow up when it gets wet, and then
it stays puffy. Super Slurper couldn't do that. It had
to dry flat so it wouldn't damage book spines. Eventually,
after a ton of trial and error, he figured out
how to assemble sheets of super Slurper designed for rescuing
(05:44):
wet books. He used the jury rigged silk screen to
distribute the powder on the envelopes of filter paper coated
with an industrial adhesive that allowed the stuff to swell
up just enough to hold water before going flat as
it dried. Plus, he left a precise border at the
edge of the paper so the slurper wouldn't ooze out,
sort of like an overstuffed PBNJ.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
I mean this all sounds so time consuming.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, and this is taking years.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
He's bouncing around rented commercial workspaces and USDA research labs,
getting by with small grants. It was slow going, but
he was homing in on the details that would make
his product, which he decided to call Zorbis, work just
right now. The problem now was finding a way to
manufacture this stuff instead of pasting it together by hand.
(06:30):
But the industrial experts he spoke with didn't understand the
science of zorbis or books the way Nikki did.
Speaker 4 (06:36):
Every engineer I spoke to for ten years kept trying
to re engineer it to their standards. No one was
able to comprehend all of my very specific needs and
challenges and answering their questions. I was learning myself what
(06:57):
the form had to be and why it had to
be the way it was. So during that period I
also figured out that if I put the sheets of
zorbix about every twenty or thirty pages, then I'm not
swelling the spine of the book. I'm not increasing the
books interior space such that it ruins the spine.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Now, the other problem was money.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
So by two thousand and nine he'd built up a
small customer base of librarians and conservation experts. People in
the book business knew the value of zorbix, but finance
guys couldn't quite get it.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
I'd managed to get a couple of people investing in this.
I was able to manufacture small batches of it by hand,
and whenever any library saw this stuff, they loved it.
They were like, this stuff is great. But I had
a hard time describing how it was useful. Like, I
tried to go in front of Angel investors, but Northern
California is a high tech industry and this is essentially
(07:56):
be low tech, and nobody understood the importance. So I'd
done research on how many books get wet in a year.
There's over two million books a year in libraries that
get wet from non catastrophic floods, water breaks, leaking roof,
spilling coffee, whatever. Went to these investors and they were like, well,
that's two million books, that's not that big a deal.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
He ended up having to take a warehouse job to
support himself while he continued looking for ways to mass
produce sorbis, all while keeping up with the orders he
was getting from librarians. By twenty fifteen, he had hit
a wall.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
I called all of my investor and I said, I'm done.
It's you know, it's from two thousand and two to
twenty fifteen. I just I can't do this anymore. And
they went, yeah, well, you prove feasibility, you got a mark,
you built the machine, you wrote the patent, you got
a market. It just didn't succeed financially. Bit just succeeded
in every other way. So I said, all right, I'm
(08:50):
going to celebrate my failure, and I went on a
motorcycle trip around the country.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
On his way through ann Arbor, he stopped to say
hi to one of his longtime customers, Shannon Zachary, the
head of conservation and book repair at the University of Michigan,
and he told her about his decision.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
She goes, what, He goes, see the stack of book series? Yeah,
she should. We had a flood in our rare book vault.
It was a water leak and we had all of
this mostly nineteenth and twentieth century kind of avant garde
types of materials that couldn't freeze dry and they had
to be flat. She goes, that stack is the last
stack of these, you know, seven hundred books or whatever
(09:24):
it was. And we used zorbis and was great. I said,
I can't keep going. I need ten grand just to
buy a paper. She goes, oh, well, you can't go
out of business.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Shannon rallied the conservation community to place ten thousand dollars
worth of orders back home in California. Nicky got to
work fulfilling them by hand. He plugged away in a
Bay Area industrial building with no heat, sharing this space
with a bunch of burning Man fans who were there
building art carts for the plout, and he set up
his fourteen foot modified screen printing system, his racks, his
(09:55):
stock of filter paper, and powdered super slurper. He covered
it all with plastic sheeting because the roof was leaking no,
but he was still no closer to getting Zorbis into
a proper manufacturing system. After a while, he looked around
and was like, why am I still doing this? You
can imagine the frustration.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Do you know what the difference between being stubborn and
perseverant is? Well, stubborn is what they say about you
when you're doing something and it doesn't look like it's
going anywhere. When they write about it after you succeeded,
they say you were perseverant, and I just said I'm stubborn.
Time to quit.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
Well, I guess that is part of science, right, I mean,
sometimes the world just doesn't make space for great ideas.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Yeah, that's pretty much how Nikki felt. So he called
up an old friend from the book world who agreed
to buy the business, But that guy got busy with
other projects, so Zorbix this incredibly complicated, beautifully simple way
to save what books was put on the back burner.
That means it's been a long time since any Zorbis
was produced, but since it's reusable, it is actually still
out there. So we heard from one conservator who's hung
(11:02):
onto her sheets for years because she says it's just
so good at what it does.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
It's pretty amazing. So where does this all stand now?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Well, there may end up being a happy ending to
this story. So right before we recorded this episode, actually
got an email from Nikki who said that talking to
us reignited his passion for the project. He's decided to
start writing the story of Zorbis for his blog and
put some demos on YouTube so more people can see
how it works. He's thinking maybe it can turn into
sort of an open source effort. And here's some even
(11:32):
more good news. He was kind enough to mail us
some sheets of Zorbix from his personal stash, and we're
giving them away today on Instagram. So people are going
to go start spelling stuff in order to be able
to use least there, right, So go follow us at
Part Time Genius and find out how you can win
some Zorbis.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
That is pretty cool. Hey, listeners, do not go anywhere.
We've got to pause for a quick break. But there
is so much weird science waiting on the other side.
(12:13):
Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're talking about
the twenty five greatest science ideas of the last twenty
five years. If you've ever gone hiking or camping in
the US, or even if you've just tried to enjoy
a nightcap on your Porsche, chances are you've had an
annoying encounter with a mosquito. But that's usually all it is,
an annoyance. Now, in other parts of the world, mosquitoes
(12:34):
are a serious health risk. In fact, the CDC calls
them the world's deadliest animal. About a million people die
for mosquito born illnesses each year. For example, despite all
the progress we've made with malaria, the WHO reports that
there were two hundred and sixty three million cases and
five hundred and ninety seven thousand debts in twenty twenty three.
(12:55):
Then there are diseases like denge, which are not often
lethal but can make you really, really ill. We actually,
when I was recording my other podcast, Colin Drive, my
aunt and uncle in India caught it and it truly
sounded miserable. But the worst part is mosquito borne illness
is on the rise worldwide, and here in the US
we're actually starting to see more cases of West Nile
(13:16):
virus Zeka and denke.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So why is this problem getting worse?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Climate change is a big part of it, right, I mean,
as temperatures rise and places get more humid, it's a
literal breeding ground for mosquitoes. Also the lack of adequate
healthcare infrastructure in many parts of the world as a factor.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
But the other problem is money.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Like in twenty twenty three, the WHO and It's partner
set a target of eight point three billion to battle
malaria around the globe, but total investment only reached about
four billions, so partners on the ground couldn't buy enough
essential gear like things that are pretty simple like mosquito nets,
also medicines and insecticides, which is why the next breakthrough
is both hilarious and exciting. So in twenty nineteen, a
(13:59):
multinational team of researchers from Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, and Indonesia
discovered that exposing mosquitoes to music can disorient them enough
to tack less and breathe less too.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
So you just crank up the tunes and the mosquitoes
kind of freak out and people are less likely to
get bitten.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
Or how does it work?
Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yees? I mean the study puts it in much more
official scientific terms, but yeah, that's pretty much it.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
So is there is there a type of music that's
more effective than another?
Speaker 1 (14:25):
In fact, will there was a particular song that they used. Okay,
this study used the twenty ten dub stuff Smash Scary
Monsters and Nice Sprites by Scrillic Cryllics.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Right, that's a Scrillics hit.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Here is a little reminder of what it sounds like,
which I'm sure takes you back your MySpace days, right,
(15:01):
But for mosquitoes, there's no nostalgia, just confusion. So here's
how the experiment worked. The researchers restrained a hamster in
a mesh cage, then unleashed ten hungry mosquitoes, and they
used a stopwatch to track how long it took the
bugs to start biting and how many times they bit
the hamster. So when Scrilliics wasn't playing, some of the
mosquitos started biting just after twenty one seconds in the cage,
(15:25):
and individual mosquitos bit the hamster as many as eleven
times and ten minutes, but when the music was playing,
they didn't start biting until at least sixty nine seconds
had passed, and the highest number of bites from a
single mosquito was seven. They also found that mosquitoes exposed
to the song were slower to initiate mating.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Wow, So what do we think is the science behind
all of this?
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Research suggests that noise causes stress in insects, like enough
to change their normal behavior. The other thing that might
be causing delayed biting is the vibration from the sound. Now,
in the Scrillics study, the scientists were careful to set
up their equipment so the speaker wasn't touching the cage.
But all sound is vibration, right, And it turns out
that the mosquitoes have to make a whole series of
(16:08):
super precise calculations before they suck your blood. First, they
need to locate you, Then they probe for a suitable
blood vessel. Then they insert their style it which is
actually what it's called, and grip your skin while they feed.
And it seems like consistent vibration, so the kind you
might experience in the twenty ten dubsteps Smash scary monsters
(16:29):
and nice brites can really throw these calculations off. There
was another study in twenty eighteen where some researchers played
acdc's back in Black to a group of beetles and
it reduced their feeding as well.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
And when you say group of beetles, I assume you're
talking about insects.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, I don't think ACDC would stop Ringo and Paul
from eating their dinners. But at any rate, it's amazing
to think that blasting music could someday be part of
an affordable and effective global mosquito control strategy.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
All right, Well, at the risk of branding myself as
the fungus guy, and I'm I'm always nervous about this,
I'm championing another fungal breakthrough for our count h and
this one has to do with their eating habits. So
for a long time now, we've known that fungi are
basically the garbage disposals of the natural world. Elie practically
anything from the wood of a violin to asbestos to
(17:18):
even jet fuel, which is super weird. In fact, there
are now at least four different species of marine fungus
that can even break down carbon based polyethylene, the most
pervasive form of plastic waste in the Earth's oceans.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
That's pretty awesome.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
But as helpful as all of this is from a
human perspective, there is one dish on the fungal menu
whose consumption stands to benefit us the most, and that's
actually radiation.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
I feel like I've heard about this right. It's some
kind of black fungus at Chernobyl.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, that's right, And years after the nineteen eighty six meltdown,
scientists discovered patches of black fungus growing on the walls
of the Number four reactor. Surprisingly, the fungi seem to
be growing toward the various sources of radiation, and his
later studies showed it actually the most where the radiation
was highest. Now, for a long time, nobody knew how
the fungus had managed to survive much less flourish, but
(18:07):
in two thousand and seven, two researchers at New York's
Albert Einstein College of Medicine shed some light on the subject.
Their study revealed that the fungus had not only adapted
to what would normally be seen as a lethal level
of radiation, It also developed a way to feed on
the radiation as a way to fuel its own growth,
kind of like the fungal equivalent of photosynthesis. The fungus
(18:28):
absorbed the radiation and then processed it harmlessly to produce
usable energy, just like a plant does with sunlight.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
That's pretty amazing. So so what's their trek?
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Well, the secret turned out to be the fung guy's
melanin content, the pigment responsible for its dark coloring. These
researchers that I mentioned, Ekaterina Dottakova and Arturo Cascidovol, discovered
that exposure to radiation had changed the shape of the
black fung gui's melanin molecule, making it much more effective
at processing radiation than fungal strains that don't contain melanin.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
It's anathing we've talked about and twice on this yeah,
this series. So does that adaptation exist in other strains
of black fungi or is it just the one that's
found at Chernobyl.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Now we actually know of a few different strains that
can do this. Now.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
They're called radiotrophic fungi, and the hope is that we
can use them to help contain and possibly reduce radiation
levels and other contaminated sites around the world. Now, to
be clear, the fungi's abilities could have useful applications in
far less extreme places than nuclear disaster sites. For example,
there are a lot of medical and manufacturing devices that
safely use smaller levels of radiation. These can be treated
(19:34):
with radiotrophic fungus to further protect workers from ambient radiation
or maybe help to power them, since the fungus produces energy.
There's also a chance that we could someday harness the
genes possible for the fungui's resilience to radiation and then
use them to create other materials with the same ability.
In the meantime, though, NASA scientists have already fast tracked
another important use for the black fungus protecting astronauts from
(19:58):
cosmic radiation.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Cool i sometimes forget. In addition to the lack of oxygen,
spaces radioactive. So you know, whether you're walking out in
a spacesuit or chilling inside the rocket, you're being hit
with some level of radiation.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Right, Yeah, it's not exactly a hospitable environment for humans
up there. And the same strain found that Chernobyl was
sent to the International Space Station back in twenty twenty,
and the experiment conducted with it showed that the fungus
was able to block some of the incoming radiation. The
finding could have major implications for future missions, including long
term voyages in a deep space where radiation levels could
be much higher. If further studies pan out, astronauts could
(20:34):
soon be wearing suits and living in habitats shielded with
the layer of this protective fungus.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
That's really an incredible journey from like the soil to
Chernobyl to outer space. Like it's a pretty huge evolution. Okay, listeners,
you've got to pay for the show with some ads,
but we'll be right back after this quick break. Welcome
(21:07):
back to Part Time Genius. When we're talking the twenty
five greatest science ideas of the last twenty five years,
and we're up to number well, this is it our
last story of the countdown, Dylan, can we get a
drum roll for Lise? All right, let's do it, Mango.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
What is the number one best science idea of the
past twenty five years?
Speaker 1 (21:32):
So this comes from a two thousand and six study
published in the British Medical Journal concerning the treatment of
obstructive sleep apnea or OSA, and this is a huge deal.
According to the National Council on Aging, nearly a billion
adults worldwide are thought to have at least a mild
case of OSA.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yeah, and I know most of us have heard of
sleep apnea, but let's take a minute just remind me
what it does exactly.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
The condition occurs when the upper airway in the throat
collosse during sleep, and this blocks the sleeper's airflow and
causes their breathing to repeatedly stop and start. So you know,
it results in like snoring, gasping, sometimes choking. Not to
mention sleep deprivation and not getting enough sleep really has
serious health consequences. Lack of sleep is linked to diabetes,
(22:19):
heart disease, plus mental health problems like brain fog, irritability, anxiety,
and even depression. But luckily, a team of Swiss researchers
came up with a treatment for sleep apnea that is
totally safe and proven to work. It involves a medical
device that produces a very distinctive sound. So I just
want to play a clip of it for you in
(22:40):
your headphones and see if you can place it. Wait,
is that a digital do I mean, what else could
it be? That one of a kind drone sound right
there is pretty incredible?
Speaker 3 (23:02):
All right, So that's cool and all, but how does
listening to it help with sleep apnea?
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Listening to it probably won't help. The sound has been
found to promote relaxation and reduce stress in some people,
but the real medical marvel comes from playing the instrument.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
Now.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
According to this two thousand and six study, the airway
collapses associated with sleep apnea can be caused by a
variety of factors, ranging from obesity, to alcohol consumption to
simply having a large tongue. But whatever the case, the
key to treating them is to find a way to
keep that airway open at all times. Now, the traditional
way to do that is with a seapap machine. This
(23:41):
treatment uses a machine to deliver a steady stream of
air pressure through a mask so that the soft tissues
and the wearer's throat won't close in and block the airway.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I guess that's kind of like one of those inflatable
tube guys at the car dealerships right picture those.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
I guess so. But the problem is, seapap machines are expensive,
they're bulky, their covers nearly half of all people prescribe
these machines by their doctors eventually quit using them. Plus,
the machines make a worrying white and I sound, which
some people will find soothing but would drive me nuts.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Yeah, it's not nearly as soothing as a digital do.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Well again, listening to a dijerdo will not help you.
But these Swiss researchers found that playing the digitaldo or
the ditch as those of us in the no Call,
it is actually a great way to strengthen the muscles
of the upper airway. And the key to that is
the circular breathing technique used by wind instrumentalists. This allows
them to create a continuous, uninterrupted tone by inhaling through
(24:38):
the nose while maintaining airflow through the instrument. Now, this
is a tricky technique to master because you kind of
have to alternate back and forth between stored air in
your cheeks and air brought into the lungs through the nose. Amazingly,
it's actually how the rapper Black Thought from the Roots
can wrap like ten minutes straight without sounding like he's
taking a big gas for air, and he has like
(24:59):
a steady flow. But once you've mastered the method through
daily practice, the muscles in your tongue and throat will
be much stronger and your upper airway will be much
less likely to collapse.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's super interesting, but I'm curious that, Like, how did
the researchers figure this out? Like what made them think
that digitido might have an effect on sleep apnea?
Speaker 1 (25:17):
So, according to the study, they were tipped off by
a digido instructor who happened to suffer from sleep apne himself,
and he reported that he and a few of his
students snored less and weren't as tired during the daytime
after practicing with the instrument for several months, and that
convinced the team.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
To take a closer look.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
So they recruited twenty five people, all of whom had
a moderate sleep apnea, gave them several weeks of lessons
on how to play, and then have them commit to
practicing daily for about four months. And so, how could
they tell whether it was working? So they used several
different measures to gauge the results, but the primary outcome
was something called the Epworth scale, which measures daytime sleepiness
(25:56):
from zero to twenty four. Now, the average Epworth score
at the start of the trial was eleven point eight,
so pretty much in the middle between zer and twenty four.
But after practicing digidoo for about twenty five minutes a day,
six days a week for several months, the test subject's
average score dropped to seven point four, so almost a
four and a half point difference. In addition, the partners
(26:19):
of the participants reported far less sleep disturbance from snoring
during the same period, suggesting that the collapsibility of the
upper airway really had been reduced by playing this digitidoo.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
And I'm curious how did those improvements stack up against
the SEPAP machine.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
So overall, the effect of the digiidoo was slightly smaller
than the typical results of SEAPAP therapy. But as the
authors noted, one of the major hurdles with SEPAP is
no one really likes using them right, and that leads
to poor compliance. But that wasn't the case with the
digido Like the people who participated were super into it
(26:54):
and even practiced more often than the researchers had asked
them to, so in the long run, the ditch my
be the better choice for some patients. Also, while we're talking,
about the dijid Did you know the name is an automatopoia.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
I did not, actually, just I don't know what I
thought the origins were. I just assumed it was an
Australian Aboriginal word.
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Yeah, I actually thought the same thing. But it turns
out the word doesn't exist in any of the local languages.
Like They've got their own names for it. They call
it the yadaki or the mago. So while the instrument
itself is thought to be one of the oldest on
the planet, the name dijidoo was likely coined by Europeans
who settled around the turn of the twentieth century, and
they called it that to mimic the rhythmic sounds it produces. Anyway,
(27:35):
I was so curious if there was any sort of
anecdotal evidence to back this up, so I went on
the sleep Apnea subreddit, and sure enough, there are a
whole bunch of posts from people who report improved sleep
after learning how to play the digerdoo. There's just one drawback,
and what would that be? The digitdoo sound is loud.
So it's true, while your sleep might be getting better,
(27:57):
your relationship with your neighbors might get work.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Oh you know, Mega, We've been doing an Instagram contest
every day of this countdown, and I already mentioned that
we're giving away sheets of Zorbix today, but since this
is the grand finale, we're also going to give away
a digital do sleep Apnea kit comes with everything you
need to become a well rested digital player by our
neighbors Samir Plugs. Go to our Instagram at part Time
(28:21):
Genius to get all the contest details.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah, it's been really fun doing these contests and maybe
we'll do more of them in the future, But that
brings us to the end of our great Science Ideas countdown.
We really hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
And in addition to Gabe, Mary and Dylan, a shout
out to Lucas Riley, who also helped us research a
bunts of this Calypso Rales is mailing out all the
(28:48):
gifts and helping us with social media. And we also
want to thank all the inventors and scientists we spoke
with for helping us make this happen. But from Will
and myself, thank you to all those folks, and thank
you to you. We feel so lucky that we get
to make this show, and we're really thrilled you're listening.
(29:19):
Part Time Genius is the production of Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio.
This show is hosted by Will Pearson and me Mongaishatikler
and research by our good pal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
for iHeart by Katrina Norbel and Ali Perry, with social
(29:42):
media support from Sasha Gay, Trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shorey.
For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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