March 22, 2011 • 29 mins
In the process known as symbiosis, two organisms of different species exist in close physical contact to the benefit of both organisms. But how does that work? Listen in to learn more about the process of symbiosis, and how it can affect human beings. Plus learn all about fecal transplants and why they're promising, but not a good DIY option.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com The Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas and I
hate you. I should ask you before we actually started recording,
But do you have any indo parasites signed? Because I'm
all out No, No, I can't get them from the
website that I used to get them from anymore because
(00:25):
I'm feeling a little chunky and I would really like
to drop a few pounds. Well yeah, I mean, um,
a parasite diet is really the way to go if
you want to drop a couple and then I mean
the only problem though, is that, um, you kind of
get these little weird side effects like abdominal pain and
distension and vomiting and diarrhea and malnutrition and itchy enus. Yeah, yeah,
(00:49):
that those that'll stack out throwing a little psychosis on
top of that, and it'll uh, it really takes a toll.
But you look fabulous, So I really don't see what
the big deal is. Thanks. Thanks, I know, and that's
what I thought when when a fish holes in Hong Kong.
We're shutting down websites selling the scarce roundworm, which people
were using as a weight loss diet. Yeah, the story
(01:12):
was picked up by a lot of people because the
idea is great because it's like a parasite, the thing
that we don't want. The parasite is like, yeah, it's
like the vire Saw the Mosquito Coast. There's like this
great scene where Harrison Ford's crazy character like kills a
mosquito and he's like he's making a ployant about some
thugs that are living off there, crazy compat of easily.
He's like he points to the blood. He's like, that's
(01:32):
that's your blood, not the mosquitoes blood. You know. It's
like that the parasite is just leaching something off of
us and we're getting nothing in return. Um. But the
closer you look at at at parasitic relationships, the more
you realize that a lot of what we think of
as parasitic relationships are actually symbiotic relationships. There's a lot
(01:53):
more give and take. Um, there's back scratching going there's
backscratching going on. And and so the idea of benefiting
from a parasite is not that crazy an idea at all.
And uh And likewise, this will explore some of some
examples of symbiosis. When you look closer, they look a
little more parasitic. Uh. And it just really it blew
(02:15):
my mind the more I looked into this, because it
really changes the way you look at all interactions between
all organisms. Yeah, the entire planet actually, when you start
to look at um, just like the basic ecosystems on
our bodies, inside of our guts, outside of our bodies,
you know, in the ocean, so on and so forth.
(02:36):
I mean, it's just even the way you look at
a tree these days now and you're like, oh my god,
and there's so much more going on than we ever imagined.
But I jump ahead of myself there with tree. Well,
let me just break it down real quick then for
for anybody that's that's new to this, what is symbiosis?
All right? Symbiosis? This is an example where we have
a situation where we have two organisms of different species
(02:57):
existing in close physical contact to the benefit of both organisms.
That's the blanket symbiosis. Yeah, But then you have different types.
For instance, there's um commence all is um and this
is when one organism benefits and the other isn't affected
much at all. Um. Then there's mutually beneficial where both
(03:18):
sides make out okay. Then there's a parasitism of course,
where one organism benefits and the other one uh suffers
or even dies. And then there's obligate symbiosis. And this
is where the situation where the symbiosis is necessary to survival.
So it's like, there are these two things in this relationship,
two species intertwined, and they need each other to survive.
(03:41):
Without each other, they're doomed. And you've got a really
good example of that, right, yes, I do. There's um
a particular creature that's just really bizarre. Um. One of
the strangest case of the symbiosis you'll run across called
the a soil that's a c O E l a
so l um flat worm uh. And these tiny worms
(04:02):
live along shorelines and they look like mass as a seaweed.
The worms themselves are transparent, but if if you were
looking inside them, you'd find this type of algae, this
uh uh platymnus algae, which contains chlorophyll and is capable
of photosynthesis, and they give this worms is green color. Right,
So the algae absorbed sunlight through the worm's clear skin
(04:25):
and they photosynthesized food, enough food that the worms have
no functioning digestive track or even working mouths, and the
algae even recycle the worms waste products. So you've got
this this crazy situation where it's like like you can
live rent free. Yeah, flat worm algae. And they've they've
(04:45):
lived together so long that they're they're one thing. They're like,
you can't. It's really hard to separate where one ends
and the other begins, right, Yeah, especially with the coloring.
And you know what I'm saying that the actual physical
representation is created by the the parasite. I suppose you
would call them this instance that the algae. Yeah, it's
like a sweet old couple. You know that they have
lived together so long that they're just this one, one thing,
(05:09):
and that the idea of one living without the other
is just ridiculous. Oh that's sweet. I just started thinking
like old couples that look like each other walking down
the street with hands in each other's pockets. Yeah. Now,
the other type is a faculty of symbiosis. And this
is where the symbiosis is is great but not necessary
to survival, which is a lot of symbiosis. Uh. And
then you have endosymbia symbias which live inside another organism,
(05:32):
and ectosymbias, which live on the body of another. But
an endo doesn't include the digestive system, by the way,
so that could you could have a parasite in your
digestive system and it would still be considered exo. And
I'm assuming because eventually it gets purged, right, kind of
think of the human bodies of doughnut, and it's like,
even if it's in the whole, it's it's it's XO,
(05:54):
right right, It's a good way to put it. Um.
I think it gets more complicated if you get into
cruelers and jelly. So so that's why we don't use
a lot of donut analogies on the show. But but
I do find the roommates analogy really interesting because when
you look at this, because it's like, take any two
roommates or any two people that live together in the
same environment, and you'll encounter different give and take. Um.
(06:16):
I think we've talked about before. We've used also like
couples as an example, Like sometimes you'll have a situation
where where like they say, the wife has a job
and the husband definitely does not, and it is sitting
on the couch all day. Um, he's he's really not
contributing a lot to this situation. But he may be
(06:36):
hurting to one degree another, but he's he's benefiting. Okay.
And I think about that as like the commence alism, right. So,
and then when I think about commencealism, always think about barnacles,
like they just attached to anything. Yeah, I'm not saying
that the guy is a barnacle. Might be a barnacle,
I've I've I've met a few barnacles in my time. Yeah, well,
but in nature, I specifically thought, of course that's the barnacle.
(06:56):
They're like the hoboes of the sea. Um. And then
with parasitism, another example right off the top of my
head is just ticks, right yeah, Like that's that's obvious.
They're just sucking your blood. They drink your blood, maybe
give you lime disease, and then fall off right. Um.
And then again mutually beneficial. You talked about the flatworm.
There's also cleaner shrimp, and they actually hang out on
(07:18):
coral reefs and then they hit up passing fish to
clean their windshields so to speak. Uh, And they crawl
onto the fish and sometimes they get into their mouths
and remove dead skin cells. I thought that was really interesting,
Like they're just hanging out there. It's like a little
car wash. Yeah, there are a number of cleaner species.
I mean in the ocean there, it's like they're just crazy.
This seems like every every species has some other species
(07:41):
that will let come into its mouth and hang out
and eat stuff off their teeth, you know. Um. But
and then there there are also some examples outside of
the oceans. For instance, there's the ox pecker and the
ox pecker uh. And there these uh you'll typically see
these like on the backs of zebras in uh in
(08:03):
Safari films, you know, and they're you know, they're hanging
around out there and they're eating lice, ticks and other
little annoyances. Um. And and on the surface, it looks
like a natural example of a symbiotic relationship, like I'm
gonna eat your parasites. Uh, you're getting rid of your parasites,
and I'm getting a dinner out of it. Right. However, um,
(08:23):
their actions are not always completely in the interest of
the host. Uh. They are suspected sometimes of nipping open
wounds on the zebra's back in order to encourage more parasites,
or even to to have a little blood, Like they're
just sort of open a little slit and have have
a little to drink a little sauce on their meal. Yeah,
it's kind of like like you're you're you know, as
(08:43):
long as I'm back here, you know, eating your ticks,
Like I think I'm gonna have a little this delicious
blood that you've got going on, right, And if you're
the zebra, you're probably like, what are you doing in
my what are you doing in my rump back there?
Like what's you probably are feeling it, but you're like, Okay,
this is probably not beneficial for me anymore, and try
to swat it away. It's kind of a like situation
where a relationship perhaps changes over time, because it makes
(09:04):
you wonder like it was there a time in the
past when the ox packer's eb relationship was a lot
more equal. Has it become a little more one sided
overtime over time? It's just it's it's fascinated to think
of these things. Well, I mean, as habitats change to that,
that could certainly change the behavior. Yeah, yeah, like say
they're less lies to go around, maybe you have to
dip into the blood a little um economic, you know,
(09:25):
and then you can make advantage and you can make
comparisons to workplace. You know, economy turns bad, maybe the
guy who's normally a model employee suddenly starts stealing pencils
and telling them at the subway station or something. I
don't know, is there tell us, Yes, they steal pin
pencils and sell them at the translation. Yeah, I've got
to come up with a better way to to to
(09:46):
steal from work. It's just not not making in the dough.
I was hoping for good pencils, but what are you
an idea? It's not really a pencil society anymore. Yeah,
But talking about different types of symbiosis also made me
think about something called the Gaia theory, Yeah, which is
really interesting. Guya being Greek for goddess, right, or a
(10:08):
Greek goddess rather um, which is also sometimes called symbiogenesis.
So there's this idea out of sounds a lot less
hippy dippy it does. Yeah, the guya. You know, I
just think about my yoga mat and it's it's not
really feeling like science so much, but there's an idea
out there, and it's called endosymbiosis, which is essentially um
(10:30):
symbiosis and not chance mutation as we've known about an
evolution that's key to evolution. So what they're basically saying
is that it's more of a cooperative atmosphere between organisms
in the environment that are driving natural selection and competition,
which is really interesting and kind of turned everybody on
(10:51):
their their butts. Some of them. Was first introduced in
the nineties sixties, in particular Richard Todkins, who was like, no, no,
this is this is crazy talk because it's kind of
a situation where instead of survival of the like the
sneakiest jerk, it's survival of the most cooperative right, right,
It's not you know, it's it's not hacking off your
your arrivals just so that you can be the one
who continues, uh forward. Right. They're actually saying that this
(11:15):
is key to complex life. Um So, if you think
of the mitochondria, nuclei, and ribosomes separately, think about them
coming together in this scenario as part of the cell
and creating this mutually beneficial organism. It's and that's the
idea behind this is really interesting. Yeah, So it's like
(11:38):
the whole world becomes an example of symbiosis. Yeah, yeah,
and yeah, the planet is is essentially a giant superorganism
working together. Now, of course, there are people who say,
I'm not really sure about this, especially that part about UM,
about this cooperation versus competition, because we know that you
know that competition has really shown itself through data, definitely
(12:01):
proving itself. But I think it's just a different way
to look at evolution. It's just kind of interesting. This
presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow.
There are here's another really interesting example the symbiosis um.
(12:22):
There are a certain species of woodpeckers and tree ants,
and they're known to call temporary truces all right, the
southern Rufus wood pecker in the black tree ant um. Normally,
these guys are predator and prey. The ants live in
the tree. Woodpeckers eat the little ants, right, But when
the bird lays its eggs in the nest of the ants, uh,
(12:43):
they have this non aggression pack that kicks in and
and that the ants end up protecting the bird's eggs
from attack and the attack by the nest and the
ants nest from other birds while the chosen bird is
nesting there. So I have found that really interesting. Yeah, okay,
so I mean that kind of goes into that whole
idea of the gaia theory. Yeah. Or you have examples too,
(13:05):
there's an operation. Yeah, there's a there's a particular species
of owl that has been known to bring a little
bitty snakes. I believe it's a Texan snake. Um, like
a little worm type sname, not not like an egg
gobbling snake, but a very tiny like worm size, kind
of blind little snake. Now bring it in and leave
it in the in the nest, because then it will
eat various little creatures that will be a little insects.
(13:28):
It would be a danger to the hatchlings. Uh yeah,
all right, that's interesting. Um. And there's another example that
I really like, and that's again going back to trees,
which we talked about at the top of the world's
plants have their own fungal partners that allowed them to survive,
which is crazy when you think about it, right, you
just look at the tree and you think that it's
it's its own um entity hanging out there. So a
(13:51):
type of fungus micro corrazal draws in nutrients and supply
this to the tree, and it basically benefits from the
tree by taking this sugar from the tree and and
it and then it gets an energy boost basically from
the trees photosynthesis of that. So if you look at
those toadstools around the base of trees, those are actually
(14:11):
the reproductive organs of subterranean fungal networks that plants and
trees tap into. So, I mean, just think about that
next time you're you're standing on a mushroom there. It
was a fascinating I was recently in Costa Rica and
my wife and I went on these these walks through
the jungle areas there and it was just fascinating to
(14:33):
just see like all the life around you and it's
just like things living on top of each other in
various states of symbiosis and men parasitis um. It's it's
pretty pretty wild. Yeah, yeah, and particularly in that atmosphere
where you know, the sun doesn't necessarily hit the forest
bed right and you see how everything is growing up
towards the sun and trying to get one little speck
(14:54):
of it, you know, photon. Yeah, and it's really it.
This is an example to where it really makes it
hard to my mind to argue that competition isn't a
key because you see the competition for sunlight and there's
not You don't get the sense of it's like, hey, guys,
let's make sure we share the sun like quid hog
in it there are or you know, or hey strangler fig,
(15:15):
stop killing that tree. I know you want sunlight, you
need to share. Yeah, it's not that's not exactly cooperation. Um.
But so we've talked about that in nature. There's definitely
instances in humans, and of course the best known is
our gut flora. Right, And in fact, if you look
at Japanese people, here's a really good example. They have
bacteria in their guts that produce enzymes which help digest seaweed. Um.
(15:38):
North Americans lack the same systems. Yeah, so does I
mean I should not have seaweed salad the next time
I go for you should? But that doesn't mean that
the jestive outcome. Don't try and keep up with with
any Japanese individuals. Thank you for for if you have
railing where I's going with that? If you have Japanese
(15:59):
friends then and you go out to sushi with them,
don't try don't try and keep up because they're gonna
gonna beat you every time. Because they got the gut,
they may have a more pleasant digestive experience than than
their non Japanese counterpart um. But this also goes again
into this this idea of bacteria and parasites, and in
particular something called helman ific therapy. Oh, these are the hookworms, right, Yeah,
(16:22):
it's deliberate infection with Helmans or parasitic worms to treat
chronic autoimmune diseases like Crohn's disease and multiple sclerosis, as
well as ibs and food allergies. Yeah, over thousands and
thousands of years, humans and hookworms end up, they've co
evolved with each other. The presence has become just a
part of the system, and so they've it actually the hookworms.
(16:45):
Some people are you actually stabilized conditions where otherwise the
immune system would turn against its own body. Okay um.
And this is the the idea again behind helman ethic
therapy is that you you are doing this on purpose.
You are basically giving your body over to a parasite. Yeah,
there was in the last year, so there's been an
episode of Radio Lab and this American I think it
(17:08):
was the radio Labe guys on this American Life and
and it was about this this guy who had all
these allergies and he just decided, Hey, I'm gonna I'm
just gonna go to Africa. I'm gonna walk around in
the in this latrine field and I'm gonna get hookworms
and I'm gonna see if they make me better. And
he claims that they did. And and it again it
comes to the idea that in the developed developing world,
(17:29):
where hookworms are more of a problem, you have less
of a problem with all these different allergies because you're
exposed because you're exposed to it. And we've eradicated them
in in in the developed world and the like Western
civilization of life. And then but we're but then kind
of we overlooked exactly what they were doing. It's like
the I think there's an episode of of The Office
where Dwight is fired and then the plants start dying
(17:51):
around the office because nobody realized that Dwight, as horrible
as he was, was actually watering all the plants. Right,
So it's kind of the that shrewd factor in all
in all of this um But then in addition to
to this this guy who's kind of a rogue the
self experimenting online worm salesman. UM. There there also are
(18:11):
people that such as a professor Professor David Pritchard of
Nottingham University, who are analyzing this in a very scientific
lab minded way. Uh. He also infected himself to find
out just how the hookworms would play out, and he
his findings were that tin worms, it's a good number
to have, and he he gave himself fifty of them, though,
and ended up feeling really hard because you get too many,
(18:33):
you get diarrhea, you get anemic, you lose too much blood.
But we felt like ten. Yeah, that's one of those
cases where if I ever feel bad for mice and
and the all the indignities that they suffer through science,
I look at someone like that and go, wow, thank
you so much for doing that. Um, because there is
more more evidence, um that there can be treatment of
(18:56):
specific diseases with us, and I'm thinking about the whip
worm and use of treatment of Crone's disease. UH. In fact, GUT,
which is an international journal of gastro Intrology and Hepatology,
published a study on whipworm in which twenty nine chrone
suffers ingestedd live whip worm over three weeks for twenty
(19:17):
four weeks, and twenty three of the twenty nine had
decreased in symptoms, like serious decreases and symptoms, which is
pretty huge when you have Cron's disease. From what I understand,
it can be really debilitating. Um. So I don't know,
We definitely don't recommend that anybody go out and buy
yourself some hookworms or try to do that on your own,
(19:38):
but it's it's interesting to know that that's a sort
of therapy that's out there and being at least studied
right now. Yeah, and then we're coming back around and
just re reevaluating parasitic and symbiotic relationships to get a
deeper understanding of these these relationships between these different species.
So end up coming around to this idea that we're
(19:58):
actually this mosaic of back here. Um. And and it's
it's understanding how important all these little interactions are to
be the larger picture. Yeah, and it is, Um, there's
something there that when you can shift your paradigm a
little bit and look at the situation better than all
of a sudden, you're you're understanding and in these sorts
of hormonethic therapies start to make sense on some level. Again,
(20:20):
we're not advocating the use of it, but the fact
that this stuff is being explored is cool. Here's another
d I Y therapy that you should not try at home. Okay, okay,
fecal transplants. Oh yes, I forgot about this one. Yeah.
Clostridium deficila or se deaf on the streets. Uh. This
is a virus that affects two hundred and fifty thousand
(20:40):
people a year. In thirteen out of every one thousand
people admitted to a hospital can pick up this bug
or have picked up this book. So this is something
that you know, one of those super bugs I'm assuming
that drives in that condition. Um, it can cause years long,
excruciating diarrhea and extreme weight loss. So people have had
serious problems with us. Uh. They looked at traditional treatments
(21:05):
and they really haven't helped because the strain of virus
doesn't you know, since it's a hospital made virus essentially
doesn't respond well to the about it. I'm already grossed
out and you haven't even gotten to the actual fecal transplant. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
all right, let's get to the poop um, or rather
the fecal transplant um. What you would want if you
(21:25):
had this problem, if you had c DIFF and you
and nothing would respond to it, is you would want
a stool sample from a relative, preferably um, and it
would be mixed with sailing and then pumped into your colon.
I know this all sounds like why why would idea this? Uh,
the idea or the end result is one quick question
(21:47):
just to make sure I have this right phrases dally.
It would be administered to the colon through like naturally
like occurring entries to the colon, right, yeah, up to
your bum okay, yeah, okay, yeah, alright, so um yeah,
just to be okay, I mean, I've just had this
horrible image of a giant poos wringe in my head
(22:07):
and I just really wanted to get rid of that image. Though, No,
no you can. There's no as far as I know, okay, um,
I haven't personally experienced it, so I can't verify, but
there is no poosh wringe that I know of. But
the idea is that you're rebalancing your gut flora because
if you have seed, if then it's going to just
(22:28):
completely lay waste. So speak to your gut bacteria. You
cannot get it back online. So the introduction of another
bacteria or someone else's gut bacteria is going to make
all the difference in helping you, um essentially just get
rid of these symptoms. Okay, Yeah. It's kind of like
(22:48):
if you have a you have a city where where
suddenly everybody's got a little too much money to take
out the garbage, You're gonna have to import garbage men.
Kind of a situation where you have this population and
there's so many different roles involved in making this population
this culture work that that that even I the you
(23:09):
end up eradicating one segment of that population, UM, then
the whole system is going to suffer. And then you
might need to bring in some members of another population
that are interested in taking out the garbage. Yes, yeah, yeah,
that garbage analogy is a really good idea. And in fact, uh,
sixty of our stool is bacteria, that's right, Okay, yeah,
(23:30):
by weight. So again this is what we may think
of is garbage or this sort of essential maintenance to
our culture UM is really important. So it would make
sense that if you had someone else's gut bacteria that
that was good bacteria and healthy, and it was reintroduced
into your system all of a sudden, you wouldn't you know,
be completely debilitated by diarrhea all the time, and you
(23:54):
would again be a healthy person. Like to put a
sci fi spin on, we're all kind of big generation
ships just full of this generation after generation of bacteria. Yes, yeah,
I mean or or mosaic so much. Yeah, it's totally gaya.
But this is from a Slate article. It said, do
(24:15):
not look for this therapy to become a rote procedure
anytime soon. Um. According to Slate, drug or medical device
companies usually foot the bill for such research as this,
But in the case of a natural patent free which
is this patent free treatment like this, no company stands
to turn a major trofic profit or trofit some people
(24:37):
prefer profit. If anything. Fecal transplants would end up costing
the pharmaceutical company's money because a single pill of van Somison,
which is one of two introbotics used to treat seed if,
costs about fifty five Yeah, so there you go. Fecal transplants.
Don't do them at home. Okay, but really interesting the
(25:01):
development I guess you would say, okay, yeah, yeah. About
the most I ever did was I tried to perform
surgery on my own toenail once and that was a mistake.
That sounds like a really bad idea, like like like
home dentistry, home heart transplant, uh fecal transplants to surgery,
home pedietry is not not a good idea. Yeah, these
(25:23):
are all things that I just I'm gonna say, I'm
gonna go on a limb here and say don't do them.
I would go say so, and this is coming from
someone who's done it. I would go as far as
to say it's stupid. So yeah, stupid at home, but
very interesting. But you know it's not stupid sending us email,
Oh no, no, because we get the best the email
(25:43):
I think of anyone in the world. Yeah. We recently
did one on auditory and musical hallucinations, and we received
a number of really cool emails, like more than we
can really get into because a lot of the ones
that we received, they're kind of in debt stories because
you have to you describe are really a strange situation,
how you came into it, and in most cases how
you came out of it, but we have one here
(26:05):
from Eric. Eric writes him to say, um, back in
two thousand five, I was involved in a bad accident
and fractured my skull fairly badly. I spent two weeks
at the i C recovering head brain surgery, and spent
another two weeks in the hospital recovering from that. Beyond that,
it took several months to Beyond that, it took several
months to heal at home. Before I was given all
the all clear and before I looked like I did
(26:27):
before the accident. Life was pretty much back to normal
until February of two thousands seven. While at work, I
had a seizure and collapsed. I had not had any
previous seizures, but because of the head trauma, I was
placed on medication. I was put on two medications, one
to immediately prevent seizures and one that took time to
build up in my system before it was effective. While
I was semiit simultaneously on both medications, I had several
(26:50):
strange hallucinations. I would hear someone talking to me, but
I was completely unable to understand them. I would hear
the noise that they were making, but what I heard
was just noise and in no way resembled language. I
was worried that there was just something wrong with me
until I spoke to friend to a friend who was epileptic,
and he said that he had hallucinations just like I
had while he was on both medications. I haven't had
(27:12):
any seizure since the first one, and after I was
weaned off the first medication, I haven't had any hallucinations either.
I hope you guys enjoyed my story, and indeed, I
I always enjoy hearing stories of people who've experienced something
a little um, you know, out of the ordinary. The
had a hallucination, auditory hallucination um or something that even
(27:33):
at times words resemble of supernatural experience, but is rooted
in as as they all are, in something that's happening
in the brain. Yeah, and again and again we hear
these stories about the frontal lobe and about the electromagnetation
magnetic activity going on. They're just really causing all sorts
of things in your brain to go haywire. So I
(27:53):
think it's interesting that he was talking about his friend
and the seizures, because that's the hallmark of of that's
sort of activity going on there in the old frontal lobe. Yeah,
so thanks for sharing, Eric, and uh, you know, everybody else,
if you have any cool tidbits like that to share, uh,
feel free to drop by Facebook and Twitter. We're on
both of those as Blow the Mind. And if you're
(28:14):
on Twitter, I encourage you to use the hashtag blew
my mind, which is already in use and has been
used by a number of people, but it is often
used for very dumb things and I think, uh, we
can reclaim that listeners week, we've got the campaign for
for blew my mind. Yeah, you read a read a
cool science article. Here's something cool on on one of
our podcast throughout that hashtag blew my mind at hash
(28:38):
blew my mind will work, and you know, we'll we'll
read it and we'll try and retweet it. Yeah, and
oftentimes you guys actually send us things that are very
mind blowing as well. So something that you might have
sent us in an email, throw it on Twitter as well. Yeah. Indeed,
that's not to say you shouldn't email us, because you should.
We always want to hear from you, so please do
send us an email at Blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com. For moral on this and thousands
(29:04):
of other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. To
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com The Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas and I
hate you. I should ask you before we actually started recording,
But do you have any indo parasites signed? Because I'm
all out No, No, I can't get them from the
website that I used to get them from anymore because
(00:25):
I'm feeling a little chunky and I would really like
to drop a few pounds. Well yeah, I mean, um,
a parasite diet is really the way to go if
you want to drop a couple and then I mean
the only problem though, is that, um, you kind of
get these little weird side effects like abdominal pain and
distension and vomiting and diarrhea and malnutrition and itchy enus. Yeah, yeah,
(00:49):
that those that'll stack out throwing a little psychosis on
top of that, and it'll uh, it really takes a toll.
But you look fabulous, So I really don't see what
the big deal is. Thanks. Thanks, I know, and that's
what I thought when when a fish holes in Hong Kong.
We're shutting down websites selling the scarce roundworm, which people
were using as a weight loss diet. Yeah, the story
(01:12):
was picked up by a lot of people because the
idea is great because it's like a parasite, the thing
that we don't want. The parasite is like, yeah, it's
like the vire Saw the Mosquito Coast. There's like this
great scene where Harrison Ford's crazy character like kills a
mosquito and he's like he's making a ployant about some
thugs that are living off there, crazy compat of easily.
He's like he points to the blood. He's like, that's
(01:32):
that's your blood, not the mosquitoes blood. You know. It's
like that the parasite is just leaching something off of
us and we're getting nothing in return. Um. But the
closer you look at at at parasitic relationships, the more
you realize that a lot of what we think of
as parasitic relationships are actually symbiotic relationships. There's a lot
(01:53):
more give and take. Um, there's back scratching going there's
backscratching going on. And and so the idea of benefiting
from a parasite is not that crazy an idea at all.
And uh And likewise, this will explore some of some
examples of symbiosis. When you look closer, they look a
little more parasitic. Uh. And it just really it blew
(02:15):
my mind the more I looked into this, because it
really changes the way you look at all interactions between
all organisms. Yeah, the entire planet actually, when you start
to look at um, just like the basic ecosystems on
our bodies, inside of our guts, outside of our bodies,
you know, in the ocean, so on and so forth.
(02:36):
I mean, it's just even the way you look at
a tree these days now and you're like, oh my god,
and there's so much more going on than we ever imagined.
But I jump ahead of myself there with tree. Well,
let me just break it down real quick then for
for anybody that's that's new to this, what is symbiosis?
All right? Symbiosis? This is an example where we have
a situation where we have two organisms of different species
(02:57):
existing in close physical contact to the benefit of both organisms.
That's the blanket symbiosis. Yeah, But then you have different types.
For instance, there's um commence all is um and this
is when one organism benefits and the other isn't affected
much at all. Um. Then there's mutually beneficial where both
(03:18):
sides make out okay. Then there's a parasitism of course,
where one organism benefits and the other one uh suffers
or even dies. And then there's obligate symbiosis. And this
is where the situation where the symbiosis is necessary to survival.
So it's like, there are these two things in this relationship,
two species intertwined, and they need each other to survive.
(03:41):
Without each other, they're doomed. And you've got a really
good example of that, right, yes, I do. There's um
a particular creature that's just really bizarre. Um. One of
the strangest case of the symbiosis you'll run across called
the a soil that's a c O E l a
so l um flat worm uh. And these tiny worms
(04:02):
live along shorelines and they look like mass as a seaweed.
The worms themselves are transparent, but if if you were
looking inside them, you'd find this type of algae, this
uh uh platymnus algae, which contains chlorophyll and is capable
of photosynthesis, and they give this worms is green color. Right,
So the algae absorbed sunlight through the worm's clear skin
(04:25):
and they photosynthesized food, enough food that the worms have
no functioning digestive track or even working mouths, and the
algae even recycle the worms waste products. So you've got
this this crazy situation where it's like like you can
live rent free. Yeah, flat worm algae. And they've they've
(04:45):
lived together so long that they're they're one thing. They're like,
you can't. It's really hard to separate where one ends
and the other begins, right, Yeah, especially with the coloring.
And you know what I'm saying that the actual physical
representation is created by the the parasite. I suppose you
would call them this instance that the algae. Yeah, it's
like a sweet old couple. You know that they have
lived together so long that they're just this one, one thing,
(05:09):
and that the idea of one living without the other
is just ridiculous. Oh that's sweet. I just started thinking
like old couples that look like each other walking down
the street with hands in each other's pockets. Yeah. Now,
the other type is a faculty of symbiosis. And this
is where the symbiosis is is great but not necessary
to survival, which is a lot of symbiosis. Uh. And
then you have endosymbia symbias which live inside another organism,
(05:32):
and ectosymbias, which live on the body of another. But
an endo doesn't include the digestive system, by the way,
so that could you could have a parasite in your
digestive system and it would still be considered exo. And
I'm assuming because eventually it gets purged, right, kind of
think of the human bodies of doughnut, and it's like,
even if it's in the whole, it's it's it's XO,
(05:54):
right right, It's a good way to put it. Um.
I think it gets more complicated if you get into
cruelers and jelly. So so that's why we don't use
a lot of donut analogies on the show. But but
I do find the roommates analogy really interesting because when
you look at this, because it's like, take any two
roommates or any two people that live together in the
same environment, and you'll encounter different give and take. Um.
(06:16):
I think we've talked about before. We've used also like
couples as an example, Like sometimes you'll have a situation
where where like they say, the wife has a job
and the husband definitely does not, and it is sitting
on the couch all day. Um, he's he's really not
contributing a lot to this situation. But he may be
(06:36):
hurting to one degree another, but he's he's benefiting. Okay.
And I think about that as like the commence alism, right. So,
and then when I think about commencealism, always think about barnacles,
like they just attached to anything. Yeah, I'm not saying
that the guy is a barnacle. Might be a barnacle,
I've I've I've met a few barnacles in my time. Yeah, well,
but in nature, I specifically thought, of course that's the barnacle.
(06:56):
They're like the hoboes of the sea. Um. And then
with parasitism, another example right off the top of my
head is just ticks, right yeah, Like that's that's obvious.
They're just sucking your blood. They drink your blood, maybe
give you lime disease, and then fall off right. Um.
And then again mutually beneficial. You talked about the flatworm.
There's also cleaner shrimp, and they actually hang out on
(07:18):
coral reefs and then they hit up passing fish to
clean their windshields so to speak. Uh, And they crawl
onto the fish and sometimes they get into their mouths
and remove dead skin cells. I thought that was really interesting,
Like they're just hanging out there. It's like a little
car wash. Yeah, there are a number of cleaner species.
I mean in the ocean there, it's like they're just crazy.
This seems like every every species has some other species
(07:41):
that will let come into its mouth and hang out
and eat stuff off their teeth, you know. Um. But
and then there there are also some examples outside of
the oceans. For instance, there's the ox pecker and the
ox pecker uh. And there these uh you'll typically see
these like on the backs of zebras in uh in
(08:03):
Safari films, you know, and they're you know, they're hanging
around out there and they're eating lice, ticks and other
little annoyances. Um. And and on the surface, it looks
like a natural example of a symbiotic relationship, like I'm
gonna eat your parasites. Uh, you're getting rid of your parasites,
and I'm getting a dinner out of it. Right. However, um,
(08:23):
their actions are not always completely in the interest of
the host. Uh. They are suspected sometimes of nipping open
wounds on the zebra's back in order to encourage more parasites,
or even to to have a little blood, Like they're
just sort of open a little slit and have have
a little to drink a little sauce on their meal. Yeah,
it's kind of like like you're you're you know, as
(08:43):
long as I'm back here, you know, eating your ticks,
Like I think I'm gonna have a little this delicious
blood that you've got going on, right, And if you're
the zebra, you're probably like, what are you doing in
my what are you doing in my rump back there?
Like what's you probably are feeling it, but you're like, Okay,
this is probably not beneficial for me anymore, and try
to swat it away. It's kind of a like situation
where a relationship perhaps changes over time, because it makes
(09:04):
you wonder like it was there a time in the
past when the ox packer's eb relationship was a lot
more equal. Has it become a little more one sided
overtime over time? It's just it's it's fascinated to think
of these things. Well, I mean, as habitats change to that,
that could certainly change the behavior. Yeah, yeah, like say
they're less lies to go around, maybe you have to
dip into the blood a little um economic, you know,
(09:25):
and then you can make advantage and you can make
comparisons to workplace. You know, economy turns bad, maybe the
guy who's normally a model employee suddenly starts stealing pencils
and telling them at the subway station or something. I
don't know, is there tell us, Yes, they steal pin
pencils and sell them at the translation. Yeah, I've got
to come up with a better way to to to
(09:46):
steal from work. It's just not not making in the dough.
I was hoping for good pencils, but what are you
an idea? It's not really a pencil society anymore. Yeah,
But talking about different types of symbiosis also made me
think about something called the Gaia theory, Yeah, which is
really interesting. Guya being Greek for goddess, right, or a
(10:08):
Greek goddess rather um, which is also sometimes called symbiogenesis.
So there's this idea out of sounds a lot less
hippy dippy it does. Yeah, the guya. You know, I
just think about my yoga mat and it's it's not
really feeling like science so much, but there's an idea
out there, and it's called endosymbiosis, which is essentially um
(10:30):
symbiosis and not chance mutation as we've known about an
evolution that's key to evolution. So what they're basically saying
is that it's more of a cooperative atmosphere between organisms
in the environment that are driving natural selection and competition,
which is really interesting and kind of turned everybody on
(10:51):
their their butts. Some of them. Was first introduced in
the nineties sixties, in particular Richard Todkins, who was like, no, no,
this is this is crazy talk because it's kind of
a situation where instead of survival of the like the
sneakiest jerk, it's survival of the most cooperative right, right,
It's not you know, it's it's not hacking off your
your arrivals just so that you can be the one
who continues, uh forward. Right. They're actually saying that this
(11:15):
is key to complex life. Um So, if you think
of the mitochondria, nuclei, and ribosomes separately, think about them
coming together in this scenario as part of the cell
and creating this mutually beneficial organism. It's and that's the
idea behind this is really interesting. Yeah, So it's like
(11:38):
the whole world becomes an example of symbiosis. Yeah, yeah,
and yeah, the planet is is essentially a giant superorganism
working together. Now, of course, there are people who say,
I'm not really sure about this, especially that part about UM,
about this cooperation versus competition, because we know that you
know that competition has really shown itself through data, definitely
(12:01):
proving itself. But I think it's just a different way
to look at evolution. It's just kind of interesting. This
presentation is brought to you by Intel sponsors of tomorrow.
There are here's another really interesting example the symbiosis um.
(12:22):
There are a certain species of woodpeckers and tree ants,
and they're known to call temporary truces all right, the
southern Rufus wood pecker in the black tree ant um. Normally,
these guys are predator and prey. The ants live in
the tree. Woodpeckers eat the little ants, right, But when
the bird lays its eggs in the nest of the ants, uh,
(12:43):
they have this non aggression pack that kicks in and
and that the ants end up protecting the bird's eggs
from attack and the attack by the nest and the
ants nest from other birds while the chosen bird is
nesting there. So I have found that really interesting. Yeah, okay,
so I mean that kind of goes into that whole
idea of the gaia theory. Yeah. Or you have examples too,
(13:05):
there's an operation. Yeah, there's a there's a particular species
of owl that has been known to bring a little
bitty snakes. I believe it's a Texan snake. Um, like
a little worm type sname, not not like an egg
gobbling snake, but a very tiny like worm size, kind
of blind little snake. Now bring it in and leave
it in the in the nest, because then it will
eat various little creatures that will be a little insects.
(13:28):
It would be a danger to the hatchlings. Uh yeah,
all right, that's interesting. Um. And there's another example that
I really like, and that's again going back to trees,
which we talked about at the top of the world's
plants have their own fungal partners that allowed them to survive,
which is crazy when you think about it, right, you
just look at the tree and you think that it's
it's its own um entity hanging out there. So a
(13:51):
type of fungus micro corrazal draws in nutrients and supply
this to the tree, and it basically benefits from the
tree by taking this sugar from the tree and and
it and then it gets an energy boost basically from
the trees photosynthesis of that. So if you look at
those toadstools around the base of trees, those are actually
(14:11):
the reproductive organs of subterranean fungal networks that plants and
trees tap into. So, I mean, just think about that
next time you're you're standing on a mushroom there. It
was a fascinating I was recently in Costa Rica and
my wife and I went on these these walks through
the jungle areas there and it was just fascinating to
(14:33):
just see like all the life around you and it's
just like things living on top of each other in
various states of symbiosis and men parasitis um. It's it's
pretty pretty wild. Yeah, yeah, and particularly in that atmosphere
where you know, the sun doesn't necessarily hit the forest
bed right and you see how everything is growing up
towards the sun and trying to get one little speck
(14:54):
of it, you know, photon. Yeah, and it's really it.
This is an example to where it really makes it
hard to my mind to argue that competition isn't a
key because you see the competition for sunlight and there's
not You don't get the sense of it's like, hey, guys,
let's make sure we share the sun like quid hog
in it there are or you know, or hey strangler fig,
(15:15):
stop killing that tree. I know you want sunlight, you
need to share. Yeah, it's not that's not exactly cooperation. Um.
But so we've talked about that in nature. There's definitely
instances in humans, and of course the best known is
our gut flora. Right, And in fact, if you look
at Japanese people, here's a really good example. They have
bacteria in their guts that produce enzymes which help digest seaweed. Um.
(15:38):
North Americans lack the same systems. Yeah, so does I
mean I should not have seaweed salad the next time
I go for you should? But that doesn't mean that
the jestive outcome. Don't try and keep up with with
any Japanese individuals. Thank you for for if you have
railing where I's going with that? If you have Japanese
(15:59):
friends then and you go out to sushi with them,
don't try don't try and keep up because they're gonna
gonna beat you every time. Because they got the gut,
they may have a more pleasant digestive experience than than
their non Japanese counterpart um. But this also goes again
into this this idea of bacteria and parasites, and in
particular something called helman ific therapy. Oh, these are the hookworms, right, Yeah,
(16:22):
it's deliberate infection with Helmans or parasitic worms to treat
chronic autoimmune diseases like Crohn's disease and multiple sclerosis, as
well as ibs and food allergies. Yeah, over thousands and
thousands of years, humans and hookworms end up, they've co
evolved with each other. The presence has become just a
part of the system, and so they've it actually the hookworms.
(16:45):
Some people are you actually stabilized conditions where otherwise the
immune system would turn against its own body. Okay um.
And this is the the idea again behind helman ethic
therapy is that you you are doing this on purpose.
You are basically giving your body over to a parasite. Yeah,
there was in the last year, so there's been an
episode of Radio Lab and this American I think it
(17:08):
was the radio Labe guys on this American Life and
and it was about this this guy who had all
these allergies and he just decided, Hey, I'm gonna I'm
just gonna go to Africa. I'm gonna walk around in
the in this latrine field and I'm gonna get hookworms
and I'm gonna see if they make me better. And
he claims that they did. And and it again it
comes to the idea that in the developed developing world,
(17:29):
where hookworms are more of a problem, you have less
of a problem with all these different allergies because you're
exposed because you're exposed to it. And we've eradicated them
in in in the developed world and the like Western
civilization of life. And then but we're but then kind
of we overlooked exactly what they were doing. It's like
the I think there's an episode of of The Office
where Dwight is fired and then the plants start dying
(17:51):
around the office because nobody realized that Dwight, as horrible
as he was, was actually watering all the plants. Right,
So it's kind of the that shrewd factor in all
in all of this um But then in addition to
to this this guy who's kind of a rogue the
self experimenting online worm salesman. UM. There there also are
(18:11):
people that such as a professor Professor David Pritchard of
Nottingham University, who are analyzing this in a very scientific
lab minded way. Uh. He also infected himself to find
out just how the hookworms would play out, and he
his findings were that tin worms, it's a good number
to have, and he he gave himself fifty of them, though,
and ended up feeling really hard because you get too many,
(18:33):
you get diarrhea, you get anemic, you lose too much blood.
But we felt like ten. Yeah, that's one of those
cases where if I ever feel bad for mice and
and the all the indignities that they suffer through science,
I look at someone like that and go, wow, thank
you so much for doing that. Um, because there is
more more evidence, um that there can be treatment of
(18:56):
specific diseases with us, and I'm thinking about the whip
worm and use of treatment of Crone's disease. UH. In fact, GUT,
which is an international journal of gastro Intrology and Hepatology,
published a study on whipworm in which twenty nine chrone
suffers ingestedd live whip worm over three weeks for twenty
(19:17):
four weeks, and twenty three of the twenty nine had
decreased in symptoms, like serious decreases and symptoms, which is
pretty huge when you have Cron's disease. From what I understand,
it can be really debilitating. Um. So I don't know,
We definitely don't recommend that anybody go out and buy
yourself some hookworms or try to do that on your own,
(19:38):
but it's it's interesting to know that that's a sort
of therapy that's out there and being at least studied
right now. Yeah, and then we're coming back around and
just re reevaluating parasitic and symbiotic relationships to get a
deeper understanding of these these relationships between these different species.
So end up coming around to this idea that we're
(19:58):
actually this mosaic of back here. Um. And and it's
it's understanding how important all these little interactions are to
be the larger picture. Yeah, and it is, Um, there's
something there that when you can shift your paradigm a
little bit and look at the situation better than all
of a sudden, you're you're understanding and in these sorts
of hormonethic therapies start to make sense on some level. Again,
(20:20):
we're not advocating the use of it, but the fact
that this stuff is being explored is cool. Here's another
d I Y therapy that you should not try at home. Okay, okay,
fecal transplants. Oh yes, I forgot about this one. Yeah.
Clostridium deficila or se deaf on the streets. Uh. This
is a virus that affects two hundred and fifty thousand
(20:40):
people a year. In thirteen out of every one thousand
people admitted to a hospital can pick up this bug
or have picked up this book. So this is something
that you know, one of those super bugs I'm assuming
that drives in that condition. Um, it can cause years long,
excruciating diarrhea and extreme weight loss. So people have had
serious problems with us. Uh. They looked at traditional treatments
(21:05):
and they really haven't helped because the strain of virus
doesn't you know, since it's a hospital made virus essentially
doesn't respond well to the about it. I'm already grossed
out and you haven't even gotten to the actual fecal transplant. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
all right, let's get to the poop um, or rather
the fecal transplant um. What you would want if you
(21:25):
had this problem, if you had c DIFF and you
and nothing would respond to it, is you would want
a stool sample from a relative, preferably um, and it
would be mixed with sailing and then pumped into your colon.
I know this all sounds like why why would idea this? Uh,
the idea or the end result is one quick question
(21:47):
just to make sure I have this right phrases dally.
It would be administered to the colon through like naturally
like occurring entries to the colon, right, yeah, up to
your bum okay, yeah, okay, yeah, alright, so um yeah,
just to be okay, I mean, I've just had this
horrible image of a giant poos wringe in my head
(22:07):
and I just really wanted to get rid of that image. Though, No,
no you can. There's no as far as I know, okay, um,
I haven't personally experienced it, so I can't verify, but
there is no poosh wringe that I know of. But
the idea is that you're rebalancing your gut flora because
if you have seed, if then it's going to just
(22:28):
completely lay waste. So speak to your gut bacteria. You
cannot get it back online. So the introduction of another
bacteria or someone else's gut bacteria is going to make
all the difference in helping you, um essentially just get
rid of these symptoms. Okay, Yeah. It's kind of like
(22:48):
if you have a you have a city where where
suddenly everybody's got a little too much money to take
out the garbage, You're gonna have to import garbage men.
Kind of a situation where you have this population and
there's so many different roles involved in making this population
this culture work that that that even I the you
(23:09):
end up eradicating one segment of that population, UM, then
the whole system is going to suffer. And then you
might need to bring in some members of another population
that are interested in taking out the garbage. Yes, yeah, yeah,
that garbage analogy is a really good idea. And in fact, uh,
sixty of our stool is bacteria, that's right, Okay, yeah,
(23:30):
by weight. So again this is what we may think
of is garbage or this sort of essential maintenance to
our culture UM is really important. So it would make
sense that if you had someone else's gut bacteria that
that was good bacteria and healthy, and it was reintroduced
into your system all of a sudden, you wouldn't you know,
be completely debilitated by diarrhea all the time, and you
(23:54):
would again be a healthy person. Like to put a
sci fi spin on, we're all kind of big generation
ships just full of this generation after generation of bacteria. Yes, yeah,
I mean or or mosaic so much. Yeah, it's totally gaya.
But this is from a Slate article. It said, do
(24:15):
not look for this therapy to become a rote procedure
anytime soon. Um. According to Slate, drug or medical device
companies usually foot the bill for such research as this,
But in the case of a natural patent free which
is this patent free treatment like this, no company stands
to turn a major trofic profit or trofit some people
(24:37):
prefer profit. If anything. Fecal transplants would end up costing
the pharmaceutical company's money because a single pill of van Somison,
which is one of two introbotics used to treat seed if,
costs about fifty five Yeah, so there you go. Fecal transplants.
Don't do them at home. Okay, but really interesting the
(25:01):
development I guess you would say, okay, yeah, yeah. About
the most I ever did was I tried to perform
surgery on my own toenail once and that was a mistake.
That sounds like a really bad idea, like like like
home dentistry, home heart transplant, uh fecal transplants to surgery,
home pedietry is not not a good idea. Yeah, these
(25:23):
are all things that I just I'm gonna say, I'm
gonna go on a limb here and say don't do them.
I would go say so, and this is coming from
someone who's done it. I would go as far as
to say it's stupid. So yeah, stupid at home, but
very interesting. But you know it's not stupid sending us email,
Oh no, no, because we get the best the email
(25:43):
I think of anyone in the world. Yeah. We recently
did one on auditory and musical hallucinations, and we received
a number of really cool emails, like more than we
can really get into because a lot of the ones
that we received, they're kind of in debt stories because
you have to you describe are really a strange situation,
how you came into it, and in most cases how
you came out of it, but we have one here
(26:05):
from Eric. Eric writes him to say, um, back in
two thousand five, I was involved in a bad accident
and fractured my skull fairly badly. I spent two weeks
at the i C recovering head brain surgery, and spent
another two weeks in the hospital recovering from that. Beyond that,
it took several months to Beyond that, it took several
months to heal at home. Before I was given all
the all clear and before I looked like I did
(26:27):
before the accident. Life was pretty much back to normal
until February of two thousands seven. While at work, I
had a seizure and collapsed. I had not had any
previous seizures, but because of the head trauma, I was
placed on medication. I was put on two medications, one
to immediately prevent seizures and one that took time to
build up in my system before it was effective. While
I was semiit simultaneously on both medications, I had several
(26:50):
strange hallucinations. I would hear someone talking to me, but
I was completely unable to understand them. I would hear
the noise that they were making, but what I heard
was just noise and in no way resembled language. I
was worried that there was just something wrong with me
until I spoke to friend to a friend who was epileptic,
and he said that he had hallucinations just like I
had while he was on both medications. I haven't had
(27:12):
any seizure since the first one, and after I was
weaned off the first medication, I haven't had any hallucinations either.
I hope you guys enjoyed my story, and indeed, I
I always enjoy hearing stories of people who've experienced something
a little um, you know, out of the ordinary. The
had a hallucination, auditory hallucination um or something that even
(27:33):
at times words resemble of supernatural experience, but is rooted
in as as they all are, in something that's happening
in the brain. Yeah, and again and again we hear
these stories about the frontal lobe and about the electromagnetation
magnetic activity going on. They're just really causing all sorts
of things in your brain to go haywire. So I
(27:53):
think it's interesting that he was talking about his friend
and the seizures, because that's the hallmark of of that's
sort of activity going on there in the old frontal lobe. Yeah,
so thanks for sharing, Eric, and uh, you know, everybody else,
if you have any cool tidbits like that to share, uh,
feel free to drop by Facebook and Twitter. We're on
both of those as Blow the Mind. And if you're
(28:14):
on Twitter, I encourage you to use the hashtag blew
my mind, which is already in use and has been
used by a number of people, but it is often
used for very dumb things and I think, uh, we
can reclaim that listeners week, we've got the campaign for
for blew my mind. Yeah, you read a read a
cool science article. Here's something cool on on one of
our podcast throughout that hashtag blew my mind at hash
(28:38):
blew my mind will work, and you know, we'll we'll
read it and we'll try and retweet it. Yeah, and
oftentimes you guys actually send us things that are very
mind blowing as well. So something that you might have
sent us in an email, throw it on Twitter as well. Yeah. Indeed,
that's not to say you shouldn't email us, because you should.
We always want to hear from you, so please do
send us an email at Blow the Mind at how
stuff works dot com. For moral on this and thousands
(29:04):
of other topics. Visit how stuff works dot com. To
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!