September 25, 2025 • 56 mins
The Ig Nobel Prizes once more honor ten studies that make us laugh, but then make us think. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe continue their annual tradition of discussing some of their favorites from this year’s winners.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
in our series about the winners of the twenty twenty
five ig Nobel Prizes. This is something we cover almost
every year here on the show, though of course we're
not affiliated with the prizes in anyway. It's just something
we like to talk about. The Ignobels are given out
usually in September of each year by a scientific humor
(00:37):
journal called the Annals of Improbable Research, edited for many
years by Mark Abrahams, and the state admission of the
Ignobel Prizes is to honor achievements that first make people
laugh and then make them think. If you haven't listened
to part one yet, you can go back and check
that one out first. But for a brief recap. In
the last episode, we talked about the twenty two twenty
(01:00):
five prize in nutrition, which went to a team who
studied lizards eating pizza. The prize for psychology for a
paper that looked at whether people become more narcissistic when
you tell them that they're really smart. And the twenty
twenty five Prize for Aviation, which went to a study
on whether fruit bats become worse at flying when they
get drunk. Is that about right, Rob, Yes, and they do.
(01:24):
And we're back today to talk about more.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
All right. Just a reminder again, we're not covering all
the winners. We're just doing two helpings, really, each of
us going in and grabbing some stuff, discussing the studies
we want to talk about, papers we want to talk about,
but by all means, go to the website improbable dot
com and you can learn more about this year's winners,
last year's winners. They have one of these great like
(01:48):
single page readouts where you can just scan through everything
that they've covered over the years. A rarity in today's
web space.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, a great thing to send to your office printer
and just get again.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Okay, So the first award that I wanted to talk
about today is the twenty twenty five Biology Prize, which
was presented to and there's a long list of names here.
As always, apologies for any mispronunciations, but the team was
Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Yasushi Matsubara, Yuki Uchiyama, Yoshihiko Fukushima,
(02:23):
Naoto Aoki, say Sato, Tatsuaki Masuda, Junichi Yueida, hiro Yuki Hiruka,
and Katsutoshi Kino, and then to quote the prize language
for their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra
like striping can avoid being bitten by flies? Yes, that
(02:44):
said painted. So the question is can you keep parasitic
insects off your cows by just painting some zebra stripes
on them? The paper in question was published in twenty
nineteen in the journal plus one, and it was called
Cows painted with zebra like striping can avoid biting fly attacks.
It kind of gives away the result there. But the
(03:05):
funny thing about this study is that this is actually
not the first time, not this paper in particular, but
research on this general subject has come up on the show.
We talked about this in a listener Mail episode last year,
which was was from August twenty twenty four. Rob, Was
this an episode that I did solo or were you
(03:25):
on this episode with me?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I don't recall. This is one of those areas that
I feel like I have podcasted on before, but I'm
not sure how recently, you know, getting into the coloration
of zebras and so forth, and you know the evolved
reason for the stripes.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, so maybe this was a solo listener mail episode
that I did. Anyway, the context in which this came
up was a message from our listener Jeremy, who at
the time had written into the show address that's contact
at stuff to Blow your mind dot com, asking for
our thoughts on an attached photo which was of a
horse grazing in a fenced pasture draped in a cloth
(04:06):
with black and white zebra print. Which is funny already
because I think, not knowing the reason for this, a
lot of people's first assumption might be that this is
just a horse somebody has dressed up in a zebra
costume for esthetic reasons, maybe Halloween unclear.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah, I mean somebody's pasture poodle. So maybe they just
have a jazzy outfit.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
On, right, So Jeremy asked if the purpose was actually
to repel biting flies, since there is some evidence that
zebra stripes may work to keep flies off the skin.
I looked into this a little bit, and I concluded
at the time that the horse in the picture was
wearing what's called a fly sheet. I had no previous
(04:49):
knowledge of this at all, but I assume most horse
owners and farmers and ranchers will be quite familiar with
this kind of product. So fly sheets are lightweight bankets,
usually made out of some kind of mesh fabric that
you drape over a horse to keep flies and other
insects from biting the horse. And if you google these products,
you'll find that other uses are advertised as well, like
(05:11):
protecting animals from UV radiation. From what I'm reading, these
things work pretty well at their main job. But that
doesn't mean that you can just protect all your horses
permanently by dressing them in fly sheets and then just
leaving them on all the time. Apparently, some horses do
not like the sheets. They find them irritating and they
(05:31):
try to shake them or rub them off, which could
lead to injury. Also, there is some injury risk just
from the horse knocking it part way off and then
getting it tangled on something. And also you can't leave
it on forever for the same reason that you shouldn't
leave the same piece of human clothing on forever. Eventually
it gets dirty and damp and hot, and it irritates
(05:52):
the skin, possibly leading to overheating or to skin infections.
So fly sheets can protect your horse from fly bites
to some extent, but you've got to balance the pros
and cons, and even for horses that tolerate them, well,
it's not just a putg it on once and forget
about it solution. But the thing I wondered about in
(06:12):
this image was if the fly sheet is itself a
physical barrier against fly bytes, what would be the additional benefit,
if anything, of having an insect repelling pattern printed on
the fly sheet? If that is indeed what zebra stripes
even do. We'll explore that question more in a minute.
(06:33):
But wouldn't the sheet itself provide the protection whether it
was printed with zebra stripes or leopard print or you
know whatever individual frames from the Boxer's omen just like
the whole movie on the side of the horse. Maybe
maybe there is an additional benefit, but I'm skeptical.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I mean, that would have venture to guess. Maybe it
would be a situation where the stripes would keep flies
potentially away from the uncovered portions of the horse as well,
Like the flies in question would be like, oh, there's
a zebra colored horse over there. I'm going to ignore
this horse entirely, even the parts that aren't zebra e
(07:09):
And I'm just going to go check out this other
certified non zebra.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Well, yeah, that is a totally reasonable thing to wonder,
except I think in at least one of the studies
we're about to look at, it mentions that when supplemental
zebra stripes are given to some animals, they still got
bitten on the parts that weren't covered.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
So okay, well, there you go.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
But I don't know. Maybe it reduces the bites on
the uncovered parts even though it doesn't totally eliminate them.
I don't know, but anyway, so questions. I don't know
whether that would be beneficial or not. Now. In that
listener mail episode, I talked about a different study on
zebra stripes and biting insects, also from twenty nineteen, also
in the Journal plus one, so same journal and year
(07:50):
as the Ignobel Prize winning study here. That paper was
called Benefits of Zebra stripes Behavior of Tabinid flies around
zebras and horses. That was by Caro at All short
summary of that one. Over the years, researchers have proposed
a lot of different evolutionary reasons that zebras might have stripes.
(08:10):
Maybe the stripes somehow regulate body temperature, for example, maybe
they helped the zebra avoid overheating in the sun somehow,
maybe they are a type of visual camouflage confusing predators.
But a very promising idea is that somehow the stripes
protect zebras against ectoparasitic insects like biting flies quote quoting
(08:32):
the authors. Here, we examined the behavior of tabanids, horseflies
in the vicinity of captive planes, zebras, and uniformly colored
domestic horses living on a horse farm in Britain. Observations
showed that fewer tabanids landed on zebras than on horses
per unit time, although rates of tabanids circling around or
(08:53):
briefly touching zebra and horse pillage did not differ. So
interesting finding. The horses and zebra has had equal numbers
of flies swarming around them, but the flies successfully landed
on the zebras less often, which presumably means they were
able to bite the zebras less often. And in a
secondary experiment, the authors found that if you placed a
(09:15):
zebra patterned coat on a horse compared to coats of
solid white or solid black, it reduced the number of
tabinid flies that landed on the horse. The horseflies still
landed on and bit like exposed unpatterned parts of the
horse's bodies, like the head. So the question is if
zebra stripes prevent flies or help help reduce the amount
(09:39):
that flies land on you, how do they do that?
The author's right quote. In separate detailed video analyzes, tabanids
approached zebras faster and failed to decelerate before contacting zebras,
and proportionately more tabinids simply touched rather than landed on
zebra pelage in comparison to horses. So, according to this
(10:04):
other research, when you have zebra stripes, biting flies have
a harder time slowing down their flight and landing correctly
on your skin, and they're more likely to kind of
fly into you at higher speed and bounce off without landing.
That's kind of interesting. It's like putting some kind of
dazzle your on your airport runway. You know, it makes
(10:25):
it hard to land the plane.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Now you're messing with the fly maneuverability and landing ability. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
And also note that when I looked into this last year,
I read some coverage, including an article in the BBC
that quoted other scientists in the field who were not
fully convinced that they that fly repellent properties were the
main evolutionary reason for zebra stripes. A few reasons for
doubt they're a major one being are biting flies really
(10:52):
a primary fitness concern for wild zebras. Some researchers were
skeptical that they were, so this is not a full
settled issue. But that brings us to the Ignobel prize
winning paper on this topic. Again, that's the Kojima at
All paper from twenty nineteen. To summarize this one, the
authors cite the previous research showing that zebra stripes seem
(11:14):
to reduce attacks by biting flies, and however much this
is or is not really a major fitness concern for
zebras in the wild, the authors argued that it is
of major significance to people who raise domestic animals like cattle.
They write, quote, biting flies are serious pests of livestock
(11:35):
that cause economic losses in animal production. Now you might think, like,
how do fly bytes cause those losses. Well, they actually explain.
They say, cattle find these biting flies really annoying, and
they change their behavior to try to protect themselves from
fly bites. So cattle that are bothered by biting flies
(11:57):
spend less time feeding and grazing, they spend less time
bedding down, and they also engage in direct defensive behaviors.
These defensive behaviors can involve a lot of violent body movements,
maybe flicking the tail, stomping around, shaking their heads, and
twitching the muscles on the skin. Cattle will also crowd
(12:20):
their bodies together to decrease their surface area and protect
themselves from flies. And the authors argue that all of
these behaviors cause economic losses since the cattle expend energy
doing this stuff, they eat and they rest less, and
crowding or bunching together in particular, seems bad. Quote. Bunching
(12:41):
increases heat, stress and risk of injury as animals jostle
for a better position to avoid biting flies, and this
can reduce weight gains in feed lot beef cattle and
milk yield in dairy cows. So this doesn't necessarily prove it,
but I think it's a reasonable inference that if if
biting flies cause these measurable economic losses for domestic cattle owners,
(13:05):
they might well translate to similar evolutionary losses for animals
in nature. We don't know for sure, but it seems
quite possible.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
It sounds reasonable anyway.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
So, building on the previous findings that biting flies either
avoid or have trouble landing on zebra stripes versus on
like a solid black or white surface, the authors ask
what happens if you just paint a solid colored cow
with zebra stripes? Will that keep the biting flies away?
And if you wonder if there's a picture, Yes, there
(13:36):
is a picture, Rob, I've got it for you to
look at. Here. So this is a black cow that
has been painted with white zebra stripes on the sides,
like the flanks, not the head, but everywhere except the head,
the flanks and the legs going all the way to
the rear end.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, this picture alone answers the question why is this funny?
This is just in and of itself, laughter inducing to
see this cow that has been painted up like a
zebra like. Somehow, it's more hilarious, obviously than a horse
being painted like a zebra. Maybe because like, you're not
fooling anybody, Like I can't help but think this cow
(14:13):
wants to be mistaken for a zebra and we're just
not buying it.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
I'm not insulting anybody here, but it is funny that
this picture has has labels for body and leg. Actually,
maybe there's a good reason for this, Like maybe if
they're if they're documenting where on the body the biting
flies that were seen landing landed, you know, you want
(14:37):
to note exactly where the boundaries are as you're considering. Yeah,
so that makes more sense. But the label of body
is really got me going. Which part is the head?
So the authors they described their small experiment as follows quote.
Six Japanese black cows were assigned to treatments using a
three by three Latin square design. The treatments were black
(14:59):
and white painted stripes, black painted stripes and no stripes,
meaning an all black body surface. Recorded fly repelling behaviors
were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and
tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each
cow were taken using a commercial digital camera after every observation,
(15:21):
and biting flies on the body and each leg were
counted from the photo images. Okay, so maybe that's why
it's important to know exactly where the boundaries are here.
We showed that the numbers of biting flies on Japanese
black cows painted with black and white stripes were significantly
lower than those on non painted cows and cows painted
(15:41):
only with black stripes. The frequencies of fly repelling behaviors
in cows painted with black and white stripes were also
lower than those in the non painted and black striped cows.
So again, in other words, compared to cows without stripes
and black cows painted with blacks, black cows painted with
(16:02):
black and white stripes had fewer biting flies land on
them and also showed fewer fly repelling behaviors, all the
different kinds of you know, the shoe fly dance. The
authors say that based on these results, it may be
the case that painting zebra stripes on solid colored livestock
can reduce the burden from biting flies without resorting to
(16:24):
other interventions like applying pesticides to livestock, which can also
be effective, but that comes with downside such as contributing
to long term pesticide resistance in the environment.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
So if true. It's one of those things where you
might say, well, it doesn't cost that much to paint
the cows, let's go ahead and do it regularly. Do
it and if it's working a little bit, great.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, seems like it. Now. One thing to note here
is again this was a small experiment. There were just
six cows here, so we should not draw like hugely
firm conclusions based on it, and more of a pilot
to open the way to more highly powered research.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, as is often the case.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Well, let's move on to the next one. This is
we want to highlight the chemistry prize. This one went
to a twenty sixteen US Israeli paper titled Polytetraflora ethylene
ingestion as a way to increase food volume and hint
society without increasing calorie content, published in Obesity Technology, written
(17:35):
by Neftalovich, Neftalovich and Greenway.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Wait a minute, PTFE ingestion as a way to increase
food volume.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Exactly, Yes, And this is one of those selections where
you can see why it is funny right at the
front end of things, because PTFE is also known by
the brand name Tefline. This is what John Gotti's teflon
don nickname was about because one of its uses is
(18:07):
in nonstick pans, right, so nothing sticks to it. Nothing
stuck to John Gotti at least for a while that situation.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, but it's not just used in cookwaar.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
No.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Yeah, PTFE is a nonstick coating has like industrial and
medical uses as well, and you find it in all
kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
That's right. It's a synthetic fluoropolymer discovered in nineteen thirty eight, discovered,
invented however you want to look at it. It's commonly
used in nonstick coating for cookwaar, but it's also used
in wiring insulation, chemical resistance, lining coatings, and medical devices.
As an electronic insulator. It's used in stain repellent fabrics
and also in aerospace parts. So the funny part here is,
(18:49):
obviously the authors are suggesting a brand new use for PTFE,
and that is what if we ate it as a
food additive.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
So it's just like you add a little bit of
salt and pepper tear meal and you also sprinkle in
some teflon.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Oh, I think it would be more than sprinkling. What
they're bulozing. Would be bulking it up like it would
be like a smoothie powder that gets added to your food.
And yeah, this paper boldly begins with the following quote,
civilization has zero calorie drinks, but we have not yet
made the leap into the realm of zero calorie foods.
(19:27):
The first step toward achieving this goal is the ability
to increase the volume of food without adding calories, the
final frontier, if you will, of eating zero calorie polymers.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I don't want to be a know it all, but
there there are not quite zero calorie bulking items, but
there are well known ways of bulking up food without
massively increasing the amount of calorie. A big one is fiber.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yes, yes, yeah, but I guess part of it here
is that there are and is that this would be
mainly used to treat a obesity as the main factory here.
But yes, it also raises a number of questions what
we'll get to including you know, first of all, can
we do this? But also should we do this? And
(20:15):
indeed are there perhaps other things like fiber that maybe
we should be putting in the end of the diet instead.
Reading this study reminded me of a gag on thirty
Rock where Jenna is on a diet and she says
it's the Japanese paper diet, where she says I can
only eat paper, but I can eat all the paper
(20:36):
I want. Perfect Yeah, I mean to be clear, the
idea of eating paper as a diet. Yeah, eating paper
I think would technically net you zero calories because your
digestive system can't break down the cellulose, the main component
of paper or most paper anyway. But this is not
(20:56):
recommended as it's not good for your digestion, and that's
before you even consider potential chemical additives, and also the
ink that may be on the paper. Though there are
edible wrappings and even mediums for printing, I'm not sure
you could really make a diet out of those either.
But yeah, just the idea of eating paper for your diet.
It works for a joke, I don't think it would
(21:17):
work in real life. So back to consuming non flavored
ptfes as part of your diet. To be fair, the
proposal is a little more complicated than Hey, it has
zero calories, so why don't we eat it? First of all,
the general proposal is that it would be some sort
of additive again, perhaps like a smoothie powder to bulk
(21:38):
up actual food. You'd eat this food, but then a
percentage of the food volume would be indigestible. It cannot
be metabolized, so it just passes through, taking up space,
giving you the feeling of being full without itself metabolizing.
The rest of your meal would though. According to the paper,
they present this as a quote non metabolized food volume
(22:00):
bulking agent, and they charge that indeed PTFE is ideal
for this because it's quote widely considered to be the
most inert material known and is extremely stable. They also
add that it succeeds in being quote inert safe, resistant
to stomach acid, lax taste, available in powder form, smooth,
resistant to heat, and also cost effective.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Well, I think it's supposed to be resistant to heat
up to a point, right, There is a point in
which it becomes not resistant to heat, right right.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I mean, anyone who's ever looked into ptf E coated cookware,
there is a threshold beyond which you're not supposed to
heat it because then there can be health concerns with
you know, how things break down and what's released and
so forth. I guess they're arguing that within the human body,
you wouldn't reach that threshold, which well, thank you say,
I mean, if you reach like five hundred degrees fahrenheit
(22:51):
within the body, something terrible has gone wrong. And just
speaking to the idea of PTF he's heating up in
the body, not to any other potential health ramifications here,
which again I think this obviously raises a ton of
questions that are not necessarily addressed in this paper or
would need to be addressed in follow up papers if
(23:11):
there was like really a huge drive to get ptfees
deliberately into food. But you know, that doesn't stop them
from presenting some evidence. They point to some studies that
claim that, and they claim that quote animal feeding trials
showed that rats fed a diet of twenty five percent
PTFE for ninety days had no signs of toxicity and
that the rats lost weight. And then they go on
(23:34):
to suggest a possible human consumption ratio of three parts
food to one part PTFE by volume, and again their
idea is this would be for therapeutic use in weight loss.
But I just want to really stress here that this
is absolutely not something that anyone out there should now
go out and line up for themselves. Don't try and
(23:56):
cook this up for yourself either. Don't develop your own
diet based on hearing about this study. This particular idea
doesn't seem to be picking up a lot of steam.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It's not getting a lot of takers in the nutrition community.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah. Yeah, Again, I think part of it comes down
to is this really necessary? Are there perhaps better options?
And you know, and I think there's a strong case
to be made. Also, Again, this paper is nearly a
decade old at this point, and I think the proposal
feels more dare we say horrific Given concern in recent
(24:30):
years over so called forever chemicals and microplastics finding their
way into our bodies so obesity and weight loss, there are
certainly vowed concerns. But should we necessarily be looking for
all new reasons to produce these chemicals and to intentionally
ingest them.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah. I mean, as far as the safety of PTFI goes,
my memory of it is that generally PTFE itself seems
to be mostly safe within the temperature ranges, or is
thought to be based on what we know, But there
are legitimate questions about health effects arising from its manufacture
and from associated chemicals that could be brought along with.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It, right, right, So that's my understanding as well. So
I guess I come back coming back to this paper specifically,
like if everything in the paper is just one hundred
percent correct and it is perfectly safe to consume some
sort of hypothetical Again, this doesn't I think, really exist yet,
some hypothetical human grade ptf E food additive, would it
(25:32):
still be the thing we want to do and need
to do? But then again, I mean that's kind of
the beautiful thing about science, right, is sometimes you do
explore these big sort of what ifs, what is this
a potential solution? And you know, maybe one paper leans
a little more positive and if it's necessary for follow up,
there will be some more negative considerations as well.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I certainly don't want to
be like snarky and dismissive. I mean, I try to
be open minded about things. But I will just let
me come back on the other side and advocate fiber.
I mean, fiber is great. It's like that's a common
thing found in many foods. You can get a you know,
like high fiber foods are a great way to bulk
up and feel more full from your meals. And without
(26:17):
adding a lot of unnecessary, unnecessary calories.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah yeah, I think this solution that is presented here
feels a little bit too dystopian and apocalyptic. And the
best food for humans to eat remains food, or that's
what I prefer anyway, with the possible exception of certain
candies feel very far removed from food, and I still
eat those, but I'm not fooling myself into thinking that
(26:42):
I'm getting anything out of them on a health level.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Just wait until you hear about the proposal to bulk
all of our meals with Twizzlers.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Well, yeah, that's exactly the candy I was thinking of
when when I'm eating it, I feel like it's plastic,
But it's a plastic I'm really into eating now, maybe
like once or twice a year.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Did you get your daily essential Twizzlers?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
So yeah, in summary, I would say that one made
me laugh, made me think, and then made me frown
a little bit. But how about you, Joe, what's your
your next selection?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Okay, my next one's also about food, not ptfe for food.
So I'm going to talk about the twenty twenty five
Physics Prize presented to and once again long list of names.
I apologize for any mispronunciations. Jacquomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello,
Matteo chi Arci, Alberto Cordicelli, Ivan di Terlisi, Fabrizio Olmeida
(27:48):
da Vida Ravignez, and Vincenzo Maria Schimenti. Four quote discoveries
about the physics of pasta sauce, especially the phase transition
that can lead to clumping, which can be a cause
of unpleasantness. The vapor in question was called phase behavior
(28:10):
of Cachiae pep bee sauce, published in the journal Physics
of Fluids in twenty twenty five. So a very recent one.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
This is a great chaser after we're just talking about
potentially eating taflon and they were just like, you know,
when you have lumps and pasta sauce unpleasant?
Speaker 3 (28:25):
It's true, Well, it is true. I don't like those lumps.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I don't mean, I mean, what's the substance of the lump?
Are we talking like a chunk of tomato? No?
Speaker 3 (28:32):
No, no, no, no no no. This is a broken
cheese sauce. Who likes a broken cheese sauce? H yeah, okay,
all right, yes, you've read Okay, so why is this funny.
I think it's funny because it's a paper in a
physics journal that's focused on how to make cheese sauce
like and on your base level. Also, it's just like cheese.
Cheese is a funny word and a funny substance. Absolutely,
(28:55):
as any toddler can tell you, you make a toddler
laugh by inserting cheese as like the wrong noun in
a sentence, any other noun. Instead substitute cheese, they will
lose their minds. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
But yeah, absolutely, cheese in and of itself funny word,
funny subject.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I think secondarily in the selection here there might be
a little bit of light cultural humor in the idea
that Italians can be so serious about pasta cooking technique
that they will explore it on the level of fluid
physics and the phase transition of matter. So the recipe
in question here is a great Italian classic. It's kachioe pepe,
(29:32):
which is pasta with cheese and pepper. Rob if you
ever made this one, you make caachio pepe at home.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Oh, I don't know that I have. I mean, this
is certainly the type of dish that I might do
as part of like a box meal. But maybe if
I've done it, it's been like so westernized that I'm
not recognizing it as such.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
I mean, it's a delightful dish. I have made a
version of it many, many times, more times than I
can count. Though, if you're talking to one of the
real witchfinder witchfinder generals, or would it be Witchfinders General,
is it like attorney's General. Yeah, I guess one of
the real witchfinders general. Of like traditional pasta technique, I
(30:11):
think my renditions of it are all blasphemous in one
way or another, because sometimes I add another source of fat,
like butter or olive oil, like so you make it
with black pepper in it, and I like toasting some
of the black pepper and olive oil. I think that's nice.
Sometimes I have used a mixture of cheeses in it,
or I have used parmesano reggiano instead of pecorino romano.
(30:33):
I think all of these things are not technically cachaae
pepe certainly not the traditional version, but some variation on
the theme.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Okay, this is not macaroni and cheese.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
I mean it's the same idea, but no, it's a
different thing. So here I'll describe what it is. Traditional
cachao pepe like, you know, the kind they say that
a grandmother in Rome would make. Has no butter, no
olive oil, no other cheeses. It has exactly three ingredients.
It is pasta, peccorino, romano, cheese, and ground black pepper,
(31:04):
and I guess also water and salt. But for some
reason people don't usually count those as ingredients. Why not,
I don't know, but they're absolutely necessary. You need those
as well. Anyway. You might think, based on the fact
that there are only three ingredients, that this would be
a very easy dish to make, but as the authors
of this paper point out, classic catchaway peppe is notoriously
(31:28):
difficult to get just right, especially for beginners who haven't
made it a million times and gotten this intuitive feel
for it. The really difficult part to do perfectly is
achieving the right sauce consistency, which I would also argue
is the most difficult part of you know, from like
(31:49):
what you brought up American recipes like macaroni and cheese.
You know, the hardest part to get right is just
the right smoothness of the sauce in the finished product.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
If you don't mix the cheese powder up enough.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
So well, I mean, if you use the powder, you're
using the magic of chemistry there in a way that
really gives you a leg up. I'll get into that
in just a minute. So the classic technique is, you know,
you grind your pepper and you grate your peccorino romano cheese.
You do those ahead of time. Pecorino romano by the way,
if you don't know it, it's kind of a it's
a dry cheese. It's a salty, sharp, slightly gamy tasting
(32:24):
hard cheese made from sheep's milk. You boil pasta in
slightly salted water, and while the pasta boils, some starch
will leach out from the pasta and that gets gelatinized
in the cooking water. This is true anytime you make pasta,
and you reserve at least some of this starchy pasta
water to help build your cheese sauce. Of course, outside
(32:46):
of Cachawa peppe, starchy pasta water is an important ingredient
in building many pasta sauces and just generally in finishing
pasta dishes. So you to finish the dish, you melt
your grated pecorian omano cheese in some of the starchy
cooking water while mixing it up with the pasta. And
this is where a lot of things can go wrong.
(33:08):
If it is too hot, your cheese will not melt
smoothly and it will form these unappetizing lumps, the broken
cheese sauce thing where it's like got these rubbery little
protein clumps in it. If it's not hot enough, your
cheese will not melt fully into the water and it
will not form a sauce. If there is not enough
starch in your pasta cooking water, the melted cheese will
(33:31):
not emulsify, and once again you get the rubbery little
protein clumps. If there is too much starch, the sauce
loses its sauciness and it becomes stiff and unappetizing in
a different way. It's not really saucy. It's more kind
of like a meala or something.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Okay, I have to ask here again. Most of everything
that I know about cooking I learned from following box meals,
and so my wife taught me. So you frequently reached
that step where the instructions say save a little pot
water for later and at times. It often feels to
me like it's almost a magical exercise, Like, no.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
It's really that really does something. Yes, yeah, okay, right,
absolutely does something and does and is more important in
some recipes than others. But yeah, you save a bit
of the pasta cooking water number one, just you have
this hot water on hand, maybe to help thin out
a sauce as you're finishing a pasta in the pan.
But also, it's not just water. It is water that
(34:29):
I mean. For one thing, it's a little bit seasoned
because you salted your cooking water. But more importantly, it
has starch from the pasta in it, which means it's
a little bit thicker than normal water. It has this
thickness and emulsifying capability that starchy water does.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Oh that's awesome. I had no idea. I just assumed
it was We saved it because it was hot and
it was salty, and maybe there was a little magic
to it. But there is a perfect sense.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Yeah, absolutely a little bit of magic, and it's the starch.
So that's what I'm about to explain. So why does
starch in the water make the cheese sauce smooth instead
of broken and clumpy? It's because cheese contains both fats
and proteins mixed together with some water content as well.
(35:16):
It's basically a matrix of proteins that holds little droplets
of fat dispersed pretty evenly throughout. And when cheese melts,
one thing that happens is that the proteins in the
fats separate. And this is why if you like melt
a piece of cheese in the microwave, you can create
an oily grease slick. The proteins and the fats that
(35:39):
are in you know, when the cheese is not melted,
they're all mixed together. When you melt it, this the
fat separates and it forms this oil slick. And so
this is the fat content separating from the protein matrix.
When cheese is melted in a liquid like water, this
gross clumping can happen because the protein matrix, and this
(36:00):
is going to be mainly the protein casin in a
dairy base, you know, in things like cheese, the proteins,
all the casin proteins, come apart from their matrix and
then the loose proteins begin to bond to each other
and form these rubbery globs of protein. Also in this process.
Of course, the fat leaks out, it gets squeezed out
(36:22):
as the proteins you know, clump together, and it goes
its own way. If it's in water, this will mean
floating and pooling on the top of the water. This
is what you don't want to happen to your cheese sauce.
This is a broken sauce. So when you add starch
to boiling water, the starch gelatinizes and it thickens the water,
(36:42):
making it more viscous than just water on its own.
The thickness of the starchy water prevents the proteins and
fat in melting cheese each from aggregating and sticking to themselves.
So you end up with a smoother sauce with the
fat and the protein distributed more evenly throughout, instead of
(37:04):
rubbery casin clumps where all the proteins are sticking together
and a grease slick floating on top where all the
fat is separate and sticking to itself. But the way
I describe this here is like it is order of
operation sensitive. This is why you can't save an already
broken sauce by adding starch. Once the damage is done,
(37:25):
the starch is not gonna fix it. Starch only protects,
it does not repair. Also, the presence of starch can
only protect the cheese so much. Even in starchy water.
If you overheat the cheese, it will still be torn
asunder and the fats in proteins will separate. So starch
provides some heat protection, but not invincibility to heat. And
(37:49):
this is why the heat in making the cheese sauces
is so important. If you get it too hot, it's
gonna clump up and split no matter what you do.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
This is a stressful recipe.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Well, yeah, exactly. So it's a simple dish in terms
of ingredients, has got three ingredients apart from the salt
in the water. But getting this desirable smooth sauce in
the end is tricky and it takes a lot of experience.
You know. It's it's something that people make a million times.
You know, they make it over and over and they
get a feel for how it works. You are able
to kind of look at it and feel it as
(38:20):
you're stirring it around and know how much of everything
you need. But what if you don't have that feel? Well,
the authors of this paper examine the whole process in
a much more granular and quantitative way, and they come
up with like specific numerical and chemical recommendations to help
people achieve perfect catchioy pepe if they don't know what
(38:43):
they're doing quote. We identify starch concentration as the key
factor influencing sauce stability with direct implications for practical cooking. Specifically,
we delineate a regime where starch concentrations below one percent
relative to cheese maas lead to the formation of system
wide clumps, a condition determining what we term the mozzarella phase.
(39:08):
That's a bad thing. You don't want your cheese sauce
to turn into mozzarella clumps and corresponding to an unpleasant
and separated sauce. Additionally, we examine the impact of cheese
concentration relative to water at a fixed starch level, observing
a lower critical solution temperature that we theoretically rationalized by
means of a minimal effective free energy model. We further
(39:31):
analyze the effect of a less traditional stabilizer tri sodium citrate,
and observe a sharp transition from the mozzarella phase to
a completely smooth and stable sauce in contrast to starch
stabilized mixtures where the transition is more gradual. Finally, we
present a scientifically optimized recipe based on our findings, enabling
(39:52):
a consistently flawless execution of this classic dish. So they've
got a fool proof method. Now I want to add
that they talk about the alternate method, where instead of starts,
you go with tri sodium citrate. I think a lot
of Italian cooking purists would rebel at the idea of
using sodium citrate to emulsify their cheese sauce, but in
(40:14):
the world of industrial food products, this is one of
the most used additives to ensure a stable emulsion and
to prevent sauces from splitting. Tri sodium citrate is one
of the key ingredients in cheese products that are made
explicitly for melting, things like Velveta and American cheese. Why
do they stay so creamy and not split when they
(40:35):
melt is because they have tri sodium citrate, this emulsifying agent,
which works in part, by the way, by helping prevent
the casin proteins from bonding together in the first place,
so that it like chemically sort of prevents them from clumping.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Okay, so use velvita when making this dish.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Yes, that's how to get the common section happy. Now,
assuming you don't go with sodium CITRATEE and you're relying
on starch in the pasta water to keep the cheese
sauce smooth, you want to aim, they say, for a
concentration that is between two and three percent of the
cheese weight that you're using. Reading from the paper here quote.
(41:18):
If the starch content is less than one percent of
the cheese weight, the sauce is prone to separating into
unpleasant system sized clumps, corresponding to the mod cyrilla phase
and Figures one and two. On the other hand, exceeding
four percent of starch results in a sauce that becomes
stiff and unappetizing as it cools. Rob This is it's
(41:41):
kind of hard to describe this if I don't know
if you've ever made an over starched pasta, but it
starts to become not really saucy and more like it's
kind of held together by a glue, sort of an
unpleasant gluy texture in between the.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Noodles, like would maybe begin to feel more like a
cheese dip as opposed to a pasta dish.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Is well, yeah, I mean just it would be too
too sticky and too doughey. Almost in the saw it
becomes less like a sauce and more like a batter.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Okay, I see what you mean.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Yeah. Then they finally say the ideal range is confirmed
by both taste and texture tests, lies between two and
three percent, ensuring stability and a pleasant consistency. So, for example,
they give exact ratios. They say, you want to make
two servings of catchaway pepe, you would start with three
hundred grams of dried pasta, two hundred grams of cheese,
(42:33):
and then four that two hundred grams of cheese. You
would want five grams of starch in about fifty grams
of water, so you could use a starch like five
grams of corn starch or potato starch dissolved in fifty
grams of water. Traditionally, you get the right amount of
starch here by using feel and by using the pasta
(42:55):
cooking water, sometimes concentrating the starch content by boiling it
down a little bit extra so you concentrate it. This
is called resotata. But this still requires some guesswork. You
just got to like kind of look at it and
know what you're looking for, because obviously you can't practically
measure the starch content of the water once it's already dissolved.
So they say, if you're really looking for an easy shortcut,
(43:18):
you just make your sauce by dissolving five grams of
corn starch or potato starch and fifty grams of water,
heating it gently until it gelatinizes, then melting the cheese
into this mixture to make your sauce. I again, I
don't know if the pasta witch finder would approve, but
that's what they say.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yeah, yeah, Like can you imagine the chefs on the
bear doing it? Yeah, fine, that makes sense. They might
do something kind of like sciencey like that. But can
you imagine like stereotypical Italian grandma cooking this way?
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Maybe not right? And once again there you're just getting
into somebody who's done this so many times. They know
it by feel. You don't have to really think about.
You're not measuring out things by weight, You just you
just eyeball it and it comes out right.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Well, now I'm beginning to understand why I've maybe not
cooked this before and it's maybe not been included in
some of the box meals that I've I've gotten over
the years, and maybe it's just a little too complex.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
Rob, I'd say give it a try, try and make
catchaway Pepe. It's delicious. And you know, the worst scenario
is just like you accidentally overheat it and it gets
a little clumpy and it's like, well that batch wasn't great,
you know, no big loss.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
All right, maybe maybe it is worth the journey. All right,
We're gonna look at one more here fittingly, we're gonna
go from cheese to shoes. This one, this one was
a lot of fun. This one was what made me
(44:54):
smile and then think and then legitimately laugh. It is
the Engineer Design Prize. This prize went to Vikash Kumar
and Sathak Mittal for Smelly Shoes an Opportunity for Shoe
rack Redesign. From the proceedings of the HWWE. I'm to
(45:15):
understand this is the Annual Conference of Indian of the
Indian Society of Ergonomics from and this was a twenty
seventeen presentation. So on the surface, yes, this paper is
funny because it is about smelly shoes, which this is
always going to be a funny concept so long as
you're not around the smelly shoes in question. Smelly shoes
(45:35):
become less funny if you were wearing them, or you're
having to put up with someone in else's smelly shoes.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Obviously it's even funnier though, if you're imagining smelling them
without knowing whether they are shoes or cheese. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
Yeah, there have been some fun experiments along those lines.
I think we've looked that over in the past. You know,
it depends on the context. If you were expecting to
smell cheese and you smell shoe, you know, then perhaps
you're okay with it. If you're expecting to smell a
shoe and you smell cheese, maybe not so. Context and
smells is extremely important. I think I've gone in this
(46:08):
rant before, but that's my take on the Durian fruit.
The Durian fruit pretty strong smells involved there. But I
think sometimes if one approaches if you approach the Durian
expecting a cheese, thinking of it as kind of a
cheese as fruit or a fruit as cheese, whichever way
it goes, then it makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Well, take it up with the Lord of Darkness in
the Boxer's omen universe.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeah, they did like their Durian. So in this paper,
the authors present everything rather matter of factly. I think
they say, Okay, India can be a hot, sweaty place,
and as with pretty much everywhere else, we may regularly
wash our bodies, and we may regularly wash our clothing,
but not necessarily our shoes, you know, And I think
(46:54):
this holds true. Shoes are sometimes made of leather, or
they're in one way or another a little more complex
in their design. You can't necessarily throw them in the washer,
and then you can't really throw them in the dryer either,
because you know it'll clog up and make that awful
racket and potentially destroy your dryer. So, yeah, we don't
always give the shoe our shoes the same attention we
(47:16):
give our bodies in our clothing.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
I'm gonna admit I am guilty of this. I am
a very hygiene conscious person in terms of body and clothes,
but I do not think enough about keeping shoes clean
same same.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
It's kind of like shoes are just gonna do what
they're gonna do. I have no control over it personally, right,
And so they established this, and okay, all right, we're
all on board with this, we kind of recognize the
universality of this. But their focus then kind of switches
to the use of shoe racks upon entrance to certain
interior spaces, and mainly they're talking about the home and
(47:51):
about you know, shoes off homes in India. I'm also
to understand religious spaces and certain shops and restaurants you know,
may also have these expectations in place, while larger Western
nine space western nized spaces are not going to have that.
I'd be interested to hear from folks out there who
are in India or have been to India. I've never been,
(48:12):
but I have visited countries where there's certainly more of
a custom of shoe removal, and and that's also the
way we do it in our house. We're generally a
shoes off household. And I really loved going to Japan,
where there's a lot of shoes off and pretty much
everywhere has a shoehorn handy, and that spoiled me. Once
I came back, It's like, why are there not shoehorns everywhere?
(48:33):
So now I have like one by the door that
I use, and I'm a little bit offended anywhere I
go that doesn't have a shoehorn.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
The long kind or the short kind.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Oh, the long kind.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
There's the long kind.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Luxurious. I mean, it is one of ages. I guess too,
it makes more sense. But yeah, it's just it feels classy.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
I remember when I was a kid discovering my late
grandfather's long goal themed shoehorn, which was like on this
piece of cane and add a shoehorn on one hand
and like a golf ball grip on the other.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Nice. Yeah, mine's just plain wood that. I still like it.
It's still rather fond of it. So anyway, we've established okay,
we have scenarios where people are wearing shoes to a
house and then upon arrival at the house, they are
taking shoes off, and then where do shoes go, Well,
they go on some sort of a shoe rack, and
they point out they're like numerous different like common designs
(49:28):
for the shoe rack. And once we're into talking about
the design of an item, we're potentially talking about ergonomics,
we're talking about human efficiency and design, and they point
out that generally when we're talking about this, we're talking
about like the physical aspects of the device or a
device or structure. You know, there are so many different
ways to approach ergonomics, and you know, we've all had
(49:51):
some experience with ergonomic design or a lack of ergonomic design,
with everything from like a computer mouse to a doorframe.
Right like, we be designing things that meet us at
least halfway, and we that are that don't force us
to become less human in order to interact with them.
So fair enough, But then they point out that, Okay,
(50:11):
we tend to focus on the physicality of all this,
but we don't think about things like scent, and they
say that we should, and that concerns the shoe rack.
What can we be doing about the design of a
shoe rack, the kind of shoe rack that would be
in the immediate interior of one's home or just outside
one's door, or however it is arranged. What could we
(50:33):
do with the design here to make shoes less pungent?
Speaker 3 (50:38):
A noble goal? It is, yeah, it is, it's.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
It's I mean, it's pretty matter of fact. And they
they point out there, at least as of this publication,
there wasn't really anything in the market like this, So
they ultimately landed on this recommendation a shoe rack that
is fitted with a UVC tube light, with the UV
lighting here targeting the bacteria on and in the shoes
responsible for the shoe odor.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
Okay, I'm following you.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah yeah, and they and they ultimately even arrive at
exactly what kind of exposure they're looking at. They're looking
at about two to three minutes of exposure to the UV
treatment and this would sufficiently eliminate a lot of the
odor associated with the shoe rack, which would then make
interacting with the shoe rack a more pleasant experience, and therefore,
(51:26):
I guess you could say interacting with the home itself
a more pleasant experience. Again, this seems perfectly reasonable. Yeah only,
and only mildly funny. But what I found really hilarious
was the chart on their experimentation with the UV lighting
on the shoe rack. And to be clear, I'm not
making fun of the research or the researchers here, but
just the mental imagery of this legitimate experiment makes me giggle.
(51:51):
So I included the table here for you Joe's Table two.
Exposure time of UVC tube light and odor observed. And
so we get we get exposure in minutes from zero
minutes to fifteen minutes. And then we also have the
foulness of the shoe smell rated as well, and then
(52:12):
the smell doe to UV treatment.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Oh, it's a trade off, yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
And then the observations of what's happening.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Okay, So how's it go?
Speaker 2 (52:21):
Okay, So I'm not going to just roll through every
detail of it, but let's start it at the on
one side of the chart and then get to the other.
So zero minute exposure, the foul smell on the shoes
is three point five, which for this table, that's maximum.
That's just maximum. Shoe funk smell due to UV treatment
itself is zero, of course, because you haven't done anything
(52:41):
to it. And the observation strong pungent smell, rotten cheese
like smell.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
Whose shoes were these?
Speaker 2 (52:49):
I mean, there's just shoes, all right, So let's go
ahead and crank it up. They crank it up to
two minute minutes of exposure. That reduces the foul smell
of the shoes to point five. So there's a little
bit of funk, but it's greatly reduced from three point five.
And the smell due to UV treatment is zero. And
they say that you just have an extremely low foul
(53:11):
smell and just a mild burnt rubber smell. Okay, And
from here this is where the burnt rubber smell cranks up,
because the next exposure thresholds are four minutes, six minutes,
ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and then the foul smell from
the shoes remains zero throughout, but the smell due to
(53:32):
the UV treatment increases, so eventually you're getting to a
fifteen minute exposure zero foul smell from the shoes, but
a four rating for smell due to UV treatment. And
then they add very strong burnt rubber smell shoe hot
ins extreme In this experiment, they found yes, if you
(53:55):
if you cook the shoes too much, they will no
longer smell a foot funk, but they will be hot
shoes that smell like burning rubber.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
And thirty minutes your shoes become doctor Manhattan exactly.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
So this this certainly made me laugh a bit, but
you know this, the experiment serves the purpose of them
figuring out, Okay, two to three minutes is really all
we need to sufficiently kill the bacteria and cure the
foul smell that is occurring with the shoes.
Speaker 3 (54:24):
I find this inspiring.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
It is it's inspiring. I mean it also outlines some
like additional design challenges here, right, how do you design
a UV powered shoe rack that is going to give
the appropriate amount of UV treatment to any given pair
of shoes without cooking them? And people coming back putting
on their hot shoes on a hot summer day and
(54:47):
their shoes smell like burnt rubber. Obviously they don't want
that either. So you know there's almost a poetry to it.
Too little attention and you have a stinky situation. Too
much attention and you have a different but even more
stinky situation. So you have to find that perfect balance
between the two. Bravo to the authors, absolutely, all right.
Speaker 3 (55:07):
Does that do it for our coverage of the twenty
twenty five Ignobel Prizes?
Speaker 2 (55:11):
I think so. I think we're going to go and
close the book on the Ignobels for this year. But yeah,
hopefully they'll do it again next year and we'll be
back to talk about all new winners around the same time.
Sometimes we cover them, as we did this year, right
after they occur. Other times we come back after on
Cober and cover them a little late after things have
cooled off a little bit because, as is often the case,
(55:32):
the studies that are honored, they often get a lot
of additional circulation and say like the late night comedy
press and so forth. All right, as always, will remind
everyone out there that Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's
primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
We set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
(55:53):
a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
in our series about the winners of the twenty twenty
five ig Nobel Prizes. This is something we cover almost
every year here on the show, though of course we're
not affiliated with the prizes in anyway. It's just something
we like to talk about. The Ignobels are given out
usually in September of each year by a scientific humor
(00:37):
journal called the Annals of Improbable Research, edited for many
years by Mark Abrahams, and the state admission of the
Ignobel Prizes is to honor achievements that first make people
laugh and then make them think. If you haven't listened
to part one yet, you can go back and check
that one out first. But for a brief recap. In
the last episode, we talked about the twenty two twenty
(01:00):
five prize in nutrition, which went to a team who
studied lizards eating pizza. The prize for psychology for a
paper that looked at whether people become more narcissistic when
you tell them that they're really smart. And the twenty
twenty five Prize for Aviation, which went to a study
on whether fruit bats become worse at flying when they
get drunk. Is that about right, Rob, Yes, and they do.
(01:24):
And we're back today to talk about more.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
All right. Just a reminder again, we're not covering all
the winners. We're just doing two helpings, really, each of
us going in and grabbing some stuff, discussing the studies
we want to talk about, papers we want to talk about,
but by all means, go to the website improbable dot
com and you can learn more about this year's winners,
last year's winners. They have one of these great like
(01:48):
single page readouts where you can just scan through everything
that they've covered over the years. A rarity in today's
web space.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Yeah, a great thing to send to your office printer
and just get again.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Okay, So the first award that I wanted to talk
about today is the twenty twenty five Biology Prize, which
was presented to and there's a long list of names here.
As always, apologies for any mispronunciations, but the team was
Tomoki Kojima, Kazato Oishi, Yasushi Matsubara, Yuki Uchiyama, Yoshihiko Fukushima,
(02:23):
Naoto Aoki, say Sato, Tatsuaki Masuda, Junichi Yueida, hiro Yuki Hiruka,
and Katsutoshi Kino, and then to quote the prize language
for their experiments to learn whether cows painted with zebra
like striping can avoid being bitten by flies? Yes, that
(02:44):
said painted. So the question is can you keep parasitic
insects off your cows by just painting some zebra stripes
on them? The paper in question was published in twenty
nineteen in the journal plus one, and it was called
Cows painted with zebra like striping can avoid biting fly attacks.
It kind of gives away the result there. But the
(03:05):
funny thing about this study is that this is actually
not the first time, not this paper in particular, but
research on this general subject has come up on the show.
We talked about this in a listener Mail episode last year,
which was was from August twenty twenty four. Rob, Was
this an episode that I did solo or were you
(03:25):
on this episode with me?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I don't recall. This is one of those areas that
I feel like I have podcasted on before, but I'm
not sure how recently, you know, getting into the coloration
of zebras and so forth, and you know the evolved
reason for the stripes.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Yeah, so maybe this was a solo listener mail episode
that I did. Anyway, the context in which this came
up was a message from our listener Jeremy, who at
the time had written into the show address that's contact
at stuff to Blow your mind dot com, asking for
our thoughts on an attached photo which was of a
horse grazing in a fenced pasture draped in a cloth
(04:06):
with black and white zebra print. Which is funny already
because I think, not knowing the reason for this, a
lot of people's first assumption might be that this is
just a horse somebody has dressed up in a zebra
costume for esthetic reasons, maybe Halloween unclear.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah, I mean somebody's pasture poodle. So maybe they just
have a jazzy outfit.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
On, right, So Jeremy asked if the purpose was actually
to repel biting flies, since there is some evidence that
zebra stripes may work to keep flies off the skin.
I looked into this a little bit, and I concluded
at the time that the horse in the picture was
wearing what's called a fly sheet. I had no previous
(04:49):
knowledge of this at all, but I assume most horse
owners and farmers and ranchers will be quite familiar with
this kind of product. So fly sheets are lightweight bankets,
usually made out of some kind of mesh fabric that
you drape over a horse to keep flies and other
insects from biting the horse. And if you google these products,
you'll find that other uses are advertised as well, like
(05:11):
protecting animals from UV radiation. From what I'm reading, these
things work pretty well at their main job. But that
doesn't mean that you can just protect all your horses
permanently by dressing them in fly sheets and then just
leaving them on all the time. Apparently, some horses do
not like the sheets. They find them irritating and they
(05:31):
try to shake them or rub them off, which could
lead to injury. Also, there is some injury risk just
from the horse knocking it part way off and then
getting it tangled on something. And also you can't leave
it on forever for the same reason that you shouldn't
leave the same piece of human clothing on forever. Eventually
it gets dirty and damp and hot, and it irritates
(05:52):
the skin, possibly leading to overheating or to skin infections.
So fly sheets can protect your horse from fly bites
to some extent, but you've got to balance the pros
and cons, and even for horses that tolerate them, well,
it's not just a putg it on once and forget
about it solution. But the thing I wondered about in
(06:12):
this image was if the fly sheet is itself a
physical barrier against fly bytes, what would be the additional benefit,
if anything, of having an insect repelling pattern printed on
the fly sheet? If that is indeed what zebra stripes
even do. We'll explore that question more in a minute.
(06:33):
But wouldn't the sheet itself provide the protection whether it
was printed with zebra stripes or leopard print or you
know whatever individual frames from the Boxer's omen just like
the whole movie on the side of the horse. Maybe
maybe there is an additional benefit, but I'm skeptical.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I mean, that would have venture to guess. Maybe it
would be a situation where the stripes would keep flies
potentially away from the uncovered portions of the horse as well,
Like the flies in question would be like, oh, there's
a zebra colored horse over there. I'm going to ignore
this horse entirely, even the parts that aren't zebra e
(07:09):
And I'm just going to go check out this other
certified non zebra.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Well, yeah, that is a totally reasonable thing to wonder,
except I think in at least one of the studies
we're about to look at, it mentions that when supplemental
zebra stripes are given to some animals, they still got
bitten on the parts that weren't covered.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
So okay, well, there you go.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
But I don't know. Maybe it reduces the bites on
the uncovered parts even though it doesn't totally eliminate them.
I don't know, but anyway, so questions. I don't know
whether that would be beneficial or not. Now. In that
listener mail episode, I talked about a different study on
zebra stripes and biting insects, also from twenty nineteen, also
in the Journal plus one, so same journal and year
(07:50):
as the Ignobel Prize winning study here. That paper was
called Benefits of Zebra stripes Behavior of Tabinid flies around
zebras and horses. That was by Caro at All short
summary of that one. Over the years, researchers have proposed
a lot of different evolutionary reasons that zebras might have stripes.
(08:10):
Maybe the stripes somehow regulate body temperature, for example, maybe
they helped the zebra avoid overheating in the sun somehow,
maybe they are a type of visual camouflage confusing predators.
But a very promising idea is that somehow the stripes
protect zebras against ectoparasitic insects like biting flies quote quoting
(08:32):
the authors. Here, we examined the behavior of tabanids, horseflies
in the vicinity of captive planes, zebras, and uniformly colored
domestic horses living on a horse farm in Britain. Observations
showed that fewer tabanids landed on zebras than on horses
per unit time, although rates of tabanids circling around or
(08:53):
briefly touching zebra and horse pillage did not differ. So
interesting finding. The horses and zebra has had equal numbers
of flies swarming around them, but the flies successfully landed
on the zebras less often, which presumably means they were
able to bite the zebras less often. And in a
secondary experiment, the authors found that if you placed a
(09:15):
zebra patterned coat on a horse compared to coats of
solid white or solid black, it reduced the number of
tabinid flies that landed on the horse. The horseflies still
landed on and bit like exposed unpatterned parts of the
horse's bodies, like the head. So the question is if
zebra stripes prevent flies or help help reduce the amount
(09:39):
that flies land on you, how do they do that?
The author's right quote. In separate detailed video analyzes, tabanids
approached zebras faster and failed to decelerate before contacting zebras,
and proportionately more tabinids simply touched rather than landed on
zebra pelage in comparison to horses. So, according to this
(10:04):
other research, when you have zebra stripes, biting flies have
a harder time slowing down their flight and landing correctly
on your skin, and they're more likely to kind of
fly into you at higher speed and bounce off without landing.
That's kind of interesting. It's like putting some kind of
dazzle your on your airport runway. You know, it makes
(10:25):
it hard to land the plane.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Now you're messing with the fly maneuverability and landing ability. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
And also note that when I looked into this last year,
I read some coverage, including an article in the BBC
that quoted other scientists in the field who were not
fully convinced that they that fly repellent properties were the
main evolutionary reason for zebra stripes. A few reasons for
doubt they're a major one being are biting flies really
(10:52):
a primary fitness concern for wild zebras. Some researchers were
skeptical that they were, so this is not a full
settled issue. But that brings us to the Ignobel prize
winning paper on this topic. Again, that's the Kojima at
All paper from twenty nineteen. To summarize this one, the
authors cite the previous research showing that zebra stripes seem
(11:14):
to reduce attacks by biting flies, and however much this
is or is not really a major fitness concern for
zebras in the wild, the authors argued that it is
of major significance to people who raise domestic animals like cattle.
They write, quote, biting flies are serious pests of livestock
(11:35):
that cause economic losses in animal production. Now you might think, like,
how do fly bytes cause those losses. Well, they actually explain.
They say, cattle find these biting flies really annoying, and
they change their behavior to try to protect themselves from
fly bites. So cattle that are bothered by biting flies
(11:57):
spend less time feeding and grazing, they spend less time
bedding down, and they also engage in direct defensive behaviors.
These defensive behaviors can involve a lot of violent body movements,
maybe flicking the tail, stomping around, shaking their heads, and
twitching the muscles on the skin. Cattle will also crowd
(12:20):
their bodies together to decrease their surface area and protect
themselves from flies. And the authors argue that all of
these behaviors cause economic losses since the cattle expend energy
doing this stuff, they eat and they rest less, and
crowding or bunching together in particular, seems bad. Quote. Bunching
(12:41):
increases heat, stress and risk of injury as animals jostle
for a better position to avoid biting flies, and this
can reduce weight gains in feed lot beef cattle and
milk yield in dairy cows. So this doesn't necessarily prove it,
but I think it's a reasonable inference that if if
biting flies cause these measurable economic losses for domestic cattle owners,
(13:05):
they might well translate to similar evolutionary losses for animals
in nature. We don't know for sure, but it seems
quite possible.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
It sounds reasonable anyway.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
So, building on the previous findings that biting flies either
avoid or have trouble landing on zebra stripes versus on
like a solid black or white surface, the authors ask
what happens if you just paint a solid colored cow
with zebra stripes? Will that keep the biting flies away?
And if you wonder if there's a picture, Yes, there
(13:36):
is a picture, Rob, I've got it for you to
look at. Here. So this is a black cow that
has been painted with white zebra stripes on the sides,
like the flanks, not the head, but everywhere except the head,
the flanks and the legs going all the way to
the rear end.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, this picture alone answers the question why is this funny?
This is just in and of itself, laughter inducing to
see this cow that has been painted up like a
zebra like. Somehow, it's more hilarious, obviously than a horse
being painted like a zebra. Maybe because like, you're not
fooling anybody, Like I can't help but think this cow
(14:13):
wants to be mistaken for a zebra and we're just
not buying it.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
I'm not insulting anybody here, but it is funny that
this picture has has labels for body and leg. Actually,
maybe there's a good reason for this, Like maybe if
they're if they're documenting where on the body the biting
flies that were seen landing landed, you know, you want
(14:37):
to note exactly where the boundaries are as you're considering. Yeah,
so that makes more sense. But the label of body
is really got me going. Which part is the head?
So the authors they described their small experiment as follows quote.
Six Japanese black cows were assigned to treatments using a
three by three Latin square design. The treatments were black
(14:59):
and white painted stripes, black painted stripes and no stripes,
meaning an all black body surface. Recorded fly repelling behaviors
were head throw, ear beat, leg stamp, skin twitch, and
tail flick. Photo images of the right side of each
cow were taken using a commercial digital camera after every observation,
(15:21):
and biting flies on the body and each leg were
counted from the photo images. Okay, so maybe that's why
it's important to know exactly where the boundaries are here.
We showed that the numbers of biting flies on Japanese
black cows painted with black and white stripes were significantly
lower than those on non painted cows and cows painted
(15:41):
only with black stripes. The frequencies of fly repelling behaviors
in cows painted with black and white stripes were also
lower than those in the non painted and black striped cows.
So again, in other words, compared to cows without stripes
and black cows painted with blacks, black cows painted with
(16:02):
black and white stripes had fewer biting flies land on
them and also showed fewer fly repelling behaviors, all the
different kinds of you know, the shoe fly dance. The
authors say that based on these results, it may be
the case that painting zebra stripes on solid colored livestock
can reduce the burden from biting flies without resorting to
(16:24):
other interventions like applying pesticides to livestock, which can also
be effective, but that comes with downside such as contributing
to long term pesticide resistance in the environment.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
So if true. It's one of those things where you
might say, well, it doesn't cost that much to paint
the cows, let's go ahead and do it regularly. Do
it and if it's working a little bit, great.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, seems like it. Now. One thing to note here
is again this was a small experiment. There were just
six cows here, so we should not draw like hugely
firm conclusions based on it, and more of a pilot
to open the way to more highly powered research.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Yeah, as is often the case.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Well, let's move on to the next one. This is
we want to highlight the chemistry prize. This one went
to a twenty sixteen US Israeli paper titled Polytetraflora ethylene
ingestion as a way to increase food volume and hint
society without increasing calorie content, published in Obesity Technology, written
(17:35):
by Neftalovich, Neftalovich and Greenway.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Wait a minute, PTFE ingestion as a way to increase
food volume.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Exactly, Yes, And this is one of those selections where
you can see why it is funny right at the
front end of things, because PTFE is also known by
the brand name Tefline. This is what John Gotti's teflon
don nickname was about because one of its uses is
(18:07):
in nonstick pans, right, so nothing sticks to it. Nothing
stuck to John Gotti at least for a while that situation.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, but it's not just used in cookwaar.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
No.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Yeah, PTFE is a nonstick coating has like industrial and
medical uses as well, and you find it in all
kinds of stuff.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
That's right. It's a synthetic fluoropolymer discovered in nineteen thirty eight, discovered,
invented however you want to look at it. It's commonly
used in nonstick coating for cookwaar, but it's also used
in wiring insulation, chemical resistance, lining coatings, and medical devices.
As an electronic insulator. It's used in stain repellent fabrics
and also in aerospace parts. So the funny part here is,
(18:49):
obviously the authors are suggesting a brand new use for PTFE,
and that is what if we ate it as a
food additive.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
So it's just like you add a little bit of
salt and pepper tear meal and you also sprinkle in
some teflon.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Oh, I think it would be more than sprinkling. What
they're bulozing. Would be bulking it up like it would
be like a smoothie powder that gets added to your food.
And yeah, this paper boldly begins with the following quote,
civilization has zero calorie drinks, but we have not yet
made the leap into the realm of zero calorie foods.
(19:27):
The first step toward achieving this goal is the ability
to increase the volume of food without adding calories, the
final frontier, if you will, of eating zero calorie polymers.
Speaker 3 (19:39):
I don't want to be a know it all, but
there there are not quite zero calorie bulking items, but
there are well known ways of bulking up food without
massively increasing the amount of calorie. A big one is fiber.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Yes, yes, yeah, but I guess part of it here
is that there are and is that this would be
mainly used to treat a obesity as the main factory here.
But yes, it also raises a number of questions what
we'll get to including you know, first of all, can
we do this? But also should we do this? And
(20:15):
indeed are there perhaps other things like fiber that maybe
we should be putting in the end of the diet instead.
Reading this study reminded me of a gag on thirty
Rock where Jenna is on a diet and she says
it's the Japanese paper diet, where she says I can
only eat paper, but I can eat all the paper
(20:36):
I want. Perfect Yeah, I mean to be clear, the
idea of eating paper as a diet. Yeah, eating paper
I think would technically net you zero calories because your
digestive system can't break down the cellulose, the main component
of paper or most paper anyway. But this is not
(20:56):
recommended as it's not good for your digestion, and that's
before you even consider potential chemical additives, and also the
ink that may be on the paper. Though there are
edible wrappings and even mediums for printing, I'm not sure
you could really make a diet out of those either.
But yeah, just the idea of eating paper for your diet.
It works for a joke, I don't think it would
(21:17):
work in real life. So back to consuming non flavored
ptfes as part of your diet. To be fair, the
proposal is a little more complicated than Hey, it has
zero calories, so why don't we eat it? First of all,
the general proposal is that it would be some sort
of additive again, perhaps like a smoothie powder to bulk
(21:38):
up actual food. You'd eat this food, but then a
percentage of the food volume would be indigestible. It cannot
be metabolized, so it just passes through, taking up space,
giving you the feeling of being full without itself metabolizing.
The rest of your meal would though. According to the paper,
they present this as a quote non metabolized food volume
(22:00):
bulking agent, and they charge that indeed PTFE is ideal
for this because it's quote widely considered to be the
most inert material known and is extremely stable. They also
add that it succeeds in being quote inert safe, resistant
to stomach acid, lax taste, available in powder form, smooth,
resistant to heat, and also cost effective.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Well, I think it's supposed to be resistant to heat
up to a point, right, There is a point in
which it becomes not resistant to heat, right right.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I mean, anyone who's ever looked into ptf E coated cookware,
there is a threshold beyond which you're not supposed to
heat it because then there can be health concerns with
you know, how things break down and what's released and
so forth. I guess they're arguing that within the human body,
you wouldn't reach that threshold, which well, thank you say,
I mean, if you reach like five hundred degrees fahrenheit
(22:51):
within the body, something terrible has gone wrong. And just
speaking to the idea of PTF he's heating up in
the body, not to any other potential health ramifications here,
which again I think this obviously raises a ton of
questions that are not necessarily addressed in this paper or
would need to be addressed in follow up papers if
(23:11):
there was like really a huge drive to get ptfees
deliberately into food. But you know, that doesn't stop them
from presenting some evidence. They point to some studies that
claim that, and they claim that quote animal feeding trials
showed that rats fed a diet of twenty five percent
PTFE for ninety days had no signs of toxicity and
that the rats lost weight. And then they go on
(23:34):
to suggest a possible human consumption ratio of three parts
food to one part PTFE by volume, and again their
idea is this would be for therapeutic use in weight loss.
But I just want to really stress here that this
is absolutely not something that anyone out there should now
go out and line up for themselves. Don't try and
(23:56):
cook this up for yourself either. Don't develop your own
diet based on hearing about this study. This particular idea
doesn't seem to be picking up a lot of steam.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
It's not getting a lot of takers in the nutrition community.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Yeah. Yeah, Again, I think part of it comes down
to is this really necessary? Are there perhaps better options?
And you know, and I think there's a strong case
to be made. Also, Again, this paper is nearly a
decade old at this point, and I think the proposal
feels more dare we say horrific Given concern in recent
(24:30):
years over so called forever chemicals and microplastics finding their
way into our bodies so obesity and weight loss, there are
certainly vowed concerns. But should we necessarily be looking for
all new reasons to produce these chemicals and to intentionally
ingest them.
Speaker 3 (24:45):
Yeah. I mean, as far as the safety of PTFI goes,
my memory of it is that generally PTFE itself seems
to be mostly safe within the temperature ranges, or is
thought to be based on what we know, But there
are legitimate questions about health effects arising from its manufacture
and from associated chemicals that could be brought along with.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
It, right, right, So that's my understanding as well. So
I guess I come back coming back to this paper specifically,
like if everything in the paper is just one hundred
percent correct and it is perfectly safe to consume some
sort of hypothetical Again, this doesn't I think, really exist yet,
some hypothetical human grade ptf E food additive, would it
(25:32):
still be the thing we want to do and need
to do? But then again, I mean that's kind of
the beautiful thing about science, right, is sometimes you do
explore these big sort of what ifs, what is this
a potential solution? And you know, maybe one paper leans
a little more positive and if it's necessary for follow up,
there will be some more negative considerations as well.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I certainly don't want to
be like snarky and dismissive. I mean, I try to
be open minded about things. But I will just let
me come back on the other side and advocate fiber.
I mean, fiber is great. It's like that's a common
thing found in many foods. You can get a you know,
like high fiber foods are a great way to bulk
up and feel more full from your meals. And without
(26:17):
adding a lot of unnecessary, unnecessary calories.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah yeah, I think this solution that is presented here
feels a little bit too dystopian and apocalyptic. And the
best food for humans to eat remains food, or that's
what I prefer anyway, with the possible exception of certain
candies feel very far removed from food, and I still
eat those, but I'm not fooling myself into thinking that
(26:42):
I'm getting anything out of them on a health level.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
Just wait until you hear about the proposal to bulk
all of our meals with Twizzlers.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
Well, yeah, that's exactly the candy I was thinking of
when when I'm eating it, I feel like it's plastic,
But it's a plastic I'm really into eating now, maybe
like once or twice a year.
Speaker 4 (27:00):
Did you get your daily essential Twizzlers?
Speaker 2 (27:12):
So yeah, in summary, I would say that one made
me laugh, made me think, and then made me frown
a little bit. But how about you, Joe, what's your
your next selection?
Speaker 3 (27:22):
Okay, my next one's also about food, not ptfe for food.
So I'm going to talk about the twenty twenty five
Physics Prize presented to and once again long list of names.
I apologize for any mispronunciations. Jacquomo Bartolucci, Daniel Maria Busiello,
Matteo chi Arci, Alberto Cordicelli, Ivan di Terlisi, Fabrizio Olmeida
(27:48):
da Vida Ravignez, and Vincenzo Maria Schimenti. Four quote discoveries
about the physics of pasta sauce, especially the phase transition
that can lead to clumping, which can be a cause
of unpleasantness. The vapor in question was called phase behavior
(28:10):
of Cachiae pep bee sauce, published in the journal Physics
of Fluids in twenty twenty five. So a very recent one.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
This is a great chaser after we're just talking about
potentially eating taflon and they were just like, you know,
when you have lumps and pasta sauce unpleasant?
Speaker 3 (28:25):
It's true, Well, it is true. I don't like those lumps.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I don't mean, I mean, what's the substance of the lump?
Are we talking like a chunk of tomato? No?
Speaker 3 (28:32):
No, no, no, no no no. This is a broken
cheese sauce. Who likes a broken cheese sauce? H yeah, okay,
all right, yes, you've read Okay, so why is this funny.
I think it's funny because it's a paper in a
physics journal that's focused on how to make cheese sauce
like and on your base level. Also, it's just like cheese.
Cheese is a funny word and a funny substance. Absolutely,
(28:55):
as any toddler can tell you, you make a toddler
laugh by inserting cheese as like the wrong noun in
a sentence, any other noun. Instead substitute cheese, they will
lose their minds. It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
But yeah, absolutely, cheese in and of itself funny word,
funny subject.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
I think secondarily in the selection here there might be
a little bit of light cultural humor in the idea
that Italians can be so serious about pasta cooking technique
that they will explore it on the level of fluid
physics and the phase transition of matter. So the recipe
in question here is a great Italian classic. It's kachioe pepe,
(29:32):
which is pasta with cheese and pepper. Rob if you
ever made this one, you make caachio pepe at home.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Oh, I don't know that I have. I mean, this
is certainly the type of dish that I might do
as part of like a box meal. But maybe if
I've done it, it's been like so westernized that I'm
not recognizing it as such.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
I mean, it's a delightful dish. I have made a
version of it many, many times, more times than I
can count. Though, if you're talking to one of the
real witchfinder witchfinder generals, or would it be Witchfinders General,
is it like attorney's General. Yeah, I guess one of
the real witchfinders general. Of like traditional pasta technique, I
(30:11):
think my renditions of it are all blasphemous in one
way or another, because sometimes I add another source of fat,
like butter or olive oil, like so you make it
with black pepper in it, and I like toasting some
of the black pepper and olive oil. I think that's nice.
Sometimes I have used a mixture of cheeses in it,
or I have used parmesano reggiano instead of pecorino romano.
(30:33):
I think all of these things are not technically cachaae
pepe certainly not the traditional version, but some variation on
the theme.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Okay, this is not macaroni and cheese.
Speaker 3 (30:43):
I mean it's the same idea, but no, it's a
different thing. So here I'll describe what it is. Traditional
cachao pepe like, you know, the kind they say that
a grandmother in Rome would make. Has no butter, no
olive oil, no other cheeses. It has exactly three ingredients.
It is pasta, peccorino, romano, cheese, and ground black pepper,
(31:04):
and I guess also water and salt. But for some
reason people don't usually count those as ingredients. Why not,
I don't know, but they're absolutely necessary. You need those
as well. Anyway. You might think, based on the fact
that there are only three ingredients, that this would be
a very easy dish to make, but as the authors
of this paper point out, classic catchaway peppe is notoriously
(31:28):
difficult to get just right, especially for beginners who haven't
made it a million times and gotten this intuitive feel
for it. The really difficult part to do perfectly is
achieving the right sauce consistency, which I would also argue
is the most difficult part of you know, from like
(31:49):
what you brought up American recipes like macaroni and cheese.
You know, the hardest part to get right is just
the right smoothness of the sauce in the finished product.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
If you don't mix the cheese powder up enough.
Speaker 3 (32:01):
So well, I mean, if you use the powder, you're
using the magic of chemistry there in a way that
really gives you a leg up. I'll get into that
in just a minute. So the classic technique is, you know,
you grind your pepper and you grate your peccorino romano cheese.
You do those ahead of time. Pecorino romano by the way,
if you don't know it, it's kind of a it's
a dry cheese. It's a salty, sharp, slightly gamy tasting
(32:24):
hard cheese made from sheep's milk. You boil pasta in
slightly salted water, and while the pasta boils, some starch
will leach out from the pasta and that gets gelatinized
in the cooking water. This is true anytime you make pasta,
and you reserve at least some of this starchy pasta
water to help build your cheese sauce. Of course, outside
(32:46):
of Cachawa peppe, starchy pasta water is an important ingredient
in building many pasta sauces and just generally in finishing
pasta dishes. So you to finish the dish, you melt
your grated pecorian omano cheese in some of the starchy
cooking water while mixing it up with the pasta. And
this is where a lot of things can go wrong.
(33:08):
If it is too hot, your cheese will not melt
smoothly and it will form these unappetizing lumps, the broken
cheese sauce thing where it's like got these rubbery little
protein clumps in it. If it's not hot enough, your
cheese will not melt fully into the water and it
will not form a sauce. If there is not enough
starch in your pasta cooking water, the melted cheese will
(33:31):
not emulsify, and once again you get the rubbery little
protein clumps. If there is too much starch, the sauce
loses its sauciness and it becomes stiff and unappetizing in
a different way. It's not really saucy. It's more kind
of like a meala or something.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Okay, I have to ask here again. Most of everything
that I know about cooking I learned from following box meals,
and so my wife taught me. So you frequently reached
that step where the instructions say save a little pot
water for later and at times. It often feels to
me like it's almost a magical exercise, Like, no.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
It's really that really does something. Yes, yeah, okay, right,
absolutely does something and does and is more important in
some recipes than others. But yeah, you save a bit
of the pasta cooking water number one, just you have
this hot water on hand, maybe to help thin out
a sauce as you're finishing a pasta in the pan.
But also, it's not just water. It is water that
(34:29):
I mean. For one thing, it's a little bit seasoned
because you salted your cooking water. But more importantly, it
has starch from the pasta in it, which means it's
a little bit thicker than normal water. It has this
thickness and emulsifying capability that starchy water does.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
Oh that's awesome. I had no idea. I just assumed
it was We saved it because it was hot and
it was salty, and maybe there was a little magic
to it. But there is a perfect sense.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Yeah, absolutely a little bit of magic, and it's the starch.
So that's what I'm about to explain. So why does
starch in the water make the cheese sauce smooth instead
of broken and clumpy? It's because cheese contains both fats
and proteins mixed together with some water content as well.
(35:16):
It's basically a matrix of proteins that holds little droplets
of fat dispersed pretty evenly throughout. And when cheese melts,
one thing that happens is that the proteins in the
fats separate. And this is why if you like melt
a piece of cheese in the microwave, you can create
an oily grease slick. The proteins and the fats that
(35:39):
are in you know, when the cheese is not melted,
they're all mixed together. When you melt it, this the
fat separates and it forms this oil slick. And so
this is the fat content separating from the protein matrix.
When cheese is melted in a liquid like water, this
gross clumping can happen because the protein matrix, and this
(36:00):
is going to be mainly the protein casin in a
dairy base, you know, in things like cheese, the proteins,
all the casin proteins, come apart from their matrix and
then the loose proteins begin to bond to each other
and form these rubbery globs of protein. Also in this process.
Of course, the fat leaks out, it gets squeezed out
(36:22):
as the proteins you know, clump together, and it goes
its own way. If it's in water, this will mean
floating and pooling on the top of the water. This
is what you don't want to happen to your cheese sauce.
This is a broken sauce. So when you add starch
to boiling water, the starch gelatinizes and it thickens the water,
(36:42):
making it more viscous than just water on its own.
The thickness of the starchy water prevents the proteins and
fat in melting cheese each from aggregating and sticking to themselves.
So you end up with a smoother sauce with the
fat and the protein distributed more evenly throughout, instead of
(37:04):
rubbery casin clumps where all the proteins are sticking together
and a grease slick floating on top where all the
fat is separate and sticking to itself. But the way
I describe this here is like it is order of
operation sensitive. This is why you can't save an already
broken sauce by adding starch. Once the damage is done,
(37:25):
the starch is not gonna fix it. Starch only protects,
it does not repair. Also, the presence of starch can
only protect the cheese so much. Even in starchy water.
If you overheat the cheese, it will still be torn
asunder and the fats in proteins will separate. So starch
provides some heat protection, but not invincibility to heat. And
(37:49):
this is why the heat in making the cheese sauces
is so important. If you get it too hot, it's
gonna clump up and split no matter what you do.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
This is a stressful recipe.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
Well, yeah, exactly. So it's a simple dish in terms
of ingredients, has got three ingredients apart from the salt
in the water. But getting this desirable smooth sauce in
the end is tricky and it takes a lot of experience.
You know. It's it's something that people make a million times.
You know, they make it over and over and they
get a feel for how it works. You are able
to kind of look at it and feel it as
(38:20):
you're stirring it around and know how much of everything
you need. But what if you don't have that feel? Well,
the authors of this paper examine the whole process in
a much more granular and quantitative way, and they come
up with like specific numerical and chemical recommendations to help
people achieve perfect catchioy pepe if they don't know what
(38:43):
they're doing quote. We identify starch concentration as the key
factor influencing sauce stability with direct implications for practical cooking. Specifically,
we delineate a regime where starch concentrations below one percent
relative to cheese maas lead to the formation of system
wide clumps, a condition determining what we term the mozzarella phase.
(39:08):
That's a bad thing. You don't want your cheese sauce
to turn into mozzarella clumps and corresponding to an unpleasant
and separated sauce. Additionally, we examine the impact of cheese
concentration relative to water at a fixed starch level, observing
a lower critical solution temperature that we theoretically rationalized by
means of a minimal effective free energy model. We further
(39:31):
analyze the effect of a less traditional stabilizer tri sodium citrate,
and observe a sharp transition from the mozzarella phase to
a completely smooth and stable sauce in contrast to starch
stabilized mixtures where the transition is more gradual. Finally, we
present a scientifically optimized recipe based on our findings, enabling
(39:52):
a consistently flawless execution of this classic dish. So they've
got a fool proof method. Now I want to add
that they talk about the alternate method, where instead of starts,
you go with tri sodium citrate. I think a lot
of Italian cooking purists would rebel at the idea of
using sodium citrate to emulsify their cheese sauce, but in
(40:14):
the world of industrial food products, this is one of
the most used additives to ensure a stable emulsion and
to prevent sauces from splitting. Tri sodium citrate is one
of the key ingredients in cheese products that are made
explicitly for melting, things like Velveta and American cheese. Why
do they stay so creamy and not split when they
(40:35):
melt is because they have tri sodium citrate, this emulsifying agent,
which works in part, by the way, by helping prevent
the casin proteins from bonding together in the first place,
so that it like chemically sort of prevents them from clumping.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Okay, so use velvita when making this dish.
Speaker 3 (40:55):
Yes, that's how to get the common section happy. Now,
assuming you don't go with sodium CITRATEE and you're relying
on starch in the pasta water to keep the cheese
sauce smooth, you want to aim, they say, for a
concentration that is between two and three percent of the
cheese weight that you're using. Reading from the paper here quote.
(41:18):
If the starch content is less than one percent of
the cheese weight, the sauce is prone to separating into
unpleasant system sized clumps, corresponding to the mod cyrilla phase
and Figures one and two. On the other hand, exceeding
four percent of starch results in a sauce that becomes
stiff and unappetizing as it cools. Rob This is it's
(41:41):
kind of hard to describe this if I don't know
if you've ever made an over starched pasta, but it
starts to become not really saucy and more like it's
kind of held together by a glue, sort of an
unpleasant gluy texture in between the.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Noodles, like would maybe begin to feel more like a
cheese dip as opposed to a pasta dish.
Speaker 3 (41:59):
Is well, yeah, I mean just it would be too
too sticky and too doughey. Almost in the saw it
becomes less like a sauce and more like a batter.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Okay, I see what you mean.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
Yeah. Then they finally say the ideal range is confirmed
by both taste and texture tests, lies between two and
three percent, ensuring stability and a pleasant consistency. So, for example,
they give exact ratios. They say, you want to make
two servings of catchaway pepe, you would start with three
hundred grams of dried pasta, two hundred grams of cheese,
(42:33):
and then four that two hundred grams of cheese. You
would want five grams of starch in about fifty grams
of water, so you could use a starch like five
grams of corn starch or potato starch dissolved in fifty
grams of water. Traditionally, you get the right amount of
starch here by using feel and by using the pasta
(42:55):
cooking water, sometimes concentrating the starch content by boiling it
down a little bit extra so you concentrate it. This
is called resotata. But this still requires some guesswork. You
just got to like kind of look at it and
know what you're looking for, because obviously you can't practically
measure the starch content of the water once it's already dissolved.
So they say, if you're really looking for an easy shortcut,
(43:18):
you just make your sauce by dissolving five grams of
corn starch or potato starch and fifty grams of water,
heating it gently until it gelatinizes, then melting the cheese
into this mixture to make your sauce. I again, I
don't know if the pasta witch finder would approve, but
that's what they say.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
Yeah, yeah, Like can you imagine the chefs on the
bear doing it? Yeah, fine, that makes sense. They might
do something kind of like sciencey like that. But can
you imagine like stereotypical Italian grandma cooking this way?
Speaker 3 (43:50):
Maybe not right? And once again there you're just getting
into somebody who's done this so many times. They know
it by feel. You don't have to really think about.
You're not measuring out things by weight, You just you
just eyeball it and it comes out right.
Speaker 2 (44:05):
Well, now I'm beginning to understand why I've maybe not
cooked this before and it's maybe not been included in
some of the box meals that I've I've gotten over
the years, and maybe it's just a little too complex.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
Rob, I'd say give it a try, try and make
catchaway Pepe. It's delicious. And you know, the worst scenario
is just like you accidentally overheat it and it gets
a little clumpy and it's like, well that batch wasn't great,
you know, no big loss.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
All right, maybe maybe it is worth the journey. All right,
We're gonna look at one more here fittingly, we're gonna
go from cheese to shoes. This one, this one was
a lot of fun. This one was what made me
(44:54):
smile and then think and then legitimately laugh. It is
the Engineer Design Prize. This prize went to Vikash Kumar
and Sathak Mittal for Smelly Shoes an Opportunity for Shoe
rack Redesign. From the proceedings of the HWWE. I'm to
(45:15):
understand this is the Annual Conference of Indian of the
Indian Society of Ergonomics from and this was a twenty
seventeen presentation. So on the surface, yes, this paper is
funny because it is about smelly shoes, which this is
always going to be a funny concept so long as
you're not around the smelly shoes in question. Smelly shoes
(45:35):
become less funny if you were wearing them, or you're
having to put up with someone in else's smelly shoes.
Speaker 3 (45:40):
Obviously it's even funnier though, if you're imagining smelling them
without knowing whether they are shoes or cheese. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:47):
Yeah, there have been some fun experiments along those lines.
I think we've looked that over in the past. You know,
it depends on the context. If you were expecting to
smell cheese and you smell shoe, you know, then perhaps
you're okay with it. If you're expecting to smell a
shoe and you smell cheese, maybe not so. Context and
smells is extremely important. I think I've gone in this
(46:08):
rant before, but that's my take on the Durian fruit.
The Durian fruit pretty strong smells involved there. But I
think sometimes if one approaches if you approach the Durian
expecting a cheese, thinking of it as kind of a
cheese as fruit or a fruit as cheese, whichever way
it goes, then it makes a lot more sense.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
Well, take it up with the Lord of Darkness in
the Boxer's omen universe.
Speaker 2 (46:33):
Yeah, they did like their Durian. So in this paper,
the authors present everything rather matter of factly. I think
they say, Okay, India can be a hot, sweaty place,
and as with pretty much everywhere else, we may regularly
wash our bodies, and we may regularly wash our clothing,
but not necessarily our shoes, you know, And I think
(46:54):
this holds true. Shoes are sometimes made of leather, or
they're in one way or another a little more complex
in their design. You can't necessarily throw them in the washer,
and then you can't really throw them in the dryer either,
because you know it'll clog up and make that awful
racket and potentially destroy your dryer. So, yeah, we don't
always give the shoe our shoes the same attention we
(47:16):
give our bodies in our clothing.
Speaker 3 (47:18):
I'm gonna admit I am guilty of this. I am
a very hygiene conscious person in terms of body and clothes,
but I do not think enough about keeping shoes clean
same same.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
It's kind of like shoes are just gonna do what
they're gonna do. I have no control over it personally, right,
And so they established this, and okay, all right, we're
all on board with this, we kind of recognize the
universality of this. But their focus then kind of switches
to the use of shoe racks upon entrance to certain
interior spaces, and mainly they're talking about the home and
(47:51):
about you know, shoes off homes in India. I'm also
to understand religious spaces and certain shops and restaurants you know,
may also have these expectations in place, while larger Western
nine space western nized spaces are not going to have that.
I'd be interested to hear from folks out there who
are in India or have been to India. I've never been,
(48:12):
but I have visited countries where there's certainly more of
a custom of shoe removal, and and that's also the
way we do it in our house. We're generally a
shoes off household. And I really loved going to Japan,
where there's a lot of shoes off and pretty much
everywhere has a shoehorn handy, and that spoiled me. Once
I came back, It's like, why are there not shoehorns everywhere?
(48:33):
So now I have like one by the door that
I use, and I'm a little bit offended anywhere I
go that doesn't have a shoehorn.
Speaker 3 (48:40):
The long kind or the short kind.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Oh, the long kind.
Speaker 3 (48:42):
There's the long kind.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Luxurious. I mean, it is one of ages. I guess too,
it makes more sense. But yeah, it's just it feels classy.
Speaker 3 (48:51):
I remember when I was a kid discovering my late
grandfather's long goal themed shoehorn, which was like on this
piece of cane and add a shoehorn on one hand
and like a golf ball grip on the other.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Nice. Yeah, mine's just plain wood that. I still like it.
It's still rather fond of it. So anyway, we've established okay,
we have scenarios where people are wearing shoes to a
house and then upon arrival at the house, they are
taking shoes off, and then where do shoes go, Well,
they go on some sort of a shoe rack, and
they point out they're like numerous different like common designs
(49:28):
for the shoe rack. And once we're into talking about
the design of an item, we're potentially talking about ergonomics,
we're talking about human efficiency and design, and they point
out that generally when we're talking about this, we're talking
about like the physical aspects of the device or a
device or structure. You know, there are so many different
ways to approach ergonomics, and you know, we've all had
(49:51):
some experience with ergonomic design or a lack of ergonomic design,
with everything from like a computer mouse to a doorframe.
Right like, we be designing things that meet us at
least halfway, and we that are that don't force us
to become less human in order to interact with them.
So fair enough, But then they point out that, Okay,
(50:11):
we tend to focus on the physicality of all this,
but we don't think about things like scent, and they
say that we should, and that concerns the shoe rack.
What can we be doing about the design of a
shoe rack, the kind of shoe rack that would be
in the immediate interior of one's home or just outside
one's door, or however it is arranged. What could we
(50:33):
do with the design here to make shoes less pungent?
Speaker 3 (50:38):
A noble goal? It is, yeah, it is, it's.
Speaker 2 (50:41):
It's I mean, it's pretty matter of fact. And they
they point out there, at least as of this publication,
there wasn't really anything in the market like this, So
they ultimately landed on this recommendation a shoe rack that
is fitted with a UVC tube light, with the UV
lighting here targeting the bacteria on and in the shoes
responsible for the shoe odor.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
Okay, I'm following you.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Yeah yeah, and they and they ultimately even arrive at
exactly what kind of exposure they're looking at. They're looking
at about two to three minutes of exposure to the UV
treatment and this would sufficiently eliminate a lot of the
odor associated with the shoe rack, which would then make
interacting with the shoe rack a more pleasant experience, and therefore,
(51:26):
I guess you could say interacting with the home itself
a more pleasant experience. Again, this seems perfectly reasonable. Yeah only,
and only mildly funny. But what I found really hilarious
was the chart on their experimentation with the UV lighting
on the shoe rack. And to be clear, I'm not
making fun of the research or the researchers here, but
just the mental imagery of this legitimate experiment makes me giggle.
(51:51):
So I included the table here for you Joe's Table two.
Exposure time of UVC tube light and odor observed. And
so we get we get exposure in minutes from zero
minutes to fifteen minutes. And then we also have the
foulness of the shoe smell rated as well, and then
(52:12):
the smell doe to UV treatment.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Oh, it's a trade off, yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:17):
And then the observations of what's happening.
Speaker 3 (52:20):
Okay, So how's it go?
Speaker 2 (52:21):
Okay, So I'm not going to just roll through every
detail of it, but let's start it at the on
one side of the chart and then get to the other.
So zero minute exposure, the foul smell on the shoes
is three point five, which for this table, that's maximum.
That's just maximum. Shoe funk smell due to UV treatment
itself is zero, of course, because you haven't done anything
(52:41):
to it. And the observation strong pungent smell, rotten cheese
like smell.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
Whose shoes were these?
Speaker 2 (52:49):
I mean, there's just shoes, all right, So let's go
ahead and crank it up. They crank it up to
two minute minutes of exposure. That reduces the foul smell
of the shoes to point five. So there's a little
bit of funk, but it's greatly reduced from three point five.
And the smell due to UV treatment is zero. And
they say that you just have an extremely low foul
(53:11):
smell and just a mild burnt rubber smell. Okay, And
from here this is where the burnt rubber smell cranks up,
because the next exposure thresholds are four minutes, six minutes,
ten minutes, fifteen minutes, and then the foul smell from
the shoes remains zero throughout, but the smell due to
(53:32):
the UV treatment increases, so eventually you're getting to a
fifteen minute exposure zero foul smell from the shoes, but
a four rating for smell due to UV treatment. And
then they add very strong burnt rubber smell shoe hot
ins extreme In this experiment, they found yes, if you
(53:55):
if you cook the shoes too much, they will no
longer smell a foot funk, but they will be hot
shoes that smell like burning rubber.
Speaker 3 (54:04):
And thirty minutes your shoes become doctor Manhattan exactly.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
So this this certainly made me laugh a bit, but
you know this, the experiment serves the purpose of them
figuring out, Okay, two to three minutes is really all
we need to sufficiently kill the bacteria and cure the
foul smell that is occurring with the shoes.
Speaker 3 (54:24):
I find this inspiring.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
It is it's inspiring. I mean it also outlines some
like additional design challenges here, right, how do you design
a UV powered shoe rack that is going to give
the appropriate amount of UV treatment to any given pair
of shoes without cooking them? And people coming back putting
on their hot shoes on a hot summer day and
(54:47):
their shoes smell like burnt rubber. Obviously they don't want
that either. So you know there's almost a poetry to it.
Too little attention and you have a stinky situation. Too
much attention and you have a different but even more
stinky situation. So you have to find that perfect balance
between the two. Bravo to the authors, absolutely, all right.
Speaker 3 (55:07):
Does that do it for our coverage of the twenty
twenty five Ignobel Prizes?
Speaker 2 (55:11):
I think so. I think we're going to go and
close the book on the Ignobels for this year. But yeah,
hopefully they'll do it again next year and we'll be
back to talk about all new winners around the same time.
Sometimes we cover them, as we did this year, right
after they occur. Other times we come back after on
Cober and cover them a little late after things have
cooled off a little bit because, as is often the case,
(55:32):
the studies that are honored, they often get a lot
of additional circulation and say like the late night comedy
press and so forth. All right, as always, will remind
everyone out there that Stuff to Blow your Mind. It's
primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
We set aside most serious concerns and just talk about
(55:53):
a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (55:55):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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