June 5, 2014 • 34 mins
The Status of Flatus: What is a fart? What's the science behind passing gas and why does volume, frequency and stench very so much from person to person? Answers await, gentle listener, as Robert and Julie discuss the biology behind breaking wind in this classic STBYM podcast episode
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey guys, welcome to Stuff to Blow
your mind. This is Julie Douglas and not with us
today is Robert Lamb, who unfortunately is suffering from a
really kind of horrendous case of laryngitis. So that is
(00:23):
why you do not hear his dulcet tones today. So
we thought we would rerun a favorite of hours for
you guys if you haven't heard it before. It is
all about wind breaking. That's right, farts. The status afflatus
is the actual name of this episode, and we hope
that you guys enjoy it. But before we get into
it and we get into the why and the how
(00:46):
of farts, I want to mention that there have always
been historically champions of windbreaking. Yes, I am talking about
Jonathan Swift, a master of satire and the author of
Gulliver's Travels. Well. He wrote an essay titled The Benefit
of Farting Explained. This was published in seventeen twenty two,
and in it he says it is translated into English
(01:07):
at the request and for the use of the Lady
damp Fart or her fought Shire by Obadiah Fizzle groom
of the stool to the Princess of us Many in Sardinia. Ah,
there you go. And we also had Benjamin Franklin, who
in seventeen eighty one, when he found out that the
Royal Academy at Brussels was requesting a scientific essay and
(01:28):
would award prizes for the best papers, he said, Hey,
here's an essay urging the Academy to discover some drug
wholesome and not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common
food or sauces that shall render the natural discharges of
wind from our bodies not only inoffensive, but agreeable as perfumes. Alright, folks,
(01:50):
I think that's evidence enough that we've been thinking about
this topic for a long time, and that people have
been rethinking it in terms of it being not so
bad of a thing, pretty natural, right in According to
Dr Patricia Raymond, she's an assistant professor of Clinical and
internal medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk. She says,
(02:10):
if you pass gas, in most cases, you're eating more
healthfully than your friends who aren't passing gas, or at
least as much, I suppose, And she says that it
should be a badge of honor. So wind break on,
my friends, wind break on, Julie. What does a fire
breathing dragon have to do with the human digestion system?
(02:31):
A lot, it turns out, in fact, it has a
lot to do with gas and belching. And you guys
know that we we promised that we would roll out
an episode about inflate us, about gas, the toots parts,
you name it. If you promised, it was like a
blood oath to our listeners that we would do a
fart episode. But no one asked for by the way,
(02:52):
no well, no one ever asked for it, but it happens.
And so here it is an entire episode devoted to
the the interesting science of of cutting one as it were.
You said that with a question mark. I think it's no,
it's definitely interesting science. I think it comes down to
the individual listener. I mean, what, what is your individual
(03:12):
relationship with gas and A? Are you the type of
person who is repelled enough to where no amount of
interesting science is really going to make you respect flateut
in any way? Or do you? Or do you? Are
you already totally on board? And in science, the coding
of science can only make flateus all the more exciting.
My feeling is that everybody does it, so everybody should
(03:34):
have an interest in it. Well, everybody does it, but
people do it to different degrees, and people do it
with with varying degrees of pride or or or disgrace. Well.
As as I've shared before, I come from a various
schatological family, so this is a topic that has been
plumbed in the family. I'm not scared to talk about it.
(03:54):
And uh, I feel like there's lots of really great
information here, in particular this idea of this fire breathing dragon,
and this is fascinating to me. This was in Mary
Richard's Gulp. She spoke with a herpetologist, steven S Corp,
who became fixated on the question of why a python
or a boa has an unusually large see Okay, so
(04:18):
I see someone like this little digestive pouch. It's near
the colon and normally you see it implant eating animals,
and so he became obsessed with it. Why why which
is a python have this? So he tried to figure
out the role of the season, whether or not it
was just there, to break down the plant material in
the animal that the python had just ingested. Um, and
(04:39):
he began to actually measure the amount of hydrogen coming
out of a python. Example, like what it was exhaling.
Affort was given a bunch of rats to eat, okay,
So he did that with something called a chromatograph, and
that measured the amount of hydrogen alright. What he actually
found out, though, was that the amount of hydrogen that
(05:00):
was being exhaled by these creatures was enormous. And I
think about this hydrogen concentration is flammable. These guys and
gals were exhaling something about okay, so what does any
of us have to do with belching or gas or
inflate us. Well, it turns out Seaquar has this really
great theory that early Man would stumble across, say, a
(05:24):
python that had just or was in the middle of
digesting a gazelle, and so as you know, the python
would be useless and trying to defend itself. Corrects just
eating this huge meal. Bloated. It's not gonna immediately runoff.
I never rum for another one, right, So early man says,
easy food. I've got dinner tonight. I have two things
(05:46):
for dinner tonight, right, I think that Mary Rich had
described it as Neanderthal for Duncan. Okay, so early man
or woman hauls us off to a campsite, there's a fire,
someone is being you know, joyful, and they began to say,
step on this python's head or they kick it, and
(06:06):
what happens. A huge flood of this hydrogen just rolls
out of the mouth, meets the fire, and then and
then you have a fire breathing reptile. Yeah. So she
course says, think about the thousands and thousands of years
of these tales of bringing down a fire breathing giant
to your campsite, because I could see, on one hand,
(06:27):
someone could be like, whoa that thing can can breathe fire?
I was really I was. I was really lucky that
I didn't get toasted back there, or they'd see what
happened and they realized, well, this thing doesn't actually breathe fire,
but it sure didn't look like it. And I'm going
to claim that it does because I look all the
more awesome for having killed it. Slay it. Right, and
I fast forward, you know, fifty years to modern humans
(06:48):
in eight year olds, all around camp fires trying to
light their farts, right, there. We have a long tradition
of this relationship with gas and man. Yeah, anybody who's
read Mary Roaches Packing from Mars book about the space
program and human space exploration. Uh Now, so there's a
there's a lot of scatological content in here, because you're
talking about sending humans and their digestive systems up into
(07:11):
a strange environment that doesn't necessarily play by the rules,
and at the very least is contained within a very
small space, and inevitably you have astronauts that are going
to pass gas and uh. I believe it was measured
out to be like three coke cans worth of worth
of gas is coming out. So there were a couple
of interesting bits they're involving NASA research. One was a
(07:32):
quest of by um Edwin Murphy UH in an attempt
to find what what the ideal fart profile for an
anstro NOTT would be UM and basically they wanted a
little or no methane or hydrogen, because, as we just
touched on, hydrogen is explosive and methane is not desirable either.
But in his work, this guy Murphy had apparently encountered
(07:52):
one ideal astronaut candidate and then this is the quote
of special interest for further research was the subject who
produced essentially no flateut on one grams dry weight of beans,
as opposed to the average gut, which will during a
peak of flash ones period five or six hours post
being consumption passed anywhere from one to almost three cups
(08:14):
of latest per hour. So, uh, that is particularly interesting.
Interesting not only because NASA that you know wants that
ideal fart profile for an astronaut, or or that you
know you would given the chance, but that there are
individuals that are almost non farthers, which is interesting. It
is amazing to me because I mean, presumably again everybody
(08:38):
does this, and I do think it's very kind of NASA,
by the way, to try to recruit people who don't
do it so much, because, as we discussed in our
Emotions in Space episode, you can get dicey up there,
and if you're next to someone who keeps putt putting,
you know, for six months straight, that that can make
things very tense. So let's talk about fart What is it? Well, basically,
(09:03):
the act of farting, of course, is the means by
which the body rids the colon of unwanted gas. And
by virtue of that unwanted pressure, you have this gas
that builds up and the average person releases between five
and two thousand milli liters of this per day. But
but yeah, what does it consist of? Well, about its
carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and methane and go again,
(09:28):
varying degrees of that depending on the particular fart parton
because some people don't produce methane. I think it's like
only one third of us produce methane yep. And most
of these gases are either swallowed inadvertently when you're eating
your food or released from the food as it is digested.
And uh, it's amazing because when it's in your body
it is odorless, and we don't think of it as
(09:49):
being odorless. Right. And the other key thing that of
the ingredients that I just listed that is odorless, all
the hydrogen, the methane, oxygen, all of it, that is
not the odor using content. It is that that is
responsible for the smell. Yeah, we'll get to that one
percent in a bit. Yeah, spend such a political term
in days. One percent. That's kind of funny to the
(10:11):
whole system exactly. Um, So, as you had mentioned we
do expel quite a bit of it. That the man
who inspired really thoughtful study of how much we expel
and even excessive gas is a man who in nine
complained of a five year epic bout of the twots
he Um. He contacted gas from entrologist Michael Levitt, and
(10:35):
in order to study the man, Lovett had to create
a baseline of normal flattist output so or flatists, I
should say, he recruited volunteers to keep flat too, graphic logs,
logs of gas activity, recording every stirring in every output.
He prefers that actually, but he did, and others have
relied on um studies that use a rectal tube in
(11:00):
collection syringes to determine average output. That is year old
way of trying to figure out how much people are expelling.
So basically the the farting in a jar scenario. Yeah,
but a little bit more foolproof and a lot more
going on, and the syringes there just to extract the
molecules and then to to figure out what sort of
(11:21):
molecules are in there. Um. These days, hydrogen output is
measured in the breath because a fixed percentage of hydrogen
produced in the colon, is absorbed into the blood, and
when it reaches the lungs, it's exhaled. Now, what he
found was that this man was passing gas thirty four
to forty two times a day. Okay, the baseline average
(11:42):
here of the humans who doesn't have any lactose intolerance
problems is about fourteen to twenty times a day in
case you're wondering. So the problem that they've finally figured
out is that he was lactose intolerant. And as we
learned before, lactose does not get broken down for some
people in the digestive excuse me, in the small intestines
(12:04):
hangs out in the colon, and then you have other
bacteria which we're breaking that down, and then you've got
the waste product of that bacteria, and you've got a
bunch of bunch of bunch of hydrogen being produced there. Yes,
of course, we're talking about humans as a whole in
regards to UH to flate us. But you can't help
but get into gender scenarios when you start thinking about
(12:25):
In fact, one of the articles that we were looking
at UH the art, the author made a point of
saying that men as as a whole. And she's really
generalizing here and painting with a very broad brush, and
I skilled her for it that all men are just
enthusiastic about their gas and just love it and crave
it and and laugh at it all the time. Yeah,
(12:45):
and model it. Really, I am not one of those men.
Like maybe that is the more baseline relationship between men
and fart, but I, for my own self, I don't
engage that style of humor. For the most part, I
will laugh at a fart joke if it is well
crafted um or in some way, you know, insightful. Um.
There have been occasionally they'll get me, like the Pristance.
(13:08):
There was a Sarah Silverman Show episode that was very
far heavy. She's she likes the farts. Yeah, and occasionally
that will work. I mean it's it's the right fart shop.
But as a whole, I do not. I'm more of
a stereotypical If you're gonna go with these stereotypes, I'm
more of a stereotypical woman when it comes to fart
gags and in self gas production than a stereotypical man. Okay,
(13:30):
so what I'm hearing is that you don't have a
cellar full of darts. No, I do not. Okay, all right,
this is good um. And it's interesting that you bring
out the stereotypes because you know, if it's were the
Victorian age, we would say, oh, well, women just don't
produce gas at all, right, it wouldn't even be a question.
But we do have data on it, and it turns
(13:50):
out that women have are seemed to be expelling more
gas than men as measured by the hydrogen exhaled. But
Mary Roach questions this and says in her book, could
it be that the suppression of gas could lead to
a higher input of hydrogen exhalation? So maybe if you're
(14:14):
going with the stereotypical um, I almos, dont want to
say stereotypical female, but let's say, let's go with if
you're going with a fart avoidant person like myself, then
they are going to be less inclined to just let
it rip whenever the mood hits them. Right, So if
you suppress it, then you're going to absorb more of
it through your bloodstream and then you're going to exhale mark. Oh,
(14:35):
so the way you're kind of reversing it and farting
into your body, into your bloods you're just breath farting, okay, right,
and that makes it really a lovely thought, doesn't it. Yeah,
I think about that next time you you give your
significant other nice little kiss. Yeah, you know, I I do.
I should add one point about that ladies and farting.
I did work in a newspaper once and an individual
(14:58):
in the front office was terminated for engaging in a
farting contest with a with a with a customer. It
was it was quite understand it. It seems like it
was mutual farting. So I guess it was just like, hey,
this is a we're going to make an example of you.
We just fart with the customer. Maybe, you know, there
could have been some other politics involved, or maybe it
was just kind of this unwritten rule where if your
(15:18):
customer comes in and celebrates his or her farts, that's fine,
but then you were not supposed to then engage with
them in a contest of farts or you know, it's
it's kind of like it's it's okay, the customer uses
foul language to a point, but you're in then not
supposed to engage them in that kind of behavior. I guess, well,
maybe maybe she showed him up. Maybe she shamed him
(15:40):
and they lost a customer because of it. Was this
a gastrontrology office, No, this was a newspaper with We
didn't even have a flatest section, you know, just business
and sports. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know that I can
recover from that story. I feel like I need time
to think about that and chuckle. But we must go on,
so I'm just gonna chuckle about that later. Um, all right,
(16:00):
so let's talk about this or should we take a break?
Oh yeah, let's take a break. Why not. When we
come back, we will discuss the one percent of the
fart that is responsible for the smell. We'll talk about
extraordinary cases of flateust. We'll talk about people who have
elevated um passing gas to an art form, and also
(16:23):
the big question, if you're in microgravity, can you propel
yourself across a space ship just by virtue of your own? Uh? Flateus? Alright,
we're back. So, as we've discussed of FLATEUS is carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen,
(16:47):
and methane. And uh these are coming from stuff that
either gases that are inadvertently swallowed or it's released from
the food as we're digesting it. But none of it
produces the signature odors and it varies certainly, as we
can attest to. None of these elements contribute to the odor.
Is just a tiny one that makes the gas so foul,
(17:08):
that's right, that creates that singular bouquet of smell. Micros
really live for the most part in the colon, where
they attack and consume undigested food and in turn generate
their own waste products. So in the case of microorganisms,
waste usually means gas, and in the case of these
microorganism organisms, that gas can be the really ripe stuff,
(17:30):
usually molecules containing sulfur like dimethyl sulfide and method methyl um.
These are waste products that ferment and they build up
to a sufficient level and then they're released with the
rest of the gas in the bowels. And by the way,
we talked about this before, the birth of a fart
happens when uh, you're stretch receptors um in your colon
(17:54):
send a signal to your brain, Hey, I'm having some discomfort,
and then this fincter is loosened up and and and
the message maybe when you get a chance, please do
something about this or maybe this is really important. So
the next time you even have like a heavy thought
in the back of your head, um, we're gonna just
go ahead and let it go, even a heavy Yeah, yeah,
(18:16):
that's right. The brain will sit there and respond and say, Okay,
now you gotta tampa down, sorry, spincter, or yep, we're
overloaded here alright. So what brave soul figured out the
scent profile of flatus. Well, the same Michael Levitt who
helped to determine the output of late us also studies
the qualities of gas. These smell profiles, he recruited volunteers
(18:41):
to detect the three main elements of a heart so
hydrogen sulfide, which is described as the scent of rotten
eggs uh meth and methiel that is described as rotting vegetation,
and dimethyl sulfide, which is oddly described as sweet mhm. Yes.
So he didn't do this as a cruel joke. I mean,
(19:03):
he wasn't just trying to you know, terrorize people with smells.
He wanted to see if the noxiousness of the scent
would correlate with the combined concentrations of these three types
of sulfur gases and it did. So the best part
of this, all this information is he took the data
and he reversed engineer to fart so he could use
(19:26):
the combined concentrations in other scenarios. Would would it be
safe to call this a frank and fart? Yes, it
would be absolutely Um it's a frank and fart. And
he wanted to figure out the absorptive properties of charcoal
underpants or seat pads, which, by the way, is of
interest to the airline industry. Which makes sense, right, I
(19:46):
think that I said, go, airline industry, put charcoal in
the seat pad. Any degree to which you can cut
down on the on the amount of flatus in that
enclosed space on a long flight, the better, Yeah, exactly.
In speaking of a long fight or a spacewalk, NASA
actually has used filters in the air circulation in space
suits with charcoal to help bind sulfur and then prevent
(20:11):
the astronauts from getting drive by farted every time the
air is recirculated. Yeah, because if they build up enough
along enough space walk, then fart madness ensues. I've heard
about fart madness, isn't earth. There are a lot of
I was looking on snopes to see if there were
any particular urban legends related to the farting of note,
and one of them was this bit that occasionally circulates
(20:33):
an emails about a man who who died because he
farted under the covers and uh and had the covers
up over his head. But that's just complete malarkey. That's
just a Dutch Oven. Yes, so so yeah, so death
by by death by by Dutch Oven not really a thing. Yeah,
And you can't try to, I mean, just for fun
Dutch Oven astronauts, right, No, No, I mean they go
(20:55):
through enough in the training. I'm sure they were, like,
you know, after you've been in that spinny thing than
I mean, we've all seen the right stuff. They went
through a lot of horrible things to to prove themselves
and to and to you know, to get their bodies
in shape and prepare themselves for this this experience in orbit.
So and keep in mind that the air in their
space suits is actually recirculated three times a minute. So
(21:16):
now another interesting bit from Mary Roach's book, Packing for Mars.
She talked to an astronaut by the name of Roger Crouch,
and he was particularly interested in the idea of propelling
yourself through a microgravity environment like aboard the space station
via your own farts, and he said that the mass
and velocity of the expelled gas is very small compared
(21:38):
to the mass of the human body. So he tested
it out found that it produced no real effect, though
he did, uh, he did have this theory that the
underpants and the pants might be um prohibiting the expulsion
of gas, and so he but he did not get
to test this naked, but he apparently has lingering thoughts
that that nude farting in Mike gravity would potentially give
(22:02):
you at least a little push across the cabin. Yeah,
that really is not going to win the hearts and
minds of your fellow astronauts or space if you just
drop trial and then try to propel yourself with your
own parts. Can you imagine the dudas doing like the
crying in space videos and all the different viral videos
Colonel have Feld, Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if he's
on board for this. That's gonna be a big shock
(22:25):
when that when that YouTube video rolls out, that might
be the one that never really makes it to be right. So, though,
if you were going to do that experiment without underpants
and really truly tested, you would want to eat the
gassiest inducing foods that you could. And it turns out
that the most eruptive edibles are beans, carrots, raisins, bananas
(22:47):
just odd to me onions not odd milk and milk
products for the very reasons that we talked before about
milk being hard to digest and break down as opposed
to something like um, what say, meat, fish, great berries,
these are these have the least amount of complex carbohydrates.
It's it's this, uh, this really damning conundrum that that
(23:11):
I that I have encountered, and then I think a
number of people encountered that the healthier that you try
to eat. You know, you're trying, you're trying to eat
all these vegetables and these whole grains and lintels and beans,
and it's just it's making you're gassier, and you feel
like you're being punished for this diet. Uh. Dr Robert
Lustig even put it this way. He said, in life,
you have two choices, it's either fat or fart. So yeah,
(23:36):
it's true, like if you were to radically change your
diet from say a meat and a very little um
vegetable diet to grains and vegetables. You would really need
to set aside a couple of days to transition into that. Kid.
You not, Well, there's that great Portlandia sketch where they
go to the restaurant that has the raw food. It's
like an all raw food place, and they actually have
(23:57):
a a flateist patio with fans, the patio far patio.
That is just one of my favorite things, one of
those that that clip is just great because it's not
hearty horror laugh laugh, but it kind of speaks to
that whole experience when you do go to a rough
foods restaurant or a vegan restaurant and the result of
that afterwards, they just kind of brought it more to
(24:19):
the forefront. Yeah, it's it's a it's a clever bit
of of parody there and uh and and commentary. So
that's that is a fart gag that I at least
chuckle that sure, because really, when you get down to it,
every restaurant should have a fart patio. Now, as we
mentioned before, you you have a very rare individual like
the the individual that NASA uncovered who barely farted at all.
(24:42):
Just the one person in the world, the one person
this mutant that that barely produces any flatus. But then
there is there's another side of that coin as well.
There the super fartre's the the extraordinary flat went individuals
that that make life so interesting. There's just thought that
some people have types of bacteria that produce more sulfur
(25:03):
than other people, so that could be part of it.
Diet is certainly part of it. And then of course,
as we mentioned earlier, some people are gonna have different
concentrations of hydrogen and methane, so some people are going
to be more explosive, which is UH. And I feel
like we've discussed this before, but it's it's more of
a serious issue when there's some sort of surgical procedure
going on, you know, with the colon UH in which
(25:26):
you're going to have to cauterize wounds with a heat element.
That heat element plus hydrogen methane that's built up that
can have literally an explosive reaction, which is not good
for anybody involved in that procedure. Now, I believe there's
an ignoble prize that was given out this right, that's
where we discussed it before, but we Normally we say
it's just it's really very funny stuff, but this one
(25:48):
um study was very serious because like, you know, what
if if you are doing this procedure on someone, if
someone has a pole up and you're moving it, uh,
you don't want them to explode and die, right, So
that's that's one of the things that doctors have been
really cognizant of, and these days they actually pipe in
a little air um and air that doesn't have flammable
(26:09):
carbon dioxide as well to try to dilute any methane
or hydrogen that might be left over. Although for anybody
who's gone to the guts or intrologists and and had
one of these procedures like a colonoscopy, then you know
that there's a lot of prep work ahead of time
to try to remove anything that might antagonize or create
a spark in your rectum. Another aspect of inflate us
(26:33):
in in the medical community is that it can actually
be used as a disease fighter sort of. I mean
it's more like a canary in the coal mine, So
doctors can actually identify toughest spot viral or bacterial infections
of the gut in someone's gas So what they do
is they just perform this test where they collect a
(26:54):
stool sample and then they try to take the gases
um and they extract those gases from a aren't needle
and then they figure out the flateus molecules and the
machine then will analyze these molecules and tell you what
the infection. Is. Pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Discussing
the various smell profiles of human flatus UH and ultimately
(27:18):
human waste. I keep coming back to horse excrement because really,
if you smelled horse excrement, it's really the best excrement
out there, you know, Like if you had to be
around a bunch of poop all day, it's really hard
to go wrong with horse. Yeah, Or you used to
used to work at a zoo, so you know that
there are various odors related to different different animals leavings,
(27:42):
and some of them were more pleasant than others. So yeah,
it was funny because I worked in the administrative building,
but the keepers would come in and they had all
sorts of smell molecules stuck to their bodies. So they
might have been working with the Zeeber's that day, who knows,
But they passed by the elephants, and that took it
all down. So the elephant not a good smell profile.
(28:02):
But the horse, the horse, I think is a good
good smell profile. So what do you think about the
latest artist? Ah? Yes, do you think they're even concerned
with the scent profile? Well, it's it's interesting because first
of all, I should I should back up and say
that I was not aware of this until about a
year ago. I was recovering from Wisdom Tooth Removal, and
(28:26):
I was I was on pain pills and I was
taking I was reading the book Madeline is Sweeping by
Sarah Shoon Leen Binnum, which is a very dreamy book anyway,
It's like a dream within a dream with all this
surreal stuff happening. And then on top of that, I
was a little loopy um from everything else that was
going on. But one of the characters that shows up
is a fart artist or a fartist if you will,
(28:50):
or a flatest or a flatty wist, but not a flattist,
not a flautist. That's uh, that's something that's something different entirely.
But turns out there's one individual that was a particular
note and it was this was a Frenchman whose real
name was Joseph Pugel Uh lived eight fifty seven to five,
but his stage name was Domain Uh, and he was
(29:14):
known for having remarkable control over his abdominal muscles and
uh he seemed to be able to just fart at will,
just NonStop, just well beyond the three coke cans of
flatists that any normal individual could could muster. But there
was a secret to what he could actually do. Um
he Uh. He had again phenomenal control over the muscles
(29:39):
down there, particularly the anal sphincter muscles, and he could
actually inhale air through the shincter and then release it.
So he wasn't that he was releasing gas that was
built up as part of this natural farting process that
we've discussed in this episode. Rather he was inhaling air
into the rectum and then releasing it again. Wow. So
(30:00):
we talked about reverse feeding in our last podcast. Yeah, yeah, right, Yeah.
It's kind of like if you've ever been generally you'll
occasionally count our kid who's doing this where they'll burp
over and over again because they're inhaling the air and
then they're brobing inhaling the air, and then burping. He
was doing the same thing, but with his bottom. I
would love to tell some stories about my family, but
(30:20):
I don't think that would be correct. All I can
say is that I think maybe in past generations we've
had some artists excellent. So anyway, on that note, we
should probably bring closure to this. Yes, let's let's call
over the robot. Well, that was a robotic fart, I know,
(30:45):
but really, I mean, I thought this was a really
classy episode on farts, and here Arnie had to come
and stick up the joint. It doesn't really smell. I
mean it just it smells like a train passing in
a subway or something, you know, kind of not really,
but don't do it again. Okay, here's some mail from
our robot. This one is from Adam Adam Rights, and
he's for solving to responding to our episode Eating Alive,
(31:07):
where we talked about the prospect of being swallowed whole
by a sperm whale. And he says, Okay, let's say
I was swallowed whole by a whale. I'm alive and
uninjured in the pre stomach. The situation looks grim, but
alas all hope is not lost, because how did I
get there. I was inspecting a gaping maw of a
giant whale while scuba diving. I have a full tank
of air and a very sharp dive knife, as does
(31:29):
any diver. Worth is salt and a healthy desire to live.
What are my chances of jabbing and slicing my way
to freedom? Slim to none? Well, uh, yeah, it's a
tough one because certainly, those the squid that are being
swallowed by the sperm whale, they have rather tough beaks,
so they don't have any bones otherwise, so they can
(31:50):
kind of they're sort of jelatinous in the way that
they can contort their bodies. Yeah, but they could they
have the ability to to use that beak on the predator.
They're able to to use their their their little suction
cups with the with the the sharp things. And then
you see the scars and the sides of sperm whales
where they've they've suckered and and and picked at them,
(32:12):
and well that's creates the amber kies right there. Yeah. Yeah,
and then yeah, and then of course once they passed
the the beaks on they we discussed in that episode
end up scarring the side of the intestinal walls. So
I don't I feel like if you were too to
try to use that knife and fight your way out,
that you're just it's gonna cause the sperm whale to
(32:32):
really gnash its teeth even more. Yeah, and and chaos
wouldn't sue. Yeah, No, it hasn't already. Yeah, I'm thinking that.
I mean, certainly you're not going to cut your way out.
I guess the only the only possibility here was if
you somehow create enough of the disturbance to where it
vomits you. Oh right, if you could just stick your
finger down its throat. Yeah, Or I think I think
(32:55):
Pinocchio escaped by started they started a little fire, right,
and the smoke builds up, and then then the creature
sneezes everyone free. So this is kind of you. Obviously
you're not going to start a fire in there, um,
but if you were to stab away and start stabbing
the size, would you possibly be able to get those
firm let us pit you up? Well, I tend to
doubt it. If you had a little pocket of poison,
(33:16):
but then you're going to expose yourself to that poison
as well. Right, I'm trying to think of ways that
you could make it regurgitate. I don't know. I bet,
I bet you guys out there might have some idea.
Think it over. I would like to to hear some
people's thoughts and man and hey, mate, you know, if
you get a spare moment here and there, maybe I'll
try and contact an expert on this. Someone who's survived
thinks walled by the way. All you all right? There
(33:41):
you go. Everything you may or may not have wanted
to know about cutting the cheese, breaking the wind, crop dusting,
farting latest my friends. Um, if you would like to
know more about some of the episodes that we create,
and I'm talking about podcast episodes as well as video,
make sure that you visit stuff to Blow your Mind
(34:02):
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We're not scared. You can do that at blow the
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(34:24):
dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey guys, welcome to Stuff to Blow
your mind. This is Julie Douglas and not with us
today is Robert Lamb, who unfortunately is suffering from a
really kind of horrendous case of laryngitis. So that is
(00:23):
why you do not hear his dulcet tones today. So
we thought we would rerun a favorite of hours for
you guys if you haven't heard it before. It is
all about wind breaking. That's right, farts. The status afflatus
is the actual name of this episode, and we hope
that you guys enjoy it. But before we get into
it and we get into the why and the how
(00:46):
of farts, I want to mention that there have always
been historically champions of windbreaking. Yes, I am talking about
Jonathan Swift, a master of satire and the author of
Gulliver's Travels. Well. He wrote an essay titled The Benefit
of Farting Explained. This was published in seventeen twenty two,
and in it he says it is translated into English
(01:07):
at the request and for the use of the Lady
damp Fart or her fought Shire by Obadiah Fizzle groom
of the stool to the Princess of us Many in Sardinia. Ah,
there you go. And we also had Benjamin Franklin, who
in seventeen eighty one, when he found out that the
Royal Academy at Brussels was requesting a scientific essay and
(01:28):
would award prizes for the best papers, he said, Hey,
here's an essay urging the Academy to discover some drug
wholesome and not disagreeable, to be mixed with our common
food or sauces that shall render the natural discharges of
wind from our bodies not only inoffensive, but agreeable as perfumes. Alright, folks,
(01:50):
I think that's evidence enough that we've been thinking about
this topic for a long time, and that people have
been rethinking it in terms of it being not so
bad of a thing, pretty natural, right in According to
Dr Patricia Raymond, she's an assistant professor of Clinical and
internal medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk. She says,
(02:10):
if you pass gas, in most cases, you're eating more
healthfully than your friends who aren't passing gas, or at
least as much, I suppose, And she says that it
should be a badge of honor. So wind break on,
my friends, wind break on, Julie. What does a fire
breathing dragon have to do with the human digestion system?
(02:31):
A lot, it turns out, in fact, it has a
lot to do with gas and belching. And you guys
know that we we promised that we would roll out
an episode about inflate us, about gas, the toots parts,
you name it. If you promised, it was like a
blood oath to our listeners that we would do a
fart episode. But no one asked for by the way,
(02:52):
no well, no one ever asked for it, but it happens.
And so here it is an entire episode devoted to
the the interesting science of of cutting one as it were.
You said that with a question mark. I think it's no,
it's definitely interesting science. I think it comes down to
the individual listener. I mean, what, what is your individual
(03:12):
relationship with gas and A? Are you the type of
person who is repelled enough to where no amount of
interesting science is really going to make you respect flateut
in any way? Or do you? Or do you? Are
you already totally on board? And in science, the coding
of science can only make flateus all the more exciting.
My feeling is that everybody does it, so everybody should
(03:34):
have an interest in it. Well, everybody does it, but
people do it to different degrees, and people do it
with with varying degrees of pride or or or disgrace. Well.
As as I've shared before, I come from a various
schatological family, so this is a topic that has been
plumbed in the family. I'm not scared to talk about it.
(03:54):
And uh, I feel like there's lots of really great
information here, in particular this idea of this fire breathing dragon,
and this is fascinating to me. This was in Mary
Richard's Gulp. She spoke with a herpetologist, steven S Corp,
who became fixated on the question of why a python
or a boa has an unusually large see Okay, so
(04:18):
I see someone like this little digestive pouch. It's near
the colon and normally you see it implant eating animals,
and so he became obsessed with it. Why why which
is a python have this? So he tried to figure
out the role of the season, whether or not it
was just there, to break down the plant material in
the animal that the python had just ingested. Um, and
(04:39):
he began to actually measure the amount of hydrogen coming
out of a python. Example, like what it was exhaling.
Affort was given a bunch of rats to eat, okay,
So he did that with something called a chromatograph, and
that measured the amount of hydrogen alright. What he actually
found out, though, was that the amount of hydrogen that
(05:00):
was being exhaled by these creatures was enormous. And I
think about this hydrogen concentration is flammable. These guys and
gals were exhaling something about okay, so what does any
of us have to do with belching or gas or
inflate us. Well, it turns out Seaquar has this really
great theory that early Man would stumble across, say, a
(05:24):
python that had just or was in the middle of
digesting a gazelle, and so as you know, the python
would be useless and trying to defend itself. Corrects just
eating this huge meal. Bloated. It's not gonna immediately runoff.
I never rum for another one, right, So early man says,
easy food. I've got dinner tonight. I have two things
(05:46):
for dinner tonight, right, I think that Mary Rich had
described it as Neanderthal for Duncan. Okay, so early man
or woman hauls us off to a campsite, there's a fire,
someone is being you know, joyful, and they began to say,
step on this python's head or they kick it, and
(06:06):
what happens. A huge flood of this hydrogen just rolls
out of the mouth, meets the fire, and then and
then you have a fire breathing reptile. Yeah. So she
course says, think about the thousands and thousands of years
of these tales of bringing down a fire breathing giant
to your campsite, because I could see, on one hand,
(06:27):
someone could be like, whoa that thing can can breathe fire?
I was really I was. I was really lucky that
I didn't get toasted back there, or they'd see what
happened and they realized, well, this thing doesn't actually breathe fire,
but it sure didn't look like it. And I'm going
to claim that it does because I look all the
more awesome for having killed it. Slay it. Right, and
I fast forward, you know, fifty years to modern humans
(06:48):
in eight year olds, all around camp fires trying to
light their farts, right, there. We have a long tradition
of this relationship with gas and man. Yeah, anybody who's
read Mary Roaches Packing from Mars book about the space
program and human space exploration. Uh Now, so there's a
there's a lot of scatological content in here, because you're
talking about sending humans and their digestive systems up into
(07:11):
a strange environment that doesn't necessarily play by the rules,
and at the very least is contained within a very
small space, and inevitably you have astronauts that are going
to pass gas and uh. I believe it was measured
out to be like three coke cans worth of worth
of gas is coming out. So there were a couple
of interesting bits they're involving NASA research. One was a
(07:32):
quest of by um Edwin Murphy UH in an attempt
to find what what the ideal fart profile for an
anstro NOTT would be UM and basically they wanted a
little or no methane or hydrogen, because, as we just
touched on, hydrogen is explosive and methane is not desirable either.
But in his work, this guy Murphy had apparently encountered
(07:52):
one ideal astronaut candidate and then this is the quote
of special interest for further research was the subject who
produced essentially no flateut on one grams dry weight of beans,
as opposed to the average gut, which will during a
peak of flash ones period five or six hours post
being consumption passed anywhere from one to almost three cups
(08:14):
of latest per hour. So, uh, that is particularly interesting.
Interesting not only because NASA that you know wants that
ideal fart profile for an astronaut, or or that you
know you would given the chance, but that there are
individuals that are almost non farthers, which is interesting. It
is amazing to me because I mean, presumably again everybody
(08:38):
does this, and I do think it's very kind of NASA,
by the way, to try to recruit people who don't
do it so much, because, as we discussed in our
Emotions in Space episode, you can get dicey up there,
and if you're next to someone who keeps putt putting,
you know, for six months straight, that that can make
things very tense. So let's talk about fart What is it? Well, basically,
(09:03):
the act of farting, of course, is the means by
which the body rids the colon of unwanted gas. And
by virtue of that unwanted pressure, you have this gas
that builds up and the average person releases between five
and two thousand milli liters of this per day. But
but yeah, what does it consist of? Well, about its
carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and methane and go again,
(09:28):
varying degrees of that depending on the particular fart parton
because some people don't produce methane. I think it's like
only one third of us produce methane yep. And most
of these gases are either swallowed inadvertently when you're eating
your food or released from the food as it is digested.
And uh, it's amazing because when it's in your body
it is odorless, and we don't think of it as
(09:49):
being odorless. Right. And the other key thing that of
the ingredients that I just listed that is odorless, all
the hydrogen, the methane, oxygen, all of it, that is
not the odor using content. It is that that is
responsible for the smell. Yeah, we'll get to that one
percent in a bit. Yeah, spend such a political term
in days. One percent. That's kind of funny to the
(10:11):
whole system exactly. Um, So, as you had mentioned we
do expel quite a bit of it. That the man
who inspired really thoughtful study of how much we expel
and even excessive gas is a man who in nine
complained of a five year epic bout of the twots
he Um. He contacted gas from entrologist Michael Levitt, and
(10:35):
in order to study the man, Lovett had to create
a baseline of normal flattist output so or flatists, I
should say, he recruited volunteers to keep flat too, graphic logs,
logs of gas activity, recording every stirring in every output.
He prefers that actually, but he did, and others have
relied on um studies that use a rectal tube in
(11:00):
collection syringes to determine average output. That is year old
way of trying to figure out how much people are expelling.
So basically the the farting in a jar scenario. Yeah,
but a little bit more foolproof and a lot more
going on, and the syringes there just to extract the
molecules and then to to figure out what sort of
(11:21):
molecules are in there. Um. These days, hydrogen output is
measured in the breath because a fixed percentage of hydrogen
produced in the colon, is absorbed into the blood, and
when it reaches the lungs, it's exhaled. Now, what he
found was that this man was passing gas thirty four
to forty two times a day. Okay, the baseline average
(11:42):
here of the humans who doesn't have any lactose intolerance
problems is about fourteen to twenty times a day in
case you're wondering. So the problem that they've finally figured
out is that he was lactose intolerant. And as we
learned before, lactose does not get broken down for some
people in the digestive excuse me, in the small intestines
(12:04):
hangs out in the colon, and then you have other
bacteria which we're breaking that down, and then you've got
the waste product of that bacteria, and you've got a
bunch of bunch of bunch of hydrogen being produced there. Yes,
of course, we're talking about humans as a whole in
regards to UH to flate us. But you can't help
but get into gender scenarios when you start thinking about
(12:25):
In fact, one of the articles that we were looking
at UH the art, the author made a point of
saying that men as as a whole. And she's really
generalizing here and painting with a very broad brush, and
I skilled her for it that all men are just
enthusiastic about their gas and just love it and crave
it and and laugh at it all the time. Yeah,
(12:45):
and model it. Really, I am not one of those men.
Like maybe that is the more baseline relationship between men
and fart, but I, for my own self, I don't
engage that style of humor. For the most part, I
will laugh at a fart joke if it is well
crafted um or in some way, you know, insightful. Um.
There have been occasionally they'll get me, like the Pristance.
(13:08):
There was a Sarah Silverman Show episode that was very
far heavy. She's she likes the farts. Yeah, and occasionally
that will work. I mean it's it's the right fart shop.
But as a whole, I do not. I'm more of
a stereotypical If you're gonna go with these stereotypes, I'm
more of a stereotypical woman when it comes to fart
gags and in self gas production than a stereotypical man. Okay,
(13:30):
so what I'm hearing is that you don't have a
cellar full of darts. No, I do not. Okay, all right,
this is good um. And it's interesting that you bring
out the stereotypes because you know, if it's were the
Victorian age, we would say, oh, well, women just don't
produce gas at all, right, it wouldn't even be a question.
But we do have data on it, and it turns
(13:50):
out that women have are seemed to be expelling more
gas than men as measured by the hydrogen exhaled. But
Mary Roach questions this and says in her book, could
it be that the suppression of gas could lead to
a higher input of hydrogen exhalation? So maybe if you're
(14:14):
going with the stereotypical um, I almos, dont want to
say stereotypical female, but let's say, let's go with if
you're going with a fart avoidant person like myself, then
they are going to be less inclined to just let
it rip whenever the mood hits them. Right, So if
you suppress it, then you're going to absorb more of
it through your bloodstream and then you're going to exhale mark. Oh,
(14:35):
so the way you're kind of reversing it and farting
into your body, into your bloods you're just breath farting, okay, right,
and that makes it really a lovely thought, doesn't it. Yeah,
I think about that next time you you give your
significant other nice little kiss. Yeah, you know, I I do.
I should add one point about that ladies and farting.
I did work in a newspaper once and an individual
(14:58):
in the front office was terminated for engaging in a
farting contest with a with a with a customer. It
was it was quite understand it. It seems like it
was mutual farting. So I guess it was just like, hey,
this is a we're going to make an example of you.
We just fart with the customer. Maybe, you know, there
could have been some other politics involved, or maybe it
was just kind of this unwritten rule where if your
(15:18):
customer comes in and celebrates his or her farts, that's fine,
but then you were not supposed to then engage with
them in a contest of farts or you know, it's
it's kind of like it's it's okay, the customer uses
foul language to a point, but you're in then not
supposed to engage them in that kind of behavior. I guess, well,
maybe maybe she showed him up. Maybe she shamed him
(15:40):
and they lost a customer because of it. Was this
a gastrontrology office, No, this was a newspaper with We
didn't even have a flatest section, you know, just business
and sports. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know that I can
recover from that story. I feel like I need time
to think about that and chuckle. But we must go on,
so I'm just gonna chuckle about that later. Um, all right,
(16:00):
so let's talk about this or should we take a break?
Oh yeah, let's take a break. Why not. When we
come back, we will discuss the one percent of the
fart that is responsible for the smell. We'll talk about
extraordinary cases of flateust. We'll talk about people who have
elevated um passing gas to an art form, and also
(16:23):
the big question, if you're in microgravity, can you propel
yourself across a space ship just by virtue of your own? Uh? Flateus? Alright,
we're back. So, as we've discussed of FLATEUS is carbon dioxide, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen,
(16:47):
and methane. And uh these are coming from stuff that
either gases that are inadvertently swallowed or it's released from
the food as we're digesting it. But none of it
produces the signature odors and it varies certainly, as we
can attest to. None of these elements contribute to the odor.
Is just a tiny one that makes the gas so foul,
(17:08):
that's right, that creates that singular bouquet of smell. Micros
really live for the most part in the colon, where
they attack and consume undigested food and in turn generate
their own waste products. So in the case of microorganisms,
waste usually means gas, and in the case of these
microorganism organisms, that gas can be the really ripe stuff,
(17:30):
usually molecules containing sulfur like dimethyl sulfide and method methyl um.
These are waste products that ferment and they build up
to a sufficient level and then they're released with the
rest of the gas in the bowels. And by the way,
we talked about this before, the birth of a fart
happens when uh, you're stretch receptors um in your colon
(17:54):
send a signal to your brain, Hey, I'm having some discomfort,
and then this fincter is loosened up and and and
the message maybe when you get a chance, please do
something about this or maybe this is really important. So
the next time you even have like a heavy thought
in the back of your head, um, we're gonna just
go ahead and let it go, even a heavy Yeah, yeah,
(18:16):
that's right. The brain will sit there and respond and say, Okay,
now you gotta tampa down, sorry, spincter, or yep, we're
overloaded here alright. So what brave soul figured out the
scent profile of flatus. Well, the same Michael Levitt who
helped to determine the output of late us also studies
the qualities of gas. These smell profiles, he recruited volunteers
(18:41):
to detect the three main elements of a heart so
hydrogen sulfide, which is described as the scent of rotten
eggs uh meth and methiel that is described as rotting vegetation,
and dimethyl sulfide, which is oddly described as sweet mhm. Yes.
So he didn't do this as a cruel joke. I mean,
(19:03):
he wasn't just trying to you know, terrorize people with smells.
He wanted to see if the noxiousness of the scent
would correlate with the combined concentrations of these three types
of sulfur gases and it did. So the best part
of this, all this information is he took the data
and he reversed engineer to fart so he could use
(19:26):
the combined concentrations in other scenarios. Would would it be
safe to call this a frank and fart? Yes, it
would be absolutely Um it's a frank and fart. And
he wanted to figure out the absorptive properties of charcoal
underpants or seat pads, which, by the way, is of
interest to the airline industry. Which makes sense, right, I
(19:46):
think that I said, go, airline industry, put charcoal in
the seat pad. Any degree to which you can cut
down on the on the amount of flatus in that
enclosed space on a long flight, the better, Yeah, exactly.
In speaking of a long fight or a spacewalk, NASA
actually has used filters in the air circulation in space
suits with charcoal to help bind sulfur and then prevent
(20:11):
the astronauts from getting drive by farted every time the
air is recirculated. Yeah, because if they build up enough
along enough space walk, then fart madness ensues. I've heard
about fart madness, isn't earth. There are a lot of
I was looking on snopes to see if there were
any particular urban legends related to the farting of note,
and one of them was this bit that occasionally circulates
(20:33):
an emails about a man who who died because he
farted under the covers and uh and had the covers
up over his head. But that's just complete malarkey. That's
just a Dutch Oven. Yes, so so yeah, so death
by by death by by Dutch Oven not really a thing. Yeah,
And you can't try to, I mean, just for fun
Dutch Oven astronauts, right, No, No, I mean they go
(20:55):
through enough in the training. I'm sure they were, like,
you know, after you've been in that spinny thing than
I mean, we've all seen the right stuff. They went
through a lot of horrible things to to prove themselves
and to and to you know, to get their bodies
in shape and prepare themselves for this this experience in orbit.
So and keep in mind that the air in their
space suits is actually recirculated three times a minute. So
(21:16):
now another interesting bit from Mary Roach's book, Packing for Mars.
She talked to an astronaut by the name of Roger Crouch,
and he was particularly interested in the idea of propelling
yourself through a microgravity environment like aboard the space station
via your own farts, and he said that the mass
and velocity of the expelled gas is very small compared
(21:38):
to the mass of the human body. So he tested
it out found that it produced no real effect, though
he did, uh, he did have this theory that the
underpants and the pants might be um prohibiting the expulsion
of gas, and so he but he did not get
to test this naked, but he apparently has lingering thoughts
that that nude farting in Mike gravity would potentially give
(22:02):
you at least a little push across the cabin. Yeah,
that really is not going to win the hearts and
minds of your fellow astronauts or space if you just
drop trial and then try to propel yourself with your
own parts. Can you imagine the dudas doing like the
crying in space videos and all the different viral videos
Colonel have Feld, Yeah, I wonder, I wonder if he's
on board for this. That's gonna be a big shock
(22:25):
when that when that YouTube video rolls out, that might
be the one that never really makes it to be right. So, though,
if you were going to do that experiment without underpants
and really truly tested, you would want to eat the
gassiest inducing foods that you could. And it turns out
that the most eruptive edibles are beans, carrots, raisins, bananas
(22:47):
just odd to me onions not odd milk and milk
products for the very reasons that we talked before about
milk being hard to digest and break down as opposed
to something like um, what say, meat, fish, great berries,
these are these have the least amount of complex carbohydrates.
It's it's this, uh, this really damning conundrum that that
(23:11):
I that I have encountered, and then I think a
number of people encountered that the healthier that you try
to eat. You know, you're trying, you're trying to eat
all these vegetables and these whole grains and lintels and beans,
and it's just it's making you're gassier, and you feel
like you're being punished for this diet. Uh. Dr Robert
Lustig even put it this way. He said, in life,
you have two choices, it's either fat or fart. So yeah,
(23:36):
it's true, like if you were to radically change your
diet from say a meat and a very little um
vegetable diet to grains and vegetables. You would really need
to set aside a couple of days to transition into that. Kid.
You not, Well, there's that great Portlandia sketch where they
go to the restaurant that has the raw food. It's
like an all raw food place, and they actually have
(23:57):
a a flateist patio with fans, the patio far patio.
That is just one of my favorite things, one of
those that that clip is just great because it's not
hearty horror laugh laugh, but it kind of speaks to
that whole experience when you do go to a rough
foods restaurant or a vegan restaurant and the result of
that afterwards, they just kind of brought it more to
(24:19):
the forefront. Yeah, it's it's a it's a clever bit
of of parody there and uh and and commentary. So
that's that is a fart gag that I at least
chuckle that sure, because really, when you get down to it,
every restaurant should have a fart patio. Now, as we
mentioned before, you you have a very rare individual like
the the individual that NASA uncovered who barely farted at all.
(24:42):
Just the one person in the world, the one person
this mutant that that barely produces any flatus. But then
there is there's another side of that coin as well.
There the super fartre's the the extraordinary flat went individuals
that that make life so interesting. There's just thought that
some people have types of bacteria that produce more sulfur
(25:03):
than other people, so that could be part of it.
Diet is certainly part of it. And then of course,
as we mentioned earlier, some people are gonna have different
concentrations of hydrogen and methane, so some people are going
to be more explosive, which is UH. And I feel
like we've discussed this before, but it's it's more of
a serious issue when there's some sort of surgical procedure
going on, you know, with the colon UH in which
(25:26):
you're going to have to cauterize wounds with a heat element.
That heat element plus hydrogen methane that's built up that
can have literally an explosive reaction, which is not good
for anybody involved in that procedure. Now, I believe there's
an ignoble prize that was given out this right, that's
where we discussed it before, but we Normally we say
it's just it's really very funny stuff, but this one
(25:48):
um study was very serious because like, you know, what
if if you are doing this procedure on someone, if
someone has a pole up and you're moving it, uh,
you don't want them to explode and die, right, So
that's that's one of the things that doctors have been
really cognizant of, and these days they actually pipe in
a little air um and air that doesn't have flammable
(26:09):
carbon dioxide as well to try to dilute any methane
or hydrogen that might be left over. Although for anybody
who's gone to the guts or intrologists and and had
one of these procedures like a colonoscopy, then you know
that there's a lot of prep work ahead of time
to try to remove anything that might antagonize or create
a spark in your rectum. Another aspect of inflate us
(26:33):
in in the medical community is that it can actually
be used as a disease fighter sort of. I mean
it's more like a canary in the coal mine, So
doctors can actually identify toughest spot viral or bacterial infections
of the gut in someone's gas So what they do
is they just perform this test where they collect a
(26:54):
stool sample and then they try to take the gases
um and they extract those gases from a aren't needle
and then they figure out the flateus molecules and the
machine then will analyze these molecules and tell you what
the infection. Is. Pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Discussing
the various smell profiles of human flatus UH and ultimately
(27:18):
human waste. I keep coming back to horse excrement because really,
if you smelled horse excrement, it's really the best excrement
out there, you know, Like if you had to be
around a bunch of poop all day, it's really hard
to go wrong with horse. Yeah, Or you used to
used to work at a zoo, so you know that
there are various odors related to different different animals leavings,
(27:42):
and some of them were more pleasant than others. So yeah,
it was funny because I worked in the administrative building,
but the keepers would come in and they had all
sorts of smell molecules stuck to their bodies. So they
might have been working with the Zeeber's that day, who knows,
But they passed by the elephants, and that took it
all down. So the elephant not a good smell profile.
(28:02):
But the horse, the horse, I think is a good
good smell profile. So what do you think about the
latest artist? Ah? Yes, do you think they're even concerned
with the scent profile? Well, it's it's interesting because first
of all, I should I should back up and say
that I was not aware of this until about a
year ago. I was recovering from Wisdom Tooth Removal, and
(28:26):
I was I was on pain pills and I was
taking I was reading the book Madeline is Sweeping by
Sarah Shoon Leen Binnum, which is a very dreamy book anyway,
It's like a dream within a dream with all this
surreal stuff happening. And then on top of that, I
was a little loopy um from everything else that was
going on. But one of the characters that shows up
is a fart artist or a fartist if you will,
(28:50):
or a flatest or a flatty wist, but not a flattist,
not a flautist. That's uh, that's something that's something different entirely.
But turns out there's one individual that was a particular
note and it was this was a Frenchman whose real
name was Joseph Pugel Uh lived eight fifty seven to five,
but his stage name was Domain Uh, and he was
(29:14):
known for having remarkable control over his abdominal muscles and
uh he seemed to be able to just fart at will,
just NonStop, just well beyond the three coke cans of
flatists that any normal individual could could muster. But there
was a secret to what he could actually do. Um
he Uh. He had again phenomenal control over the muscles
(29:39):
down there, particularly the anal sphincter muscles, and he could
actually inhale air through the shincter and then release it.
So he wasn't that he was releasing gas that was
built up as part of this natural farting process that
we've discussed in this episode. Rather he was inhaling air
into the rectum and then releasing it again. Wow. So
(30:00):
we talked about reverse feeding in our last podcast. Yeah, yeah, right, Yeah.
It's kind of like if you've ever been generally you'll
occasionally count our kid who's doing this where they'll burp
over and over again because they're inhaling the air and
then they're brobing inhaling the air, and then burping. He
was doing the same thing, but with his bottom. I
would love to tell some stories about my family, but
(30:20):
I don't think that would be correct. All I can
say is that I think maybe in past generations we've
had some artists excellent. So anyway, on that note, we
should probably bring closure to this. Yes, let's let's call
over the robot. Well, that was a robotic fart, I know,
(30:45):
but really, I mean, I thought this was a really
classy episode on farts, and here Arnie had to come
and stick up the joint. It doesn't really smell. I
mean it just it smells like a train passing in
a subway or something, you know, kind of not really,
but don't do it again. Okay, here's some mail from
our robot. This one is from Adam Adam Rights, and
he's for solving to responding to our episode Eating Alive,
(31:07):
where we talked about the prospect of being swallowed whole
by a sperm whale. And he says, Okay, let's say
I was swallowed whole by a whale. I'm alive and
uninjured in the pre stomach. The situation looks grim, but
alas all hope is not lost, because how did I
get there. I was inspecting a gaping maw of a
giant whale while scuba diving. I have a full tank
of air and a very sharp dive knife, as does
(31:29):
any diver. Worth is salt and a healthy desire to live.
What are my chances of jabbing and slicing my way
to freedom? Slim to none? Well, uh, yeah, it's a
tough one because certainly, those the squid that are being
swallowed by the sperm whale, they have rather tough beaks,
so they don't have any bones otherwise, so they can
(31:50):
kind of they're sort of jelatinous in the way that
they can contort their bodies. Yeah, but they could they
have the ability to to use that beak on the predator.
They're able to to use their their their little suction
cups with the with the the sharp things. And then
you see the scars and the sides of sperm whales
where they've they've suckered and and and picked at them,
(32:12):
and well that's creates the amber kies right there. Yeah. Yeah,
and then yeah, and then of course once they passed
the the beaks on they we discussed in that episode
end up scarring the side of the intestinal walls. So
I don't I feel like if you were too to
try to use that knife and fight your way out,
that you're just it's gonna cause the sperm whale to
(32:32):
really gnash its teeth even more. Yeah, and and chaos
wouldn't sue. Yeah, No, it hasn't already. Yeah, I'm thinking that.
I mean, certainly you're not going to cut your way out.
I guess the only the only possibility here was if
you somehow create enough of the disturbance to where it
vomits you. Oh right, if you could just stick your
finger down its throat. Yeah, Or I think I think
(32:55):
Pinocchio escaped by started they started a little fire, right,
and the smoke builds up, and then then the creature
sneezes everyone free. So this is kind of you. Obviously
you're not going to start a fire in there, um,
but if you were to stab away and start stabbing
the size, would you possibly be able to get those
firm let us pit you up? Well, I tend to
doubt it. If you had a little pocket of poison,
(33:16):
but then you're going to expose yourself to that poison
as well. Right, I'm trying to think of ways that
you could make it regurgitate. I don't know. I bet,
I bet you guys out there might have some idea.
Think it over. I would like to to hear some
people's thoughts and man and hey, mate, you know, if
you get a spare moment here and there, maybe I'll
try and contact an expert on this. Someone who's survived
thinks walled by the way. All you all right? There
(33:41):
you go. Everything you may or may not have wanted
to know about cutting the cheese, breaking the wind, crop dusting,
farting latest my friends. Um, if you would like to
know more about some of the episodes that we create,
and I'm talking about podcast episodes as well as video,
make sure that you visit stuff to Blow your Mind
(34:02):
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(34:24):
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