SYSK Selects: Virus Talk with Josh and Chuck

Viruses are big jerks that invade regular cells and hold them hostage, making you sick while they're doing it. Learn everything you ever needed to know about viruses, including how the common cold works, in this classic episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hello, friends out there, It's Chuck Bryant here on a
Saturday to intro my select pick for this week from
October four two fourteen. Virus Talk with Josh and Chuck.
Not a spin off show, but as podcast episode we
recorded about virus is very very interesting stuff. Give it
a listen right now. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know,

(00:26):
a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles
w Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry Uh. And this is Stuff
you Should Know, featuring my enormous dot up nose and
how appropriate. Yeah, well that was one of the reasons

(00:49):
why I wanted to do this one. I figured I'm
a little sick right now. Yeah still, and uh, I
wanted to know more about the monster inside of me.
That's right, Like I'm not feeling great and knowledge is power,
like we always say, exactly, Like, just from researching this,
I was like starting to break a sweat and tremble
and I was like, I'm getting better, and then I

(01:10):
passed out and hit my head. Yeah, and I didn't
have enough time to finish studying so good, I'm gonna
have to make a lot of this up. Chuck cool. Yeah,
we've covered we covered ebola recently, and we are definitely
going to cover HIV at some point. We just haven't
gotten around to it. Yeah, but both of those are viruses.
So there's another one we talked about that seemed to
come up in this I don't remember what it was,

(01:31):
but um, the herpies. No, no, we never talked about herpes.
Um well, you know, not mixed company what what was it?
I don't remember, but there was definitely microbiome maybe Yeah, No,
I don't remember what it was. But we've talked about
viruses and viral infections. But to me, I think viruses
are one of the most fascinating things on the entire planet.

(01:54):
They're jerks, like, we don't know where they came from.
We don't quite know how to classify them because they
really kind of operate on the line between a living
in a non living thing. Yeah, this article said like
most scientists agree, but I found a lot of people
that said that they're not living things too, So yeah, um,
but who cares really, They still definitely have an effect.

(02:16):
You know. The weird thing is about a virus is
why some people say it's living and some people say
it's non living. Is that it to to be a
living thing, you have to have something like arms. Yeah,
you have to have arms. Rocks rocks don't have arms,
No point proven um. You have to have You have

(02:39):
to be able to carry out the processes that keep
you alive, like self sustaining. Yeah, like you A cell.
A cell is the smallest living organism. It's the smallest
possible living organism because you get lower than that and
you have maybe the things that make up a cell,
but they can't sustain themselves. A cell can sustain itself

(03:00):
health and things can be made up of cells like us,
and therefore we are a living organisms. The cells that
make us up our living organisms. Plants are living organisms,
but viruses they don't have any means of carrying out
the processes that keep them alive, which doesn't matter because
they're not alive, But more important, they don't have any

(03:21):
processes that allow them to reproduce. Yeah, they're just like
by themselves that they're not worth very much. They need
to glom on. They're always gloming on to everyone else's
junk exactly, which is basically what a virus does. But
for something as simple as a viruses, And we'll talk
about how simple they are in a second. They have
devastating effects when they do start to really get busy,

(03:46):
you know. So, Chuck I was saying, like, they don't
know exactly where viruses came from. They know they're very old.
But there there are a couple of theories. My favorite one,
probably the one that's right, is um that they are
former bits of cells that basically evolved into freelance renegades.

(04:07):
Really yeah, which explains why certain viruses fit with certain cells.
Well that makes sense. Huh. So they could have just
been basically like drifting genetic material that that evolved enough
to say I'm gonna learn to reproduce by hijacking renegade drifters. Yep,
So are you saying that viruses or John Rambo? Pretty much?

(04:30):
So let's talk about like what makes a virus? Uh? Yeah, Well,
like you said, a cell is is on its own
It can do its own thing. Viruses cannot. Viruses are
super tiny, about one millionth of an inch long, which
is a thousand times smaller than bacteria, which are smaller
than human cells. Most of them. There are some viruses

(04:51):
that are actually larger than the average sized bacteria, but
for the the most part they are smaller, which is still
super tiny. Sure it is like you need an electron
microscope to view these bad boys, right. Uh. And they
can infect just about any living thing. As a matter
of fact, any living thing could be theoretically infected by
a virus, like a bacteria can get a viral infection. Man,

(05:12):
that's crazy, isn't that crazy? I don't even know what
that seaweed can get viruses? Yeah, donkeys, Yeah, all sorts
of stuff, the whole the whole gamut from seaweed to donkeys.
U a virus itself. If you just want to look
at what that that little tiny particle is is. Uh,
it's a very on Is that how we're going to

(05:34):
say that viron viron? Yeah? Why didn't they just leave
the second eye out environ? Yeah? I don't know how
much better. Basically, what it is is a set of
genetic instructions. Can be either DNA or RNA, can't be both. Uh,
And it's you know, it's just instructions, that's all it is. Well,
that's that's the nucleic acid that is part of a VIRON.

(05:56):
Like a VIRON is like a particle. It's like an
individual viral particle. Yeah, and part of that is the
nucleic acid. Yeah, and that's surrounded by capsid, which is
just a protein coating to protect it. And then sometimes
if it's an envelope virus, it will also have an
envelope around that capsid. If it's naked, it doesn't need

(06:16):
or I guess it just doesn't have that other protein code, right,
And the enveloped ones are enveloped with this um a lipid,
a fat of some sort um. But for a naked virus,
it's can it's made up of two things. It's got.
It's it's nucleic acid and it's protein coding that protects
the nucleic acid. So it's not just nucleic acid floating around,

(06:39):
that's right. And um, the nucleic acid is like you said,
it's basically just a blueprint for how to make more viruses.
Because if speaking teleologically, a virus is its whole purpose
is to make more viruses. That's all it cares about.
And you can say, well, that applies to about any

(07:00):
living organism if you get down to the bare bones,
just to put the gate. Yeah, with the virus, it's
like that's it, man, it's not doing anything else. It
doesn't care about playing cards. It doesn't want to do
anything but reproduce and make you sick. Yeah, pretty much.
Uh there. Their shape varies a lot, but they're basically
three types helical or hell eqal. It's like a tube.

(07:25):
You got your polyhedral, so it's sort of like a
soccer ball, and then you have your complex shapes and
they are complex there. You know, they can look crazy,
they can have tails, they can have crazy looking spider
legs like the what they both which one looks like
the Apollo lunar Lander. I'm gonna go with complex, I
would for sure, but yeah, yeah, I don't think it

(07:47):
could be polyhedral. It's startling how much it looks like that. Yeah,
it looks like it was made to look like a
cool little lunar Lander. Or that the lunar Lander was
modeled after the virus maybe, which doesn't make much because
they wanted to infect the Moon, which you may have
astronaut jokes. Uh So, Unlike cells that can do their

(08:10):
own thing, viruses don't have enzymes like cells do that
basically allowed to operate uh independently as their own little units.
Some do. Some viruses contain just enough enzymes to take
their DNA or their RNA and and do something with
it to basically primate to be transcribed or something like that.

(08:30):
Or they have enzymes that go hijack the enzymes in
the cell. Yeah, so some do. Most don't write. But um, yeah,
that's that's the whole point of infecting a host cell.
If all of virus wants to do is reproduce, but
it can't reproduce, that's where the host cell comes in.
That's right. They basically move into the factory with and

(08:52):
say we're going to use your equipment. They're like, they
don't mind. There's gonna be some big changes around here
because there's a new share eriff in town. And the virus.
Although all viruses don't not kill people, we should point
that out, no, And so it depending on what kind
of virus it is, whether it's naked or enveloped. Um,

(09:14):
it will attach itself to the to the host cell
and either inject it. If it's naked, it has to
stay outside the host cell and it basically injects its
genetic material into the host cell. Or if it's enveloped
that fat lipid coding that that makes it an enveloped

(09:35):
virus basically connects to the host cell's own fat lipid coding,
and that protein coated virus can basically slip through, just
absorb right into the cell and say tada when it
makes it on the inside. Yeah. Is that what an
antigen is? I think that's the protein that has to match,

(09:56):
like the antigen looks for another uh like protein so
it can get that tight bond. And if they and
if they're not similar enough, they can't bond and infect
that cell. Be wrong? And that is that right? I
don't know if that's the it sounds right, and the
reason it sounds right because I saw elsewhere in the
research that, Um, that's why viruses go after specific kinds

(10:18):
of cells. Okay there there, Um, that's they recognize the
type of cells that they're capable of infecting, right, and say,
I can bind to you very tightly, my friend, exactly,
So let's dance exactly all right. Right after this message,
we are going to get down to the nitty gritty
on what happens once they have bound themselves to that cell.

(10:52):
All right, Josh, they moved into the cell. They like
the looks of it. It's a nice open concept floor plan,
which everyone loves these days, right. What happens from there, Well,
it depends on the virus. So let's say it was
one that injected it. It's got its genetic material floating around.
Maybe there's an enzyme that's assisting the genetic material, or
if the virus itself showed up, Um, it's releasing its

(11:15):
genetic material all over the place. But basically what happens
is that sounds pretty crossy. Yeah, well it is pretty gross.
It happens exactly like it like you think, Um, but
the the once inside the cell, you'll see a lot
that the virus hijacks the cells um processes. Yeah, like hey,

(11:36):
we need to use your deal because we don't have
our own. Exactly. Um, they're not. The reason people use
the word hijack is because it really gets the point across,
but it's also because science isn't on how viruses do it,
and they they what they think basically is that if
there's an accompanying enzyme or something, the enzymes, but basically

(12:00):
wait for a line of other enzymes, the cell zone
enzymes to go past, and then it grabs the last
one in the line. That old trick hits it over
the head hypnotizes it basically, and then sends it back
out to go recruit other enzymes, and then all of
a sudden, the cell is it's enzymes, it's workers. If

(12:21):
you think of the enzymes as like the workers in
the cell um, they're all working for this virus, and
the cells like, what the heck is going on? It's
too late. The enzymes are focused on transcribing the DNA,
which ultimately just makes more DNA or RNA for the virus,
and then assembling it with proteins that the enzymes are

(12:43):
now making, so they're now making more and more and
more viruses. It's a hostile takeover. It is very much
a hostile takeover. That's one way to go. There's another
thing called a retrovirus, which I'm a huge fan of.
Some of the worst viruses around a retroviruses, which is
ironic because they actually have the softest impact on the
host cell. But a retrovirus goes in very quietly, hangs

(13:05):
around clothing and right, Yeah, because HIV is a retrovirus. Um,
so is uh. I think a flu flu is a
retrovirus too, I think um. But it goes in and
it it just inserts its DNA into the cells DNA alright,
So it's like, yeah, I go about your business or whatever.

(13:27):
But now there's this extra sequence that when you go
over it and you transcribe it and you do what
this this um d NA or this genetic material is
telling you to do to make you're gonna Also is
a byproduct spit out um viruses, so it's just duplicating itself,
it is. So that's there's a lot of different things
that can go on. But it's like you said, there's

(13:49):
a hostile takeover or the cell is tricked into making
more viruses, but what happens is more and more and
more and more viruses are being made within the host cell,
which can be pretty bad for the hostel. Ultimately, well, yeah,
because eventually the virus is gonna leave, and they can
either if it's a naked virus, it'll bust out and

(14:10):
just destroy the host cell and be like, hey, I'm
tired of your little apartment. I'm just gonna burn it
down because I'm my own thing now and I can
live on my own um. Or if it's an envelope
virus and it'll just kind of pinch away and keep
that protective cell membrane and just be like, well, fine,
I'll just take my stuff and and leave and you're

(14:32):
free to do what you want. Right. Well, that's another
reason why retroviruses are easy on the host cell is
because all retroviruses are enveloped viruses. So these new newly
made viruses just moved to the outside membrane and and
bud off. And then what happens when they bud off
or when the cell breaks open because there's so many

(14:53):
new viruses, it ruptures the cell. Yeah, it's just pretty
horrific if you think about it. Um, all of a sudden,
you're contagious. Yeah, and it's duplicating and spreading all throughout
your body at a pretty rapid rate. Lots of these guys.
So let's let's look at your well, let's look at
you for instance. Okay, what have you got right now?

(15:16):
I got something some sort of viral infection cold, not
the flu, probably, Yeah, you achy, fevery no, no, feverish.
I mean, uh so what do you What do I have? Doc? Well,
I would say you have a cold, but I had
a cold that that turned into a sinus infection. I
may have one of those from the color of the

(15:38):
stuff that's coming out of my nose, I would say
I probably have a size infection. Yes. Would you describe
it as khaki? Uh? I would describe it as a
drab all of oh Man, way worse than Khaki. When
I was sick a couple of weeks ago, I had
some serious, bright, bright, almost fluorescent yellow coming out, which
is all very gratifying to get rid of, either with

(16:01):
your Nettie Potter just blowing your nose or whatever. I've
been Nettie Potting like a madman. Yeah. You know you
can overdo that when you're sick. Apparently, Yeah, I can imagine,
because this just the salt. Get too much salt up there,
and I think just fluid like unless you really really
get it all out. Uh, it's better like you need
to dry out completely in between. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I

(16:24):
definitely all right, We'll just take two of these and
come back and see me next week. Well you're diagnosing
what was going on, Well, you've got a cold, I think, um,
but let's say you're in the office. I think we
should make this as real as possible. I was. Let's
say that I'm hanging out with my sweet little four
year old niece, who herself has a cold. Uh. She

(16:44):
the she, the the person. I don't want to name names,
but I think she's she's on your list now. So
all right, So your little niece probably sneezed or something
or just put her dirty little hands all over your
face because she loves Uncle Josh. She she has her
dad would not allow her to have dirty hands. Okay,

(17:04):
I think she an Okay, yeah, uh. And what you
probably did was inhaled a virus particle, and that probably
attached to your the linings of your nasal passages, your sinuses,
because apparently there's basically only three ways that a virus
gets into your body. You inhale it uh, attaches to
your mucous membranes like your nose or your gums or something,

(17:28):
or enters through a break in the skin. That's right.
So your host cell is going to break open, your
virus is gonna move in there with and say I'm
gonna use your equipment like we talked about. Then maybe
travel to your bloodstream, travel to your lungs uh, and
you're gonna end up getting Let's say, maybe one of
the first signs is a running nose because you're losing

(17:48):
cells and your sinuses, and now that fluid is gonna
be loosened up as a result. Yeah, the nasal, the
literal cellular lining of my sinuses is being is rupturing
to attack. Because here's the thing. When you go through
and look at like what a virus does, you're looking
at what one individual virian is doing. You don't necessarily

(18:10):
just pick up one individual viron. You can be exposed
to many, many, many virians and they are each reproducing,
producing thousands more just in one cell. So all this
is going on, it can have a pronounced effect. Like
if you just lost one cell your in your nasal lining,
it's not gonna do much. You're probably never ever going

(18:31):
to notice. But if you lose a ton of the
cells at the same time, you're gonna have a runny nose,
or if it happens in your throat, you're gonna have
a sore throat. That's right, that's just fluid. You know,
it's attacking those cells in your throat and the lining,
and it's dripping and just causing like a usually some
sort of inflammation. Yeah, and those because that those ruptured

(18:52):
cells are being carried down by your nose juice to
the back of your throat, which is turn That's what
I was raised on. It's in turn um nose juice okay,
which in turn U and they attach an attack to
the cells lining your throat and then this whole thing
is just going on and on and on again. Yeah,

(19:14):
if you've ever had aches and pains because of maybe
a flu, that's because your muscle cells are being attacked.
And it sucks because you don't know that this is
going on at first, like it's just this war being
waged inside your body and you're like, you know, hey,
I'm just going to the grocery store and I'm feeling
pretty good exactly, and by the time you start to

(19:34):
feel it's too late, it is too late. I'm glad
you brought that up because I did a don't be
dumb on when you're actually contagious. Yeah, what's the final
on that? So it depends on it does it vary?
The how long you're contagious varies, But when you start
is a about a day before you start showing symptoms.

(19:55):
So like remember how I said, if you have one
cell burst and and you're not gonna notice it, it's
gonna take many many cells to burst before you finally
have a sore throat. Well, while those things are bursting.
After that first one bursts, you're contagious, buddy. So for
a day before you even know you're sick, you're walking
around infecting other people. With a cold, you go from

(20:18):
the day before symptoms to about four days after. And
with the flu, you go from the day before symptoms
to five to seven days after, so you can still
be It is true when people are like, I'm not
contagious anymore, they're usually probably totally wrong. But say they're
flu last eight days. If they say that on day eight,

(20:38):
they're they're actually right. Most people say it by like
day three or four or whatever. That's it's not right. Well,
they need to watch Don't Be Dumb. Josh's award winning
web series so many awards, man, I think the next
award is gonna win. Is the most divisive web series
because half the people, more than half the think, are like, man,
this is the best thing ever. People I don't good it.

(21:00):
Why is Josh acting so weird? And I'll just respond with, yeah,
you don't get it, And I mean it's definitely not
for everybody. I've learned, Well, it's very funny. I think

(21:30):
it turns out. You asked me if I if I
feel feverish, and I don't, Apparently my body is slacking
on the immune response. Well, I think you don't always
get the fever. But fever is a good thing because
your body is wired to operate optimally at ninety eight
point six, even though I heard that was nine eight
point seven. Now is that right? Yeah? I heard that

(21:50):
they kind of abandoned that as like an average body
temperature because it varies enough between human beings that they're
they're like, now it's this between this rather than point six,
and if you don't have that, you're sick. So somewhere
in that range, let's say, uh, chemical reactions and basically
anything going on your body just that's the temperature it likes.

(22:11):
So when you get a fever, it's actually slowing all
those processes down, including the virus is spread. Yeah, because
it's like, oh man, it's hot, I can't can't work
as much, that's right, Uh, which is kind of a weird, indirect,
roundabout way of slowing a fever down or slowing an
infection down. Yeah. I mean, I guess if it works,

(22:33):
So it's good to have a fever it is good
to have a fever. And it's it actually makes sense
in a strange way because some infections, some viruses attack
the very cells that are meant to mount the immune response.
Like remember a bola, it goes right after like every
immune response cell that can find. HIV goes after T cells,

(22:53):
which attack and destroy foreign bodies, so to to slow
them down and just the spread so that the immune
response can continue and mount a full attack is kind
of clever. Yeah, And and since you mentioned HIV, it's
it's another scary one because it's one of those viruses
that can just lay in wait and they even call

(23:17):
it sleeping it some sometimes, you know, like it's not
obvious you could have HIV and be spreading HIV without
ever feeling any kind of sick or any kind of symptoms,
and um, basically eventually that virus is gonna do its thing.
You know, it could lay in wait for years even
without without acting right and then it depends on the virus.

(23:40):
But they figure that there's some sort of environmental trigger.
One I saw was like exposure to UV light or
something like that. It's the same thing. Herpies is a
virus like that, it sleeps which is why people who
have like say herpie simplex don't always have um cold source.

(24:01):
It'll just flare up, right, it will flare up. And
they often say, like in times of stress or something
like that, Well the virus isn't like this person is
stressed out, let's go. There's probably cortisol triggers the virus
to start reproducing. But one of the one of the
devious aspects of this is when that when that virus
sneaks in and inserts its d n A or RNA

(24:25):
into the DNA of the cell and just hang back
and wait. Well that cell is dividing as like normal
again the virus unwittingly right without the virus even being reproduced,
and now set up to be reproduced rather than in
just one cell now four or eight or sixteen or
thirty two. And then all hell breaks loose when all

(24:47):
of them start going at the same time because they
were all exposed to cortisol. That's what I'm saying. Viruses
are amazingly interesting and wicked, wicked, wicked things they are. Um,
So here are some tips the way on you know,
if your office is sick, or you're around your four
year old niece, Uh, here's some tips from your buddies

(25:11):
here to keep you from getting sick. You know that
there are carrier organisms like mosquitoes and fleas. They can
spread viruses. We know it can be airborne. We already
talked about bodily fluids, whether that's nose juice or saliva
or blood or semen or vaginal secretions as one way
you can get a direct transfer. Uh, surfaces on which

(25:32):
bodily fluids have dried, which is kind of scary to
think about. Yeah, you know you wanted to keep all
those secretions like off of surfaces because the virus can
live outside of the body for a while. Apparently flu
virus can live for seven days just on the surface. Yeah,
that's why, like you sneeze in your hand and you
open the door to your office, then there's there could

(25:55):
be little virus on that door knob and um, that's
why they super advise. And one of the things that
we're advising now is to wash your hands a lot
if you're sick or if you know that there are
sickness around you. Like I wouldn't be Howard Hughes about it,
but I wash my hands a lot when I know
that there's viruses going around. I started washing my hands

(26:18):
a lot more once I've found out or was told
what you're actually doing when you're washing your hand, Um,
you're not actually killing anything on your hands, any germs.
What you're doing by introducing soap is you're creating something
that will basically go and cling to germs on your hands.
And then when you wash off the soap, you're washing
off the germs. So you're not like waging war or

(26:40):
anything like that. You're basically just rinsing your hands clean. Literally.
So once once I realized that, I was like, oh, yeah,
washing washing hands makes a lot of sense, because before
that I was like some doesn't do anything. Yeah, like
and I don't even use antibacterial soap as a rule.
But so I was like, it's definitely not doing anything.
Now like it is doing something. So let's wash our

(27:03):
hands as often as possible. That's a good idea and
a really long T shirt. If you are sick, you're
going to want to cover your mouth when you sneeze
and cough, because that's just common decency. Um, you want
to avoid contact with anyone else's bodily fluids, whether you're
sick or not. And whether they're sick or not. It's

(27:26):
just you don't want to have anyone else's bodily fluids
on you, r in you unless you know you're like
married or something. Right then, unless you really love that person,
the fluids are welcome. Uh. And antibiotics and this this
thing's gotten blue a few times. It's a very sexy show. Yeah,
sexy virus. Uh, antibiotics aren't gonna help with um a

(27:48):
viral infection that is obviously for bacterial infections only. Yes,
But it occurred to me, Chuck that if you you
could cure a viral infection, if a in a bacteria
with antibiotics would be kind of like euthanasia, but it
would cure the viral infections. Good point, bacteria infected with

(28:09):
the virus. That's how tough viruses are. And we have
no idea how they originated or where they came from.
We don't. We just know they're super old and the
ones that are the oldest are the ones that kill
the least. Yeah, if you think about it, a virus
would just, by right of natural selection, evolved to be

(28:33):
able to reproduce without killing the host, because if the
host survives, then that just increases the chances of the
virus to be spread from most host Right, So a
really deadly virus is probably newer as far as humanity
is concerned. And a virus that can infect more organism,
more types of organisms, like one that could make grass

(28:56):
sick but also make a human sick, that's probably a
pretty old virus. Old virus just sounds intimidating. Well, we
have like basically what amounts to fossilized viruses in our
DNA from all those viruses as retroviruses that came in
inserted as genetic material, and our body learned to mount
a defense against them. But that that stuff is still

(29:19):
in the human genome. Crazy viruses. Uh. There. There are
also immunizations, of course, and you know how they work.
They pre infect your body so it knows, you know
how to mount the the fight against it to make
sure it has all the right equipment. It's like putting
up wanted posters in your body. Yeah, but those virus
has changed slightly, ever so slightly enough to where you

(29:42):
have to keep updating these vaccines so you know it
keeps working well, Yeah, you know, yeah, they evolve fairly quickly. Um. Lastly, Chuck,
I want to address something. There is a I guess
a misconception or urban legend or whatever that you can
tell where there you have a viral infection or a
back sterial infection um or what kind of virus you

(30:03):
have based on the color of your mucus. We talked
about fluorescent or something like that. They they don't in
and of themselves relate to a specific type of virus
or bacterial or viral infection or anything like that. It's
not true. So that's viruses. Yeah, I got nothing else.
It is good to know how this stuff works out because, um,

(30:25):
you know, when you get sick, you understand a little better.
Maybe you can mentally fight the stuff more effectively. I'm
doing it right now. You see how I'm bleeding from
my scalp. Oh my god, I'm using a lot of
mental power. It's amazing. If you want to know more
about viruses, you can start by typing that word into
the search bar at how stuff works dot com and
it will bring up this cool article. And I said

(30:47):
how stuff works. So it's time for listener mail. I'm
gonna call this Headstones. My name is Georgia Gilbert. I'm
a new but enthusiastic fan from the University of Washington Huskies.
I was listening to your Tombstone's podcast, and I want
to say that the move to churchyard burials is a
bit more complicated than you implied, uh If I remember correctly,

(31:10):
burials in churchyards began mostly as a common practice because
of the plague. Churches would sell spots for burial within
the church itself, in the walls and the floors, etcetera,
because there was a common belief during the Middle Ages
that being buried in the church was being very closer
to God, and if you're very closer to God, the
better off you're going to be in the afterlife, the
reasoning goes. Many people would actually get spots within their

(31:33):
local church to be buried, or at least very close
to the walls outside. During the plague gears, however, the
amount of bodies accumulated to be buried became too much,
and they began to bury people further outside the church,
even if they had paid for a spot inside. I
read a great book on death in London through the
Ages that talked about it that was called Necropolis. Highly

(31:53):
recommend it. So thanks for teaching me such awesome Stuff guys,
I can now ask my mother in law intelligent questions
about growing up in Germany during the Cold War thanks
to your Berlin Wall program. Nice and that is from Georgia.
That was fascinating. The plague, by the way, it was bacterial,
not viral, in case anybody was one doing like me. Yeah,

(32:14):
we did one in the plague, right we did? Yeah,
black death or black plague. Yeah, anyway, who is that again, Georgia.
Thanks a lot, Georgia. We appreciate that. That was a
great email. If you have a great email, you can
try to tweet it to us if it's short at
s y s K podcast. You can post it on
Facebook if you like, at Facebook, dot com slash Stuff
you Should Know, or you can send us an email

(32:37):
like a normal person to stuff podcast at how stuff
Works dot com and as always, in the meantime, hang
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