The Rise of the Superbug

It's true - scientists around the world are increasingly concerned that antibiotics are losing their effectiveness, leading to a future filled with unstoppable bacteria. But could it actually happen? How did we get here, and what happens next?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, and

(00:22):
we're gonna pause just there for a second because our
super producer Nold Madman Brown is not in the studio
with us today. No, but he's doing something very important
that we cannot talk about yet, but we assure you
it's a secret mission. And I'm Ben. You guys know me,

(00:43):
you're you. This is stuff they don't want you to know.
But it's not just Matt and I in the studio today,
ladies and gentlemen, we are thrilled to have a returning
guest friend of the show, the should we say famous
or infamous? Lauren vocal Ball, Yes, Hi, you know, whichever,
whichever one you want. Today it's a Wednesday, I'd say
just regular famous. On Wednesday's regular famous. Yeah, you may know.

(01:06):
Learn from all of the places around how stuff works,
everything from forward thinking to brain stuff, to how stuff
works now to what the stuff? I think there's seven
or eight more, yeah, essentially everything any time that I
can move furniture for a show. That's basically what I do, yes,
because I'm also writing and editing and research and performance.
But yeah, your passion though, really is furniture moving related? Though? Right?

(01:30):
Absolutely it makes sense because you know anytime that you
can get the pound girl on the tab moving heavy things.
That's also it should also be noted that you have
mastered the art of the teleprompter. I have. I have
attempted to do this on several occasions, and uh, it's
way harder than it looks. You guys, it's a great
video game. It is. I'm gonna learn, I'm gonna become

(01:51):
an apprentice. A little a little bit of background before
we get in today's episode. This this might be interesting
to some of you. So midst the video writers here,
Laura and I are half of the video writing team. Uh,
we have this. Everybody in in a job, every group
has some has some task that is no one's favorite, right,

(02:12):
whether it's taking out the garbage, move the furniture. For us,
it's that telepomper man. It's because depending upon the host
or whom you're you're operating this for, it can be
a real um where family show. It can be a
real pain in the pain in these is my favorite,

(02:34):
but substitute if you're trying to keep it clean, the
smell of the pain in the nose the favorite, but substitute. Okay,
so I'm gonna be collecting some of our choice quotes
from this Uh Lauren. Earlier before we got on the air,
you had said I might get angry about some things today.
Why do you guys only invite me to to talk

(02:55):
about topics that anger me? I'm paraphrasing a. Yeah, that's
what I said, and I'm you didn't really give me
a satisfactory answer. Aside from its fun, it makes for
a better podcast, it really does. Is there a reason
that you get upset about this topic or should we
just bring that up later? First, we should do the
shout out corner. Oh, that's true, I don't get angry

(03:17):
about shoutout corners. Good shout up corners. That's right, ladies
and gentlemen, it is the return of our shout out corner.
For those of you unfamiliar with this. Recently, we have
resurrected the practice of shoutouts just a way to have
have some of your fellow listeners say hello to all

(03:38):
at once and it's pretty simple. We can't shout out everybody,
so we can try to keep it down to like
three people. But if you're one of the first three
to write to us on Facebook, Twitter, email, or find
me on the street or in the back of a bar,
then just ask for a shout on who knows you
may get one, just like Joshua Woolsey from Facebook wrote
to us and said, hey, can I have a shout out?

(04:00):
Huge shout out to you, Joshua. And another thing that
happens if we don't get enough people that want an
actual shout out, what we're gonna do is call out
people who are just cool on our Twitter and Facebook.
So I'm doing around. I'm doing that right now. I'm
calling out Casper Parks and Hugh Lame trink Advice Yes
at Ostrak Swan for sending us those cattle mutilation little

(04:22):
images comic book excerpts that we were talking about with
cows doing fun things. I think one of them was
saying it was the cow returning home to the ranch
and just saying, hey, man, it's okay, we're all we're
all back and we're all good. Don't have to worry
to That was not the other one was Gary Larson
and and this sounds like so much fun, I'll do
one too, so so shout out to Joe Dragoness that's

(04:45):
at J M D R A g U n A S.
I'm I apologize if I butchered your name for suggesting
the obvious and overlooked angle that perhaps cattle mutilation occurs
as a result of turf wars over grazing zones and
uh that this is all ultimately cow on cow violence. Yeah,
we completely missed that in the podcast we did. We

(05:06):
try our best, but we don't always get everything right.
We're only human, most of us. Uh, speaking of human things.
That's our shout out corner ladies and gentlemen, of course
right to us if you if you would like to participate,
We've got a question here. I wanted to check with
you guys before we get into today's topic, which also,

(05:29):
oddly enough, has a run in with livestock. What is
the sickest you've ever been? Who ever? Ever? Like ever?
Oh man? Uh, the only one I can think of
is the most recent time that I was very sick
and I gotta I got some kind of bacterial infection
and it lasted for like a month, and it was
when I had just moved into a new place, so

(05:50):
I'm sure that I had all kinds of like new
stuff floating around. I'm allergic to cats. My roommate has
two cats. Hilarious backstory, but so so you know, so
there was lots of stuff going on with my immune system.
But essentially I was just incapable of moving my own
objects for that entire month because I just couldn't. I
just couldn't. I couldn't get out of bed. The weakness

(06:11):
that you feel when you're going through that. Yeah, and
as someone as passionate as you are about moving furniture,
that has to be emotionally painful as well, right I
The the toll that it took on me metaphysically, I think,
is the one that cannot be ignored. Wow, that sonds crazy?
What what about you met? You want to go? You
want to I have a story to talk about here,

(06:32):
but it's not necessarily about me. It's about my grandfather.
Would that would that be? Okay? Okay? So my grandfather
back in I guess it was late. He was living
with my parents at their house and coming and he
fell and broke his hip just one night. He got
up to go the bathroom and he fell. So he
had to go have surgery and they replaced his hip

(06:54):
and went really well. The doctors were worried about the
procedure itself, because you know, and almost ninety year old
man doing that kind of intensive surgery is a little dangerous.
But it turned out fine and and that went really well.
The problem was he needed rehabilitation, and our family couldn't afford,
you know, in home services stuff like that, the more
expensive things that you can get for that. So we

(07:17):
had to go to a rehabilitation center. And while he
was there, one of the things that he was having
a problem doing is getting up and going to the bathroom,
something we take for granted every day. So he required
a catheter, and either through this catheter or through some
other urine mitigation method, he developed an infection. And when

(07:40):
he got this infection, at first it was you know,
it's kind of standard when you're in a hospital like
that to get a small infection or something. It happens
all the time. The problem was it wasn't going away.
My mom spoke to the nurse and the nurse said, specifically,
we think this may be a superbug. We think it's

(08:02):
not responding to any of the antibiotics that we're giving him,
and it may be resistant. Well, unfortunately, the infection did
take his life and he died on May. But it
was my first run in personally with something like this,
and I didn't think that it was possible in the

(08:23):
United States, at a good facility where he was, that
this could even occur. And uh, it really kind of
opened my eyes to this topic and scared me a
little bit. It's it's a sobering thought that this is
our topic for today, ladies and gentlemen. We are going
to talk about something that you have probably heard of

(08:44):
in the news and probably wondered. Is that alarmism? Is
this just a ploy for more clicks or more viewers
on the part of mainstream media, And unfortunately it is not.
It's completely true. Yeah, this is two for two of
you guys inviting me on for something that is actually
not a conspiracy at all. It's just it's just people

(09:04):
sucking well, it's not a conspiracy theory, but there are
I will submit to you, Lauren Vogelbamba, that there are
a couple of conspiracies of foot involved in this. Oh
no spoilers let's talk about disease, you guys before we
die of one, and we'll start with a story about

(09:25):
the Black Death, the Black plague. You've heard of it before,
if you have ever, you've just heard of it is
not you have history, Yes, if you have history, that's perfect.
I want to go ahead and say that I'm going
to ignore any spoiler warnings on this. It happened a
while ago. I think around then we can we can

(09:46):
talk about Yeah, good, okay. I just wanted to gut
check with you guys. Boy, the ancient world was a
terrible and brutal place. Everything side, Yeah, aside from like
the clothes and maybe the millery. Um, I wouldn't not
have wanted to live in the past. Yeah, I think
it's I think we watch Bill and Ted sometime in
our childhood and then say, hey, time travel is fun.

(10:09):
It's probably not. We'll get into some statistics later, but
it is. It is difficult for the vast majority of
to us to imagine just how filthy living conditions were,
how poor and crude our understanding of quote unquote medicine was,
and just how much easier it was to die from

(10:29):
what these days would be a kind of trivial infection,
you know, small little things, because you may be walking
around in feces all day when you're trying to get
from one place to the other out in the streets,
because you probably are. Yeah, yeah, and animal feces, human feces,
all kinds. So the Black Plague, as it's commonly called

(10:50):
an English describes, instead of a wave of three separate
incidences incidencies, I guess, moving from a plague reservoir somewhere
in the cast being and see area central Asia westward.
And it followed shipping routes. The Black Death is generally
thought to have arrived by ship in Europe in October
of seven, when twelve ships from Genoa docked at the

(11:13):
Sicilian port of Messina. And that's right after going through
the Black Seas. Oh, and this is a this is
a spooky story to tell in the dark, you know,
because this ship, when it hits the docks, it's full
of dead people, people who are either dead or in
the process of and uh, those who were still alive

(11:35):
or just overcome with fever. They're throwing up, they're hallucinating,
delirious from the pain. And that wasn't all, was it? Oh? No,
it gets grosser. Yeah, they were also covered in in
these black boils that used blood and puss and and
and that is where we get the name the Black

(11:55):
Death from. Yeah, in Sicily, the government of Sicily ordered
the fleet out of the harbor, you know, back to
Genoa with you or never mind, never mind. Well they
probably thought they were safe, we got rid of this problem.
We're okay now, Yeah, but that wasn't the truth. They were,
unfortunately very wrong, and over the next five years, this

(12:15):
thing that we come to know as the Black Death
would kill more than twenty million people in Europe at
the time. That was almost one third of the continents populations.
So if we were Europe, the three of us in
this room right now, one of us would die, which
is which is a crazy thing. And people didn't know
what was going on. Was it a punishment from God?

(12:38):
Was it uh? Foreign hoards from the like literally hordes
from the Mongol horde? Yeah, yeah, I mean we wouldn't
have germ theory for the next few centuries, so people
had no concept of what disease transmission meant. Yeah, yeah,
how are you getting it? That's that's a crazy thing
to not know from living a wanton, sinful life. Maybe honestly,

(13:00):
I mean at the time, maybe that one time I
danced too much, Yeah, the time that, Yes, the dancing
in public, I think is where we could trace this
back to that or a bacteria that was that was
proven to be the cause of the plague. As recently
as two thousand ten, there were DNA studies that confirmed
something that have been suspected for a while, a thing

(13:20):
called your sinia pestis, and it is common to fleas
that live on rats or rodents excuse me, from central
Western Asia, Kurdistan, parts of India, and oddly enough Uganda.
The effects of this are seen today. According to the
historian Philip die Leader quote, forty five to fifty of

(13:42):
the European population died during a four year period. Uh,
there's a fair amount of geographic variation. However, in Mediterranean
Europe areas such as Italy, the south of France and Spain,
where plague ran for about four years consecutively, it was
probably closer to eight of the popul relation. That's huge,
you guess. In Germany and England, though, it was probably

(14:04):
closer to only right and over you'll you'll notice, folks
that there are some differences in the statistics already, because
just above it said roughly a third of the population,
but then you hear forty We're still working out how
many people actually died. That's how massive this was. In

(14:24):
many situations, there was no one there to count the dead. Yeah,
you had you had to know exactly how many people died,
but also who died of what? I mean, how are
you going to prove that they died of this and
not because there was no food left at the point. Yeah,
the I guess the side consequences or the ripple effects

(14:44):
of that. Overall, you'll hear a number with a great range, right,
they'll say seventy five to two million people across Eurasia
died as a result of this. But there's one positive thing.
It looked really hard. There's one positive thing about the
black death Yeah, I know it sounds weird to say. Okay,
so silver black death lining. Yes, black death lining. So
there's a book that we've mentioned on the air before,

(15:06):
I think, called In the Wake of the Plague by
an author named Norman Cantor, And this is where I
learned that the disease the plague may be responsible for
HIV resistance in some European populations, especially northern European. Oh
that's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, I was just reading the other
day about how worm infestations and Viking populations were responsible

(15:30):
for a gene that now causes emphysema. So strange, how
like like like like like resistance to worm infestations lead
to a genetic variant that basically causes an emphasema. So
it's so it's great how these ripple effects less great
for people with emphasema obviously than people with HIV resistance,
Like that's the lot of you would rather have superpower
versus and affliction, yes, but but nonetheless, oh that that's

(15:53):
genetically great. Yeah, it's it's strange what happens when any
population of living things is put through uh an environmental ringer?
Now does some some of you may might be saying,
like Matt Lauren Ben also Nolan's spirit, why are you
guys talking about the Black Death that was so long ago?

(16:13):
Move on, guys, this is just a grizzly historical side note.
We'll sit tight for a second. Well, we'll get to that,
and first let's talk about these bugs is back here?
What what do we mean when we say a bug
or a superbug. All right, you guys, here we go.
Travel with us for a moment. Close your eyes. I know,

(16:33):
Wait you're driving. Don't close your eyes. Sorry, sorry, Just
pretend there's an overlay on your windscreen. Okay, here we go.
Imagine your body, peaceful eyes, hopefully years. That's nice. Hopefully
there's an abdomen with guts down there. Now, imagine that

(16:56):
this body is an entire civilization, a city, perhaps even
a planet of its own, filled with bacteria in you,
around you, They're all living inside this city. Holy smokes,
it's crowded in there. Okay, so fun fact, here, there
are more bacterial cells that are inside of you than

(17:19):
there are your cells. Seriously. Here, here's the good thing.
They're much much smaller than your cells. Uh. And the
statistic has recently been contested and not in peer reviewed research,
so we can't take it for for certain yet. But
but suffice it to say that we host a lot
of my many more than you would think or want

(17:41):
to believe, and they're way smaller than the human cells
that make up your body. So it's not although we
are covered in living things and just inundated with them,
we're still you know by volume, there's more of us
than there are that. Yeah, there we go. That's how
you measure this that. Let's see, are they part of
snow now that we have created this ecosystem together? Oh?

(18:03):
Absolutely Yeah. A lot of them are are harmless, working
kind of you know, just alongside all of our normal
bodily processes, and a lot of them are even helpful. Yeah.
They digest food, they will fight off the bad bacteria
for you if it's a good day. We all have
these strange ecosystems or microbiomes and our guts, and you

(18:26):
can hear very interesting podcasts by some of our peers
are colleagues about the so called fecal transplants, which are
real thing. Yeah. Yeah, As it turns out, the microbiomes
and our guts have a lot to do with our
mental health, with our immune systems, with all kinds of
systems that you wouldn't expect gut bacteria to be influencing. Guys.

(18:46):
Really quick, fun fact that I learned from having a baby.
I didn't have the baby, but from having a baby,
you were like you were like a producer surge of sorts. Yeah.
So when when you were a baby and you're being breastfed.
The substance that you are fed prior to actually getting
milk is is the stuff that creates and coats the
inside of your lining. It creates your basically the little

(19:10):
biomes of bacteria that lives inside of you because you're
getting it from your parents, from your mother, which is
kind of cool. Isn't that weird to think about bacterial transfer?
Bacterial transferred and it's on purpose and we have to
do it or else there are issues, they're bad things
that happen. There's also research into how baby is born
via cesarean section are missing out on some vaginal microbiomes stuff,

(19:33):
and so so researchers are starting to just kind of
just kind of swab that right on the baby after
it's born by sarian section, therefore giving these amazing like
life saving, lifelong benefits benefits. Yeah, like the exterior bacterias
on your skin and stuff like that. Wow, that's crazy,
that's fascinating. So we are taking pains, of course, folks,

(19:56):
to show that bacteria is not all bad. It gets bad,
wrap it's not all bad, but uh, it is responsible
for your farts. So as we have a brain stuff
video about it, which ends on an oddly philosophical note
where it's like, Oh, it's not really you farting, it's
all this stuff inside of you that's producing this, which

(20:16):
makes you think, like, who are we farting inside of you?
Know what I mean? If we're the bacteria. Anyway, check
it out if you want. It's free on YouTube. But
I say that because it's time for us to take
a turn. We've talked about the good bacteria. What about
the other side. Uh, Yeah, there's there's a lot of
pathogenic a k A disease producing bacteria that can cause

(20:40):
infections anywhere in your body that you have body parts,
basically um and and and a note here which will
get more important as we go deeper into this conversation
about how tricky it is to fight off harmful bacteria.
UM species of bacteria don't fall into two simple binary
categories of pathogenic versus non pathogenic. And we know this

(21:01):
because we've seen bacteria species that were previously harmless turn
pathogenic inside of a host. So it's an on off
switch in each individual bacterium that depends on a number
of factors that the conditions in the host and the
health and welfare of the rest of the colony. Primarily,
to put it simply and also kind of scarily, bacteria

(21:23):
that have the capacity to be pathogenic can lie dormant.
What I imagined when when you're saying this is that
there are these tiny little microscopic sleeper cells of of terrorists.
Think these these bacterium terrorists that are just waiting to
be activated, and when they get the call, they're they're
they're opportunistic. It's it's really incredible from a evolution standpoint,

(21:47):
and really terrifying from a human person walking around with
these like hypothetical ticking time bombs kind of standpoint. Oh
and in addition to a bacteria colonies pathogenic state, you've
also got another qualifier that you can apply here, and
that's the colonies virulence, which is like how revvd up
the colon. The colony is about making you sick. Um. So,

(22:08):
where pathogenicity is whether bacteria make you sick or not,
virulence is how sick pathogenic bacteria make you. Okay, I see,
so like a sore throat or pneumonia. Sure, yeah, I'm
picking those throughout the air for the sake of argument.
It's amazing that we have as a species survived long
enough to learn so much about this this ancient supervillain.

(22:33):
Really that our species has been in a war. Uh
And now we know that bacteria have also pulled a
Benedict Arnold at times and switch sides. Well, it doesn't
benefit them to kill us off, so it's it's really
it's really a genetic flaw in bacteria. If they're killing us, well,
they probably don't need us all though, because they tread
live in other animals as well, right, especially if there

(22:55):
are other bacteria that it is helpful when the host
dies of that there can be movement or something. And
then that's wow, that doesn't make any sense when I
think about But there are so many other things that
take advantage of a being when it dies and it's
being broken down and how much food is created. Their
opportunistic is probably the word of the week for our
podcasts here. So let's we we talked about the good,

(23:19):
we talked about the bad, let's talk about the ugly.
In the early nine we didn't really have any any
efficacious or effective medicines against things like common germs. So
there were traditional treatments that we can talk about, but
there their efficiency was not It was nowhere near the

(23:42):
pills that your doctor will give you today, even though
the body has this great immune system that can fight
off infections. Sometimes the germs there's some serious heavyweights. Right.
We've got some uh frightening statistics here too, Right. Yeah,
before antibiotics, you had a very good chance of dying
if you got something like bacterial meningitis. Of the children

(24:05):
who got it died, and among those children who lived,
most of them had some kind of long lasting effects,
anything from different disabilities to deafness to even mental mental retardation,
which to me would be a fate worse than death. Honestly,
you know, I I can't imagine having a kid and
having a disease where they say your child survived, will

(24:28):
no longer be able to hear you, maybe even understand
who you are? Is that living? I don't know. Strep throat.
I used to get strepped throat all the time when
I was a kid. It was a time of fatal disease.
Did you guys ever have strepped throat or ear infections?
Stuff like infections I had about like once a year. Yeah.
We are not suited for time travel, my friends, unless

(24:49):
we have some sort of protective gear. I think the
bubble boy, yeah, or a space suit from NASA, but
they won't sell those. Two civilians they gave it. They
gave one. They gave one kid who actually did have
to of in a bubble because of this terrible immune disorder.
They gave him a kind of a space suit, but
they won't. You can email them if you want. Have
you been emailing them? I did email them before and asked,

(25:11):
uh they they said no, But there's nothing wrong with trying.
Here's the thing though, these ear infections. If we were
to travel back into the past, um you, Lauren, you,
Matt Noel, you listeners. If we all went back in
the past for some kind of time travel party and
we got an ear infection and we didn't have any
treatment for it, it could spread from the ear to

(25:31):
your brain. Yeah, well that's that's terrible. And then other
and let's not forget the serious infections are still around.
They're still too virgin losis, pneumonia, whooping cough, and they
are caused by these bacteria that are like Lauren said earlierly,
they're virulent, they reproduce at an extraordinary pace, and they

(25:52):
can easily well, they'll make you very sick, but they
could also plausibly just cause you to die. Game for men. Okay,
so let's talk about bacteria for a little bit. Guys,
let's get to know them. These people that were kind
of vilifying here, what are they like? Well, you can
if you look at a bacteria, ben let's imagine that

(26:13):
their real estate agents. For them. It's all about location, location, location.
They just need to find a place where they can
that they can eat, where they can reproduce. And guess what, uh,
they're not doing any kind of the They reproduce a sexually.
Oh yeah, yeah, so your your gut is not full

(26:34):
of a bunch of tiny creatures that are just sexual
congress inside of you making load. No, well, not bacteria anyway,
not bacteria anyway. Yeah, that's true. They can reproduce very
very quickly though the bacteria cat in in the right
conditions a warm, moist place, bacteria can reproduce like every
twenty minutes, which means you start with one and in

(26:56):
an hour you could have eight. Scale that across the
thousands and millions of creatures and bacteria can of course
damage you in a number of ways, poisoning your food,
entering your body through the air, and animal bite an
awkward high five, you know, seriously, skin to skin contact,
doorknob sometimes well, well, touching a door knob and having

(27:18):
either a cut on your skin or immediately putting your dirty,
dirty hand against one of your mucus membranes. Don't do that.
Don't do that. Do people do that? Uh? Probably more
than you would think. Actually, yeah, I always judge people
if I'm in the restroom and I hear them leave
without washing their hands. I know to some degree, it's

(27:39):
just this ritualized thing that we have. All we have
all as a society convinced ourselves will make people safer,
and it's better than nothing. But still I judge you
if I, if I, if I don't hear just at
least like run your hands. Yes, if I don't even
hear the water turn on, then judgment is coming your way. Luckily,
even if you don't wash your hands because you have

(28:02):
some I don't know, weird thing in your past. We
have something else that can help you. It's a nifty
group of substances called antibiotics, the Michael Jordan's medicine do yes, perfect?
So So what are these what? What what's the deal
with antibiotics? Well, these are chemical substances. You may have
heard of one of the most popular, penicillin, which is

(28:25):
derived from fungus or some other micro organism. And when
they're administered in dilute solutions. You, guys, these things are
able to destroy other micro organisms, which is extremely helpful
our targets in this case bacteria. Um. And if we're
gonna be technical, guys, the best group description for these
things would be anti microbials, though the term antibiotic is

(28:47):
used most often. Hey, what's the difference, you might be asking,
great question, Well, anti microbials can describe a variety of things.
There are anti septics that's applied to living tissue to
prevent infection, often during a surgery. Right, Uh, there's this.
Their disinfectants like bleach oh yeah, which just non selectively
kill all the things. Yeah, use on non living substances

(29:11):
to prevent the spread of infection. And finally, the heroes
of our story, uh, antibiotics, which kill the nasty micro
organisms inside your body. Once upon a time, this term
was only used to describe, you know, the natural stuff,
the moldy bread things like that. Nowadays, it's also used
to describe synthetic antibiotics. Um, let's say about the discovery

(29:35):
of antibiotics. We have some myths to bust. Well, yes,
depending on your age and the country of your origin,
you've probably heard all kinds of fun myths about how
antibiotics came about, especially from when you're in school, especially
young age school. Western Europeans were for a long time
thought to be credited with the discovery of antibiotics. However, yeah, well,

(29:57):
it may be true that various civilizations, include areas of
Western Europe, discovered these substances independently. It is incredibly difficult.
I'm gonna double down actually and say that is impossible
to really nail down who discovered what first why, Because
not only are antibiotics one of the most effective medicines

(30:17):
in human history, they're also one of the oldest. Like
super ol. We have no idea. Traces of stuff like
tetracycling have been found in human skeletal remains in the
ancient Sudanese Nubia dating back to three hundred fifty to
fifty c e. What. Yeah, and just before penicillin. That

(30:37):
is so far before penicilla, that's before there was even
really a calendar that would apply to something we could
understand you know what I mean. Yeah, And traces of
the same substance were found in bones from the Docta
Oasis in Egypt. And we we know that we can
find this substance tetracycling easier than any other ancient biotics

(31:01):
because it has a unique structure. But despite the fact
that that's our um, you know, that's our smoking gun,
that's our solid proof, there's so much other stuff there.
There's strong evidence the ancient civilizations across the world independently
discovered some sort of local antibiotics. Yeah. I heard something
about the red soil in Jordan's Yeah, still in use today.

(31:22):
It's a cheaper alternative than a pharmacy trip. And and
some kind of herb that was used in ancient China. Yeah, yeah,
art amiss and it's I'm not gonna try to butcher
the Mandarin for it, but it was used for thousands
of years. It also has antibiotic properties, and we know
that ancient antibiotic use has affected the genetic structure of

(31:43):
human beings. That sounds crazy. I know, you, me, everyone,
we know you listening. Everyone you know probably in some
way affected our Our genes are like um. Our genes
are yeah, yeah, that's the perfect word. So we usually
associate we live now and in the later part of

(32:05):
the age of antibiotics currently, and we usually associate the
beginning of this with two people, primarily Paul Airlick and
Alexander Fleming. Now this was also before penicillin, but not
so much before penicilla not so much before. So Hairlick's
idea of this magic bullet that selectively targets only these

(32:26):
disease causing microbes and not the host itself was based
on this observation that anneline and other synthetic dies, which
first became available around that time, could stain specific microbes
but not some of the others. And that's that's a
pretty huge discovery. And he said, well, what about these
chemical compounds, could we synthesize something that would be able

(32:47):
to exert that this full action exclusively on a parasite
harboring within an organism. So they did this large scale
screen program in nineteen o four and it was so gross.
They were trying to find a cure for syphilis, which
was a big deal. I mean, it's the problem. It's
still like not a vacation, I'm sure sure, but it

(33:08):
was a much bigger problem at that time, certainly, and
the treatment for it at the time was pretty crummy.
It would they would treat you with inorganic mercury salts
and had terrible side effects, and it didn't work that well.
It was just you'ld still probably go insane and then
die right, yes, you were. Was it was it Nietzsche

(33:29):
who had syphilis? I mean probably there are a lot
of historical figures that either on the surface or under
the table, had syphilis. So in his laboratory, together with
some other chemists, uh Arl synthesized hundreds of derivatives of
this highly toxic drug called a toxical and a burst
of creativity, and tested it in rabbits that were infected

(33:51):
with syphilis over go over over again, hundreds and hundreds
of times. I don't think I realized until right this
very moment that rabbits could get philist and I'm so
I don't even like rabbits, and I'm so sad for
rabbits right now. It's strange that there's some animals that
can get diseases that humans have, like leprosy is big
for humans, and armadillos that always I know they have

(34:13):
enough of a tough time. I always thought it was
strange that humans use rabbits for testing, but yeah, it
makes a lot of sense when you look at what
they can and cannot get compared to humans. Yeah, there's
similarities that are good for testing, if not, if not ethical,
I guess he goes to a question, you know how
many rabbits you're willing to kill to save? Well, in

(34:34):
this case, it was hundreds. Yes, yes, yes, in this
case it was hundreds. Right now, let's go to nineteen
o nine. Thank you, Ben. It's not the same without
no I know where is he. I hope he gets
back from that secret mission soon. Maybe he'll like find
this that we're recording and then put in some the

(34:57):
d and we won't even know that's true. I guess
we are kind of time traveling, aren't we. Yes, Okay, everybody,
let's uh, let's right now in the middle of the podcast.
Let's everyone clap their hands. No, don't do that, snap her, no,
don't do that. Um close your eyes again, no, they
don't a single simultaneously on three, everybody wink a single

(35:23):
eye and hopefully that will make Noel put something right here.
One two, Oh, he did it. I didn't even have
to say three. Okay. So now that we're in N nine,
you guys, these guys came across this compound in the

(35:47):
six hundred series of testing on these rabbits, thus numbered
six oh six, which cured syphilis infected rabbits, and showed
significant promise promise for the treatment of patients with this
venereal disease syphilis in limited trials on humans. So not
only did the rabbits go, hey, this worked on me,

(36:08):
thanks guys, rab rabbits noises, and then the humans. I mean,
it's incredible. It worked on rabbits and it's working on humans.
And despite the despite the fact that it was a
pain in the tuckus uh, there was a there was
a tremendous need for this drug and it became the
most frequently prescribed drug under the name salver san just

(36:29):
way better than a tonsil uh. And it was the
it was the number one. It was the king of
the hill drug cells wise, until the arrival of penicillin
in the nineteen forties. Weirdly enough, with salver san uh,
people still don't know what they call the mode of action.
We're not a hundred million percent sure how it works.

(36:51):
It just it just yeah, so talked about a lucky
lucky break um. Penicillin though is now penicilla is like
the main it's the beyond that, the destiny. I mean
it's pretty I mean it's pretty big. I mean you
probably heard of it. Yeah. So still in the nineteen
twenties British scientists named Alexander Fleming, which we've done some

(37:13):
shows on for Stuff of Genius. Maybe maybe we've you've
heard about it on a few of our other Pure podcasts.
He was working at a lab in St. Mary's when
he discovered a naturally growing substance that could attack certain bacteria.
So there was mold growing on the same plate or

(37:34):
peach tree dish as a colony of something called Staphylococcus
aureus bacteria. And this is these guys are jerks, super jerks,
not nice at all. Uh. Do you have pimples? Might
be them, You've got boils might be, then pneumonia, meningitis
might be. Then the rap sheet is yes, exactly. So

(37:55):
he he found that this mold made a substance that
could dissolve this back to area and he called it penicillin,
named after the Penicillium mold that made this substance. Over
the next two decades, they experimented with this penicillin and
tried to get it in the most efficient form, and
and they did. And it works essentially by creating holes

(38:16):
in the bacterium's outer membrane, kind of letting all of
its insides leak out and thereby killing it dead. Um.
It's not quite microstabbing, though it The penicillin prevents bacteria
from replenishing their cells, so as they're breaking down, they
just don't get any more membrane, right, Yeah, and then

(38:36):
and then all of a sudden, it's like that's the
noise that it makes. I'm pretty sure that a very
small Yeah, other antibiotics can can work similar to that,
or they can interfere with bacterium's production of other necessary
subcellular structures, or can even prevent bacteria from multiplying. So you, guys,
we we have conquered, at least in theory, we have

(38:57):
the substance now that can attack and anchor these bacterium
that have just been ravaging humanity and other animal life
for years, decades and centuries, perfect millennium. We're good to go, right, Yeah,
let's count everything in it all the time. So let's
also that's what we're doing. So here we are the
modern world. Let's talk about some statistics. Uh, you've probably

(39:17):
heard of the outfit called the c d C Center
for Disease Control here in Atlanta, Georgia, where we record
the show. They've got some sobering statistics for US. In
one year, two hundred sixty two point five million courses
of antibiotics are written in the outpatient setting. What that
means is that you go see a doctor, you say, hey,

(39:39):
I'm feeling weird. They say, I don't know what your
symptoms are. Here's some penicillin, and you know, God be
with you. This number, two sixty two point five million
equates to more than five prescriptions written each year for
every six people in the US. So did you guys
get an antibiotic prescription? Did you? I don't know, man,

(40:04):
I did not pass this kind of a blur. I
actually did not. It was the first year in a
long time where I did not have a dos of
antibiotics on on week like three of that infection. I
was like, you know, I think I'm going to see
a doctor about this. And that's the great thing about
antibox when you are like that sick. Yeah, when you're
like my ears might explode right out of my head.

(40:24):
Let's let's go see a doctor about this thing. Right,
it's a it's a good drug, and it's not just uh,
it's not just for people either write an antibiotic and
outfit with the totally legitimate name of Union of Concerned
Scientists and being somewhat sarcastic, I leave it to you
to check the sources. Of course, they they had some

(40:45):
of the highest estimates for these numbers. So I'm about
to um and we're about to explore together. So every
year they say livestock producers in the US used twenty
four point six million pounds of anti microbials. Get this,
in the absence of disease for non therapeutic purposes. That's
ten point three million pounds and pigs, ten point five

(41:06):
million pounds in the chickens and poultry, and three point
seven million pounds in cattle. And it would be even
higher if they measured the anti microobials used therapeutically, the
ones that are actually medicine for these animals. Right, And
the distinction here is really important because the non therapeutic purposes,
includes just like low level pre treatment of animals that

(41:29):
aren't sick at all, that could be sick, that could
get sick, uh someday. Um. But because of a few
studies that were done which will go into later. But yeah,
so so it's a huge number of of our food
animals that are being treated with the stuff. And this
means that, according to some of the higher estimates, you'll
see anywhere from forty percent to nine of antibiotics used

(41:52):
in the US are actually for livestock and not for people.
And even if it is super low, even if it
is which is still pretty high, that's still a lot.
I mean, we're talking about life forms that reproduce every
twenty minutes. Yes, and these bacteria reproduce every twenty minutes.
It's evolution and fast forward. Luckily we have antibiotics on

(42:16):
our side. Em blowyer, they swell. Are you're feeling sick?
Do you do you have a sore throat? Do you
have an earache? Do you have bulbous black craps sprouting
from your skin? We'll take a pill and boom, you're cured. Right,
here's where it gets crazy. Antibiotics are less effective in

(42:38):
the present day than they were in the past. We
are losing our species ancient war against these micro organisms,
you guys. And and this is the part that is
not a conspiracy theory. This is a conspiracy fact of
of of microbes versus us. Right. Yeah. Over the past decades,
scientists across the world have noted the rise of bacteria

(42:59):
resistant to one or multiple common antibiotic treatments. This is
scary stuff. Two thousand thirteen, our folks at the CDC
announced the antibiotic resistant pathogens in the US alone sick
in two million people a year and play a role
in twenty three thousand deaths annually. At least twenty five

(43:20):
thousand people die each year in Europe from infections due
to five specific antibiotic resistant bacteria. Also in the US,
there's the methless and resistance Staphylococcus that Ben said earlier.
You remember that one. Yes, that those infections kill nearly
nineteen thousand people a year, which is more than the

(43:41):
number of people who die from AIDS in this country. Ah. Yeah,
Another fun stat. In ten, UK scientists announced the discovery
of bacteria bearing a gene known as mcr one that
gives bacteria resistance to Colliston, which is often used by
doctors when other or antibiotics fail. Yeah, that's the high

(44:03):
like the heavy, heavy stuff, right right, Yeah, it's one
of the last lines of defense. Yeah. It was discovered
in China and then Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and
several other Asian and African countries. So we know that
this resistance gene is spreading. And again I cannot emphasize
this enough. Bacteria evolve more quickly than animals of our size,

(44:27):
ever will one of the big problems. One of the
big factors contributing to this is over prescription. Millions of
these antibiotics are consumed annually in the US. However, it's
estimated that as many as half are unnecessary. And I
don't know if you guys have ever been in a situation, um,
Matt Lauren no listeners where you have um where you've

(44:50):
come in to the doctor's office and you have something
that maybe is a virus, but you're still prescribed an antibiotic.
You know, this happens with respiratory tract infections. The majority
of the time those are caused by something viral, not
a not a bacterial infection of them, and the antibiotics
do absolutely nothing to combat that type of infection. Yeah yeah,

(45:13):
they just wave at viruses on the on the highway.
That's all that's going on in the in the city
of our bodies. Right. For a long time this happened
because for a long time, we as a species, we
as a civilization, thought it was harmless to prescribe antibiotics
because you know, what's the what's the harm if if

(45:34):
it's not helping, it's certainly not gonna hurt you. Yeah. Sure. So,
so if someone came in and demanded a pill for
whatever was ailing them, then doctors would just you know,
toss them some of ox scillin or whatever. And we
don't just have we don't just have antibiotics as medicine
that we take with the prescription. Oh yeah, yeah, they're
they're in all kinds of cleaning products. To the sale

(45:55):
of antibiotics. Soaps may generate as much as a billion
dollars per year in the United States alone. But do
do they really work better than regular soaps? Probably not
fun times, Okay. For for example, here a study out
of South Korea published in in the Journal of Anti
Microbial Chemotherapy looked into soaps made with the common active

(46:19):
ingredient trichlasan, and they found that there was no statistical
difference in the number of bacteria gotten rid of by
regular versus antibiotic soaps during normal hand washing. In order
to see a difference, the researchers had to soap stuff
with microbes on it in the two soap solutions for
nine hours nine hours. Yeah, and okay, we don't. We

(46:41):
don't usually wash our hands for nine hours straight, you know,
I mean there's special cases. Sure, I've had a couple
of long nights, You've had some stressful from you've got
a baby. We all understand your hands clean. They do.
You're just saying that. But even if you're not dealing
with the things that Matt is on a daily basis. Uh,

(47:02):
these active chemicals last at least nine hours in our
drains and our runoff, potentially in our water supply. So
even though they might not be effective on our bodies,
they are almost surely at work going to work on
bacterial populations that are in our environments, driving their evolution.
And that is certainly something you don't think about when
you're just at the sink washing your hands or something.

(47:24):
So antibiotic stuff like the soaps and hand sanitizers and
stud it's a rip. Yeah, totally, yeah. Yeah. The the
FDA is actually considering right now whether it should even
be legal to market antibiotic cleaning products at all, based
on whether they have any any actual benefits. Some companies
are already reformulating and anticipation of the FDA's official word

(47:47):
on the matter, which is coming in September. That is
really scary because Okay, so in my hand, I've got
one of these hand sanitizer things that kills nine terms
you guys, that's what it says. Well, it's a it's
a sanitizer thing. It's not an antibiotic, so it falls
into that bleach kill them all. But you're still you're

(48:10):
still like kind of unnecessarily killing off bacterial populations. And
I'm possibly giving some of the populations that don't die
that that point oh one percent that lives. I might
be giving them that genetic boost. Yeah yeah. And it's
not just medicine, it's not just soap. I think we
should talk a little bit more about the animals. This

(48:33):
is the worst part. Yeah, alright, So so those estimates
are really interesting because that you that you reported earlier
then are really interesting because the meat industry does not
report on how it uses antibiotics and animals um but
like we said, it definitely doesn't use them just when
they're sick. Uh And and this came into practice when

(48:55):
some research like a few decades ago found the animals
pre treated with low level anibi attics would generally gain
weight like up to three percent more than non treated animals.
And when you're when you're dealing with with with pennies
per animal of profit, three percent is pretty huge in
in the big meat there has to be a better

(49:16):
way to say that. Well, when you're talking about millions
and millions of those meats of the walking meats that
you're creating that have a three extra amount of meat
on it, that's yeah. Yeah. So the reason that this
is a problem is that is that treated animals can
harbor resistant strains of bacteria that make people sick, like salmonella.
For example, how how do you like some antibiotic resistant salmonella?

(49:37):
Guys love it. I'm not doing anything this weekend. The
cd The CDC estimates that every year, over four hundred
thousand people in the United States alone gets sick from
resistant salmonella and can't be low backter, what another another
make you puke? Kind of sounds like a lot of
people are already in on this. I might skip the salmonella. Yeah,

(50:00):
too too big already, it's too big guys. Yet, I
was really I was thinking about getting a burrito. There's
a maybe you should just never eat again. I think
that's probably okay. But we have some more stats about
this as well. Yeah. Yeah. The CDC also estimates that
as many as twenty percent of resistant infections are caused
by transfer from our food or from contact of animals.

(50:23):
Banning this sub therapeutic use of antibiotics would would absolutely
lower the meat industries profit margin by you know, making
its animals overall smaller and and potentially sicker and less
able to be kept in shall we say, profit optimizing
conditions intensive farming. I think is the current euphemism disgusting?

(50:43):
That's horrifying? Yeah? Um, but okay, so do you want
to get really really mad guys? Yea, yeah, I'm not
doing the salmonella things. Okay, excellent. Well. In a report
commissioned by the U s d A that was published
in researchers estimated that the annual cost to consumers of
the huge change of banning sub therapeutic use of antibiotics.

(51:06):
The annual cost consumers would be between four dollars and
eighty four cents and nine dollars and seventy two cents
per capita. It's like per person per year. Yeah, maybe
ten dollars five to ten Yeah, okay, And so so
you know, just that for inflation from and and I guess,
like you know, like check your your privilege, like you know,

(51:26):
it's it's easier for me to absorb twenty dollar a
year difference in my food cost than it is for
many other human people. But who ha, I'm mad about
that when you think about that, especially just when you
look at the reasons that they have to or believe
that they need to administer these antibiotics because of the

(51:49):
conditions and because of that small increase in meat value
in the entire time. The clock is ticking. Clock of
evolution reminds me of that game that was once very popular, Pandemic.
Do you guys remember Pandemic? And yeah, okay, I'm glad
that someone else remembers that because one of the most
difficult places to get to, like implant pandemic. You play

(52:13):
disease and you can be a virus, you can be
a bacteria, you can be something else, I don't know,
a fungus, and your job is to infect the world
and to end the age of human beings. There's one
place that is the most difficult to get and you guys,
remember what it is, right, It's it's an It's madagas

(52:35):
Madagascar in that game has the most paranoid effective government
on the planet. As soon as someone coughs, there like,
shut down the hospital, burn everybody, shut down the ports.
I have only one that's this game once and I've
played it a disturbing amount of times. But I say
I say this because it's easy to forget that this

(52:56):
is happening in real life where you live right now,
unless you live in a clean room. The clock is ticking.
And we have these methods to our antibiotic madness. We
have our first line of antibiotics, methicillin, oxocillin, penicillin A moxicillin.
But as these bacteria are treated, either underdosed or dosed unnecessarily,

(53:20):
they survive and they change and we have to find
new ways to combat them. So what happens, What happens
bat Well, we uh, should we talk about Plan B? Yeah? Yes,
because okay, because this is all doom and gloom, but
we do as a species kind of have a Plan B.

(53:42):
Were or we're developing a Plan B that I have
a lot of hope for personally. Um, because okay, we
we've learned the using this brute force of antibiotics against
bacteria is bad. But but what if we could outsmart bacteria? Uh?
And this seems like a ludicrous thing to say because
bacteria are literally brainless. They don't even have a cell nucleus,

(54:03):
so it seems like it wouldn't be that hard. But
but researchers are just now learning how bacteria are so successful,
and it's partially thanks to a form of communication called
quorum sensing. Oh I think I've I think I've heard
of this? Is this how they build networks? Uh? Sort of? Yeah, yeah,
they can. They can produce, release, and detect these signal

(54:24):
molecules that let them know what's up with other bacteria
in the colony and and even with other species of
bacteria that are in the area. It lets a colony
of bacteria kind of synchronize its gene expression. For for
better survival. So, like some some things that bacteria colonies
can do through quorum sensing, our work together to produce
tough biofilms that surface colonies that are especially resistant to antibiotics.

(54:48):
They can become more or less virulent, and they can
toggle their pathogenicity on and off. So so if this
were a mob of people, it's this warm sensing a
allows one of them to say, hey, we're just hanging out,
but why don't we kill somebody? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's it's basically what happens here is that a bacterium,

(55:12):
a single bacterium, produces and releases these signal molecules when
it finds itself in in a particular state, when you know,
it really likes the place it's hanging out in or
doesn't like it or or whatever. Okay, um, and it
detects a lot of signal molecules from other bacteria around it,
and when it detects enough of any given type of
signal molecule, it switches modes to go with what the

(55:33):
group is doing. So okay, so this is something we've discovered,
and does Plan B somehow try and like stop that
from happening, or now that we understand. That is that
the idea. Well okay, so so you guys, I'm sure
that you've talked before on this show about how governments
and militaries sometimes use signal jamming techniques to prevent unwanted

(55:55):
communication in in certain circumstances. Yeah. Um, rees, richers are
working on the bacterial equivalent of that, and there's a
few different approaches that are being investigated. Um. They use
chemicals or enzymes to uh to disrupt the production of
signal molecules, or to disrupt the reception of signal molecules,

(56:16):
or to send out false signals, and and any of
these have the potential to trick bacteria to go into
a non pathogenic state, even if conditions are are ripe.
So this is necessarily killing it. This is just changing it. Yeah,
this is just saying like, hey, just chills where you are,

(56:37):
what you're doing, and don't do anything else. Why don't
we just hang out? And I hope it works because
otherwise we are looking at a future full of super bugs.
Remember the play we talked about earlier in the show,
how it never really goes away, It just shows up
every so often like some weird family curse. Well, if
our boy, your senior pestis evolves beyond the reach of antibiotics,

(57:00):
we could look at the stunning fatal sequel to the
original Black Death and we wouldn't have any defense. Yeah,
the the bibonic plague is not over with. From two
thousand to two thousand nine, you're sitting a pestis bacteria
infected over twenty thousand people worldwide and and killed one thousand,
six hundred and twelve, and antibiotics have traditionally knocked it
out really fast. Uh. You know, early detection and treatment

(57:23):
are important. Mostly it's it's deadly if the infection spreads
to your lungs, causing what's known as the pneumonic plague. Madagascar,
two thousand seven. Plague samples taken from a boy reveal
the form of why pest is resistant to eight different antibiotics.
Two thousand fourteen, same place, Madagascar, Over cases of plague

(57:48):
were confirmed in November. We may be approaching a post
antibiotic age. But hey, what about pharmaceutical companies, right, that's
literally their job. Wouldn't they like to save the world
or at some of the people on it. Well, to
answer that question, we have a nifty quote for you
from our friends at the BBC. Pharmaceutical research hasn't kept

(58:10):
up with the growing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. No
new types of classes of antibiotics have been discovered for
twenty five years, and some strains of bacteria are now
unharmed by nearly all of the drugs designed to kill them,
making infections by these bacteria almost untreatable. Experts have warned

(58:31):
we are decades behind in the race against the superbugs.
We've already exploited the most obvious, naturally occurring antibiotics, so
creating new ones requires much more time and ingenuity, but
currently there is little financial incentive to do so. Pharmaceutical
companies target chronic illnesses to maximize potential profits from new drugs. Imagine,

(58:58):
if you will, a world in which a common infection,
something is insignificant as a deep cut could kill you,
A sore throat could lead to death by asphyxiation. A
serious burn would almost certainly be a death sentence. It's
like we're way back, guys. It's like we transported all
the way back to three fifty C and we didn't

(59:19):
even have to leave our timeline. We're talking about a
world in which many vital medical procedures that depend on
weakening the immune system, like chemotherapy, will be essentially useless
because there's no way to prevent the associated risk of infection.
Transplants would be a thing of the past. Tattoos would
be dangerous. Treatments for our thritis and rheumatism also depend

(59:41):
on immunosuppressors. And here in the US as well as
many other parts of the world, we're still coping with
high rates of HIV transmission. Uh that that that virus
of course attacks immune cells, which leads to autoimmune deficiency syndrome.
We would return to brutal pass a world in which
five women out of one thousand died in childbirth one
person and out of nine died when they got a

(01:00:01):
skin infection. Out of ten folks who would get pneumonia,
three would die. And there are so many diseases that
we that we don't worry about anymore, and in developed
countries that are caused by bacterial infections typhus, tuberculosis, gonorrhea,
Hey resistant goneria another fun one right up there with salmonella.
What are you doing this weekend? Again? Uh? You know,

(01:00:21):
even even the scarier ones that the meningitis, anthrax, and
and botulism. Researchers are saying that this won't be like
the imagined zombie apocalypse, but something a lot more insidious.
People spending longer in the hospital, patients getting sicker, having
more complications, and dying more often. And what I'm envisioning
is a future, at least at the moment, where families

(01:00:43):
are having to move back in closer to one another
because they can't afford to live spread out the way
we kind of have over the past few decades, especially
in this country, where now everyone is more grouped together,
everyone's getting sick together and even sicker and not getting better.
To add to that that the majority of people across
the globe now live in what would be called an

(01:01:06):
urban environment. It's easier to transmit sickness now, So that
is our conclusion at this point. We leave you, ladies
and gentlemen, at the I of the storm, I guess,
because there is quite possibly a storm coming. Will new
antibiotic methods happen, Will pharmaceutical companies overcome the financial disincentives

(01:01:30):
to create new solutions? Are we going to have to
wait until the storm hits? Yeah? Will our food industry
actually make some changes to hopefully better some of this situation.
If they don't. And if you're wondering what you can
do personally, there's there's there's definitely stuff that you can
do on an individual level. And and that includes washing

(01:01:53):
your hands before you eat stuff or otherwise touch the
mucus membranes. Uh, know them, love them, don't put bacteria
in them. Um. Uh, don't use antibacterial soaps, they're bad times. Uh.
Don't touch poop, try not to touch poop. Yeah, one
at a time. But these are seriously, these are these

(01:02:17):
are good points. Yeah, and and and one one more
one more. Um. If you're if you do get prescribed
in an albiotic by a doctor, make sure that you
take it as it was prescribed to you and don't
stop halfway through the treatment, no matter whether you're feeling
better or not. That's huge because that that can that
can lead to building resistance of the bacterial colonies in
your body. So what do you think, ladies and gentlemen,

(01:02:39):
we would love to hear from you. Will humanity be
able to turn the tide in the coming the next leg,
the next theater of the super bug war? Uh? If
you would like to write to us. We'd love to
hear from you. We're on Facebook and Twitter. We're conspiracy
stuff both of those. And Lauren, thank you so much
for come onto the show again. Thank you for making

(01:03:02):
me mad. It's great. Yeah, it was our pleasure. Speaking
of being friends, you mentioned something on Twitter to us,
just as just a fun way to close this out.
I think, uh, something that we have. I don't know
if we talked about on the show, Ben, but I
think maybe I brought it to your attention and Jason's attention,
this thing called the conspiracy cruise. Cruise you said it's

(01:03:26):
this thing. Did you read much about it? Uh? No,
I read like half of a blog post from a
lady who was there nsider who was like exploring it.
From a skeptics who is Harvard, went to Harvard Law school.
It was actually a lawyer. Yeah, yeah it sounded I
mean it sounded great. I mean I mean I think
we should go. I think we should. This is not

(01:03:46):
an old secret mission, by the way, from he's something else.
He's on a much more important mission. Not that this
isn't important. I'd love to send him on that cruise though.
So can we vote While he's not here. Listeners, you
can vote as well. Everybody wants to send Nolan the cruise,
say I alone, I just know, yeah what I want
to go to? Oh okay, yeah go you should go?

(01:04:10):
And I yeah, I mean if you guys think that
you need backup, I don't want to. I mean it
would be cool if we could all go, but whatever,
that's fine, I'll go. I'm not gonna go. I I
don't think I can cross running water. Well we'll see
what I if I can pack something, they can help
you get out there. Oh yeah, yeah, I've I've I've
got you. Don't worry. Thanks you guys giving me a
coffin a dirt or something. Yeah, no, the covens on it.

(01:04:32):
Oh fantastic. Well, on that note, we're going to head out.
But Lorden, where can people find you when they want
to hear more of your work? Oh? Goodness, many many places.
Uh you know. Go go ahead and use that Google thing.
It's pretty fancy. Look up brain stuff or what the
stuff with an exclamation point and also a question mark,
or a little bit more directly, you can look me

(01:04:53):
up under fw thinking on Twitter. That's at f W thinking.
It's it's similar basically everywhere, and uh and and brain
Stuff is brain Stuff Show or brain Stuff hs W
and Forward Thinking is an exciting show because it looks
at in maybe a slightly more optimistic way. It looks
at some of the big questions about the future that
we tackle here, I would say a much more optimistic way. Yeah, yeah.

(01:05:16):
The the the quorum sensing research is from Forward Thinking.
So if you want to hear more about quorum sensing
and the future of everything from space exploration to robots,
to the animals inside of us or the bacteria inside
of us, then do check out Forward Thinking and Speaking
of the future. This is something that we always like

(01:05:38):
to end our show with what future topics should we cover?
Our best ideas come from you. You can tell us
on Facebook, you can tell us on Twitter, or if
you think that's a bunch of rigamarole and hooplah and
unnecessary brew hahaim, then you can write to us directly.
We are conspiracy at how stuff works dot com. For

(01:06:01):
more on this topic another unexplained phenomena, visit YouTube dot
com slash conspiracy. You can also get in touch on
Twitter at the handle at conspiracy Stuff