November 6, 2018 • 45 mins
Each year, the Ig Nobel prizes honor the weirdest and wackiest contributions to humanity’s scientific understanding of the natural world. In this pair of Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast episodes, Robert Lamb and Joe McCormick unpack each of this year’s winners.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and our yearly tradition returns. We always end up covering
the ig Nobel Prizes, and that's what we're gonna do
(00:23):
today in part one of our ig No Bells series.
That's right. We we generally pick up with the ig
Noo Bells after October is finished because the Ignoble Prizes,
it tends to happen, uh right at the end of September.
Terrible timing for us, like we're just getting going for
Monster season and then they throw these in our past.
But I think it works out too because then for us,
(00:45):
because everybody can sort of read the initial press releases
if you know, if you're if you're paying attention to them,
to the science to science media, you'll probably pick up
on on what one and then you can eventually check
back in with us and hear us chat about it
as well. Now, these spirit of the Ignoble Prizes, if
you're not familiar is they would say they follow the
(01:05):
ethos of Professor Frank Right, Professor Frank, Professor Frank. He'll
make you laugh, He'll make you think, Yeah, yeah, the Simpsons, Yeah,
very very much. So, Uh, I have to we have
to point out, as I think we usually do ignobles.
In some cases, they rub some people the wrong way.
Some people don't see the humor in it. They maybe
think that science should, uh should be a humorist affair
(01:27):
and that we and or they think that that in
some cases, uh, the honorees are being made fun of.
But I think for the vast majority of individuals honored
by the ignobles, uh, they get it, They get the joke,
they see the value of it, and they realize that, yes,
it's about having fun, but it's also about honoring legitimate
research as well. Yeah. I mean, so these are real studies,
(01:49):
and it tends to focus on studies that are funny
when you first look at them, but they usually do
reveal something at least pretty interesting. I mean not always.
Sometimes I kindaman, well, that's just pretty silly, But most
of the time there's at least some kind of really
interesting tidbit in there. It either moves the field forward
in some unexpected way, or it gives you something to
(02:09):
think about. Uh, they do that, they Professor Frank. Professor Frank.
So these have been awarded every year since by the
Annals of Improbable Research, a humorous science publication that looks
at various studies and whatnot. The purpose of this award,
according to the editors of Improbable Research, is to quote
honor achievements that first make people laugh and then make
(02:30):
then make them think. Furthermore, they stressed that the ten
prizes aren't necessarily meant to pass judgment on the winners. Instead,
as they they tend to emphasize that the prizes quote
celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur people's interests
in science, medicine, and technology. And by the way, the
principal individual here is editor Mark Abram's, editor of the
(02:51):
Animals of Improbable Research. Um, and I think that's important
to the idea about spurring people's interests, because a lot
of times do manage to highlight studies and papers and
achievements in science then otherwise don't really rise, uh, you know,
up in the headlines, or if they do, they only
rise in the headlines because they're funny. And so one
(03:14):
thing that we like to do when we look at
the ignobles is find Okay, are are there some of
these that are actually kind of interesting when you start
thinking about them? Do they give you something to ponder? Yeah?
And in always we ask the question why is it important?
And why is it funny? The second question is generally
just very obvious and the kid go except for the
ones that aren't actually all that funny, which occasionally happens. Yeah,
(03:37):
sometimes sometimes, but generally you're like, oh, yeah, I see
why they honored that one. And in some cases I
think we've mentioned on the show, a new study will
come along and we'll realize, oh, that one that's going
to get an ignoble at some point. Yeah, any study
about like butts or bending over or something that's just
it's just a shoe, and then it just naturally Nobell bait. Yes, exactly.
(03:58):
All right. So, now that we've established the ig Nobel
Prizes and what they are for anyone it wasn't familiar,
let's let's start jumping into some of the winners for
two thousand and eighteen. Okay, Now, obviously we're not going
to cover all of the winners in the same depth.
Some we're going to engage with pretty deeply. Some we'll
just sort of talk about pretty quickly. But I think
the first thing we should look at is maybe medicine prize. Yes,
(04:21):
so this one honors Mark Mitchell and David Wartener for
for using roller coaster rides to try to hasten the
passage of kidney stones. Does this have practical utility? Well yeah,
just just you wait. This was an October publication and uh,
Dave Wardinger was the individual who accepted the honors at
(04:42):
the ceremony. So this one obviously links into an episode
that you and I recorded years back, The Stone of Madness,
which my name is Lubert nas because the episode dealt
in part with the passing of kidney stones and bladder
stones and what wait is it the Bosch painting? Is
it Bosch? Yes, the removing of the Stone of Madness
not from the bowels but from the cranium. Right, But
(05:06):
the the idea is that there was like a removal
of stone surgeries in the early modern period. Was was
kind of dicey, right, literally, like people were diced and
sliced and then died horrible deaths on the operating table.
But there's this painting by Herono Spash that makes fun
of this guy who's going to try to get a
stone and alleged stone cut out of his head, and
(05:28):
he's like, please cut the stone. Master. My name is
Lubert Doss, So I often think about that when I
see somebody behaving foolishly in public. I'm just like, my
name is Lupert Doss. All right, Well I've I I
don't know about you, Joe, but I've been fortunate enough
to avoid kidney stones thus far in my life. If
you've ever had a kidney stone, now I have not. Okay, Well, basically,
(05:49):
what we're we're talking about here are hard deposits made
of minerals and salts. They form, They can form inside
your kidneys, and they often form when the urine becomes concentrated,
allowing the minerals to crystallized and stick together. Uh if
they If they form, then your body tries to pass them,
which can be painful. In some cases, doctors can simply
give you a pain killer and instruct you to drink
(06:09):
a lot of water to help pass it. But in
other cases, especially if it becomes lodged in your urinary tract,
surgery may be required to it. That's just I'm shivering
over here. So there's no dud, you know, definite single
cause for kidney stones, but dehydration can certainly lead to
their formation. Again the concentration of urine. Remember now, as
(06:32):
the authors of this paper point out, some three hundred
thousand US patients seek emergency care for kidney stones each year.
And in addition to hydration saying you know, drink a
lot of water or the administration fluids to other things
that are sometimes used are positional inversion and external application
(06:52):
of force. WHOA, so what does that mean getting upside
down or something getting upside down getting thrown around a
little bit, And so I think everyone can can can
realize here while why we're getting into the domain of
roller coasters, uh, They point out that there have been
reports of spontaneous kidney stone passage associated with both the
(07:14):
roller coaster riding and bungee cord jumping. So somebody had
kidney stones and then they're like time to go bungee jumping. Well,
and that was a little unclear the weather. It was
a situation where if the individual knew they had the stones,
I assume they knew, um, given the discomfort that is
generally reported, but attached the bungee cords. My name is
Lubert Dass. The problem though, is, they said, these these
(07:39):
accounts they tend to be reported in like non peer
reviewed publications or it's just kind of like word of mouth.
And uh. In particular, uh, they noted that they had
heard numerous stories about people passing kidney stones after riding
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, a roller coaster at Walt disney
World's Magic Kingdom thing part in Orlando, Florida. Uh. Yeah,
(08:02):
they they had turned apparently heard various accounts of folks
spontaneously passing the stones after writing it, Have you ridden
this roller coaster? Joe? No, I'm not really a roller
coaster person, and I haven't wait. Which one is that
Magic Kingdom? Oh? Yeah, I've been to that one, but
not since I was a kid. I was probably too
short to ride to it. Anyway, when I was there,
it's like it has like a mining theme. I wrote
(08:23):
it just like what last year the year before. I
wrote it with my son and my niece, and it's
a fun roller coaster. I'm not really a roller coaster
person myself, but I enjoyed some of the roller coasters
at Disney because they're just like really phenomenal productions, especially
the one that has a YETI in it. Did you
get the black lung? The black light? The black long
(08:43):
was not a featured add on when I was at Disney.
But but this, this is a roller coaster that does
move you around. It's it's not like one of those
just crazy, um you know, one of those just insane
rides that does that some people go for. It doesn't
look like it's a design and to get a confession
out of you, but it's still it takes you for
(09:04):
a ride. So they wanted to test it out. They said, well,
let's go there and let's see what happens to some
kidney stones. Brilliant, I'm in now. They didn't take individuals
with kidney stones on board, so there were no human
test subjects here. What they did is they took three
kidney stones of different sizes, suspended them in urine, and
then placed them in adult uteroscopy and reino scopy simulators,
(09:29):
and then they took them for twenty rides, so sixty
rides in total. Okay, so they what basically got them
in some kind of fake kidney kind of contraption. Yeah,
there were some pictures of these in the paper and
they one of them looks kind of like a prop
from a David Cronenberg film, and the other looks like
a it's like a crystal tree looking, you know device.
(09:50):
It looks like it kind of looks like an award
you might win for, you know, achievements in Kidney Stone,
Remove Horse something. So do you know if they had
to have any kind of arrangements to negotiate these organs
onto the roller coaster, like are they arguing with the
ticket guy or what? They pointed out specifically that that
care was taken to preserve guests, employ entertainment, joinment. Um. So,
(10:14):
so I believe they had them inside of something hidden
out of the way because they also mentioned specifically, uh,
and this is this is an exact quote. Uh. Bovine
and poor sign renal models were deemed impractical as patients
surrogates for study, owing to ambient temperature and the inappropriate
display of such material in a family friendly amusement park. Okay,
so you couldn't bring like pig kidneys onto the roller
(10:38):
coaster because that might upset some people. Yeah, and Disney
was apparently they were gracious hosts for this study, but
they knew there were limits it's kind of a delicate
situation when you're carrying out your kidney stone research on
an active amusement park ride. But then again, you might
have some science loving kids there. They get their you know,
their picture hugging Mickey, and then they get their picture
(10:58):
hugging some pig kidneyst opportunity. That's maybe, so maybe maybe
for the next study. So what did they find out, Well,
they found that it did seem to prove helpful, but
mostly only if you're seated towards the back of the coaster.
So for front coaster passage, right, we're talking four of
twenty four. Rear coaster passage rate twenty three or thirty six. Hey,
(11:19):
that's not bad. Yeah, I mean it's like, like everybody knows,
you said at the back of the coaster, you're gonna
get a bump, your more hillacious ride, and if you
have a lacious kidney stone, well it's going this is
going to help knock it out of you just a
little bit easier. So the author is actually like suggesting
people do this somehow, I would suspect not. No, no,
(11:39):
I don't think anybody is saying go to to Disney
World instead of a doctor kidney stone. Like, for one thing,
the lines for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad are pretty long,
and I cannot imagine standing in them with any kind
of like an abdominal discomfort going on, or you know,
and enhanced necessity to urinate or anything. But how long
(12:04):
they had the stand in lines total in order to
run the ride the thirty six times or whatever that
they were trying to pass the stone? Maybe there's some
sort of a research based fast pass you can get.
I'm not sure. I don't know that they mentioned that
specifically in the study. And then they also point out
that their other you know, their limitations on the study.
Obviously they didn't get to use human patients. They use
(12:26):
these models, But the study is important because kidney stones
are a legitimate health concern, and I don't think, Yeah,
even though we're not talking about installing roller coasters in hospitals,
it does make one think what kind of what kind
of an apparatus might be appropriate, right, Yeah, I mean
you could probably just figure out what part of the
(12:47):
roller coaster rides specifically is the most useful, like what
you know, kinds of g forces on the body and
how that's applied, and maybe just like make a chair
that does it to you or something. Yeah, that's I
think that's the most logical application that I can imagine,
short of just actually having a roller coaster at the hospital.
That's also sounds kind of fun um. But anyway, that's
(13:09):
why it's important, why it's funny. Obviously, it's science plus
roller coasters. Anytime that combo was coming at you, it's
going to elect a few giggles. I think that's a
pretty good one. Okay, well let's take a quick break,
and when we come back, we will have more ignobles.
Thank thank Alright, we're back now. The next one I
(13:30):
think we should go to is Nutrition Prize. And I
know what you have all been thinking lately. You've been wondering,
can I lose weight by converting to a diet consisting
only of human flesh? The Hannibal diets, the new fad.
Oh no, Hannibal eats all kinds of other stuff. He
would have to go like super paleo Hannibal. Well, he
(13:51):
supplements his diet with human flesh. That's how he stays
so trim putting like a blueberry reduction balsamic glaze on
this humane You know how unhealthy all that would be
if he wasn't throwing in some some lean human flesh
to just really balance everything out, all right. So this
prize went to a researcher named James Cole for a
paper published in Scientific Reports in called Assessing the Caloric
(14:16):
Significance of Episodes of Human Cannibalism in the Paleolithic. Who
attended the ceremony is James Cole, the author of this paper.
So let's say you come across some evidence of humans
eating other humans, it's reasonable to ask why are they
doing this? Right? In fact, this is often a question
we have to ask about the remains of Stone Age
(14:37):
humans because they're Paleolithic sites, Stone Age sites that show
clear evidence of human cannibalism at least as far back
as our hominin relatives in the early place to see
in roughly two point five million years ago. So I
guess before we get to the y. Actually, a totally
reasonable question you might have is, if we're talking about
hominin remains that are thousands or even millions of years old,
(14:59):
how can we tell cannibalism took place. It's just bones, right, Like,
what would the evidence be? Well, there are a couple
of lines of evidence for cannibalism in the Pleistocene. One
is anthropogenic modification of human remains. That's the like polite
sciencey way to talk about signs of butchering on human bones.
(15:20):
So clear human made changes to the bones of other humans,
and these would be the same kinds of physical marks
that we would find left on the bones of what
are considered prey animals. Signs of butchering, cooking, and eating.
And examples would include cuts and chop marks in the
bone from the butchering process, like they might have been
made with sharp stone tools, breaks in the long bones,
(15:42):
which would be presumably to access the marrow, because that's
the good part. Evidence of cooking, such as burned ends
of a bone, human tooth marks on a bone, quote,
lack of a cranial base to get at the brain
on otherwise complete or near complete skeleton. Well you gotta
suck the head. I mean, anybody who's like crayfish or
(16:05):
swamp bugs if you want to call them. So, I'm sorry,
I said crayfish crawdads is the correct terms that I'm
gonna go with. Crawdads. I have to admit I'm a
little hazy. I do like swamp bugs as a as
a kind of Cajun description though right, well, they're they
are quite bug like, but they have delicious heads, and
so a lot of people just eat the tails, but
people who know what's up also take the what would
(16:27):
you call it this guess this is the thoracic cavity
with the head there, and they just suck all the
fat and juices and guts out of it, get those
good tasty brains and uh so, yeah, there apparently there's
some nutritional value in the brains that some people might
want to get. But there's also the idea and that
sometimes modification of the skull is done for some kind
(16:49):
of other purpose, not just purely accessing nutrition, but like
the creation of skull cups, making skulls into like eating
or drinking vessels. Yeah. I mean, we've we've seen more
recent examples of this in Tibetan customs, for instance. Yeah.
Uh So, another thing that Cole mentions is like a
physical sign of cannibalism in ancient human rains or ancient
(17:11):
hominin remains, not necessarily just holmo sapiens uh is quote,
the virtual absence of vertebrae due to crushing or boiling
to get it bone marrow and grease, so like maybe
you want to get that good spinal cord, you're gonna
have the vertebrae kind of coming apart. It's like eating
crab legs. Yeah, and then tool scrapes on the bones,
which there could be scrapes on the bones related to
(17:33):
butchering and accessing of meat, but there could also be
scrapes on the bones for ritualistic or symbolic purposes. On
top of that, there's some interesting genetic evidence of cannibalism
in the in the world. In the prehistoric world, for example,
there are diseases known as transmissible sponge iform and cephalopath
ease or t s S, and examples of this would
(17:54):
include CURU or kreuz feld Yakob disease. And these are
prion diseases or pre on diseases that cause degeneration of
brain tissue and can be acquired often through cannibalism. When
you might have heard of is kuru. The members of
the for A linguistic group in Papua New Guinea have
often been exposed to the t SC known as kuru
(18:15):
because of their practice of ritual Indo cannibalism. For religious
and cultural reasons. Yeah, and a lot of these ideas, um,
you know, they have to do with the passing on
of a departed individual, parted family member, like and you
consume some of their flesh and it's like their spirit
lives on through you, that sort of thing, exactly. H
(18:35):
And So an interesting thing is that there are worldwide
patterns of genes we find that seem to indicate our
species genetic history sometimes favored in the past adaptation for
resistance to T S S, for example meat at all.
In a two thousand three paper, and Science wrote, quote
(18:55):
heterozygosity for common polymorphism in the human pre on protein
gene p r n P confers relative resistance to prion diseases,
and then later they're write worldwide p r np haplotype
diversity encoding alleal frequencies suggest the strong balancing selection at
this locust occurred during the evolution of modern humans. So
(19:17):
the authors argued that the patterns of genetic resistance to
T S c S that we see in human populations
indicate that something in our evolutionary history favored people who
could cannibalize, who could eat human flesh without contracting fatal
encephalopath ez, this is a fun paper thus far. This
really it's kind of a nice follow up to our
(19:37):
ghoul episode, the delta impart with you know, with the
question you know what about the consumption of human corpses
in in in our in our past, and in our biology.
It is an interesting subject. In fact, I'm not even
really getting deep into the paper yet. I'm just I'm
just setting it up, so it's going to really get
going in a second, okay. Like, first of all, their
disputes about whether individual sites actually do show evidence of
(20:01):
cannibalism rather than some other form of manipulation of the dead,
like you could have had maybe ritualistic de fleshing of
the dead without eating. Maybe for some reason they wanted
to get the meat off the bones of a dead person,
but not not eat it. Well, like one example that
comes to mind, to come back to Tibet, the practice
of sky burial, the breaking down of a corpse so
that they flesh may be consumed by sacred animals. Uh Like,
(20:25):
if you were just looking at the forensic evidence of that,
you might say, oh, well, clearly this person was butchered
and eating, because essentially it is butchery, but it is
not for cannibalism, but whether or not it happened in
individual cases, it at least does appear to be something
that happened enough for us to have records of it.
Sometimes prehistoric humans and other related hominins were eating each
(20:46):
other at least often enough for us to have some
archaeological record of it. So back to the original question,
the question of why why were these ancient humans and
other hominin relatives eating each other? Coal notes that there
are multiple document and motivations for human cannibalism. So several
of these would be like survival cannibalism. That's when you're
not normally a cannibal, but you're about to starve to death,
(21:07):
so you eat somebody. Right. This is essentially with the
touch of the wind to go in in the folklore
of native people's in the America's gets that the idea
that is forced to uh, you may have to enact
cannibal cannibalism, right. And then there is of course psychotic
or criminal cannibalism, and aggressive cannibalism. These would be various
types of cannibalism that is some sort of like aggressive symbology,
(21:31):
like warfare cannibalism. You you know, not only defeat your enemies,
but you defeat them so totally that you feel you
should eat them. There is, of course, as we've pointed out,
spiritual a ritual cannibalism, and then there is gastronomic or
dietary cannibalism, nutritional cannibalism. Basically like this is part of
your diet and you're eating it because it's meat. Yeah,
(21:51):
it's kind of like that list the old school cannibalism.
This is more in line with the biological cannibalism that
we've discussed in the show before, right, of other organisms.
Uh uh, yeah, there's that. And then also he points
out a good a good category that often gets left
out medicinal cannibalism. Right, sometimes you might want to eat
another human because you think it does something kind of
(22:12):
a vampiric cannibalism. Could the flesh of the young and
you shall feel better wise one, Yeah, something like that.
So a couple of other relevant categories. Just to mention
is that there's the idea of exo cannibalism versus indo cannibalism.
Exo cannibalism would be humans eating humans who were not
part of the in group, for example, eating rivals killed
(22:32):
in war. And then there's indo cannibalism, which is eating
humans who were part of your in group, for example,
ritualistically eating one's own family members for religious reasons. Right,
and you can sort of divide these up two has
been into categories of nice cannibalism and mean cannibalism. Right, So,
the majorities of studies of paleolithic cannibal sites have tended
to deposit, Cole says, a nutritional motivation for the cannibalism,
(22:57):
while a smaller number have positive religious rich rules or
aggressive cannibalism associated with warfare. And Cole points out that
there's some confusing things about the ways these motivational labels
are applied to instances of cannibalism from prehistoric times. And
so to help refine the discussion about the types of
cannibalism and the role of raw nutrition in motivating prehistoric
(23:18):
cannibalistic episodes, Cole said, basically, hey, wouldn't it help to
know exactly how nutritious a paleolithic human was? That could
sort of help us better understand whether these are purely
nutrition seeking events or whether there's some other kind of
significance to them. Right. So, ultimately the goal of this
paper was to construct an informed estimate on the nutritional
(23:39):
value of a human. First question, has anybody ever done
that before? Cole says, yes, it has been done that
it was just sort of in a short letter to
American Anthropologist in the year nineteen seventy, and their methodology
for how they came up with their number was not clear,
But in nineteen seventy Stanley M. Garn and Walter D.
Block wrote quote the limited nutritional Value of Cannibalism. In
(24:03):
this short letter to American Anthropologist, garn and Block claimed
that an adult male weighing fifty kilograms or about a
hundred and ten pounds, which is a reasonable estimate of
the body mass of a stone age human, would yield
about thirty kilograms or sixty six pounds of edible skeletal
muscle mass, and nutritionally, that breaks dound about four point
five kilograms of protein and about eighteen thousand calories. So
(24:26):
based on this, garn and Block said that if human
is your only source of protein, that's the only meat
you're eating and the only real protein you're getting. A
group of sixty people would need to eat a person
every day in order to get enough protein to have
a healthy diet. Uh. And if it were rationed out,
so you've got less out to a diet of like
one human per week shared between sixty people, the group
(24:49):
would not be getting nearly enough protein. So, based on
this garn and Block conclude quote, the nutritional value of
cannibalism may therefore be viewed as questionable unless a group
is in a position consume its own number in a year.
So basically you'd have to be eating a lot of humans.
All right, Well, you know, I really want to see
these numbers broken down and compared to the Chainsaw family
(25:12):
and the Texas Chainsaw massacre, Right, is that nutritional cannibalism? Well,
I don't. I feel like it's a mix of nutritional
and commercial because there are four individuals in the family
and obviously they need the protein. Uh, it's commercial. This
is not taken into account at all. I know, because
they're running the barbecue restaurant on the side, and as
we find out in Texas Chainsaw Masacre to they're they're
(25:33):
winning awards at regional barbecue competitions. This is prestige cannibalism. Yes.
Uh So to follow up on Garden Block coal asks, Okay,
is their estimate correct. They don't say how they got
to these numbers. And to figure that out, Coal did
a review of the existing literature on the chemical composition
of the human body, relying on three studies from the
(25:54):
Journal of Biological Chemistry in the middle of the twentieth century,
which were drawn from analysis of four alt human males.
So how much nutrition is there per kilogram of muscle
mass on a human? Well, this data yielded an average
of nineteen thousand, nine hundred and fifty one calory calories
per twenty four point nine kilograms of muscle mass. So
(26:17):
garden Block weren't all that far off by estimating eighteen
thousand calories in thirty ms of muscle. And so there's
and then Coal comes up with some estimates of the
nutritional value of the protein and fat on a human.
I think this is supposed to be for a roughly
a hundred and forty five pound human male, So total
body there would be about a hundred and forty three thousand,
(26:40):
seven hundred and seventy one calories. And it's got a
breakdown by body parts, right, so like the body parts
reasonably expected to be consumed based on ethnographic studies of cannibalism,
so not eating stuff like teeth and nerve tissue. That
would leave you with about a hundred and twenty five thousand,
eight hundred and twenty two calories. And there is this
wonder full table in the paper where the body is
(27:02):
broken down into parts based on their nutritional value. So
the heart it's about six hundred and fifty calories, the brain,
spinal cord, and nerve trunks about undred calories, the four
arms one thousand, six hundred and sixty four calories. I'm
assuming this is not for a popeye, but just like
regular forearms. Now that hard, that's that's some that's some
good calories there. But that's some tough eating. That's some
(27:23):
tough tissue. Oh yeah, I think you've got to You've
gotta make a stew with that. Well. Yeah, So part
of the one of the caveats, and I'll get into
the caveats in a minute here, but one of the
caveats is that this is just for raw meat. It
it can't take into account how the nutritional value of
these things change when cooked. But we have discussed before
how cooking is thought to significantly increase the caloric value
(27:44):
or nutritional value of a lot of foods. Things that
cannot otherwise be digested can be digested after being cooked exactly.
So I wanted to come up with some comparisons, not
analyzing protein ratios or anything, but just purely in terms
of raw calories. I worked out that on this number
with the with the edible part being about a hundred
(28:04):
eight hundred and twenty two calories, human body is worth
about a hundred and thirty two Windy's bacon eaders. Now,
what's a bacon eater. A bacon eader is a Windy
sandwich that has a bunch of bacon and cheese on it. Okay,
so it's like a bacon cheese barker. Yes, basically, it's
like that there. I think they make a big deal
about how like we don't put any lettuce on this.
You know, this is just bacon and cheese. It's one
(28:26):
of those sandwiches that uses kind of crass masculinity marketing.
It's kind of sandwich for men, like the double down
sort of that kind of thing. Yeah, so it's like
that human body is worth about a hundred and thirty
two Windy's bacon eaters. Or I've got another one here
about two hundred and ninety three slices of pizza Hut
Meat Lover's large original stuffed crust pizza. All right, well,
(28:48):
that's that's quite a lot of pizza. Well, I mean,
a human body is somewhat nutritious, though I did I
want to say I arrived at those numbers using those
restaurants online nutrition calculators. Those numbers could be they could
be massively under shooting the glories in an average baconator. Now,
obviously there are gonna be some caveats in this type
of because this is just coming up with some very
(29:09):
broad est so some major caveats coal mentions. He says
the data he used to arrive at his estimates were
only based on adult males in the twentieth century, and
he's got a great sense of humor when he writes this,
so quote. Ideally, nutritional templates for females and a range
of ages would be constructed to represent the full nutritional
potential of hominin social groups. However, data for females and
(29:32):
subadults are not available within the published literature, and the
collection of primary data of this nature was outside the
ethical and legal scope of this study. Uh. He also
says that the data only pertains to basically anatomically modern humans.
It's not known how different the nutritional value of other
species like Neanderthals or Homo erectus might be. Also, the
(29:53):
average values here are drawn from a small sample size.
Better estimates could be drawn if you had more humans
to measure the neutra rational value of Also, these values
are of the nutritional value of raw me. Like we said,
cooking might change things. So after that coal also does
some estimates of the nutritional yield for body mass at
different Paleolithic cannibalism sites found by archaeologists. So you've got
(30:16):
a Stone Age cannibalism site and you look at okay,
what were the different people here that apparently got eaten?
And so he like tries to add up how much
body mass calorie value was was being served at this site. Uh,
and so how so the question he asks is how
do you humans stack up against other meat sources of
the Paleolithic quote when compared to most other fauna, human
(30:39):
skeletal muscle has a nutritional value broadly in line with
those that match our size and weight, but produced significantly
fewer calories than most of the larger fauna such as mammoth,
wooly rhino, or deer species known to have been regularly
consumed by past hominins, So they're better meals around. Yeah, exactly. So,
(30:59):
while you could get decent nutrition from a human body,
Cole argues that it would be much more worthwhile to
simply hunt the same large fauna of the time that
you would normally be hunting mammoth, Rhinoceros RX, bison, cow, bear, horse,
giant deer, all this stuff. So hunting and killing a
human for meat has a kind of wonky risk to
reward ratio because, you know, he points out that humans
(31:21):
are crafty and sometimes they can fight back in clever
and dangerous ways. Is it really worth hunting humans provided
that they're going to give you relatively low amounts of
nutrition compared to these big, fat, bulky animals that are
also probably easier to hunt. So Cole asks were hominins
actively hunted by members of their own species in prehistoric times? Uh?
(31:44):
He says quote active hunting raises the interesting question of
whether the relatively low calorific return for hominins would justify
the energy expenditure in hunting an individual or group. If
the motivation was driven was driven purely by balancing energy quotions.
It is suggested here that this would not be the
case when a single large fauna individual returns many more
(32:07):
calories without the difficulties of hunting groups of hominins that
were as intelligent and resourceful as the hunters in their
ability to fight back and evade pursuit. So now he said,
you know, we have these instances of what looks like
prehistoric cannibalism among hominins, but it just doesn't seem like
that is a very smart strategy for getting meat generally.
(32:30):
So what what's going on here? Why do we see
this cannibalism? And he hypothesizes, well, maybe there are cases
of occasional opportunistic nutritional cannibalism. For example, we're pretty hungry
and a member of our group just died of natural causes,
right or or certainly to go back to the warfare,
and now ities like you get into some sort of
uh an altercation with a rival group, perhaps over access
(32:55):
to fauna to fauna, and then well, I need meat.
I was hunting this thing, but I just bashed the
skull in of this guy, who, granted looks a lot
like me. But is made of meat, right, So yeah,
it could be sort of occasional opportunistic cannibalism. But then
Cole also says that quote the motivations for cannibalistic episodes
(33:15):
lay within complex cultural systems involving both intra and intergroup
dynamics and competition. Essentially, he's saying he thinks a very
likely explanation for a lot of these cannibalistic episodes has
something to do with prehistoric culture, which we don't know
a lot about. But it could involve uh, religious uses,
ritual uses, medicinal uses, things people believed there to be
(33:39):
reasons to eat other humans that went beyond just the
nutritional value. I mean, it is very difficult to put
ourselves to attempt to put ourselves in the mindset of
of such cultures. Yeah, and we don't know what they were.
I mean, that's one of the fascinating things. They're interesting
little tidbits, but they didn't leave written records, so we
don't really have descriptions of what they believed and what
(34:01):
their relationships were like, and you know, just all the
things that the kind of everyday texture of society that
we know so well in our own world. It's it's
mostly opaque to us what it was like this far
back in the past. Well, you know, even the Chainsaw
family from Texas, Chainsaw Masker, they they have their own
sort of culture and system of beliefs that seems to
have risen up out of this, uh, this Texan um
(34:26):
avatoir culture and their family history with the business there.
You know, there's some intentionally or or perhaps accidentally uh,
kind of ingenious ideas about like the spiritual nature of cannibalism,
kind of indebted in that original motion picture. Yeah, do
you have an example, Well, there's a sense of there's
(34:46):
a sense of ritual to the cannibalism it's going on
at least within the own their within the family, and
maybe you could apply that to the barbecue restaurant as well.
But like there's that whole scene with the uh, you know,
seated at the table and granted, you know they're they're
proba really drawing a little bit from Judeo Christian traditions there,
but you know, there's there's some something sacred going on
(35:06):
with the family dinner and allowing Grandpa, the greatest killer
that had ever ever lived, to attempt to to kill
the victim. So that he can, uh, you know, drink
of her blood, eat of her flesh, and grow stronger. Uh.
And then all these other sort of elements of like that,
the little bone wind chimes and constructions that have been created.
(35:27):
It seemed it's almost like there are people that are
so cut off from the rest of of a modern
society that they're kind of reinventing primordial religious concepts. That
is fascinating. I had never thought of it that way,
Like all they do, like if if if everything that
they do is concerned with meat and the importance of
(35:47):
meat and the preparation of meat, um, and then what
kind of ideas come out of that? It's it's it's
not unlike what we might try and imagine for prehistoric people.
So you know, if your whole life is, of course
about the hunt, then various ideas spring out of that.
If your whole life is about about the importance of
meat and blood, Uh, then you know it, who knows
(36:11):
exactly how they view the importance of our own flesh
and what kind of powers or or or or I mean,
we tend to put a horror show interpretation on it.
And obviously I'm drawing in Texas chainsaw maskt right. But
I mean perhaps in a way it's beautiful. Perhaps it
was like I have killed this individual in battle, and
I must eat them like that is the the only
(36:32):
like that is how you show respect for a worthy adversary.
I mean we're tempted to want to construct some sort
of brutal like I have killed my enemy and now
I must feast on their brains kind of thing. But
it maybe in its own way it was sacred. Well.
I think it's also possible that we frequently underestimate the
degree to which a lot of the strange features of
our culture that don't seem strange to us, because there
(36:53):
are culture um are just are in traceable ways downstream
of economics which are ultimately reducible to chemical energy economics,
you know, acquiring food to eat. Uh, you can trace
a lot of culture back to getting food and surviving. Absolutely,
So to bring it back to the study, another thing
(37:14):
you can imagine is how perhaps certain practices that were
originally just opportunistic nutritional practices, maybe opportunistic cannibalism, when someone
died and you didn't want to waste the meat, so
you ate them. Uh, It's possible that could have turned
into religious beliefs and rituals exactly. And that's not even
taking into effect like any you know, sort of abnormal
(37:38):
psychological effects that might have taken place and in certain
individuals and therefore influenced the overall shape of the culture.
You know, like if one individual claimed and or even
believed that, say they consume the flesh of their departed
father and then heard their father's voice, then that could
have enormous effects, you know. I mean, we're talking about
(37:59):
the spread of religion. Yeah, this is always interesting territory.
Uh so, yeah, well, not the last time we will
visit the potential religious beliefs and rituals of prehistoric common ends.
But we're gonna go and take a break now. We're
gonna leave cannibalism for now. But when we come back,
we're gonna look at just a couple of more Ignoble
Prize winners briefly before closing out part one of our
(38:23):
Ignoble Prize series for this year. All right, thank thank
and we're back. Robert. Do you have a shorter look
you wanted to take it something? Oh? Sure, why don't
we talk about the Chemistry prize? Okay, let's do some chemistry.
This is from Romeo at all and they were honored
(38:43):
for measuring the degree to which human saliva is a
good cleaning agent for dirty surfaces. The paper was a
titled human Saliva as a Cleaning Agent for Dirty Surfaces
and it was published in Studies in Conservation back in
nine and and the winners delivered their acceptance speech via
recorded video. So with the original title should I spit
(39:06):
on it? And that got rejected that it may can't
sound a little bit a little basically yeah, but we
can all relate to this, right, I mean, have you
ever used your own saliva to clean off, say a
smart smartphone screen or I know, in my case, I've
used it on a kid's face. Plenty of times. I
used my saliva as dishwashing detergent. So I don't know
why people buy those pods. You just spit in the
(39:27):
dishwasher a lot and then get it going. It does
a great job. Well I I nobody's pushing it that
that far. But there does seem to be something to
the cleansing power of spit, at least to you know,
a limited degree. And this is exactly what the paper
and question looked into. They used quantitative test and chromatographic
(39:48):
techniques to isolate alpha Emily's as the key cleaning property
in human saliva. Now you're probably wondering, well, what is
an Emily's Is it some sort of microbe? What is it? Well,
an Emilyes is a member of a class of enzymes
that splits a starch compound via the addition of water molecule.
(40:10):
Now we we divide them into alpha's and betas because
they differ in the exact way that they attack the
bonds of a starch molecule. But Alpha Emilyes is found
throughout the biological world, specifically in the digestive systems of
humans and other animals. The one in the salivary glands
is called Thailand that begins with the P P T
y A l I in. So why is it important, Well,
(40:31):
it concerns human biology. Obviously we're humans. We're always interested
in that. It also concerns hygiene. And it's funny because
it involves spit, and it involves the idea of cleaning
something with spit, something that on on a basic level,
I feel like we all do this. We all have
probably had a situation where we use spit to quote
unquote clean something, and yet at the same time spit
(40:52):
is considered dirty. Uh, Like someone spitting at you is gross,
seeing someone spit in the street is disgusting. Well, yeah,
I mean you can see some of the things, Like,
I can see why this would be because the role
of saliva in the mouth is somewhat the same as
the role of average cleaning liquids or detergents. Right, So
it is a detergent mean that it's like a wedding
(41:13):
and lubrication agent that helps things move around and wash off.
And then it's also a somewhat a digesting agent, like
it breaks some things down and tenderizes some things. Yeah,
it is that. Our mouth, we have to remember, is
the first stage of the digestion. You know. We masticate
the food, we get it all cut up, we get
it nice and wet and soaked, and then our tongue
(41:34):
helps to form it at the back of our throat
into a bolus that is going to pass down our throats,
preparing a package for shipment to the rest of the
digestive system. There's nothing more appetizing than thinking about the
lubrication of a bolus going down your throat, right, And
then you know, ultimately that's what a French kisses. A
french kiss are two individuals deciding to link uh the
(41:57):
initial stages of their digestive system and to manipulate each
other's um uh, you know, a oral manipulation. Limb. It's
a beautiful moment. I just got a brilliant idea for
an episode in the future. It should just be called
Robert and Joe ruined Kissing, and we just like we
just destroyed. We just take it to the point where
(42:18):
nobody who listens will ever do it again. All right, Well,
coming this Valentine's Day to a stuff to blow your
mind episode near you? Well, I have another one here.
This is another short one and we're not going to
spend much time on to kind of close out the episode.
But their medical education prize uh, this one went to A.
Kira hora Uchi for the medical report colin Oscopy in
(42:39):
the sitting position Lessons learned from self colinoscopy self colonoscopy. Yes,
I'm just gonna read the abstract on this one. Okay, Okay,
just read it. Colin Oscopy is typically done in the
supine position, with the patient's position varied as needed to
assist instrument insertion. We found that a newly developed small
(43:00):
caliber variable stiffness colonoscope design for colonoscopy and pediatric patients
was especially useful in patients with difficult colonoscopy. The outside
diameter is ten point three millimeters, and the working length,
the field of view, and the range of the tip
flection are similar to those of standard uh kolonoscopes. So,
(43:21):
I mean, I don't have much to say about this one.
It kind of calls back to our and we did
an entire episode on on the evolution of the anus,
so it's not like we're shy about discussing this part
of the human anatomy. But I think this is one
of those studies that basically they honored it because of
the whole uh self colonoscopy aspect of the title. I
(43:41):
suspect that is what set them off. Yeah, it was
the self colonoscopy. Though at the same time it's important
because this is an invalid and important diagnostic method for
for for human health. Oh yeah, colonoscopies are important. All right. Well,
on that note, we're gonna go ahead and pinch off
this particular episode of to to Blow Your Mind, but
we're coming back in uh in the next episode, and
(44:04):
we're going to discuss the remaining Ignobel Prize winners, UH,
some of them in more detail, certainly than we than
we spent with the colonoscopy study. There's some really good
ones in the next episode, indeed, acording more, including morning Wood.
So come back for that. Uh. In the meantime, if
you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. That is the mothership. That's where
(44:25):
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(44:45):
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(45:07):
can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Does it how stuff works dot Com would
(45:36):
be
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot Com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and our yearly tradition returns. We always end up covering
the ig Nobel Prizes, and that's what we're gonna do
(00:23):
today in part one of our ig No Bells series.
That's right. We we generally pick up with the ig
Noo Bells after October is finished because the Ignoble Prizes,
it tends to happen, uh right at the end of September.
Terrible timing for us, like we're just getting going for
Monster season and then they throw these in our past.
But I think it works out too because then for us,
(00:45):
because everybody can sort of read the initial press releases
if you know, if you're if you're paying attention to them,
to the science to science media, you'll probably pick up
on on what one and then you can eventually check
back in with us and hear us chat about it
as well. Now, these spirit of the Ignoble Prizes, if
you're not familiar is they would say they follow the
(01:05):
ethos of Professor Frank Right, Professor Frank, Professor Frank. He'll
make you laugh, He'll make you think, Yeah, yeah, the Simpsons, Yeah,
very very much. So, Uh, I have to we have
to point out, as I think we usually do ignobles.
In some cases, they rub some people the wrong way.
Some people don't see the humor in it. They maybe
think that science should, uh should be a humorist affair
(01:27):
and that we and or they think that that in
some cases, uh, the honorees are being made fun of.
But I think for the vast majority of individuals honored
by the ignobles, uh, they get it, They get the joke,
they see the value of it, and they realize that, yes,
it's about having fun, but it's also about honoring legitimate
research as well. Yeah. I mean, so these are real studies,
(01:49):
and it tends to focus on studies that are funny
when you first look at them, but they usually do
reveal something at least pretty interesting. I mean not always.
Sometimes I kindaman, well, that's just pretty silly, But most
of the time there's at least some kind of really
interesting tidbit in there. It either moves the field forward
in some unexpected way, or it gives you something to
(02:09):
think about. Uh, they do that, they Professor Frank. Professor Frank.
So these have been awarded every year since by the
Annals of Improbable Research, a humorous science publication that looks
at various studies and whatnot. The purpose of this award,
according to the editors of Improbable Research, is to quote
honor achievements that first make people laugh and then make
(02:30):
then make them think. Furthermore, they stressed that the ten
prizes aren't necessarily meant to pass judgment on the winners. Instead,
as they they tend to emphasize that the prizes quote
celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative, and spur people's interests
in science, medicine, and technology. And by the way, the
principal individual here is editor Mark Abram's, editor of the
(02:51):
Animals of Improbable Research. Um, and I think that's important
to the idea about spurring people's interests, because a lot
of times do manage to highlight studies and papers and
achievements in science then otherwise don't really rise, uh, you know,
up in the headlines, or if they do, they only
rise in the headlines because they're funny. And so one
(03:14):
thing that we like to do when we look at
the ignobles is find Okay, are are there some of
these that are actually kind of interesting when you start
thinking about them? Do they give you something to ponder? Yeah?
And in always we ask the question why is it important?
And why is it funny? The second question is generally
just very obvious and the kid go except for the
ones that aren't actually all that funny, which occasionally happens. Yeah,
(03:37):
sometimes sometimes, but generally you're like, oh, yeah, I see
why they honored that one. And in some cases I
think we've mentioned on the show, a new study will
come along and we'll realize, oh, that one that's going
to get an ignoble at some point. Yeah, any study
about like butts or bending over or something that's just
it's just a shoe, and then it just naturally Nobell bait. Yes, exactly.
(03:58):
All right. So, now that we've established the ig Nobel
Prizes and what they are for anyone it wasn't familiar,
let's let's start jumping into some of the winners for
two thousand and eighteen. Okay, Now, obviously we're not going
to cover all of the winners in the same depth.
Some we're going to engage with pretty deeply. Some we'll
just sort of talk about pretty quickly. But I think
the first thing we should look at is maybe medicine prize. Yes,
(04:21):
so this one honors Mark Mitchell and David Wartener for
for using roller coaster rides to try to hasten the
passage of kidney stones. Does this have practical utility? Well yeah,
just just you wait. This was an October publication and uh,
Dave Wardinger was the individual who accepted the honors at
(04:42):
the ceremony. So this one obviously links into an episode
that you and I recorded years back, The Stone of Madness,
which my name is Lubert nas because the episode dealt
in part with the passing of kidney stones and bladder
stones and what wait is it the Bosch painting? Is
it Bosch? Yes, the removing of the Stone of Madness
not from the bowels but from the cranium. Right, But
(05:06):
the the idea is that there was like a removal
of stone surgeries in the early modern period. Was was
kind of dicey, right, literally, like people were diced and
sliced and then died horrible deaths on the operating table.
But there's this painting by Herono Spash that makes fun
of this guy who's going to try to get a
stone and alleged stone cut out of his head, and
(05:28):
he's like, please cut the stone. Master. My name is
Lubert Doss, So I often think about that when I
see somebody behaving foolishly in public. I'm just like, my
name is Lupert Doss. All right, Well I've I I
don't know about you, Joe, but I've been fortunate enough
to avoid kidney stones thus far in my life. If
you've ever had a kidney stone, now I have not. Okay, Well, basically,
(05:49):
what we're we're talking about here are hard deposits made
of minerals and salts. They form, They can form inside
your kidneys, and they often form when the urine becomes concentrated,
allowing the minerals to crystallized and stick together. Uh if
they If they form, then your body tries to pass them,
which can be painful. In some cases, doctors can simply
give you a pain killer and instruct you to drink
(06:09):
a lot of water to help pass it. But in
other cases, especially if it becomes lodged in your urinary tract,
surgery may be required to it. That's just I'm shivering
over here. So there's no dud, you know, definite single
cause for kidney stones, but dehydration can certainly lead to
their formation. Again the concentration of urine. Remember now, as
(06:32):
the authors of this paper point out, some three hundred
thousand US patients seek emergency care for kidney stones each year.
And in addition to hydration saying you know, drink a
lot of water or the administration fluids to other things
that are sometimes used are positional inversion and external application
(06:52):
of force. WHOA, so what does that mean getting upside
down or something getting upside down getting thrown around a
little bit, And so I think everyone can can can
realize here while why we're getting into the domain of
roller coasters, uh, They point out that there have been
reports of spontaneous kidney stone passage associated with both the
(07:14):
roller coaster riding and bungee cord jumping. So somebody had
kidney stones and then they're like time to go bungee jumping. Well,
and that was a little unclear the weather. It was
a situation where if the individual knew they had the stones,
I assume they knew, um, given the discomfort that is
generally reported, but attached the bungee cords. My name is
Lubert Dass. The problem though, is, they said, these these
(07:39):
accounts they tend to be reported in like non peer
reviewed publications or it's just kind of like word of mouth.
And uh. In particular, uh, they noted that they had
heard numerous stories about people passing kidney stones after riding
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, a roller coaster at Walt disney
World's Magic Kingdom thing part in Orlando, Florida. Uh. Yeah,
(08:02):
they they had turned apparently heard various accounts of folks
spontaneously passing the stones after writing it, Have you ridden
this roller coaster? Joe? No, I'm not really a roller
coaster person, and I haven't wait. Which one is that
Magic Kingdom? Oh? Yeah, I've been to that one, but
not since I was a kid. I was probably too
short to ride to it. Anyway, when I was there,
it's like it has like a mining theme. I wrote
(08:23):
it just like what last year the year before. I
wrote it with my son and my niece, and it's
a fun roller coaster. I'm not really a roller coaster
person myself, but I enjoyed some of the roller coasters
at Disney because they're just like really phenomenal productions, especially
the one that has a YETI in it. Did you
get the black lung? The black light? The black long
(08:43):
was not a featured add on when I was at Disney.
But but this, this is a roller coaster that does
move you around. It's it's not like one of those
just crazy, um you know, one of those just insane
rides that does that some people go for. It doesn't
look like it's a design and to get a confession
out of you, but it's still it takes you for
(09:04):
a ride. So they wanted to test it out. They said, well,
let's go there and let's see what happens to some
kidney stones. Brilliant, I'm in now. They didn't take individuals
with kidney stones on board, so there were no human
test subjects here. What they did is they took three
kidney stones of different sizes, suspended them in urine, and
then placed them in adult uteroscopy and reino scopy simulators,
(09:29):
and then they took them for twenty rides, so sixty
rides in total. Okay, so they what basically got them
in some kind of fake kidney kind of contraption. Yeah,
there were some pictures of these in the paper and
they one of them looks kind of like a prop
from a David Cronenberg film, and the other looks like
a it's like a crystal tree looking, you know device.
(09:50):
It looks like it kind of looks like an award
you might win for, you know, achievements in Kidney Stone,
Remove Horse something. So do you know if they had
to have any kind of arrangements to negotiate these organs
onto the roller coaster, like are they arguing with the
ticket guy or what? They pointed out specifically that that
care was taken to preserve guests, employ entertainment, joinment. Um. So,
(10:14):
so I believe they had them inside of something hidden
out of the way because they also mentioned specifically, uh,
and this is this is an exact quote. Uh. Bovine
and poor sign renal models were deemed impractical as patients
surrogates for study, owing to ambient temperature and the inappropriate
display of such material in a family friendly amusement park. Okay,
so you couldn't bring like pig kidneys onto the roller
(10:38):
coaster because that might upset some people. Yeah, and Disney
was apparently they were gracious hosts for this study, but
they knew there were limits it's kind of a delicate
situation when you're carrying out your kidney stone research on
an active amusement park ride. But then again, you might
have some science loving kids there. They get their you know,
their picture hugging Mickey, and then they get their picture
(10:58):
hugging some pig kidneyst opportunity. That's maybe, so maybe maybe
for the next study. So what did they find out, Well,
they found that it did seem to prove helpful, but
mostly only if you're seated towards the back of the coaster.
So for front coaster passage, right, we're talking four of
twenty four. Rear coaster passage rate twenty three or thirty six. Hey,
(11:19):
that's not bad. Yeah, I mean it's like, like everybody knows,
you said at the back of the coaster, you're gonna
get a bump, your more hillacious ride, and if you
have a lacious kidney stone, well it's going this is
going to help knock it out of you just a
little bit easier. So the author is actually like suggesting
people do this somehow, I would suspect not. No, no,
(11:39):
I don't think anybody is saying go to to Disney
World instead of a doctor kidney stone. Like, for one thing,
the lines for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad are pretty long,
and I cannot imagine standing in them with any kind
of like an abdominal discomfort going on, or you know,
and enhanced necessity to urinate or anything. But how long
(12:04):
they had the stand in lines total in order to
run the ride the thirty six times or whatever that
they were trying to pass the stone? Maybe there's some
sort of a research based fast pass you can get.
I'm not sure. I don't know that they mentioned that
specifically in the study. And then they also point out
that their other you know, their limitations on the study.
Obviously they didn't get to use human patients. They use
(12:26):
these models, But the study is important because kidney stones
are a legitimate health concern, and I don't think, Yeah,
even though we're not talking about installing roller coasters in hospitals,
it does make one think what kind of what kind
of an apparatus might be appropriate, right, Yeah, I mean
you could probably just figure out what part of the
(12:47):
roller coaster rides specifically is the most useful, like what
you know, kinds of g forces on the body and
how that's applied, and maybe just like make a chair
that does it to you or something. Yeah, that's I
think that's the most logical application that I can imagine,
short of just actually having a roller coaster at the hospital.
That's also sounds kind of fun um. But anyway, that's
(13:09):
why it's important, why it's funny. Obviously, it's science plus
roller coasters. Anytime that combo was coming at you, it's
going to elect a few giggles. I think that's a
pretty good one. Okay, well let's take a quick break,
and when we come back, we will have more ignobles.
Thank thank Alright, we're back now. The next one I
(13:30):
think we should go to is Nutrition Prize. And I
know what you have all been thinking lately. You've been wondering,
can I lose weight by converting to a diet consisting
only of human flesh? The Hannibal diets, the new fad.
Oh no, Hannibal eats all kinds of other stuff. He
would have to go like super paleo Hannibal. Well, he
(13:51):
supplements his diet with human flesh. That's how he stays
so trim putting like a blueberry reduction balsamic glaze on
this humane You know how unhealthy all that would be
if he wasn't throwing in some some lean human flesh
to just really balance everything out, all right. So this
prize went to a researcher named James Cole for a
paper published in Scientific Reports in called Assessing the Caloric
(14:16):
Significance of Episodes of Human Cannibalism in the Paleolithic. Who
attended the ceremony is James Cole, the author of this paper.
So let's say you come across some evidence of humans
eating other humans, it's reasonable to ask why are they
doing this? Right? In fact, this is often a question
we have to ask about the remains of Stone Age
(14:37):
humans because they're Paleolithic sites, Stone Age sites that show
clear evidence of human cannibalism at least as far back
as our hominin relatives in the early place to see
in roughly two point five million years ago. So I
guess before we get to the y. Actually, a totally
reasonable question you might have is, if we're talking about
hominin remains that are thousands or even millions of years old,
(14:59):
how can we tell cannibalism took place. It's just bones, right, Like,
what would the evidence be? Well, there are a couple
of lines of evidence for cannibalism in the Pleistocene. One
is anthropogenic modification of human remains. That's the like polite
sciencey way to talk about signs of butchering on human bones.
(15:20):
So clear human made changes to the bones of other humans,
and these would be the same kinds of physical marks
that we would find left on the bones of what
are considered prey animals. Signs of butchering, cooking, and eating.
And examples would include cuts and chop marks in the
bone from the butchering process, like they might have been
made with sharp stone tools, breaks in the long bones,
(15:42):
which would be presumably to access the marrow, because that's
the good part. Evidence of cooking, such as burned ends
of a bone, human tooth marks on a bone, quote,
lack of a cranial base to get at the brain
on otherwise complete or near complete skeleton. Well you gotta
suck the head. I mean, anybody who's like crayfish or
(16:05):
swamp bugs if you want to call them. So, I'm sorry,
I said crayfish crawdads is the correct terms that I'm
gonna go with. Crawdads. I have to admit I'm a
little hazy. I do like swamp bugs as a as
a kind of Cajun description though right, well, they're they
are quite bug like, but they have delicious heads, and
so a lot of people just eat the tails, but
people who know what's up also take the what would
(16:27):
you call it this guess this is the thoracic cavity
with the head there, and they just suck all the
fat and juices and guts out of it, get those
good tasty brains and uh so, yeah, there apparently there's
some nutritional value in the brains that some people might
want to get. But there's also the idea and that
sometimes modification of the skull is done for some kind
(16:49):
of other purpose, not just purely accessing nutrition, but like
the creation of skull cups, making skulls into like eating
or drinking vessels. Yeah. I mean, we've we've seen more
recent examples of this in Tibetan customs, for instance. Yeah.
Uh So, another thing that Cole mentions is like a
physical sign of cannibalism in ancient human rains or ancient
(17:11):
hominin remains, not necessarily just holmo sapiens uh is quote,
the virtual absence of vertebrae due to crushing or boiling
to get it bone marrow and grease, so like maybe
you want to get that good spinal cord, you're gonna
have the vertebrae kind of coming apart. It's like eating
crab legs. Yeah, and then tool scrapes on the bones,
which there could be scrapes on the bones related to
(17:33):
butchering and accessing of meat, but there could also be
scrapes on the bones for ritualistic or symbolic purposes. On
top of that, there's some interesting genetic evidence of cannibalism
in the in the world. In the prehistoric world, for example,
there are diseases known as transmissible sponge iform and cephalopath
ease or t s S, and examples of this would
(17:54):
include CURU or kreuz feld Yakob disease. And these are
prion diseases or pre on diseases that cause degeneration of
brain tissue and can be acquired often through cannibalism. When
you might have heard of is kuru. The members of
the for A linguistic group in Papua New Guinea have
often been exposed to the t SC known as kuru
(18:15):
because of their practice of ritual Indo cannibalism. For religious
and cultural reasons. Yeah, and a lot of these ideas, um,
you know, they have to do with the passing on
of a departed individual, parted family member, like and you
consume some of their flesh and it's like their spirit
lives on through you, that sort of thing, exactly. H
(18:35):
And So an interesting thing is that there are worldwide
patterns of genes we find that seem to indicate our
species genetic history sometimes favored in the past adaptation for
resistance to T S S, for example meat at all.
In a two thousand three paper, and Science wrote, quote
(18:55):
heterozygosity for common polymorphism in the human pre on protein
gene p r n P confers relative resistance to prion diseases,
and then later they're write worldwide p r np haplotype
diversity encoding alleal frequencies suggest the strong balancing selection at
this locust occurred during the evolution of modern humans. So
(19:17):
the authors argued that the patterns of genetic resistance to
T S c S that we see in human populations
indicate that something in our evolutionary history favored people who
could cannibalize, who could eat human flesh without contracting fatal
encephalopath ez, this is a fun paper thus far. This
really it's kind of a nice follow up to our
(19:37):
ghoul episode, the delta impart with you know, with the
question you know what about the consumption of human corpses
in in in our in our past, and in our biology.
It is an interesting subject. In fact, I'm not even
really getting deep into the paper yet. I'm just I'm
just setting it up, so it's going to really get
going in a second, okay. Like, first of all, their
disputes about whether individual sites actually do show evidence of
(20:01):
cannibalism rather than some other form of manipulation of the dead,
like you could have had maybe ritualistic de fleshing of
the dead without eating. Maybe for some reason they wanted
to get the meat off the bones of a dead person,
but not not eat it. Well, like one example that
comes to mind, to come back to Tibet, the practice
of sky burial, the breaking down of a corpse so
that they flesh may be consumed by sacred animals. Uh Like,
(20:25):
if you were just looking at the forensic evidence of that,
you might say, oh, well, clearly this person was butchered
and eating, because essentially it is butchery, but it is
not for cannibalism, but whether or not it happened in
individual cases, it at least does appear to be something
that happened enough for us to have records of it.
Sometimes prehistoric humans and other related hominins were eating each
(20:46):
other at least often enough for us to have some
archaeological record of it. So back to the original question,
the question of why why were these ancient humans and
other hominin relatives eating each other? Coal notes that there
are multiple document and motivations for human cannibalism. So several
of these would be like survival cannibalism. That's when you're
not normally a cannibal, but you're about to starve to death,
(21:07):
so you eat somebody. Right. This is essentially with the
touch of the wind to go in in the folklore
of native people's in the America's gets that the idea
that is forced to uh, you may have to enact
cannibal cannibalism, right. And then there is of course psychotic
or criminal cannibalism, and aggressive cannibalism. These would be various
types of cannibalism that is some sort of like aggressive symbology,
(21:31):
like warfare cannibalism. You you know, not only defeat your enemies,
but you defeat them so totally that you feel you
should eat them. There is, of course, as we've pointed out,
spiritual a ritual cannibalism, and then there is gastronomic or
dietary cannibalism, nutritional cannibalism. Basically like this is part of
your diet and you're eating it because it's meat. Yeah,
(21:51):
it's kind of like that list the old school cannibalism.
This is more in line with the biological cannibalism that
we've discussed in the show before, right, of other organisms.
Uh uh, yeah, there's that. And then also he points
out a good a good category that often gets left
out medicinal cannibalism. Right, sometimes you might want to eat
another human because you think it does something kind of
(22:12):
a vampiric cannibalism. Could the flesh of the young and
you shall feel better wise one, Yeah, something like that.
So a couple of other relevant categories. Just to mention
is that there's the idea of exo cannibalism versus indo cannibalism.
Exo cannibalism would be humans eating humans who were not
part of the in group, for example, eating rivals killed
(22:32):
in war. And then there's indo cannibalism, which is eating
humans who were part of your in group, for example,
ritualistically eating one's own family members for religious reasons. Right,
and you can sort of divide these up two has
been into categories of nice cannibalism and mean cannibalism. Right, So,
the majorities of studies of paleolithic cannibal sites have tended
to deposit, Cole says, a nutritional motivation for the cannibalism,
(22:57):
while a smaller number have positive religious rich rules or
aggressive cannibalism associated with warfare. And Cole points out that
there's some confusing things about the ways these motivational labels
are applied to instances of cannibalism from prehistoric times. And
so to help refine the discussion about the types of
cannibalism and the role of raw nutrition in motivating prehistoric
(23:18):
cannibalistic episodes, Cole said, basically, hey, wouldn't it help to
know exactly how nutritious a paleolithic human was? That could
sort of help us better understand whether these are purely
nutrition seeking events or whether there's some other kind of
significance to them. Right. So, ultimately the goal of this
paper was to construct an informed estimate on the nutritional
(23:39):
value of a human. First question, has anybody ever done
that before? Cole says, yes, it has been done that
it was just sort of in a short letter to
American Anthropologist in the year nineteen seventy, and their methodology
for how they came up with their number was not clear,
But in nineteen seventy Stanley M. Garn and Walter D.
Block wrote quote the limited nutritional Value of Cannibalism. In
(24:03):
this short letter to American Anthropologist, garn and Block claimed
that an adult male weighing fifty kilograms or about a
hundred and ten pounds, which is a reasonable estimate of
the body mass of a stone age human, would yield
about thirty kilograms or sixty six pounds of edible skeletal
muscle mass, and nutritionally, that breaks dound about four point
five kilograms of protein and about eighteen thousand calories. So
(24:26):
based on this, garn and Block said that if human
is your only source of protein, that's the only meat
you're eating and the only real protein you're getting. A
group of sixty people would need to eat a person
every day in order to get enough protein to have
a healthy diet. Uh. And if it were rationed out,
so you've got less out to a diet of like
one human per week shared between sixty people, the group
(24:49):
would not be getting nearly enough protein. So, based on
this garn and Block conclude quote, the nutritional value of
cannibalism may therefore be viewed as questionable unless a group
is in a position consume its own number in a year.
So basically you'd have to be eating a lot of humans.
All right, Well, you know, I really want to see
these numbers broken down and compared to the Chainsaw family
(25:12):
and the Texas Chainsaw massacre, Right, is that nutritional cannibalism? Well,
I don't. I feel like it's a mix of nutritional
and commercial because there are four individuals in the family
and obviously they need the protein. Uh, it's commercial. This
is not taken into account at all. I know, because
they're running the barbecue restaurant on the side, and as
we find out in Texas Chainsaw Masacre to they're they're
(25:33):
winning awards at regional barbecue competitions. This is prestige cannibalism. Yes.
Uh So to follow up on Garden Block coal asks, Okay,
is their estimate correct. They don't say how they got
to these numbers. And to figure that out, Coal did
a review of the existing literature on the chemical composition
of the human body, relying on three studies from the
(25:54):
Journal of Biological Chemistry in the middle of the twentieth century,
which were drawn from analysis of four alt human males.
So how much nutrition is there per kilogram of muscle
mass on a human? Well, this data yielded an average
of nineteen thousand, nine hundred and fifty one calory calories
per twenty four point nine kilograms of muscle mass. So
(26:17):
garden Block weren't all that far off by estimating eighteen
thousand calories in thirty ms of muscle. And so there's
and then Coal comes up with some estimates of the
nutritional value of the protein and fat on a human.
I think this is supposed to be for a roughly
a hundred and forty five pound human male, So total
body there would be about a hundred and forty three thousand,
(26:40):
seven hundred and seventy one calories. And it's got a
breakdown by body parts, right, so like the body parts
reasonably expected to be consumed based on ethnographic studies of cannibalism,
so not eating stuff like teeth and nerve tissue. That
would leave you with about a hundred and twenty five thousand,
eight hundred and twenty two calories. And there is this
wonder full table in the paper where the body is
(27:02):
broken down into parts based on their nutritional value. So
the heart it's about six hundred and fifty calories, the brain,
spinal cord, and nerve trunks about undred calories, the four
arms one thousand, six hundred and sixty four calories. I'm
assuming this is not for a popeye, but just like
regular forearms. Now that hard, that's that's some that's some
good calories there. But that's some tough eating. That's some
(27:23):
tough tissue. Oh yeah, I think you've got to You've
gotta make a stew with that. Well. Yeah, So part
of the one of the caveats, and I'll get into
the caveats in a minute here, but one of the
caveats is that this is just for raw meat. It
it can't take into account how the nutritional value of
these things change when cooked. But we have discussed before
how cooking is thought to significantly increase the caloric value
(27:44):
or nutritional value of a lot of foods. Things that
cannot otherwise be digested can be digested after being cooked exactly.
So I wanted to come up with some comparisons, not
analyzing protein ratios or anything, but just purely in terms
of raw calories. I worked out that on this number
with the with the edible part being about a hundred
(28:04):
eight hundred and twenty two calories, human body is worth
about a hundred and thirty two Windy's bacon eaders. Now,
what's a bacon eater. A bacon eader is a Windy
sandwich that has a bunch of bacon and cheese on it. Okay,
so it's like a bacon cheese barker. Yes, basically, it's
like that there. I think they make a big deal
about how like we don't put any lettuce on this.
You know, this is just bacon and cheese. It's one
(28:26):
of those sandwiches that uses kind of crass masculinity marketing.
It's kind of sandwich for men, like the double down
sort of that kind of thing. Yeah, so it's like
that human body is worth about a hundred and thirty
two Windy's bacon eaters. Or I've got another one here
about two hundred and ninety three slices of pizza Hut
Meat Lover's large original stuffed crust pizza. All right, well,
(28:48):
that's that's quite a lot of pizza. Well, I mean,
a human body is somewhat nutritious, though I did I
want to say I arrived at those numbers using those
restaurants online nutrition calculators. Those numbers could be they could
be massively under shooting the glories in an average baconator. Now,
obviously there are gonna be some caveats in this type
of because this is just coming up with some very
(29:09):
broad est so some major caveats coal mentions. He says
the data he used to arrive at his estimates were
only based on adult males in the twentieth century, and
he's got a great sense of humor when he writes this,
so quote. Ideally, nutritional templates for females and a range
of ages would be constructed to represent the full nutritional
potential of hominin social groups. However, data for females and
(29:32):
subadults are not available within the published literature, and the
collection of primary data of this nature was outside the
ethical and legal scope of this study. Uh. He also
says that the data only pertains to basically anatomically modern humans.
It's not known how different the nutritional value of other
species like Neanderthals or Homo erectus might be. Also, the
(29:53):
average values here are drawn from a small sample size.
Better estimates could be drawn if you had more humans
to measure the neutra rational value of Also, these values
are of the nutritional value of raw me. Like we said,
cooking might change things. So after that coal also does
some estimates of the nutritional yield for body mass at
different Paleolithic cannibalism sites found by archaeologists. So you've got
(30:16):
a Stone Age cannibalism site and you look at okay,
what were the different people here that apparently got eaten?
And so he like tries to add up how much
body mass calorie value was was being served at this site. Uh,
and so how so the question he asks is how
do you humans stack up against other meat sources of
the Paleolithic quote when compared to most other fauna, human
(30:39):
skeletal muscle has a nutritional value broadly in line with
those that match our size and weight, but produced significantly
fewer calories than most of the larger fauna such as mammoth,
wooly rhino, or deer species known to have been regularly
consumed by past hominins, So they're better meals around. Yeah, exactly. So,
(30:59):
while you could get decent nutrition from a human body,
Cole argues that it would be much more worthwhile to
simply hunt the same large fauna of the time that
you would normally be hunting mammoth, Rhinoceros RX, bison, cow, bear, horse,
giant deer, all this stuff. So hunting and killing a
human for meat has a kind of wonky risk to
reward ratio because, you know, he points out that humans
(31:21):
are crafty and sometimes they can fight back in clever
and dangerous ways. Is it really worth hunting humans provided
that they're going to give you relatively low amounts of
nutrition compared to these big, fat, bulky animals that are
also probably easier to hunt. So Cole asks were hominins
actively hunted by members of their own species in prehistoric times? Uh?
(31:44):
He says quote active hunting raises the interesting question of
whether the relatively low calorific return for hominins would justify
the energy expenditure in hunting an individual or group. If
the motivation was driven was driven purely by balancing energy quotions.
It is suggested here that this would not be the
case when a single large fauna individual returns many more
(32:07):
calories without the difficulties of hunting groups of hominins that
were as intelligent and resourceful as the hunters in their
ability to fight back and evade pursuit. So now he said,
you know, we have these instances of what looks like
prehistoric cannibalism among hominins, but it just doesn't seem like
that is a very smart strategy for getting meat generally.
(32:30):
So what what's going on here? Why do we see
this cannibalism? And he hypothesizes, well, maybe there are cases
of occasional opportunistic nutritional cannibalism. For example, we're pretty hungry
and a member of our group just died of natural causes,
right or or certainly to go back to the warfare,
and now ities like you get into some sort of
uh an altercation with a rival group, perhaps over access
(32:55):
to fauna to fauna, and then well, I need meat.
I was hunting this thing, but I just bashed the
skull in of this guy, who, granted looks a lot
like me. But is made of meat, right, So yeah,
it could be sort of occasional opportunistic cannibalism. But then
Cole also says that quote the motivations for cannibalistic episodes
(33:15):
lay within complex cultural systems involving both intra and intergroup
dynamics and competition. Essentially, he's saying he thinks a very
likely explanation for a lot of these cannibalistic episodes has
something to do with prehistoric culture, which we don't know
a lot about. But it could involve uh, religious uses,
ritual uses, medicinal uses, things people believed there to be
(33:39):
reasons to eat other humans that went beyond just the
nutritional value. I mean, it is very difficult to put
ourselves to attempt to put ourselves in the mindset of
of such cultures. Yeah, and we don't know what they were.
I mean, that's one of the fascinating things. They're interesting
little tidbits, but they didn't leave written records, so we
don't really have descriptions of what they believed and what
(34:01):
their relationships were like, and you know, just all the
things that the kind of everyday texture of society that
we know so well in our own world. It's it's
mostly opaque to us what it was like this far
back in the past. Well, you know, even the Chainsaw
family from Texas, Chainsaw Masker, they they have their own
sort of culture and system of beliefs that seems to
have risen up out of this, uh, this Texan um
(34:26):
avatoir culture and their family history with the business there.
You know, there's some intentionally or or perhaps accidentally uh,
kind of ingenious ideas about like the spiritual nature of cannibalism,
kind of indebted in that original motion picture. Yeah, do
you have an example, Well, there's a sense of there's
(34:46):
a sense of ritual to the cannibalism it's going on
at least within the own their within the family, and
maybe you could apply that to the barbecue restaurant as well.
But like there's that whole scene with the uh, you know,
seated at the table and granted, you know they're they're
proba really drawing a little bit from Judeo Christian traditions there,
but you know, there's there's some something sacred going on
(35:06):
with the family dinner and allowing Grandpa, the greatest killer
that had ever ever lived, to attempt to to kill
the victim. So that he can, uh, you know, drink
of her blood, eat of her flesh, and grow stronger. Uh.
And then all these other sort of elements of like that,
the little bone wind chimes and constructions that have been created.
(35:27):
It seemed it's almost like there are people that are
so cut off from the rest of of a modern
society that they're kind of reinventing primordial religious concepts. That
is fascinating. I had never thought of it that way,
Like all they do, like if if if everything that
they do is concerned with meat and the importance of
(35:47):
meat and the preparation of meat, um, and then what
kind of ideas come out of that? It's it's it's
not unlike what we might try and imagine for prehistoric people.
So you know, if your whole life is, of course
about the hunt, then various ideas spring out of that.
If your whole life is about about the importance of
meat and blood, Uh, then you know it, who knows
(36:11):
exactly how they view the importance of our own flesh
and what kind of powers or or or or I mean,
we tend to put a horror show interpretation on it.
And obviously I'm drawing in Texas chainsaw maskt right. But
I mean perhaps in a way it's beautiful. Perhaps it
was like I have killed this individual in battle, and
I must eat them like that is the the only
(36:32):
like that is how you show respect for a worthy adversary.
I mean we're tempted to want to construct some sort
of brutal like I have killed my enemy and now
I must feast on their brains kind of thing. But
it maybe in its own way it was sacred. Well.
I think it's also possible that we frequently underestimate the
degree to which a lot of the strange features of
our culture that don't seem strange to us, because there
(36:53):
are culture um are just are in traceable ways downstream
of economics which are ultimately reducible to chemical energy economics,
you know, acquiring food to eat. Uh, you can trace
a lot of culture back to getting food and surviving. Absolutely,
So to bring it back to the study, another thing
(37:14):
you can imagine is how perhaps certain practices that were
originally just opportunistic nutritional practices, maybe opportunistic cannibalism, when someone
died and you didn't want to waste the meat, so
you ate them. Uh, It's possible that could have turned
into religious beliefs and rituals exactly. And that's not even
taking into effect like any you know, sort of abnormal
(37:38):
psychological effects that might have taken place and in certain
individuals and therefore influenced the overall shape of the culture.
You know, like if one individual claimed and or even
believed that, say they consume the flesh of their departed
father and then heard their father's voice, then that could
have enormous effects, you know. I mean, we're talking about
(37:59):
the spread of religion. Yeah, this is always interesting territory.
Uh so, yeah, well, not the last time we will
visit the potential religious beliefs and rituals of prehistoric common ends.
But we're gonna go and take a break now. We're
gonna leave cannibalism for now. But when we come back,
we're gonna look at just a couple of more Ignoble
Prize winners briefly before closing out part one of our
(38:23):
Ignoble Prize series for this year. All right, thank thank
and we're back. Robert. Do you have a shorter look
you wanted to take it something? Oh? Sure, why don't
we talk about the Chemistry prize? Okay, let's do some chemistry.
This is from Romeo at all and they were honored
(38:43):
for measuring the degree to which human saliva is a
good cleaning agent for dirty surfaces. The paper was a
titled human Saliva as a Cleaning Agent for Dirty Surfaces
and it was published in Studies in Conservation back in
nine and and the winners delivered their acceptance speech via
recorded video. So with the original title should I spit
(39:06):
on it? And that got rejected that it may can't
sound a little bit a little basically yeah, but we
can all relate to this, right, I mean, have you
ever used your own saliva to clean off, say a
smart smartphone screen or I know, in my case, I've
used it on a kid's face. Plenty of times. I
used my saliva as dishwashing detergent. So I don't know
why people buy those pods. You just spit in the
(39:27):
dishwasher a lot and then get it going. It does
a great job. Well I I nobody's pushing it that
that far. But there does seem to be something to
the cleansing power of spit, at least to you know,
a limited degree. And this is exactly what the paper
and question looked into. They used quantitative test and chromatographic
(39:48):
techniques to isolate alpha Emily's as the key cleaning property
in human saliva. Now you're probably wondering, well, what is
an Emily's Is it some sort of microbe? What is it? Well,
an Emilyes is a member of a class of enzymes
that splits a starch compound via the addition of water molecule.
(40:10):
Now we we divide them into alpha's and betas because
they differ in the exact way that they attack the
bonds of a starch molecule. But Alpha Emilyes is found
throughout the biological world, specifically in the digestive systems of
humans and other animals. The one in the salivary glands
is called Thailand that begins with the P P T
y A l I in. So why is it important, Well,
(40:31):
it concerns human biology. Obviously we're humans. We're always interested
in that. It also concerns hygiene. And it's funny because
it involves spit, and it involves the idea of cleaning
something with spit, something that on on a basic level,
I feel like we all do this. We all have
probably had a situation where we use spit to quote
unquote clean something, and yet at the same time spit
(40:52):
is considered dirty. Uh, Like someone spitting at you is gross,
seeing someone spit in the street is disgusting. Well, yeah,
I mean you can see some of the things, Like,
I can see why this would be because the role
of saliva in the mouth is somewhat the same as
the role of average cleaning liquids or detergents. Right, So
it is a detergent mean that it's like a wedding
(41:13):
and lubrication agent that helps things move around and wash off.
And then it's also a somewhat a digesting agent, like
it breaks some things down and tenderizes some things. Yeah,
it is that. Our mouth, we have to remember, is
the first stage of the digestion. You know. We masticate
the food, we get it all cut up, we get
it nice and wet and soaked, and then our tongue
(41:34):
helps to form it at the back of our throat
into a bolus that is going to pass down our throats,
preparing a package for shipment to the rest of the
digestive system. There's nothing more appetizing than thinking about the
lubrication of a bolus going down your throat, right, And
then you know, ultimately that's what a French kisses. A
french kiss are two individuals deciding to link uh the
(41:57):
initial stages of their digestive system and to manipulate each
other's um uh, you know, a oral manipulation. Limb. It's
a beautiful moment. I just got a brilliant idea for
an episode in the future. It should just be called
Robert and Joe ruined Kissing, and we just like we
just destroyed. We just take it to the point where
(42:18):
nobody who listens will ever do it again. All right, Well,
coming this Valentine's Day to a stuff to blow your
mind episode near you? Well, I have another one here.
This is another short one and we're not going to
spend much time on to kind of close out the episode.
But their medical education prize uh, this one went to A.
Kira hora Uchi for the medical report colin Oscopy in
(42:39):
the sitting position Lessons learned from self colinoscopy self colonoscopy. Yes,
I'm just gonna read the abstract on this one. Okay, Okay,
just read it. Colin Oscopy is typically done in the
supine position, with the patient's position varied as needed to
assist instrument insertion. We found that a newly developed small
(43:00):
caliber variable stiffness colonoscope design for colonoscopy and pediatric patients
was especially useful in patients with difficult colonoscopy. The outside
diameter is ten point three millimeters, and the working length,
the field of view, and the range of the tip
flection are similar to those of standard uh kolonoscopes. So,
(43:21):
I mean, I don't have much to say about this one.
It kind of calls back to our and we did
an entire episode on on the evolution of the anus,
so it's not like we're shy about discussing this part
of the human anatomy. But I think this is one
of those studies that basically they honored it because of
the whole uh self colonoscopy aspect of the title. I
(43:41):
suspect that is what set them off. Yeah, it was
the self colonoscopy. Though at the same time it's important
because this is an invalid and important diagnostic method for
for for human health. Oh yeah, colonoscopies are important. All right. Well,
on that note, we're gonna go ahead and pinch off
this particular episode of to to Blow Your Mind, but
we're coming back in uh in the next episode, and
(44:04):
we're going to discuss the remaining Ignobel Prize winners, UH,
some of them in more detail, certainly than we than
we spent with the colonoscopy study. There's some really good
ones in the next episode, indeed, acording more, including morning Wood.
So come back for that. Uh. In the meantime, if
you want to check out more episodes of Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, head on over to stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. That is the mothership. That's where
(44:25):
we'll find all the episodes of the podcast. You'll find
links out to our various social media accounts. You'll find
a link to our t public store. It's there's a
link for our store right at the top of the page,
and that will give you the opportunity to buy something
with our logo on it, like a shirt or a sticker,
a tote bag, a throw pillow. They have all sorts
of options there. It's a it's a cool way to
(44:45):
support the show, UH and UH we appreciate it if
you do. And if you want to support the show
in a way it doesn't cost you a dime and
just simply rate and review us wherever you have the
power to do so big thanks as always to our
excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Tari hair Rison. If
you would like to send us an email to give
us feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
topic for the future, or just to say hi, you
(45:07):
can email us at blow the Mind at how stuff
works dot com for more on this and thousands of
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(45:36):
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