Absolute Disgust

for me, it's um. I mean, I do have some visual disgust, Like, for instance, if I watch Clockwork Orange and they see the scene where they're peeling back his eyes and they've got the little hooks right on his the lids of his eyes, that just disgust me. It makes my stomach turn. Um somehow, something about eyes really

and and poking at eyes disgusting to me. But more than anything, I think smells, because it could be just something as you know, normal, as hey, there's some stinky garbage or cigarette butts that kind of makes me real coil yourself. Well, I mean, certainly a bad odor will get to me, but I guess things that seem like unhygienic things often give me the all over. It's like if I'm if there's somebody on on on the train and they're coughing without covering their mouth. Or the time

I saw the chicken lady on the train. Have I mentioned this before? I do believe I've heard of it. And she was eating an entire rope. Well, she had a rotisserie chicken that had been that she had been eating on and it was down to just like the little sort of gray slivers, and she was picking the meat off of it on the train, and then she would touch the pole on the train, and then she would go back to eating her chicken, which just totally

freaking me out. I basically had to had to switch cars at that point, you know, things things of that nature where I'm like, this is kind of gross, and that part of my brain is dis wanting me to flee for for fear of all the diseases rolling off the situation right right, It's like you're having this this really powerful feeling for a reason, right. Your body, your mind, everything is telling you like back away right now, um, And there's a reason for this, and we're going to

talk about that. Um. I asked Jonathan Strickland of Tech Stuff what disgusted him, and he gave me a very specific answer that it was maggots emerging from carcasses, because you might mistake the movement under the skin for something else than they emerge, and uh, chaos and sues. Ah, well, there's a there's a great example of that in the book The Wasp Factory. It actually ends up driving a character in saying that's a Banks book. The guy did the culture series. Look it up if you want to

be disgusted. But why are we disgusted? Right? Why? Why does this happen? And where does it occur in nature? Um? Where does it occur in the brain? Why why is it such a part of who we are? Well? Joshua Tiber the universe, the U University excuse me in Amsterdam proposed three domains of discussed three separate psychological programs. Yeah, okay, and they all make sense, right, deseese what you talked about, right, people coughing on the train. Yeah, with putting on their

their chicken juice on the poles. Uh, that just sounded wrong. Mate, choice and moral judgment. Okay, we'll see, like all three of those are rolled up in the Chicken Lady because because I'm like, that's gross and potentially going to strepad a disease. I really don't want to mate with you. And uh, morally I think it's also yeah, morally, it's against the rules to eat on the train. What the

heck are you doing? Um? Yeah, yeah, it's a little bit reprehensible to sit there and basically, you know, essentially like lick your hands and the chicken and then just put it all over everything for other people who come upon and transfer to themselves. Yeah. Though, if you touch one of those poles with your bare skin, I mean you're really asking for it. You are always looking arm yeah, or wearing or just pull your sleep down, yeah, or just or just fall. Better to fall on the floor

than to touch that pole. Yeah, roll around on that floor is probably a lot that are Um. Apparently there is a look of disgust that is universal. So when we feel disgusted, this look crosses over our faces. Um, and what it is and this is according to Paul Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco, the look is screwing up of our noses and pulling down at the corners of our mouths. You're doing it right now, Yeah, you look a little disgusted. And every culture all over

the world, this is the look of disgusting. Yeah look, yeah, so I mean you know you're in another country you're disgusted by something. Just keep that in mind that if you happen to be over at someone's home in another country and they're cooking you something and it's maybe not something that you would try at your own home, trying not to screw your nose, because there's something universal. It's not like go in this country. It thumbs up is good in this country. It's fighting word, you know, or

like or turn you know, the whole thing. Like if you turn your glass upside down in Australia, it means you're you're challenging everyone in the bar to a fight. But I can't back that at That's one thing I've heard our Australian listeners will sort of thought on that up. Yeah. Or the soles of your shoes in Egypt, right that I think I believe that's I put down, or or like in Thailand, like setting so that your shoes pointing at somebody, that's that's bad, you know, But here nobody cares.

Now they don't point your shoes all you want. Uh. But Charles Darwin actually tackled this subject before and the paper the expression of the emotions in man and animals, and he described the face of disgust as if we're expelling some horrible tasting substance from the mouth. So there has been, you know, historical interest in disgust, but as of late it's actually getting some some legs, as you

would say, in terms of being studied in earnest. Dr Valerie Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is a disgust bologist in fact, and she says, disgust is in our everyday life. It determines our hygiene behaviors. It determines how close we get to people, determines who were going to kiss, who we're going to meet with, who we're going to sit next to. It determines the people that we shunned, and that is something that we

do a lot of. Yeah, and you look at the list of things that are typically associated with the disgust um and certainly it's one of the ones we already mentioned are on there. I mean, you know, the basically bodily secretion issues, feces, vomit, sweats, bit blood plus sexual fluids, body parts, wounds, corpses, tonail, clippings, decaying food, certain living creatures like the maggots, like lice, like worms, rats, some people,

dogs and cats, which to each their own. And then uh, and then individuals who are ill the diseased right again, then there's that visual of that person is someone I need to back away from. Um. But yeah, and the body parts uh universals list that you're talking about, toneail clippings came up. Yeah, and I thought that was really interesting because I thought I feel the same way. And no, Um, I always attributed it to being some sort of weird idea that I had that someone might take my tonail

clippings and that's just spell against me exactly. I mean, that's the old magic of be careful with your hair. Stuff into the side of you. Don't don't let anybody get all of your brush or they could keeps cast magical spells against you. Right. Yeah, there's irrational fears that

we have. Yeah, and it's actually interesting. You know, in the past we've discussed sympathetic magic and our attitudes towards discussed or somewhat wrapped up in sympathetic magic, like the you know, the idea that say, something that has come into contact with something gross is therefore gross, which is a which, as a basic physical rule, tends to apply. You know, if the fork has been in the toilet, you're not going to eat with the fork, even if

you clean it. Sometimes, you know, to have this association of the fork of the toilet trying to spear something right, But then are you know, humans have the ability to really get out and take things and extrapolate them to

ridiculous levels. So you end up with a situation where you I mean, that's where we end up with things like the idea that certain individuals are n'touchable because they have a particular job in society that that puts them in contact with foul things or foul ideas even you know it, it ends up becoming a part of this sympathetic magic and the idea that something can be not

only befouled but besmirched, you know. Yeah, and we'll talk about that a little bit more too later about the cultural aspect of it and what you're talking about um in sympathetic magic, because that's really it's such an interesting

psychological component to this. Yeah, but back to the physiological I found an interesting um uh description of this in the book Clean A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity by Virginia Smith, which I think I've mentioned for it is just a great book on the history of of hygiene and how hygiene ends up becoming interwoven with these

ideas of purity. But she refers to the nervous reflex of disgust and repulsion as a physiological safety net, which I think that you know, ties in nicely with the with the with the disease and uh uh and and mating aspect of this trifecta of repulsion. Okay, all right, I can see that. All right. So diving into the brain, where is this tech in place? When I when I see the chicken lady on the on the train, like, like, what's lighting up? If someone would strapped me into you know,

an fm R I or something. Yeah, if we could see a scan your brain, we would see a lot of activity in insula and the amygdala as well as other especially this frontal insula. It's an area the brain that in addition to the deep seated discuss you have, you also have things such as addiction is sometimes tied up there as well. So it's not it's not like

just the repulsion center of the brain. Um, there have been studies that have shown that people would damage to this portion of the brain were actually able to give up cigarettes instantly. So so there's a lot going on there. But one of the things that is it is definitely going on there is repulsion. Yeah, and mygdala, of course

is processing emotions. That that makes sense that you're seeing the chicken lady on Marta the train system and uh, you're you're starting to form all of those opinions and having a very big gut reaction to it. It's also the like if you were to receive a centual touch from one significant other that also ends up resonating in the insula. So there's a lot of physical stimuli and central simuli in the world around you. You wind up

figuring out what you're supposed to do with it. Yeah, and it's interesting that you actually just brought up um, someone that you know um touching you because in a lot of these studies, and this is going to sound like a no dumb moment, but of course we find the people that we know less disgusting than the people that we don't know. And a lot of that is because you know, there's a familiarity there, even if that

person is truly disgusting. Um, but there's less and opportunity to objectify that person, and maybe on some level you're like, okay, well they're not maybe the cleanest of people, but there are no threat to me. I know this, I know my immune system knows that this no threat. Well here's the This one actually came up among some friends. Where do you stand on using a spouse's toothbrush? Um, okay, Well, in a situation where it's the only choice, then I'm

fine with it. But when I've accidentally done it, or my daughter grabbed my toothbrush actually this morning, and I was like no, no, which was kind of ridiculous because um, certainly, you know, I eat some of her sandwiches, she eat some of mine, and we are all exchanging sandwiches sandwiches and that makes you sound a little like birds, but yeah we are. We have a little giant nest um. But yeah, and you know kissing and everything, so yeah,

all the germs are being passed between one another. Well, I found just in a few people have talked like they tend to range. There's some people that are like, yeah, like we're you know, you're on a trip and you only have one toothbrush in the bag, It's no big deal. And then other people were like, you know, absolutely not one person gets to brush their teeth on that trip. Well, it's kind of like my germs, just my germs, Okay,

no one else's germs. Um, which is just silly and funny. Um. I guess what we just feel really like we've got quite a connection with all of the bacteria on our body, which we've talked about. It's like, you know, there's tenfold of foreign bacteria to our to our own cells. So okay, I guess we start to feel a little bit fuzzy and lovy for our own bacteria. Um. But anyway, let's talk about discussed from an evolutionary standpoint. Yeah, like, what

sense does it make, um, evolving? I mean, obviously, the big pick I'm here is to is avoiding disease. For for an organism to be successful and doesn't need it needs to not get taken down by by predators, but it also has to avoid the ailments that will weaken

it either unto death or into the hands of these predators. Right, So, I mean, you know, it's makes sense that we would have these sort of uh signals for us to visual accues, smell cues that would make us stop in our tracks and reassess or reevaluate, because this is how we have been so successful as a species, right, this ability to step back and evaluate and say this might be something

that would be harmful to me. Right. We talked about some of this in the Science of Stink, where we're we're talking about how like a like you, you get hit with a bad smell, and the bad smell will hit you square in the face, and it's your brain's way of saying something is wrong here. This is potentially poisonous or disease written in some way, shape or form. So you need to at least think about it before you touch it. You have not just completely avoid it entirely. Yeah.

In fact, the New York Times has an article called the ick Factor, and in it they talk about how smell is causes such a powerful response in the brain that the U. S. Army has been trying to develop a stink bomb with an odor foul enough to be used for riot control, and that police are very interested.

And so it makes sense. I mean, that's the kind of reaction you would have, right, that it could disperse crowds because if something that your body is yelling, this is bad for me, right without necessarily the more adverse reactions ones and one encounters with like tear gas and the like rubber bullets, and yeah, and I was actually thinking about this too. It's just in terms of my

own personal experiences, uh, with getting ill. And this doesn't happen every single time, but it's more likely than not that a couple of days before I get ill, I will have a dream actually, and in the dream, I have to use the bathroom. But the only bathroom that's available to me is one that's a public restroom. And as soon as I walk in it, I realized that is the most disgusting public restroom I've ever been in. It's feces encrusted everywhere, like every you could not touch

something that's clean if you tried. And in the dream, I always looked down and I'm barefoot, and there's a stream of urine and flam and everything that you could possibly Yeah, it's the Seriously, if you've ever seen Trainspotting, it makes that that bathroom and Trainspotting look really spick and span um. But this is and I always have this stream, and I always like God, I got oh, and I have had it so much that it's obvious to me now that I'm about to get sick and

it's my body trying to tell me something. But it wasn't until we were doing this research that I realized that just what a big signal my mind and body were trying to transmit to me. Wow. Have you tried hitting that scenario with any lucid dreaming ever? Well, here's

the thing. I mean, I can lucid dream most of the time, but it's always happens if you ever decided like I'm going to clean this bathroom in turn, like cleaning Superwoman, and you just stiff it all because my because of what happens is the way to unfold is that I am I look down in my feet and are now you know, in the muck, and so I have no I can't even I can't turn back. It doesn't matter. I'm exposed as the point of the dream. So because yeah, because sometimes I thought, oh, really seriously,

can I just go to another restroom? But it's too late, But there you go. So, I mean, these these are all things, you know, feces, um, whatever else is hiding away in that public restroom that pretend potential disease and illness. Right, those are the things that we look at we have such a strong reaction to. And even in the animal world, I mean anyone who's had a pet. I mean, granted, if you have a dog, it does seem at times

like the like a dog is disgusted by nothing. But but even even dogs occasionally encounter something where they're like they're visibly not wanting any of it. They may not actually smirk their face up, but they will move away from it. They will kind of see it in their ears, right, right, And uh, you know, certainly in my cat, I've seen him do that, back off on things. Um especially like if it's chemical too. He seems to have a problem

with that, which is pretty good. All right, Well, let's take a quick break and when we come back, we will get into uh, alright, we're back obsessive compulsion disorder. Right, how does that time with a whole disgust scenario. Okay, Well, just so everybody knows, this is something that affects about three point three million people between the ages of eighteen and fifty four in the United States alone. And the

classic example this off and turned around. They like somebody who compulsively washed their hands, like their hands cannot I mean they're basically lading with Beth because their hands never

feel completely clean exactly. So um. In the context of disgust, researchers were interested to see how people with how CD dealt with things that we're disgusting for those people, and in a study by the University of Florida's Evelyn F. And William L. McKnight Brain Institute, researchers compared the reactions of eight people with contamination preoccupation O c D. Okay, so a lot of handwashing with a group of healthy adults to a set of thirty pictures that had been

rated in terms of emotional impact. So um, the pictures that we're talking about had a series of threatening, disgusting, our neutral images like snakes bearing their fangs, Carrie uh, flies on pumpkin pie. Yeah, that's what you just swatted away. Okay, See we have different disgustometers, right, I didn't do not like flies landing on my food. I figured, like, you know, it's kind of one of those things you dropped the food and or three second roll the same thing with

a fly. I mean, I'm gonna probably still need it, okay, um, all right, And the other picture they had was a picture of a sunset lovely right uh, And then they had Mr I skiing scans of their brains and researchers found that pictures that induced fear discussed prompted reactions in different parts of the brain and both groups of participants, But the level of stimulation in certain areas of the brain prompted by the disgusting images was greater with people

with O C D are greater for people with O C D UM and this is really interesting too. The areas of the brain most affected by these images included those that process unpleasant taste and smells. So the difference suggests that obsessive people driven to behaviors like constant handwashing may be motivated by their extreme sensitivity to discuss, and not, as commonly thought, by their fear of some sort of

awful outcome. Um, if they were to stop washing their hands. Okay, So it's not just it's not like a conscious thing like I have to wash my hands or I'm going to catch the leg. It's it's it's tied up on

a much more primal level, right, yeah, exactly. I mean that and I found that absolutely um fascinating because you think about O c D and you think about hand washing, and you think about it as some sort of crazy prevention method, but in fact, it is that they're they're having this reaction that's so heartfelt that you know, they're overreacting to the stimuli in front of them, right, which is why I mean, it's like you're not going to talk somebody out of O c D. You're not gonna

be able to reason, and not because it's not coming from a seed of reason. Uh, you know, you're not gonna be able to say, like, well, logically you're washing your hands too much and you're actually doing more damage to your skin. Blah blah blah. It's not gonna well, especially if you're Amingdala two is having such an overreaction. I mean, this is these are things that are going

on undercover that you don't even know. So it's not like you could I mean, I guess unless you're some sort of end master, maybe you could step back and you know, dial down your your brain waves there um, but most likely you know, this is something that you can't necessarily control all right now, when one thinks of like discuss reactions, especially to smell instantly think of pregnant women. Yeah, because I mean that's uh, I mean that that's just

one of those things. It's like like if anyone who has who has been pregnant as a pregnant friend, there's the whole thing about like suddenly like it'll be like something like garlic. We'll totally set some people off and they're like they can't even be in the same room with somebody who just had breadsticks. It's true. Yeah, you get very sensitive to it very quickly. Did you find

this to do the case? I did. Yeah, not the entire time, but certain times where I was just like, oh man, and my husband would be like, what what are you smelling and be like, I don't know, Like thirty yards away, someone just had some bob choy with them with some ginger and curry, and the courage just really very pungent. I thought, you can get the bob choy is the culprit because botchoy didn't know smell like anything. Uh, you know, after it's cooked, that's quite buttery, and it

kind of smells pottery. It does have a butteryodor. But even things that really weren't offensive, I was just picking up on them, and sometimes things that weren't offensive became inoffensive. Um. But this is because what they found is that pregnant

women have elevated levels of progesteron. Yeah. Now, this is a steroid hormone involved in the female minstrel cycle, pregnancy and embryogenesis of humans and other species, so that's why the levels are up obviously during pregnancy, yeah, and particularly in the first trimester when derailing fetal development is is UM usually could occur most often during the first trimester, so that's when UM, a woman's censors would be sort of ferreting out what might be dangerous for her to consume,

like the idea. An easy example this is of course the cat box. Like anyone, like everyone knows, like pregnant ladies don't mess with cat boxes because of the whole um taxo plasmas. Yeah, um, and of course taxo plasmas. That's an interesting topic and to itself, which we may have to get into another time. But but obviously pregnan lady should have avoid the cat box, so it would make sense, but with the body would would on some of the use the logic of well, she shouldn't go

near the cat box. So let's make the cat box extra stinky just to hinge the bat, you know, just to just to make sure. Yeah, and didn't you tell And I know this is definitely something for another time. It's told me an interesting little fact about taxo plasmosis that the little critters what they do with the cat's mind and the urine. Wasn't it something sort of Oh,

there's a lot of fast. I did some research on it a year or two back for an Animal Planet tie in, and there's there's all sorts of crazy research on how it alters the behavior of animals, but also people like making making rats and mice crave the smell of cat urine so they'll basically steer the cat, I mean steer the mouse towards the belly of a cat so it can can complete its life cycle and can potentially generate or stir up risk taking behavior even in

human males. It's fast, So I mean, I just that brings me back to the podcast that we did about Guts Gut Floor and how a lot of our behavior is dependent on the materia that we have in there. But but it's an example just in the whole idea of like catpe. There's an example of on one hand, the body making a tinkering with our disgust reactions to

steer one away from the cat urine. And then on the other level, you have a parasite hijacking rats natural repulsion by that smell and making it move towards it because the parasite needs the animal to be eaten by a cat. It's just amazing that it could that smell could just you know, walked off and say, come to me, consume me rat. But let's talk a little bit more

about disgust from a cultural perspective. Yes, so obviously humans have a way of taking things that are sort of natural, you know, that are just a natural process of our bodies. We we add a couple of layers of reasoning and faulty reasoning and cultural norms on top of that, and things quickly get out of control. So we end up attaching disgust to things that aren't really discussed, um, I mean, ends up getting tied up in our politics, even certainly

in our moral views of the world. Yeah, this is really interesting. Curtis, the disgust bologist, was talking about a survey that she did in different countries to find out what people found disgusting in those countries, and she uncovered

some interesting cultural pec peculiarities. For example, food cooked by a menstruating woman was a frequent cause of disgust in India against the pathetic magic here, right, Like, Okay, I'm assuming that it was assumed that if they ate this food that was cooked by a menstruating woman, that maybe they would their masculinity would be downgraded. I'm not sure, or there's maybe just such disgust in that culture with

that particular um part of the body. I say not being in that culture, right, I mean because on one level, yes, you would not want someone who is physically ill cooking your food for for obvious reasons. So if you if end up creating the stallacy that the menstruating woman is unclean, and then and then then it makes a twisted kind of sense that you would not want them cooking for you. But again, a twisted kind of sense that emerges from

our our our human complication of all. Yeah yeah, yeah, But it's funny because even if someone went to use the bathroom and then cooked your food, right, You're still there's still this idea that you could bring some sort of contaminant from that atmosphere, So you know what I'm saying, Like, it's I could see how maybe some of this is this idea that menstreating women are unclean, but so are people who just used the bathroom. Yeah, with the same

logic there um. But also Curtis uncovered that apparently the Dutch thinks that fat people are disgusting too, so it just kind of differs in each culture. Well, here's something I do find disgusting that kind of falls into this weird territory, and that is people talking on the phone in the bathroom that I think it's just bad form.

And if I will say that if someone is doing that, I will belch it's loudly as I can, because I feel like this is some sort of place that a retreat that I could actually go and use the bathroom and not feel bad about it because it's a path room. I mean, I I'm not going to name any names, but there was an individual, uh it works for this company that was talking on the phone while very audibly going number two in the men's room, and it was weird, like who, like, who are you? Do you either A

are you just sold? Are you a? So confident that the other person on the other line is not going to hear any of these sounds or be do you just not care? Like is it not that important of a contact. I don't know how I feel about that, Like do I admire that? Or am I kind of slightly disgusted? I mean that is that's got a lot of hutzpah, you know, to to sit down and do that. And then I mean, how would how do would you

react if you heard somebody? I mean I think David Sedaris had a bit about this, like talking to his sister and finding out that she had that she had been talking while going to the bath room, and that if anyone what she would do is just pretend that she was opening a jar. If you had the audibly strange, she would just be like, oh, just a second, I've gotta get this jar, um, And that would he be her way of explaining away from it. But but then then it also reminds me to keep the comedy uh

train going here. I remember Kids in the Hall skit where um you came out that like there was a you know, all male board meeting and they're going over some uh some sort of product reviews or something. And they're reading one of these, uh these reviews, and then one of the one of the individual's notices the like a weird smile on the guy who wrote its face,

and he realizes, oh, did you write this naked? And then everyone just feels kind of dirty for it, which I think is you know, it's a it's a ridiculous extreme comedy example, but it it does illustrate a lot of the complexity of our repulsion uh two things, you know, because the idea that somebody wrote something naked that's so far removed from anything that could potentially I mean, it's it's not it doesn't tie into the mating discussed, the

the moral discussed really well, and certainly not the disease discussed. But you could see, like it makes it it makes enough sense where you could imagine somebody finding it repulsive. Well, I mean, certainly there are some Victorian ideas about nudity, right that could you know, make someone think about it would be repulsive by nudity. I mean, certainly Freud had

ideas about sex and the repulsion behind it. Um And you know, again there's this idea of illness and disease that could be transmitted through sex, so sympathetic magic right, your naked all of a sudden you write something and and and that's going to transfer, uh the clap. I will say that in the last year, How Stuff Works has relaxed its teleworking program somewhere, so you have more people working from home, more people writing from home, and

invariably more people writing naked. So uh, they're they're they're probably more articles and How Stuff Works than ever before written by naked people. And it's uh it Fortunately, like I said, now that will actually come. I'm just thinking about everybody on their smartphones right now who are looking up related articles and now feeling maybe a little bit dirty. Yeah, I wonder how many of our listeners are naked right now. You don't have to tell you, but but I mean

some of them are going to sleep. Some people sleep naked. It's just how good it's true they do. Um Okay, so so yeah, we kind of got off fisodic there. It is cultural though, um. And although some people say that we have this encoded hardwired in us right to ferret out disgusted and it's to our advantage to do so. But Paul Rosen, he's a psychologist, um, who's at the University of Pennsylvania, and he's considered a pioneer of modern

disgusted research. Carried out his own survey on things people found disgusting and discovered that causes of death rated the highest amongst his North American subjects. Really, like, even things like a sword would be disgusting because the sword is like the least disgusting thing. Yeah, well, I mean it can be. I mean, could have little bits of brain

hanging off of it. Well, even that's more awesome than disgusting. Yeah, I agree, But I think he means that they're probably instances of disgust that could lead to death, right as opposed to just being like, you know, stepping back and being for a moment out of joint about it. And he says that anything that reminds us we are animals elicits disgusted discussed functions like a defense mechanism to keep human animal nous out of awareness. Okay, so things like

versus the cloak about that we know and love. Yes, Like, the thing that makes that art installation brilliant is that it does kind of force you to think about your own biological functions and what that means. Yeah, and just to refresh everybody's memory. This is the clerk about that. Um,

I can't remember them, yeah maybe yeah, something along this line. Okay, so this is the artist, and he had the cloak about and he had during the installation a chef feed the bot three times a day and then he would add, um, certain little chemicals that would mimic togestion. It would like travel through like I think six different tanks and then come out the other end onto a little conveyor belt and it would be stone cole pooh. Yeah. So again

you're talking about the disgusted element there. And one of the articles we read said that the little girls seeing this contraption and this really sterile environment, started crying. So um, you know we again, we all have different reactions to this. All right, well, let's call over our sterile, totally non disgusting robot to bring us some hygienic mail to Yeah, we do not feed that robot three times a day and then give it chemicals to pretend like it's going

to do it's thing. Just for the record, well, here's when I here's when we heard. I heard from a listener by the name of Stephen. Stephen writes in and you know. I'm not even sure which podcast keeps responding to because it was kind of a tangent I think, but it says that I was actually in your my computers right up when I finally cut up with some older back episodes, I didn't have time to listen to

Thai Red Bull is terrifying. I did a study abroad in chang Mine two thousand one, and after a couple of guys got back from Christmas vacation in the Islands, they introduced us to a truly horrific cocktail in a picture of ice at one bottle of Makong whiskey, uh, two cans of coke, and two bottles of Thai Red Bull. I usually stuck to beer, but it was a recipe for disaster for my compatriots. Tons of energy and way

too few inhibitions. Not to mention the rumors that Makong whiskey is not fit for sale in the US for human consumption due to a number of questionable added its. Huh, I did not know that I had some Makeong whiskey when you did. If you're not drinking beer in Thailand like the other big drink, it's like a coke, Uh.

Like a like a whiskey and coke kind of a thing. Uh, and like some of the like I remember reading, um, like in some bars, you you go to the bar with your whiskey bottle and they serve you coke and ice and a little Seltzer water in it, and but you could use your own whiskey. I guess there's like a quorking. I can't remember the detail on that. Um. And then sometimes if you don't drink at all, they will keep it for you and you come back that they'll put your name on you come back and you

get it the next night. So so it's like, I'm not a beer drinker, and that's like it was a real tie drink. So I was like, I should probably have that one over there. I didn't know that it might have had questionable added it is that could be doing who knows what. Anyway, Stephen continues, you can occasionally find those little glass bottles of rocket fuel in Southeast Asian grocery stores. I've had the the red Bull cans in China, and I can honestly say I'm not sure

which is worse. Um, there's enough caffeine to completely shut off a migraine. But I wouldn't be surprised if it also causes heart problems. Anyway, great job, always always on the podcast, and I think, um, I should be all caught up after this very slow kay at work. So all right, yeah, I believe I put out a call like as anyone else had an experience with tie red bull, because when I had one in Thailand, it was it was like crazy stimulated. We've heard from a few people

in the um. Consensus seems to be that it's diabolical. And then we have another quick one here. This is

from a listener by the name of Stevie. Stevie right, Tennis says, Hey, guys, it just I was just listening to your neo evolution podcast where the INU made reference to the nine nine nine Candles podcast, and it got me thinking, if we did genetically mutate ourselves or have the ability to replace parts over the years so we could live this long, do you think women would have the reproductive capability so last longer than fifty years until they reached menopads. Just a thought on all of this.

I mean, if we replaced our reproductive organs over the years, not for those eggs would end up being our own, maybe a genetically engineered version. But how would this affect the offspring we have with them in the future. I thought this was something good to chew on. Keep on casting your pods have the show cool. Yeah, that's an interesting proposition, and certainly I would think that on the

horizon would be something like a uterine replicator. Yeah. I mean, it's like, uh from the a pretty gray, the bearded one, the beard one, like the point out, it's like a car, the human body of all these parts they wear down, either due to use or abuse, and the idea is to better maintain the vehicle, which at times might need replacing thoughts, right, And it also may mean that procreation gets moved to the lab in some instances. So, um,

that's wed for a thought for another podcast, I believe. Yeah. In fact, maybe when we're gonna record next we kind of touch on it, I think, and the one next Um well, hey, anyway, Stevie, thanks for the thoughts. I love it when people take topics we bring up in one podcast and combine them with another and start mixing it together. I mean, that's what the whole podcast is really about about, you know, stirring up the old mind.

Juices and h seeing what pops at the surface, taking them in your head because otherwise the juices we'll keep express them, express them through the mighty pen. Yeah, okay, board. So hey, if you want to share something with us, where can you find us? Well, you can find us on Facebook. We're Stuff to Blow the Mind on there, and uh, you know, we have a wall. We put photos on the wall, we put videos, we put links to what we're doing, streams of the podcast, all sorts

of good stuff. And then we also have a Twitter account which is below the mind. And hey, we would love to hear from you via email, and particularly we would love to find out what your pet discussed is. So send us a letter let us know the uh blow the mind. At Discovery dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join How Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.