SYSK Selects: Does the five-second rule work?

There's only one way to find out, and that is to enjoy this episode. Thank you. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W. Chuck Bryant's consulting his notes, he's wearing his classes. Everybody's getting ready to podcast. So that this stuff, you know, stretching, doing my yoga. You just pat for the fourth time in the last hour, got more coffee and drink a

lot of coffee. But that was exciting. Yeah, And while I was getting coffee, I was like, I used my elbow to press the buttons to make coffee. Are you doing that now, Um, I have become I'm trying to think back to what initiated it, but I've definitely become far more germ conscious. I'm not a germophobe, because I can just be like, oh god, you know that's fine. You your fingers touched your mouth, stop simpering, right, Like I can get ahold of myself like that. But at

the same time, you know what it is. It was that it was flesh eating bacteria when it was going around Georgia for a little while. And then simultaneously like being aware that, like the gym is lousy with germs, and I think that that did a one two number on me, and all of a sudden, I'm just very I'm very aware of what I touch. Yeah, I'm not super germ conscious. I have been more so though since

we've started learning more about this crap um. But we have a mutual friend whose girlfriend won't even keep her toothbrush in the bathroom. Oh really, Yeah, she said, why would I among the fecal air? Why would I keep my toothbrush in the bathroom? Makes sense? Yeah, And uh, she knows who she is. I don't know who she is. I'll tell you after. Um, so you're kind of you're okay with it, You're okay with the idea of germs.

I mean, there is this whole there's this whole thing called the hygiene hypothesis, which makes uttering complete sense to me that if you're allow more germs and you'll just learn to fight them and have more robust immune systems. Yes, especially growing up as a child and the children who develop allergies, it's because they are raised in a sterile lisol environment. My environment was filthy, dirty, and and so when they finally get out into this very filthy an

the world e g Um preschool, Yeah, they are. They don't have any anybody's built up for it. It makes a lot of sense. I don't know that there's any hard science that backs it up, but I don't know that it's ever been disproven. But that's called the hygiene hypods It appeals to me. It appeals to me. I'm not I don't have allergies. I don't get sick that much. No, and I'm unhealthy as it gets. I wouldn't call you that. No,

I'm in the middle. Yes, I appreciate that. Okay, I guess really the division line between a germophobe in a non germophobe would probably be found somewhere in the five second rule. When don't you think sure? So, like if I dropped something, depending on what it was and where I dropped it, I would possibly eat it. There's a there's a comedian here in Atlanta. It's pretty good. It names no Garden Schwartz and he's saying, yeah, yeah, it

means Noah Black Garden, I think and uh. He was saying that, Um, the five second role is basically exists on a sliding scale. Like if it's a piece of broccoli, it's like a zero second agreed. If it's like a cheeto, it's like a whenever I find it rule. Whenever I find it, pick it up and eat it. Roll. Um. He does it way better than me. But he had a great observation about the five second role. The point is for me, it depends on what it is where it is, not really even how long it's been there.

I mean, if if it's because there's so long and it's under the couch and there's like dust bunnies accumulated on it, I won't eat it. No, no, no, you wouldn't eat anything that you didn't recently drop. Would you if you just found a cookie on the floor, you would eat it. Again, it depends on where where it was found. Like some places seem far cleaner to me than other's, Like my in Numi's apartment is very very clean. Sure, So if it fell and was just slightly under the couch,

yeah yeah I would. Yeah, I'd eat it. It depends. I mean, if it were a piece of salami or something, I wouldn't. But if it were like a very dry cookie, perhaps they a good potato chip, Yeah, that wasn't stale yet, it's very clean, I would blow it off and eat it. Yeah, I would. Um, since we're talking about our sliding scales, I would eat nothing that I didn't recently drop, unless it was a if it was like a little bit

sweets Um the King, they're candy bar the King. If I found one of those that I had just forgotten that was under my couch, unwrapped on the floor, I would eat that no matter how long it had been there. I would maybe rinse it off, or I would melt it down or in reform it or do something deconstructed.

That's why I would do that. Um, you know, they released a box a selection of caramels called stuff you Should Eat a little Bit Sweet stuyah, and it says specifically on their website that that's in honor of us. Thank you, listen jen Um. Okay, So I feel like we've gone in depth on what we do with the five second rule. The question still remains, Chuck, is it? Is it viable? Is that a real thing? Like if you if you are an adherent to the five second

rule and you're like, I'm a very clean person. I only eat stuff that's been on the floor for five seconds or less. Are you full of it? Well, you're sort of full of it. You're totally full of it. There's a high school student UH in two thousand three, Jillian Clark and UM. She was doing her internship at the UH fighting L I and I of the University of Illinois, and she said, you know what, we should do a little study because it's the old wives tale

about the five second rule. And she coded, um, these tiles with E. Coli, which is really gross, and drop cookies and gummy bears and things onto the surface for certain amounts of time and then studied what kind of bacteria picked up And of course no matter how long have they been down there, bacteria did jump onto the food within five seconds. What is important to point out, though, is the long you left it there, the more it picked up. So the five seconds are under is important.

Like it's usually not five seconds for me. If I drop a piece of food, I've got it back within my hand in like two seconds. I've seen it. You're like a like a ninja. And it matters because the longest they are, the more bacteria it's gonna pick up. Right, Yeah, yeah, um. So Jillian Clark just did this very initial preliminary investigation, but she was a pioneer and received the two thousand four Ignoble Prize for Public Health for her efforts. Yeah. Um,

and so she kind of she established this trail. She blazed the trail. Uh. And then about four years later, some closing university researchers really kind of dug in to figure out what was going on with this five second rule and built on Clark's work. Tigers. Yeah, I mean, we gotta say it. I don't feel like we do. Okay, screw you, tigers. Um, all right, so what did they

found out? They found out, Well, if you thought that the same thing, right, if you thought the E. Coli bacteria and the tiles was gross, and where you're going. These guys created a broth of salmonella. They call it salmonella soup, which is so nasty. Yeah, and they they applied it to three different types of material, because I mean, like sure, maybe five seconds you're gonna get some bacteria on it. But what if what doesn't it depend on

the kind of food. Doesn't it depend on the kind of surface that comes in contact with So these investigators their pros they were at Clemson. Um, they applied to salmonella soup to tile, would surface and carpet, right, and then they started dropping bread and bologny on it. Good choice,

why not? Um? And they they found what Clark found that in less than five seconds, no matter how short at the time, but there was a bacterial transfer, Yeah, between a hundred and fifty and eight thousand bacteria if under five seconds, and consider this with salmonella, you only need ten individual bacterium too for what's called an infectious dose. Okay, so that is five seconds or under. If he left it down there for a minute, it was going to

be ten times that. And um, there are ten strains of salmonella not I mean, besides just the bacteria, it's there's a lot of stuff going on down there on your floor, most notably poop on your shoes. Yeah, that's another thing too, everywhere. But you should you should take your shoes off. My wife is of Japanese ancestry, and I definitely picked up from hers, like you take your shoes off when you come in the house, so you just walk around without shoes on all the all the time,

or slippers or something. Yeah, because like, especially if you're germ conscious, man, if you go into a public bathroom and you walk out of there, you're the bottom of your shoes are just like a nightmare. You don't want to track that all over your house because you may find a cookie on your couch that you want to eat. You have to plan for the future basically, and that

starts with taking your shoes off in your house. For some reason, I don't think the Japanese culture is rooted in the hopes that you'll find a cookie on your floor and be able to eat it. No, maybe not, but they are bigging into taking their shoes. My friend Jason and in Tokyo that he is married to a woman in Keiko and years ago when we're living in Athens, they started that tradition of removing your shoes and he was like, hey, you mind, I was like, of course,

not watch this. Well. Sometimes they will even provide like slippers and stuff for guests, like if you're in a Japanese home, so you're still wearing shoes in there, But I guess you point have never left your house, so that's the deal. Yes, and I don't like wild environment, you're all good. Yeah, And I won't wear my slippers in the bathroom either. I gotta tell you, I just got some new slippers. What go barefoot in there? The socks or whatever? Yeah, okay, but like I don't want

to burn the socks cut my feet. I bought some new slippers. Dude. I'm not usually wanted to plug things on the air, But if you're a grown man and you want some the best slippers you've ever had, and you don't mind throwing down little cash us men slippers, my friend, what do you think I wear that we were? Yes, I wonder if they're the same ones. They are like little loafer sort of swede. Mine don't have a back.

They just have this soul have a back, and they have like the hard bottom, so you can go out and get in the mail or if you're me, go to the grocery store. Man, it's so comfortable and all the what is it upper or whatever, it's not as sharp. It's called sharper lining. Oh is it? Yeah? The sheep shear that's what That's what some people call it. So cozy. Okay, so slippers. I need to start plugging these things and

giving them for free. I'm a sucker. Always buy them and then plug them, right, but it's not a sucker. Chuck here above the boards. Okay, Um, So back to it. Oh. So, the longer the stuff stayed in contact the more the more it was, the more bacteria that came upon it. But surprisingly what they found was that the transfer was the least for carpet. The type of surface that came in contact with made a difference. I thought it was the most for carpet was the least. It was the

least transferred. But the stuff survived in the carpet longer, so it all washed out. So it made some difference, but not really. Whether it's wood, tyler carpet, when you drop something on it, there's going to be a a lot of bacteria transfer. But this stuff survives on these services. Carpet, you're kind of like, okay, yeah, there's a lot to it. There's pile and you know, there's some sort of Berber factor and all that. Um, you can't forget the Berber factory, right.

Uh So, of course, Carpet, that's not much of a surprise that there's a lot of bacteria in there. But would or tile Not only do they find that, like the stuff can survive for a while, it survives for up to a month. A month after they put this stuff on there, a month later there was still living bacteria enough for an infectious dose on all three surfaces. A dude, that's okay, I'm becoming more of a drama fobe. And yeah, we're all turning into David Putty right now.

And yeah, remember he and Peggy who called Elaine Suze Susie. They both turned out to be germaphobes. They had like a little bacteria. Yeah, remember Cramer made a radish rose in his shower. He had a garbage disposal in his shower so he could remember bathe at the same time. It was that episode. Um, so I know earlier you mentioned, Um, it's just kind of off handedly said, you know, if it's something dry like a cookie, or that actually makes a difference. You found out that moisture can be the

key to more bacteria transfer. Um, So a dry cookie versus a piece of like wet bologna or salami or moist bolognay I said, moist bologny, Um, we'll have more bacteria. And that's why they say when you go to the restroom and you wash your hands, the drying is just as important, if not more important than the watching. Yeah, they found that, um, this transfer bacteria seems to be facilitated by moisture. Right, so when you touch something with your wet hands, you're gonna get a bunch of a

bunch of bacteria transferred onto your hands. If you wash your hands and then use one of those hands free paper towels spencers and dry your hands, you can touch that a surface that you would have touched with your wet hands, and you're gonna have far less bacteria transferred to it. Yea, or nowadays the air dryers in the bathroom, have have you noticed in the past few years or just like for fifty years, it was the same air dryer. Oh,

now there's the accelerator. Now there's the accelerator and the Dyson blade dryer. I like the accelerator because the Dison blade do you have to stick your hands down in there like that and it's almost like playing operation, Like it's almost impossible not to touch the side, and then like, what's what does anyone clean the bottom of those things? Like? I don't think so. The accelerator, it's all just like blowing your hands and you're you're done, and it's you

cannot touch things more. It's true. I like the accelerator because the the way it makes your skin ripple, like the g forces is pretty amazing. Like we were in the indoor skydiving thing. Oh yeah, exactly. And let's talk

about hands real quick, chuck. So there's a study that came out of the University of Colorado at Boulder and UM they found some really surprising things using this technique called metagenomics where they take a swab of like a sample off of your hands and then rather than doing culture, they do basically a DNA profile for everything found in that swab. What they find, well, they did fifty one participants. They found different bacteria species across the fifty one participants UM,

and what what I found was particularly interesting. They found that um only five percent of these species were found in all fifty one participants. No, five period, not even percent. Oh yeah, five period. So out of all these species only when we're sharing. So that means we there's just way more out there than we thought, I guess. Huh ye, And it's just luck of the drawers to what leaps to your hands, I guess so. And not only your hands,

but specific hands too. They found that the right and left palms of a single person shared only seventeen percent of the bacterial species, So that means there's different species on different hands of the same person. That's weird. And then women tend to have a higher diversity of bacteria on their hands than men. Not necessarily more uh bacteria total, but more diversity among species. Interesting. So depending on which hand you shake, you're going to be getting a different

type of bacteria from someone. Yeah. And if somebody like shakes your hand is like, oh, it's just water, I washed my hand, punch them in the head because you're that's bacterial transfer. Jerk dry your hands. Yeah, and uh, and since you mentioned women. Um, I think the study by the girl in two thousand three found that women are more likely to eat something off the floor than men, which surprised me. What surprised me is where the person who wrote this article got that. I couldn't find it.

Anyone didn't either. I saw that women were more familiar with the concept of the five second rule, but that not that they used it more. Yeah, you know what, I'm gonna call that a dubious statement, then dubious indeed. Uh, okay, so you've eaten something off the floor? Are we get on hands? Yeah? Thanks for that, okay. I like in the article they pointed out that out of the fifty one participants, there were a hundred and two hands. Yeah, it's just like, all right, so good. You didn't have

any amputees in the study, right. What was funny is I was I didn't think it added up, and then I realized that's why I stopped for a second a minute ago. Um, all right, so you've picked up a cookie off of the floor, it's dry, it's been down there for three seconds, and you think, you know what, I'm gonna roll the dice and eat it because my stomach acids and the acids, and my saliva is going to kill all this stuff factor fiction. That is fiction. That is very much fiction. So says uh. The germ

guru of the University of Arizona, go, what are they? Wildcats? Sun devils? Who's the Arizona State? That's Arizona State. Arizona's wildcats, cats go wildcats. Charles Gerba, his name almost looks like germ, yeah close or gerb closer than Clark. Like he's the

adult version of the Gerber baby. So he says that uh virus is actually uh survived the low pH In fact, a lot of them like it, and that pretty much any bacteria that you can infect your intestine with is going to stay alive long enough to get to your intestine, right, it's going to survive that that acidity in your stomach. Yeah. Look, look, look for a podcast on digestion. That was a good one. Man,

That was great if you want to learn how that works. Um, And it does make a difference on where it's landed. Like you said, Um, some floors are more dangerous than others. In bathrooms are the worst place on earth. Yeah, And kitchens, actually kitchens are the worst. There's supposedly dirtier than bathrooms.

It depends on the bathroom. But yeah, Gerba points out that of all the shoes that he's ever analyzed, and this guy like runs around on Good Morning America in the Today Show and like analyze this stuff and just freaks people out. It's like kind of his um, his trade. Yeah, he said that the fecal matter appears on about of the shoes he's ever analyzed. Of course it does. Yeah, like I said, there's poop everywhere, poop everywhere, especially in

my house. So uh yeah, you'd think of public restrooms pretty bad, and it is, but it depends on what part of the public restroom you're talking about, and sometimes compared to other places that it doesn't hold a candle. There's some surprising germ statistics that were about to unleash on you. Let's start with uh, let's just jump all over. Then I got the kitchen floor. UM, the area on the kitchen floor just in front of your sink. We're gonna be doing your dishes and dropping food and poop.

UM has more bacteria than your trash can square inch as opposed to four eleven, So double um and your kitchen sponge I know everyone knows that that's a really filthy thing to have. You remember that one necessary but filthy. Remember the I think the Clorox wipes or lights Al wipes commerce Still where the lady was using a sponge or like, if you're using a sponge, you might as well be doing this, and she was just rubbing like a raw chicken breast on her counter like it was

a sponge. That's basically true, though. It's like you you should be really careful with your sponge, what you clean with it, what you don't clean with it, um, the letting it dry out, changing it like regularly. Like if you've got a two month old kitchen sponge and you're using that to wipe your counter, you were spreading bacteria all over the place. You don't love your family, so you can use it at first, is what I do.

Because I'm a clean guy. My wife is not. I will clean up after her with a sponge and then I'll go back with my organic spray and then do the paper towel wipe after that. That's the final step in the process. As always, the dry paper towel with my seventh seven stuff is what I used. And then a little bit of lighter fluid sterilized the counter. All right, So your kitchen floor is is dirtier than your trash can.

Your sponge holds sixty times more bacteria than your pet food bowl, even though pet food bowls are pretty gross too, supposedly because you don't clean them out as much. Sure, and all of this is germier than a toilet seat. Yeah.

You always hear that the old toilet seat. Yeah, And I think the reason why the toilet seat is surprisingly cleaner in comparison, or surprisingly germ free compared to other things like your kitchen sink and all that is because people clean the toilet seat more frequently because they think

of it as a dirty place. And this is kind of borne out in another study that Gerba carried out on behalf of the Chlorox Corporation, who make lights all wipes, UM, and he found that one of the dirtiest places in the universe is a person's desk. And he found that, um, apparently, the average desk has a hundred times more bacteria than a kitchen table and four hundred times more bacteria than the average toilet. And one of the reasons is because people don't ever wipe this down. So he did the

study where he divided workers into two groups. One group used these sanitizing wipes once or twice a day, and then the other group didn't, and after two days there was a ninety nine point nine percent reduction in bacteria on the desk of the people who are using the wipe. So wiping down your telephone, hands at your dead mouse is a big one. Your mouse, you'll let your a keyboard apparently where you typically rest your hand on your desk minds on my mouse, um has about ten million

bacteria on average. UM. But he also found that over the course of a day, if you don't wipe your stuff down, you actually increase your bacteria from nineteen to thirty one on telephone, mouse, keyboard, desktop surfaces. Throughout a day, it increases that much more. Man, I haven't cleaned my desk in so long. It's been a while for me too. I don't use the phone though I don't either. Yeah, no one calls us. I don't even know my number to give out, and and anytimes if somebody asked for

I'm like just email. Yeah, that's what I do. Um. Molly At, the former co host of Stuff Mom, never told you back in the day she wrote about cubicle death and specifically germs in the workplace, like we were just talking about and um, she points out that and if you're a restaurant and you have more than seven hundred bacteria per square inch, you're going to be considered unsanitary. But you will come into contact with ten million bacteria day in your office. And statistics like people eat at

their desk and don't clean. I eat at my desk occasionally. I don't clean of people, uh only occasionally will wipe down their work area. And um, your desktop itself, not the computer desktop, but your desk. It's a hundred times Germany or than a kitchen table and four hunh again, four hundred times Germany or than a toilet seat. And presentee is um, which is a big problem. Uh se

shent of workers, I'm sorry. One third of workers that's not it's close reported to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases that they felt like they were obligated to go to work even when they were sick. Yeah, that's it's a problem. It's not okay. And I know around here, especially Tracy are from she takes it pretty serious. She's like she gets piste off. When people are in here sick,

she'll yell yeah, she'll say, if you're sick, please stay home. Um, because the office is dirty, your bathrooms dirty, your kitchens dirty. That cutting board that you're cutting your vegetables on filthy. Yeah, it's all dirty, it's all gross. Well, I can't remember. I was trying to think of what episode biofilm came up. You were telling everybody about biofilm. Oh yeah, what was that. I can't for the life of me remember. But um,

that's how bacteria survive. That's how they can survive on stainless steel, That's how they can survive on wood, on tile, on non poor service is on synthetic surfaces that are designed to keep bacteria from thriving. These things can survive because they live in biofilm. Yeah, it's this protective um film on any surface. And if a surface has grooves or things like that that where a biofilm can hide,

there's going to be a lot more bacteria. And cutting board apparently is one of those great examples, especially a wood cutting board, I think, yeah, which I prefer me too. Got a clean and well though, Yeah, because I'd rather have some bacteria in my food than like shards of plastic. You know. Yeah, it's a good point. Um, So before you freak out and jump in a pool of pure

l most of these germs are benign. Like we've quoted all these tens of thousands and millions of germs and things, most of urbanign, and your body's going to take care of most of it too. But it only takes like you know, when you find yourself retching over the toilet with a stomach virus, it might have just been one little bacteria that got through, and all it takes is ten for salmon alody gets you in a hundred for E. Coli, ten ten little guys the bottom of a woman's purse randomly.

Uh Gerba again just ran up to some people and he's like, let me test your purse. And he found um from the hundreds to six point seven million on the bottom of one woman's purse. And he didn't say that that also had like pieces of pot pie, and like, there are probably reasons, but I think that was that one. That's a good thing to go out and took you to goodbye, reassuring everybody that as long as your immune system is in order, you're probably Okay, as far as

these bacteria go. Don't keep your toothbrush in your bathroom, so says our friends care rn. UM. Let's see before we say anything like listener mail or go find this article. I want to do a quick shout out. Okay, do it. Archiva team Chuck recently hit a very significant milestone. One point five million dollars in loans. Wow. That's enormous. Not

say it? Oh? Yeah. Kiva the Kiva dot organism micro lending site where you can make loans and little twenty five dollar increments to people in the developing world to use for entrepreneurship, to um have their taxi license, to buy oxen, to retail clothes, what have you, UM farming whatever, and um Archiva team has doled out one point five million in these twenty five dollar loans. That's just such an amazing accomplishment. Yeah. When we started this, we had

no idea that it was gonna have legs like this. Yeah, and I mean we're gonna keep it going perpect to it, so we are. One of the reasons I wanted to shout out is because we are resetting our goals. We're setting our goal to two million dollars by the summer solstice June one. It's an international date, right, um and Glenn, the team leader at Kiva, came up with this, and I think it's a sound idea. Yeah, thank you to Glenn and Sonia as always. So we're going to UH

two million by June twenty one. And if you want to join us in this, we are not the least bit exclusive. We're a very inclusive and welcoming group of people. You can go to UM www dot Kiva, k I v a dot org, slash Team Slash Stuff you should Know, okay, and if you want to know anything more about the five second rule, type five second rule in the search bar house to folks dot com, I said search bar. So it's time for listener mail. It is Josh. This is We are just a few days away from our

TV show premiere. That when we would be remiss. I know you're probably tired of hearing about it by now, I'm not We would be premiss if we didn't remind everyone that on Saturday night at ten pm Eastern on Science Channel, you're going to get two episodes of Stuff you Should Know, back to back. The premiere episode two following the season premiere of Ricky Gervais's Idiot Abroad. Yeah,

with Carl Pilkington. That comes on first, and then we come on at ten with two brand new the first two episodes of Stuff you should know, the TV show. That's right, And if you do not have cable, ifear not, because as we have announced, you can purchase these episodes on iTunes after they are released next day. And because we love everyone so much in the world, you can

get the premiere episode for free on iTunes. So just seek it out, download it, watch it and make some noise over at Science Channel for and on Twitter too. Um and uh we we think you're gonna like it. It's uh us and we play ourselves. But it's setting like a kind of a fictionalized version of the office, our office, and um there's podcasting and action and adventure and all sorts of goodness, so it should be Hopefully

everybody likes it. Yeah, as we have said before, it's the real US in a fictional world, spelling factual information. Yes that's a red tagline. All right. I hope you stuck around for this listenermail because it's pretty good. This is from Ben. Uh guys, my name has been. I'm a thirty year old husband and father. Never consider myself a very smart man. I did mediocre in high school. Uh, not because of lack of trying, but because being viewed as a lazy student, and I was just socially awkward.

To be honest, my wife has talked me into catching up with your podcast, and since then I've gotten a smartphone and done so. And all I can say is thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. Um, it just helped me become a better husband and father. Let me explain. After high school, I became a father to a beautiful boy with an ex girlfriend who was not the best person. Due to some heart complications, my son Logan passed away four days after his first birthday.

This resulted in me not following through with college, shutting down emotionally, basically becoming angry at the world and God for my son's passing. To put it bluntly, I became someone who I said I never would become. It was full of hate. The years that followed in my life was just gray as I went through the motions of life. Things turned around when I met my wife Jordan, got

married and had our son, Raydon. And yes I didn't name him Radin after Mortal Kombat, and then I was turned on your podcast after listening to over two hundred of them, you two have opened a hard spot in my heart. After listening to you guys and hearing how good natured you are, I myself have been trying to give everything in life a fair chance and have become more of a good Harvard person who no longer battles

something bad within myself. I know right, I'm happier in life than ever before, and I have my wife and son and now Chuck and Josh to thank for helping. I'm trying to further my education. I can't stop reading and learning, and I save your show so when my one year old son is old enough, he can experience something that changes daddy's life for the better, just like he and his mommy did. So. I can't thank you guys enough for all I've done without even knowing it.

Sometimes all it takes is good hearts and a good podcast to make even a small difference. If you guys are Evan Ohio, I would like to play about the drink that is from Ben children May and Ben thank you for that. We're not even trying. I dude, I read this stuff and I'm just like, are you kidding me? That's pretty cool? Like what are you supposed to say to that? Thank you? So thanks ben Um. If you want to get in touch with chucking me about five

second rule, how about this. We want to know the nastiest thing you've ever eaten, whether it was something that was prepared, something that touched the ground, tell us, tell us your nasty eating story. Yeah, and if you're one of those kids. I had friends in elementary school that would have like gross eating contests, that would like throw mashed potatoes on the floor and then eat them. I explored that once. I was like, you know what, maybe

maybe I am that kid. Let's let's find out. And I ate a sticker that was on the ground was some hair attached to it, and I was like, no, I need to keep seeking my persona because that not me. Yeah. Wow, yeah, well we want to know about them, right, Yeah. I can't believe you held out I mean that long that story. Tweet to us at s Y s K podcast, join us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff you should Know, and as always, you can send us an email for

more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it, how stuff works, dot com