Ever noticed that aluminum foil has a shiny side and a dull side? Why do you suppose that is? Maybe it is significant – after all some recipes call for it to be either shiny side up or shiny side down. But how much difference could it possibly make? Listen and find out. https://culinarylore.com/food-science:aluminum-foil-shiny-side-up-or-down/
Bet you didn’t know that radio technology helped to create the quartz watch. Or that railroad technology reshaped how we celebrate Christmas. And how in the world did the telegraph change the way we speak? These are just a few of the fascinating ways older technologies have had an significant impact on how we live today. Ainissa Ramirez, is a material scientist and author of the book The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another (https://amzn.to/2UyQkCy) . Listen as she takes us on a journey through some of the fascinating technologies that continue to shape how we live our lives.
Humans are one of a very few species that actually sweat through the skin. The purpose of sweating is to help you stay cool. And how this cooling system works inside your body is really interesting. You have millions of sweat glands and what kind of climate you spent your toddler years in likely affected how many of your sweat glands were activated and how efficiently they work today. There’s a lot to the story of human perspiration. Science writer Sarah Everts has gone deep into the research on sweating for her book, The Joy of Sweat: The Strange Science of Perspiration (https://amzn.to/3AwyPTX) and she is here to explain.
You know if you have ever flown on an airplane, there are oxygen masks in the event of an emergency. So where do they keep the oxygen? And why do they tell you to tug on the mask to begin the flow of oxygen? Listen because the answer to that question is really going to surprise you. https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopeners/do-airplanes-really-carry-oxygen-for-the-oxygen-masks.html
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Today on something you should know
Does aluminum foil, have shiny side and adele side? What's the difference,
the amazing way certain technologies have changed how we live. The railroad clocks, glass, cook, work, even the telegraph to telegraph actually had a hand in shaping language, because sentences became compressed. If you went to a telegraph office, they would tell you you had to keep your messages brief. If you look at took written before the telegraph in books written after the telegraph, you'll see that sentences are short also,
airplanes have oxygen masks, so where do they keep the oxygen and the science of sweat? Why we do it
Where does it come from what sweat
as is the liquidity parts of blood. If you drink something it takes about fifteen minutes before whatever it is that you're drinking ends up out on the surface of your skin, sweat all those today
on something you should know.
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something you should now fascinating intel, the world's top experts and practical advice. You can use your life today, something you should now make. Progress
This is gonna, be fine episode
strange sights of sweat. Ten, how older technologies still impact your life today, really interesting
I welcome the something you should know, and we start today in the kitchen and if you have spent any time
in the kitchen, youve notice that aluminum foil has been
they shiny side and adele side and in cookbooks you'll find recipes that say cover.
with aluminum foil, shiny side down some cooks believe
that makes a difference which side is up or which site is down. When you line a pan, does it know it
and here's how we know. First of all, the
except reynolds aluminum say that the reason there is a dull side and a shiny side is simply the result of the manufacturing process. It's not
tension? It just comes out that way they claim
is no significant difference which side you use when you cook or freeze or refrigerate food
Secondly, the chefs america's test kitchen did three tests: were they cooked baked potatoes in foil, cooked mashed, potato
in a pan covered with foil and he
it water in a container covered with foil all in.
regular, conventional oven. They did each
has twice once
the shiny side phasing out and once with the chinese side facing in
and there was no difference, there is no difference in that
there's something you should know
There's some
when called- and you may
ever heard of this. I hadn't really heard this before either it's called material science. It's a real science and people who work in this field.
do a lot of really interesting things that affect how you live. Your life.
You're, stand this injustice. Second anita ramirez is immaterial scientists she's worked as a research scientist bell labs and held academic
emissions at yale and mit she's author of a book called
alchemy of us. How humor
and matter transformed one another. I unease
Welcome to something you should know. Thank you so much great to be here, so
explain briefly what material science is cause, I think this is
really fascinating! Well, it's the science of stuff. It's I call myself in Adam whisper Anna
interested in how atoms move in the world, and then I try and convince him to do new things, so we can make new materials. So that's what materials scientists do and give me a real quick example of what
you just said of making moving atoms and making new stuff, for example, what your cell phone that was made possible by material scientists. The fact that that glass is almost indestructible, glasses, usually fragile, while material scientist figure out how to make it so that its strong, and so when you drop it, doesn't break that's kind of the things that we think about.
that's actually really cool sounds like a fun job, so one of the ways that material science has affected our life.
and really changed. Our lives is how,
material science changed clocks.
Is really interesting so explain that clocks, weren't, always precise
number. You know going to my grandmother's house and she would have a grandfather clock and it was always off, but we got better at
materials that are inside. First, they were very sophisticated springs and then they became quartz, gems and quartz actually vibrates. If you put it in electrical signal and it vibrates a certain amount of time
and you can use those vibrations as a way to mark off time, precisely so that the material that involved in making our clocks more accurate,
and what's the story of how an who decided that instead of springs, we would use courts to make clocks more accurate,
EL the story of that development, oh sure. Well, it ends up. There was a bell lab scientists that most people
don't know about. His name is warren in medicine and he will ye had a project where he was actually making a frequency
rear radio was very popular back then, and sometimes radio stations round the wrong station, and so they wanted to have a precise freak frequency
reader, so they knew where to broadcast their station. So he figured that out any use courts to do that, because you can get courts to vibrate a certain number of times,
for a second and when he figure that out he's like well look if quartz can vibrate a certain number of times per second, maybe I can use this as a yardstick, if you will for time, if I know it it if this, if I know this material will vibrate ten thousand times per second, I can count off those ten thousand vibrations and say: okay, that's one second, and so with that in
and he was able to create the first quartz watch, and so he was the inventor behind the court's watch and the the weird effect that's going on with courts is that it has a strange material property where that, if you apply electrical signal to it, it wiggles
it's called p, a's or electricity, and that was found long time ago by the curie but brothers. We know the name curie with Madame curie, but her husband and his brother. They actually found this effect long before she she was married to him and so quartz clocks, replace spring clocks. Is that a fair statement? Yeah, that's correct so before quartz clocks,
these springs. Crucible, steel is the material that was made it was made out of, and the thing about these steel springs is that they we need to figure out how to make steel springs, that vibrate in a more flexible precisely and an uniformly before that it was really hard
make uniform metals see you. If you think about all movies, you would see blacksmiths and they would be folding over
tyrians, and they would make things like shoe, horns and the like, but and those are fine, but
you wanted to make something uniform folding at all
and heating and beating it really wasn't the best way to do that.
So there was a gentleman whose name was benjamin huntsmen. He figured out how to make very, very well controlled in terms of the composition of the steel. He figured out how to
that and once he was able to do that, then we had very, very well made uniform metals and we can make springs that worked accurately and so that what was
heart of an early clock and then later on, that was replaced by courts because as accurate as the
whose springs were courts is more accurate. So that's why they replaced springs with core
and any another area where material science really changed. Everything is the railroad, so explain that
the railroads we don't think about the railroads, but the railroads actually changed a lot of our experiences. First of all, long ago, before the railroads we used to travel by stagecoach,
and it would take a long time to get from a distance
from new york to Boston people. Wouldn't really do it in fact
wouldn't really travel more than fifty miles
four son moved away from his family more than fifty miles. His mother might not see him again, so the railroads really made the country smaller, because we were able to travel those distances to greater extent
the other thing that the railroad did is it actually change the holiday that we don't even think about, and that's christmas now christmas.
To be this holiday, which was about meeting with the family and eating food, but when it around me,
Thus your revolution: there were so many products that were available that the industrialists had to figure out a way to get these products and convince people to buy them, and so what happens at christmas was transformed into a gift giving occasion and the way
to get those gifts to people with through the railroad, so the railroad had a hand in commercializing christmas, and it was before
the steel right. The steel tracks that the railroad ran on is what changed everything yeah, it's the rails, it's her! It's the rails
The steel why we knew had we knew how to make steel. Steel is a fantastic material, because it's very hard and very tough
And so so an usually you dont have materials that have both of those properties at the same time and we had to figure out how to make it abundantly because
one point, you can make small map a small amount of it enough to feel like a pot, but when Henry bessemer figured out how to make
hans of it. Then we were able to make lots and lots of steel rails and had them go across the country. Now, before steel rails, there were iron rails and iron is a good material, but it had to be replaced every two years but would steal. It could be
in eighteen years, and so that means that you don't have to worry about the infrastructure you can just build and build and build
it's every two years. You have to replace these steel, real sorry, these iron rails, all the time and so steel allowed us to forget about that for a while and build and build in building
Infrastructure so is certainly in the material that allowed us to to build this huge network that connected the entire country.
were rails for trains, build
of iron first and then converted to steal, or we waited and cattle steel. Now we, the first early rails, were made at a would now. That's not gonna. Last long at all,
you know a couple: a rainstorms and you ve got to replace that so
wood and then iron, and that was fantastic because it was better than would. But again it couldn't last very long. But then, when steel came along then you don't have to worry about it for over Elk, nearly two dec
so it was really we. The railroads had been around for some time, but they really took off when we had better rails. When you think about the telegraphed,
I mean it is virtually a forgotten technology, and yet, at the time it was such a big deal.
And you think about the materials that went into creating this network of of poles with
wires going across are all over the nation. Were you
could send messages it had to be it had to be huge
Oh, that was mine, blowing, because the fastest way that you can get information used to be by letter anyway.
It may be too weak. So let's say you send a letter to your aunt. Tell her about things that are going on. It would take two weeks before you hear back, but the telegraph changed all that in minutes you can hear from a relative, and that was amazing about the telegraph along the way actually started to have a hand in shaping language, because it had a limitation of how much information could be said. And so, if you went to a telegraph office, they would tell you that you're welcome to use it, but you had to keep your messages brief, so that other customers could use it and what I discovered that the telegraph actually had a hand in shaping language, because sentences became compressed. If you look
books written before the telegraph and books written after the telegraph you'll see that sentences are shorter. Now, there's many reasons for that, one of them being that america wanted to change the way. It spoke english relative to the uk, but another was a technology of the telegraph. It actually had a hand in shaping language,
we'll have a question about why things had to be kept so brief, but but first
speaking with anita Ramirez she's immaterial scientists and the name of her book is the alchemy of us
humans and matter transformed one another if you're a parent, I bet the subject
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Guess I really got into and became a fan of. Is the jordan harbinger show, mostly because of george
and now I've got to know him- and I like to show more now than I did then, which
one of the reasons I am suggesting you give it a lesson like some
You should know Jordan harbinger talks to really interesting. People recently
Did it showed titled r? U s,
go path, and is that so terrible? He spoke with Kevin Dutton.
The author of the wisdom of
go? Paths pretty interesting?
in provocative topic and then
was another episode I like recently about how conspiracy theories make society sick, jordan hard.
Europe is an excellent interviewer, huh,
dives into the minds of fascinating people from athletes. Authors
It is mobsters, spies and hostage negotiators,
conversations are always riveting and jordan is.
We focused on pulling useful practical insights out of his guests.
I know you like us, that's what we do here, but in a different way, look try that job,
harbinger show- and I bet you added dear podcast rotation search for the jordan.
harbinger show a r b, as in boy I end is in Nancy. G. Are jordan harbinger on apple pie,
spotify or wherever you listen, so anita. What difference would it make it
the sentences were longer or shorter, or the messages were longer or shorter. If the, why? Why was it necessary to keep things brief, while they wanted to keep the lines free for future customers and also the telegraph as wonder,
as it was sometimes was unreliable and the lines could go down. So you. What
make sure that your message, your dispatch, made it to its destination, so they would say, keep it brief because
wines go down. At least they got some of the message, as opposed to. If you keep a long since you know you can hear part of the senses,
oh what the full meaning was. So that was one of the reasons why people were encouraged to keep their messages. Brief,
What about the technology and the materials used that made the telegraph feasible while the wires of the telegraph wires?
initially made out of iron but later made out of copper, and it relies on electricity going through that. And if you have electricity, how do you send a message? I I liken it to water going through a pipe if you're at one end of the pipe and arm at the other end of the pipe and there's no way for me to communicate with you. How can I do that? Well,
in turn on and off the water water, to tell you, hey, Michael the something's going on, and if I get a little bit more sophisticated, I can
turn it on for a short amount of time or turn it off and on for a long amount of time, and this could alert you of. What's that something is necessary on my aunt, and so that's what's going on with the telegraph by using short and long pulses of electricity and creating a code that that equals each
The alphabet. This is how information was able to get shuttle across those those copper wires, and so that was the basis for the telegraph. The carbon
Filament is one of those materials that really changed. Everything so explain that story short carpet. Filament is a word that thomas edison came up with an film. It just means a very, very thin wire and he was very much focus on figuring out the best wire for his incandescent bob's, his light bulbs, and he tried thousands of different materials. Any eventually are focused on carbon, because carbon was able to glow very brett very brightly, and that was the birth of the incandescent bulb. Now, what I also discovered is, as light bulbs became abundant. It ends up that the type of light that surrounds us is not.
That is not exactly the best like that we should have now. In edison's day people lived by the sun and then at night they lived by his incandescent bomb. The sun generates a lot of blue light, an incandescent bulbs or redder light, but today,
nice surrounded by lights, that generate a lot of bluer light, and this
not necessarily good for our health, because our bodies have two mode to modes: a growth mode and repair mode. Our growth mode is where we have more growth more months going.
our bodies and how our body nos two to generate. That is when it detects blue light.
So wherein growth mode most of the time and
the result is a range of different health ailments that are bubbling up because of lights. So the?
I've been filament is something that we really don't think about light bulbs are things that we really don't think about, but now we're sorry to see that there is their impacting our health. The development
Improvements in glassware me. Nobody really talks about that
never hear about that, but really
glass where the ability to have containers you can see through me. It was a big deal well glass, whereas is so important, particularly in science, because
Science is based on seeing an observation
and so is very important. Have a way to do that and glass has been tremendous for that. We use up with glass, whereas such as beakers and early mire flasks, but
so use it for lenses and microscopes in telescopes, but for a long time we couldn't get very good glass. You would
in a microscope or you look in a telescope and a kind of look like three glasses, whereas the red side,
there was a red side and there was a blue side
now, there's no way that you can discover anything if he really can't see through the glass. So for a long time.
people were trying to make better and better glass. The glass was also nest.
Prefer glass where that goes in in scientific laboratories, and that had some problems too, because if you poured an acid into older glassware, it would actually be eaten up by the by the acid. Well, that's no!
good that you're going to have new problems? If you do that, so it was really necessary for us to figure out how to make better glass and at the end of it it ends.
That there was a woman. Her name was bessie littleton. She came up with this,
dear, that she needed better wait a cook in a casserole dish, but she was
She was complaining about this to her husband who actually work for corning, and he was
working on a new type of glass. He brought one of his samples home
she tried it out. She made a wonderful pie and different types of foods with it. This was actually the birth of pirates
though it became initially away to cook better foods, but then later pirates was used for scientific glassware, such as I mentioned with earlier my flasks and test tubes in the law,
so this idea of binding, better bake, whereas actually would gave rise to better science equipment so with glass cook, where why
in it break I mean if you took out just a regular glass drinking glass in and put it
the oven and turned it up the five hundred degrees it would shatter. So why doesn't cook where break the secret element is boron?
Boron is a key element of the periodic table again that we don't usually think about, but it creates
really really strong bonds. So, depending on how much boron you put in the glass is able to do different things
some, if you have a certain amount of boron in the glass, the glass will be very, very strong.
so that it won't expand when you put it into the oven,
so you don't have to worry about it. Breaking if you put
ass boron in it. It will be able to survive if you include other materials
Well, it will be able to cite survive, having acids in their so the
grit ingredient is bore on in these types of glasses, are called borough, silicate glasses. So as they like
hi rex measuring cups that you can put boiling water and they have boron in them. They have more on their bora boron, silicate glasses and that's the reason why the doing is that because of this element, bore
one of the interesting examples of material science through the ages is sound music and how
it has changed as the materials have changed. Well, what's
aunt has talked about a sound is at its very much linked to technology. In particular, music early music was actually moulded by early phonograph. The phonograph kind of look like a huge horn that was connected to this cylinder, but it couldn't pick up very, very
off sounds like guitars? And so, if you listen to early music, you won't hear too many guitar Julia, loud music, like horns and to buzz, and things like that. So the technology actually shaped music that we listen to and the creator of the telegraph a sorry. The creator of the phonograph was actually thomas edison and he made this wonderful device that was able to capture sound. In fact, people had thought this
the dream that you could actually capture sound and this ability to store information. Besides words on a lot of words on a page but actually little prick in then tinfoil, which is what the fuck, how the phonograph is made
actually put us on the path for other ways of storing things, and that puts us on the path for the hard disk. So so music was action.
Part of the origination story for the hard disk and the ability,
to store music real
changed over the years, because the materials changed over the years. You know we had those big, very brutal, scratchy seventy eights and then
We had the thirty three r p m records in forty five hour, p m records in an attractive
in cosette tapes and and then the sea, cd and the city was really, I think, a big deal in the sense that it.
it was a digital way to store music. The city was amazing because you can get to the specific song that you wanted right away. That was revolutionary because before that was the cassette tape and if you wanted to get to a specific song, you
The fast boarded stop passport and stop. The city was also caught a based on a similar way of thinking, meaning that it made out of sheer
and long dashes or short and long holes, and so it was, it was a digital form of storing information. The phonograph was analogue. The way that you spoke like if I put my hand in front of my mouth and I can feel the pressure wave that is sort of what you would see
phonograph. You would see big things when you say something like the letter p and you would say you would see smaller things when you saw when you said something like the letter s. So every bit of this space of sound was captured with the phonograph, but what the compact disc cities it was digital. So there was a threshold for when a big dish, a big dash, would occur.
and when a smaller dashwood occur. So so it was a big deal, but it was a part of the evolution of sound what it is
amazing, to realise how some of these early technologies and early materials
we're not only a big deal at the time, but we're so profound that they continue to reverberate and and help shape our lives today, a niece
Ramirez has been my guess: she's a material scientists and the name of her book is the alchemy of us
humans, in matter transformed one another and you'll find a link to the
book in a show notes
activities of this has been a kind of a real fun rob through history. So thank you for being here. Thank you. So much
Sweating or purse
virus is something we all do and so do here
and monkeys and hippos, and probably a
no other animals. You ve likely her
The reason we sweat is to help us stay cool which is,
but it's so much more involved in interesting than that as you're about to
you're from science journalist Sarah everts, who has
thoroughly research. This topic for her book. The joy
of sweat
strange science of perspiration eyes, era high Michael nice to be here. So why is sweat and sweating
so interesting and important to understand so sweat is actually
humanity's evolutionary superpower or one of them. The fact that we can cool off
wow in motion is something that we can do better than most other animals on this planet. So, if you think about it like one of the things that makes humans
make? Is that were a naked eight were we were pre, much hairless or mostly so, and because we're hairless we have
out of surface area on our body that can evaporate off sweat, and this is how we cool down and because we can cool down
off a huge surface area. We can do all sorts of things in really hot temperatures.
We can go forging in the middle of the day we can run
marathons- and this is
We been this huge evolutionary advantage. So, if you think about our predecessors, if your hunting right most of the pray that we would be seeking runs faster than us, they can sprint way faster, but they have to stop to cool down because dying of heat. Stroke is a really terrible way to die, but because we can cool down while we're running, we can catch up with that pray and effectively forced them to run again and run again and run again until they are so weakened by heat stroke that it's easy to kill them
or they actually just die of that, and you know if you consider a dog dogs cool down by panting right and they are doing the same thing. They are evaporating a liquid, but only off the surface of their tongue because that's the like only hairless area of their body, whereas we have our whole bodies and also
is to go back to dogs. There evaporating saliva. We are about
waiting, sweat and if you like, look at other animals this sweating of operation,
one of the most efficient ways to cool down, but if you dont have swept lands to do that, you have to rely on other bodily fluids, and I'd argue that saliva is one of the least growth other bodily fluids, you
Rely on some animals, like seals, urinate on themselves to get wet enough to evaporate that he'd away vulture
poop on their own legs, honeybees vomit on themselves. So it's kind of amazing
We have a heat control sort of mecca,
embedded in our own skin. Like millions of little mission,
in that are devoted to keeping a school
Interestingly, though we don't all sweat the same as some people seem to be,
sweaty and other people don't seem to break a sweat. So what's the difference there? Certainly your genetics play an important part. Some people have of more swiftly, and so your average person has between two and five million.
I got my sweet glands counted and we ve only known each other a few minutes, but I feel comfortable to say that I have three million right like big you. So there's like the number of sweat glands that you have
There is another genetic component like how fast that sweat comes out of your glands, like the rate, the flux of sweat
and then there's also you know the triggering. You know: how quickly does your body body a react to you know hotter corps
then there's also nurture, so you are born with
all the sweat lands that you're ever going to have on your body, but it's in your toddler years that they actually all become either fully activated or or not.
And so some researchers are looking into the impact of environs.
So where did you spend your toddler years? Was a in a cold climate? Was it in a hot climate,
Based on that that may affect how many sweat glands got activated in how efficient they are because pretty much everybody is sweating all the time. Even if you're not boiling hot
You're, sweat, glands are making tiny my newt adjustments to your core temperature by releasing tiny amounts of sweat, and then, of course, you know if you go offer, run or you're out my son, you get really hot and they they start releasing more. But you know people who have grown up in very hot.
I'm it's often have more sort of efficient sweating, so they may not look like their sweating, but certainly they are because otherwise they would be totally miserable. So the sweat that I sweat problem
I'm guessing started out as something I drank. It's the water in my system that somehow gets to my sweat glance and then comes out a sweat is, at
our assessment yeah so effectively. What sweat is is the liquid? He parts
of blood, so anything that really awaiting around yeah yeah, because, though, the way that your sweat glands find something
you put out on the skin. Is they affectively recruit with called interstitial fluid? So you got blood right and then, if you were to open up your body or bodies where
inside right. All your organs are moist in that moist stuff is called interstitial fluid and its yeah, its blood minus the big red blood cells, the platelets, the
in cells and yours, wetlands just source, sweat from that interstitial fluid ooh, but you're totally right. If you drink something
it takes about fifteen minutes before whatever it is,
You're drinking ends up out on the surface of your skin. A sweat will not kind of employee.
Is that we need to drink a lot, because if we drink something in
ten minutes later, it's coming out of sweated, it means we need to replenish that mean what what mom said about drink.
Lots of water seems like pretty good advice, yeah exactly but I'd say you know drink to your thirst right. We don't need to over hydrate and if you drink too much, you can have this like horrible condition.
paypal night train you, which is when you drink too much a new swell your body up in any you can actually die from.
you know, swelling you're, you're, spinal cord off the seems like you'd have to drink.
Awful lot of water. For that to happen, isn't that isn't the bigger problem that we're not drinking enough water, not that were drinking too much water you're right?
about that. So, if you look at marathons and people have done this, research, more
people have died of a hyper night trina. Then they have of heat stroke, room and that's because there's this constant push to drink drink drink drink during which is good,
But we have evolved over in many many many years to have our are thirsts. Tell us when to drink
We also sweat when we're nervous has nothing to do with, or maybe it has something to do with being high, but but that isn't that the root cause of edward just nervous? Why is that gag question so
activated the sweat from too
is one is obviously temperature, but another one is sort of hormones like adrenaline. So if you're nervous, that can also open the floodgates so you're you're sweating glands can be triggered too open to differently
is what I know. I've heard that there's no two
of sweating and that there are two kinds of sweat. There's the sweat
perspiration that you give off to cool down and then the nervous, sweat is a whole different kind of sweat. Is it oh, so there art
different kinds of swift glance, and I'm really glad you asked about that, because when is the liquid water stuff right them, the stuff tat we ve been talking about. It's called like an aquareine, sweat land and its job is to call you down and that sweat is the liquid parts of blood, whereas there
Another sweat gland that appears anywhere where you grow, hair during adolescents and its sweat is actually pretty. Waxy and
wherever hair grows during adolescents, including, of course, your armpits- that sweat starts getting released during the teenage years and its responsible for morphing armpits into distinct zones, and that sweat is waxy its.
wait a lot more similar to your wax than two and the salty wet stuff that we're you know producing to cool down, and it turns into stinky stuff, because the bacteria that live all over your body,
we'd love to eat it and when they eat it they may,
I realise it and what they release is really
stinky, and so you know the good news is you're, not stinky, because your sweat actually stinks. Your stick. Sorry, your stinky, because bacteria living in your armpits are eating your sweat and turning it into sticky stuff, so
good news, bad news, don't know! Why is sweat salty, that's, because our blood is salty right, and so this
is actually kind of an incidental tag along. We don't need the salt to cool down. We just need water to evaporate away the heat, but because
bodies are salty oceans. The salt comes along for the ride, and so we have often heard that you
the commercials tell you that you need to drink, not just water, but you need to
place your minerals, your salts and things, because you sweat. That out is that of valid claim. I totally agree with the claim that we need to replenish our electoral rights. I typically don't buy the products, though, because so think about the amount of salt that you lose, oh and, by the way you're sweat glands are desperately trying to retrieve salt, so
They really tried to keep the salt in your body and actually the amount of salt that comes out in sweat is lower than the you know. The the saltiness of the the water inside your body, because your body is trying so desperately hard to you, know, keep those electrolytes on the inside, but I think we probably can all admit that we have tasted sweat at some point in some capacity and
it's still pretty salty, and you can imagine- or I couldn't imagine drinking a whole cup of that, and so, if you need to replenish electoral rights, you need to do that by eating. Salty foods are foods with with with salt in it, not by drinking it, because you can't actually get all those electrolyte back into your body. That way. It's unpalatable, and so, if you want a drink, a sports drinks go right ahead, but the amount of sugar that's added is high and the amount of electoral rights that you actually replace is low compared to what you ve actually lost their sweat. So, let's
about the connection between sweat and human attraction cause? I don't you I've heard there is a connection. I don't really understand it. I dont get how somebody smells good, really turn you on or off that much, but
iguanas are you're you're you're, not a candidate for the sweat dating events that that sometimes
around the world. Seemingly not the funny thing about how we smell
is that you know whether we like it or not. We
you have an odour and we recognise the odor of those
round us. So, for example, you know parents can identify their newborns based on smell just hours after birth, for the mother and a little bit later for for the other, non birthing, parent and siblings. You haven't seen each other for years, can identify their siblings odor and so there you know we have an odour print, whether we like it or not, and law enforcement has long relied on dogs, for example, to sniff out individuals based on our odor prince
we do have an odor and in that odor there's all sorts of interesting pieces of social information that we share with one another. So if you're anxious, as you had mentioned a little bit earlier, you know people sweat us
binkie kind of odor when their stressed out law enforcement have long said that people come into interrogation
smelling like themselves and leave all smelling super anxious like there's this dominant thing that comes out
in a t, shirt experiments done by scientists, you can identify whether somebody has sweat just you know, due to exercise verses, whether they ve been stressed out. But in terms of romance. I think that there's lake a couple of
is at play clearly you're going to smell the body odor of your romantic partner at some point or another, and it's going to be a make or break moment right. So you know just you know on this:
face you you're gonna have to be comfortable with with that odor. But, of course everybody loves to think about. Pheromones
right in, or is there something in our sweat there
is making somebody attracted to me, is there a way to do that and in the animal
Damn pheromones certainly exist. So, for example, pigs are my favorite. The male pig will breathe heavily on the female and there's a pheromones
I called and trust in all and entrust unknown which, if she sniffs that and if she's in heat, she will immediately spin around and raise her rump sort of in a universal physical sign that it's time to start a family moss, do the same thing on the female
release a pheromone called burma call if, as a male nearby smells it, he will immediately zoom to hurt me. It's like the your perfect definition of a booty call.
When you know that it's kind of hard to imagine that that exists in humans and uh it'd be kind of alarming. If it did because can you imagine actually being able to spit something out- and you know ultimately immediately get a booty call, but
researchers have found that we are attracted to those of others who
I have immune systems that are slightly different enough, that any progeny that we have will have a really robust.
it means tat, a man if you think about it, that it is really beneficial to the human species. For most of human history, it's been pathogens there
you know kill us, and so, if you can be attracted to somebody who's got it
different enough immune system so that you know the combination of immune systems, you know is, is really strong. Think rate on your child is, is gonna, probably survive to adulthood and may be passed
on your genes for as long as humans have been human.
We ve been sweating, and so the erratic
we ve also been stinking from our sweat, and if I guess
forever- it never really bother anybody till the last hundred years or so and now there's this whole, this whole industry, the anti perspiration,
industry and the deodorant industry. That's a convinced us that we shouldn't
wet and that if we do sweat, we don't smell so we're,
that all word that all come from around the turn of the twentieth century is when deodorants in any persons are first being invented and brought to market and at the time it's the victorian era and people don't want to be talking about sweats and and also, quite frankly, they don't think they need to control their body odor. They think that washing with soap and water and may be applying some perfume is in a good enough for me. Thank you very much, and so it actually took a very clever marketer called james web young to figure out a way to put the fear of stink, particularly in his case in america,
and in the nineteen eighteens I'm he works with this woman named edna murphy or she hired him to market her product, a product called odor? Oh no, and he effectively discovers that you know everybody has heard of these sorts of products, but they dont think they need it, and so his strategy is
to tell women that not only do they stink, but they still a lot and people are talking about them behind their backs. The strategy's called whisper copy by the way, and that not only are we
well gossiping about them, but this ultimately is going to mean they're not going to find themselves a husband. So it's ninety nineteen and it's amazing because one of his advertisements, which appeared in ladies' home journal and and effectively said you know within the curve of a woman's arm. You know secrets too dark to you know to be uncovered something like that people
cancel their subscription to ladies home journal, because they were so offended that he was saying this to women and yet simultaneously sales of odor? Oh no skyrocketed- and you know soon many other companies who are also trying to market deodorant
persons were borrowing from there. So you know you'd see headlines beautiful but dumb. She has never learn the first thing about body, odor control and finally, in the thirties,
when they've exhausted all the advertising to women they're like oh, we need to make more money, let's target men and but because they've spent you know over a decade presenting deodorants, nagpur sprints as a female product. They have to go out of their way to make deodorants in a person's very masculine, and so some of the early entrepreneurs are doing things leg up. You know marketing them in whiskey, jugs on there getting sports people to advertise them and the thing that they're kind of preying on
It is men's fear of having a job right. It was the great depression at the time. Men are worried about losing work and so, instead of saying they're not going to find a mate for life they're like you're, going to lose your job if you're stinky in the workplace so yeah. I do think that you know it's it's nice to be able to control your body odor. I I sometimes wear these products, but I'm always really cognizant that this is something that marketers have really instilled
and in my culture over in the past hundred years, I've always wondered
deodorants, work and maybe more so. I wondered how do anti perspiring work because, if
spiralling. If sweating is such a natural and necessary thing. Why would you want to stop it, but I
understand why you would want to stop some of it but it. But how did they work? What's that
mechanism that they are effective. Oh great question I'll start with the utterance deodorants work by being effectively in antiseptic, so they kill the armpit bacteria that would eat the waxy secretions. The sweat from your april crank lands and turn it into stinky stuff, whereas anti per sprints actually physically plug the pores.
Your sweat lands in your our pets so that they effectively block that sweat from coming out at all and block the buffeted for all those armpit bacteria. So
did you find doing the research for this? What did you find? It was really surprising about sweat. I'd, see, there's too quick things at all. You know try and be short about it. The first is that of fingerprints are actually just sweat prints.
Oh anything that circulating around in your blood gets left behind. In a fingerprint, and you know, law enforcement has typically in a picked up a fingerprint.
to try and see how it looks, but now chemists or figuring out how to analyze? You know that the microscopic amounts of chemicals-
behind in that swept ran right.
And they can tell I I went had my fingerprints analyzed and you know you could tell me that I had had a cup of coffee there,
caffeine coming out and the researcher who did this
Simona Mona french has in sheffield she's been working with law enforcement.
You know you can also tell if somebody has snorted cocaine, weather
They have been drinking alcohol just from the chemicals left behind in a fingerprint, so you know this is just in
early stages of research, but I do think a lot about. You know the future of surveillance, because
We we're we worry about. You know the dna that we leave behind in you know, or or hairs, or you know, or on our spit on a coffee cup,
whatever- and I think this is going to be enough
issue
along the same lines, and I think the other super interesting thing is that there is
artificial, sweat, industry. So, even though, like we arguably,
use enough sweat. Thank you very much. There are many real
the who need to have synthetic sweat in their labs to do their work and so
thing from textile companies who want to make sure that the die in their tee shirts doesn't
leech out into somebody's armpit or
arm. Smartphone manufacturers want to make sure that the electronics on
the surface of the phone can deal with sweaty fingers or watch manufacturers.
read about nickel reaching out. So people use
synthetic sweat to to do all sorts of funny experiments, and it just makes me laugh to think that you know around
World little bottles of synthetic sweat are being shipped about
while I'm sweating up a storm out in the sun. Why
never knew. There was so much to know about sweating, but since it some
we all do it's kind of interesting to hear what it is that's going on and why it's going on the Sarah.
Average has been my guess: cheeses, science, journalists in the name of her book is the joy of sweat. This strange science, if perspiration and you'll, find a link to that book in the show notes.
thanks for being here, Sarah appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much
the
You know when you fly the flight attendants do that little demonstration. That includes what to do. If the oxygen masks come down in an emergency
Well, have you ever wondered where on the plane they keep all that oxygen while they don't? There are no big time,
some oxygen that would be dangerous would weigh a lot.
take up a lot of room. Instead
What really happens is there is a chemical reactions that creates oxygen. The chemical
was our barium peroxide, sodium chlorate and potassium chlorate, and you know that
in a demonstration when the flight attendant says you need to pay.
Down on the mask to release the flow of oxygen. What what really
happens. Is that tug on the mask triggers a firing pin
that initiated that chemical reaction, the by product of that reaction, is oxygen. There's enough
twenty minutes, which is enough time for the pilot to bring the plane lower, so you can breathe again, and that
something you should know. I
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Transcript generated on 2023-09-17.