Brain Junk

Nighttime waking and scattered thoughts are problem solving's evil twin. If you find yourself awake at 3 am obsessing over your problems, remember that stress and hormonal imbalances can really damage the quality of your sleep.

Show Notes:

IFL Science: Why Do We Wake Around 3am And Dwell On Our Fears And Shortcomings?

VeryWellmind.com: Military Sleep method

Science Direct: Molecular Clock

US Southwestern University: Understanding the circadian clocks of individual cells

Wikipedia: Suprachiasmatic nucleus

NIH: Visual impairment and circadian rhythm disorders

The New Yorker: The Woman who Spent Five Hundred Days in a Cave

Benadryl and Alzheimer's possible link

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk, I'm Trace Kerr

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today I'm gonna continue changing your lives because we've talked about how to up your personal hygiene game. And today I'm gonna tell you about why you wake up at 03:00 a.m. And give you some tips and tricks.

[00:00:19] Speaker A: To stop that from happening.

[00:00:21] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:00:24] Speaker A: I am not a 03:00 a.m. Wake up person, so this will be interesting.

[00:00:27] Speaker B: You're not what it.

[00:00:29] Speaker A: No.

[00:00:29] Speaker B: Do you wake up in the night?

[00:00:30] Speaker A: No, I'm not a wake upper.

[00:00:32] Speaker B: Oh, that's interesting. Well, Chris and I both are, and I tend to. On a good night, I just wake up once. But oftentimes I will wake up in this somewhere between two and 04:00 a.m.. Time. And so we're both like, why is that happening to us? And some of it is Shelby the cat.

She seems to get the zoomies. So let's back up, too. Greg Murray, professor and director, center for Mental Health in Sweden, Swinburne University of Technology. Swin. Yeah, Swinburne University of Technology.

He's a psychology researcher, and his expertise is in mood and sleep and circadian systems. Oh, and so he talks about this in an article for IFL science. For those of you who don't wake up like trace, it's bad because in the middle of the night, all of the thoughts seem to be. It's never like, I was so good in that meeting today, and I just love these blankets, and it's not that stuff. It's distressing and punitive thoughts, and they're irrational and unproductive. If you are alert enough that you have awoken, usually some people, it might not be that way, but it's definitely the way my brain works. It will worry about everything and anything....

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2024 is the 100th anniversary of Band-aids. But before they were the little strips in cool tins, they came in a roll you could cut to size.

Show Notes:

Johnson & Johnson history of Band-aids

Wikipedia: Band-aid history

Disposable America

The Atlantic: The Story of the Black Band-aid

TruColour Bandages

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And I do have a cold.

[00:00:08] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:00:08] Speaker B: But today is everything you never knew you wanted to know about band aids.

[00:00:13] Speaker A: I want to know many things. Did you buy picturey ones for your children, or were you kind of scroogey?

[00:00:20] Speaker B: Here's the thing. I kind of felt like the picturey ones didn't have enough of the nick.

I'm a fan of the fabricy ones because I feel like they stay on better.

[00:00:32] Speaker A: Yeah, but.

[00:00:33] Speaker B: Okay, so, 2024, I just figured this out when I was doing research, is the 100th anniversary of the eponymous bandaid.

[00:00:40] Speaker A: Oh, so they've had them since the 20s?

[00:00:44] Speaker B: Yes.

I went to the Johnson and Johnson website for the history of the bandaid, and I stayed for a bandaid quiz.

[00:00:51] Speaker A: You can do a band. That's fun. I'll do any quiz.

[00:00:55] Speaker B: Same. I got 90%. But I may have done some research and also cheated.

I had already been looking into it, and then I took the quiz, and I was like, I'm so smart. No, it was all but way back in the late 19 hundreds when you.

[00:01:17] Speaker A: And I were young.

[00:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah, way back then, a million years ago, back with the mammoth. You could buy bandaids in a tin.

[00:01:25] Speaker A: Yes, you can again. Now they're, like $5 more than regular bandaids.

[00:01:30] Speaker B: I haven't seen that with the flip top lid.

[00:01:33] Speaker A: I walk down that row, I'm not even there for bandaids. I'm there for whatever else is in that row, and I'm like, I probably need four tins of these fancy bandaids.

[00:01:42] Speaker B: I don't know. But, I mean, that tin, it was just the right size to fit in, like, a shirt pocket. When I was a kid, you had, like, fishing supplies in there. It's almost like the cookie tin. That's actually a sewing kit.

[00:01:55] Speaker A: Yes, exactly.

[00:01:56] Speaker B: The number of times you could open that bandaid tin and it would not be bandaids was about 50 50.

[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yes. Gum. If it's nicely in there. Yeah.

[00:02:05] Speaker B: Okay, so the story of the bandaid. Let me take you back.

[00:02:09] Speaker A: Take me back.

[00:02:10] Speaker B: Back in 1920, Josephine Knight Dixon. Now, Johnson and Johnson says she was accident prone around the kitchen. I feel like she was a woman in the kitchen getting burns and cuts. That just happens.

[00:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Because the kitchen was a lot more dangerous in the. Yeah.

[00:02:26] Speaker B: Keep her away from the knives. But back then, we didn't have bandaids, so she would just wrap her fingers in a bit of spare fabric that she had lying know, and it would come untied and it would get dirty....

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brainjunkpodcast.substack.com

2024 is the 100th anniversary of Band-aids. But before they were the little strips in cool tins, they came in a roll you could cut to size.

Show Notes:

Johnson & Johnson history of Band-aids

Wikipedia: Band-aid history

Disposable America

The Atlantic: The Story of the Black Band-aid

TruColour Bandages

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And I do have a cold.

[00:00:08] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:00:08] Speaker B: But today is everything you never knew you wanted to know about band aids.

[00:00:13] Speaker A: I want to know many things. Did you buy picturey ones for your children, or were you kind of scroogey?

[00:00:20] Speaker B: Here's the thing. I kind of felt like the picturey ones didn't have enough of the nick.

I'm a fan of the fabricy ones because I feel like they stay on better.

[00:00:32] Speaker A: Yeah, but.

[00:00:33] Speaker B: Okay, so, 2024, I just figured this out when I was doing research, is the 100th anniversary of the eponymous bandaid.

[00:00:40] Speaker A: Oh, so they've had them since the 20s?

[00:00:44] Speaker B: Yes.

I went to the Johnson and Johnson website for the history of the bandaid, and I stayed for a bandaid quiz.

[00:00:51] Speaker A: You can do a band. That's fun. I'll do any quiz.

[00:00:55] Speaker B: Same. I got 90%. But I may have done some research and also cheated.

I had already been looking into it, and then I took the quiz, and I was like, I'm so smart. No, it was all but way back in the late 19 hundreds when you.

[00:01:17] Speaker A: And I were young.

[00:01:18] Speaker B: Yeah, way back then, a million years ago, back with the mammoth. You could buy bandaids in a tin.

[00:01:25] Speaker A: Yes, you can again. Now they're, like $5 more than regular bandaids.

[00:01:30] Speaker B: I haven't seen that with the flip top lid.

[00:01:33] Speaker A: I walk down that row, I'm not even there for bandaids. I'm there for whatever else is in that row, and I'm like, I probably need four tins of these fancy bandaids.

[00:01:42] Speaker B: I don't know. But, I mean, that tin, it was just the right size to fit in, like, a shirt pocket. When I was a kid, you had, like, fishing supplies in there. It's almost like the cookie tin. That's actually a sewing kit.

[00:01:55] Speaker A: Yes, exactly.

[00:01:56] Speaker B: The number of times you could open that bandaid tin and it would not be bandaids was about 50 50.

[00:02:02] Speaker A: Yes. Gum. If it's nicely in there. Yeah.

[00:02:05] Speaker B: Okay, so the story of the bandaid. Let me take you back.

[00:02:09] Speaker A: Take me back.

[00:02:10] Speaker B: Back in 1920, Josephine Knight Dixon. Now, Johnson and Johnson says she was accident prone around the kitchen. I feel like she was a woman in the kitchen getting burns and cuts. That just happens.

[00:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Because the kitchen was a lot more dangerous in the. Yeah.

[00:02:26] Speaker B: Keep her away from the knives. But back then, we didn't have bandaids, so she would just wrap her fingers in a bit of spare fabric that she had lying know, and it would come untied and it would get dirty. So she told her husband about this issue, and he was a cotton buyer for Johnson Johnson. And the cotton that they were buying, they were using that to make gauze.

[00:02:49] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:02:49] Speaker B: And they had been making that for a while. Well, so he was. Okay, let's. Let's make a solution to this problem. So he brought a bunch of samples home. I like to think that he just kind of went into a supply closet and was like, let's take a little bit of this. A little bit.

[00:03:04] Speaker A: Some sticky notes, a few paperclips, a red stapler.

[00:03:08] Speaker B: Don't look in my handy dandy leather briefcase. There's nothing in there. But Earl. That was his name. Earl brought a bunch

From poker to games played to pass the time, those 52 cards are so ubiquitous it's hard to figure just when we started using them. We go all the way back to ancient China for a possible origin of cards.

images: Cloisters Deck from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and and example of cards from today from pixabay

Show Notes:

The strange coincidence of the Instagram guy & 52 card decks

Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Cloisters Playing Cards

Atlas Obscura: Playing cards around the world and through the ages

JSTOR: an excerpt from The Game of Leaves: An Inquiry into the Origin of Chinese Playing Cards

Wikipedia: Chinese Playing Cards

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Hey there. Trace here. So Amy and I have a couple projects coming up over the next couple months. She's taking some classes. She's got to do homework. I've got some projects, a fiction podcast that I'm working on writing, and a novel that I'm working on editing. And we need a little more space, a little more time. So we're not stopping brain junk. Absolutely not. We love it too much to quit. But we are going to move to every two weeks instead of every week. So that means this week is an episode, and then we won't have another episode until April 2. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't get your brain junk fixed. We got lots of old episodes. You can head over to YouTube for the really old episodes. I'm slowly uploading more. We're not going anywhere. We're just going to dial it back a little bit for a little while. So enjoy this episode. Yeah, we'll see you in two weeks.

Welcome to Brain junk. I'm Trace Kerr.

[00:00:59] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're going to talk about everything you never knew you wanted to know about playing cards.

Are you a card family? Like old school? Not like games, but the traditional four suit deck.

[00:01:16] Speaker A: Yeah, we are. Well, you know, it's funny because I grew up as a card family. Chaz did not grow up as a card family. They were a scrabble family. And I have converted him to the crazy eights and the Kings in the know, the old people card games.

[00:01:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. Now, I have never played kings in the corner. My family is a rummy family. I think there's some cribbage in there, too, with the little pegs. Children were not allowed to touch that. I think it was an adult escape game because they played it out at the lake and they're like, shouldn't you guys be swimming? Grandpa's out watching go swim, so I need to learn to play that one.

[00:01:55] Speaker A: Well, I can teach you how to play cribbage. Chaz and I play cribbage all the time. Neither of my children like to play cards, which is funny. It began and ended with us. That's it. We're done.

[00:02:05] Speaker B: Now.

It's a generational thing in my family because my grandpa was a military fella for a long time, and so it was an officer's. It's a clubby thing. They would have card night. And so that filtered down into my parents play, and we play. Chris didn't play as much, but the kids liked it when they could start playing with the grandparents, and Allie especially, can win.

[00:02:27] Speaker A: See, now, what you have to do is you get your children, because, like Beckett's person, cam likes to play cards, and so you just have to make sure. You have to be like, are you nice to my child? Do you like to play, know,...

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Call them slippahs, flip flops, chanclas, slops, plakkies, slaps, pantofles, or thongs...whatever word you choose says a lot about your age and what part of the world you grew up in. We came up with this episode topic as kind of a joke. Turns out there's way more about to know about these summer shoes than we thought.

Show Notes:

Wikipedia on the history of flip flops

The Paduka

Kanye West being weird as usual with diamond studded flips

Satra: History of the flip flop

Forbes: This Brand Reinvented Flip-Flops (And Made Them A Sustainable Product)

Business Wire: Global Flip Flops Market to Reach $28.5 Billion by 2030, Fueled by Work-from-Home Trend and Growing Demand in Developing Countries - ResearchAndMarkets.com

Obama first US President photoed in slippahs

Guinness account on X: Andre Ortolf running in flip flops

Longest flip flop throw

Flip Flops History and Production Process

Harper's Bazaar

YouTube: Mexican Moms play chancla or no chancla

Washington Post Flip Flop vs Thongs

recycled rubber flops

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Trace Kerr.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're going to be discussing everything you never knew you wanted to know about flip flops.

Flip flop.

[00:00:15] Speaker A: Or is it thongs? And then all the gen Z's cringed.

[00:00:19] Speaker B: I know. And it is the very first thing I think of every time you say flip flops. For the longest time, I remember the first time somebody corrected my wrong term use. They're like, oh. And I'm like, oh, all right. So the flip flop, for me, the quintessential flip flop, is the black sole, the rainbow striped straps. Oh, I love those things. My aunts had them out at the lake, and they were the coolest.

[00:00:45] Speaker A: I was just trying to think. I once had flip flops that I wore to camp on an overnight. And I can remember that the middle bit tore out of the bottom of the shoe.

[00:00:56] Speaker B: You suffered for 36 hours was limping.

[00:01:00] Speaker A: Along with one flip flop. O...

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It's easy to believe that a snake might be a deadly mimic. But butterflies that start life as carnivorous caterpillars? Oh heck yeah!

Show Notes:

YouTube BBC: Ants Adopt a Caterpillar

YouTube Entomological Society of America: Ants and Blues

The Pattern of Social Parasitism in Maculinea teleius Butterfly Is Driven by the Size and Spatial Distribution of the Host Ant Nests

Entomology Today: Carnivorous Caterpillars Fool Ants by Sounding like Queens

PLOS One: Variation in Butterfly Larval Acoustics as a Strategy to Infiltrate and Exploit Host Ant Colony Resources

Scientific American: Actual audio of the caterpillar mimicking an ant

Avian deception using an elaborate caudal lure in Pseudocerastes urarachnoides (Serpentes: Viperidae)

Herpetological.org Pseudocerastes urarachnoides: the ambush specialist (great pictures of the viper!)

Discover: Meet the Snake

Transcript:

00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to brain junk. I'm Amy Barton.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And today is everything you never knew you wanted to know about deadly animal mimics.

[00:00:13] Speaker A: I want to know a lot about that.

[00:00:15] Speaker B: Well, I have two. It's double header. I can't make up my mind about subjects lately and I'm just going to mash it together.

[00:00:21] Speaker C: Bonus.

[00:00:24] Speaker B: So the first one, I'm going to give you a little scenario. You have a child pretending to be a queen, infiltrating a city, deceiving soldiers into taking care of her, all the while eating the real queen's children.

[00:00:37] Speaker C: Oh, my word.

[00:00:38] Speaker A: That sounds like a marvel plot.

[00:00:40] Speaker C: It does, right?

[00:00:40] Speaker B: Horror movie, Sci-Fi it's not. It's the real life of the large blue butterfly caterpillar.

[00:00:47] Speaker A: I was sure we were going down an ant road.

[00:00:50] Speaker C: Well, wow.

[00:00:52] Speaker B: Kind of.

So, according to the plus one 2014 paper, this is the title. Variation in butterfly larval acoustics as a strategy to infiltrate and exploit host ant colony resources.

[00:01:10] Speaker C: Ooh, that's quite the title.

[00:01:12] Speaker B: It's so much title. There are about 10,000 different buggy critters out there faking their way into ant hills to snack on ants.

[00:01:19] Speaker C: That's a lot.

[00:01:20] Speaker A: Poor ants. I know there's a lot of them.

[00:01:23] Speaker C: But that's not an excuse. There's so many.

[00:01:27] Speaker B: We could eat a couple.

[00:01:28] Speaker C: It'll be fine.

[00:01:33] Speaker A: Okay, you're right. That's true.

[00:01:34] Speaker D: Yeah.

[00:01:35] Speaker B: Of all of these butterflies in the matulina family, they're super cute. They're little blue butterflies. The one I'm go...

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If you haven't figured it out by now, Amy is not afraid to ask tough questions! Today she talks butt health, bidets, and the dangers of wet wipes. It's funnier than you'd think, we promise.

Show Notes:

Business Insider: interview with Dr. Goldstein

Am I Doing it Wrong? Jan 2024

The Spruce: 7 Best Bidet Attachments

Splinter free toilet paper

History Channel: All the Ways We've Wiped

CBS news article about Johnny Carson creating a toilet paper shortage

And just in case you're not a dinosaur like Trace and Amy, this is Walter Cronkite

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Trace Kerr.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Amy Barton. And today we're going to be discussing personal care, which is, I know, one of the things you come to brain junk for, because we care about you, and we want you to know you might not be wiping correctly.

[00:00:21] Speaker A: Oh, no.

[00:00:22] Speaker B: This is a hard truth that we need to share with you.

And this comes from Chris Barton.

[00:00:29] Speaker A: Oh, no.

[00:00:29] Speaker B: Who, like, we're sitting watching whatever we're watching on Saturday or Sunday morning, and he's, uh, is this a brain junk? And he sends me this article that's entitled bad news. You're probably wiping all wrong. And I'm like, yes, it is.

Okay, are you ready?

[00:00:50] Speaker A: No.

[00:00:55] Speaker B: Parents is going to be some low key anatomical terms. Shall we talk about Dr. Evan Goldstein? Absolutely. And he is a nationally renowned anal surgeon.

[00:01:05] Speaker A: Oh, wow.

[00:01:05] Speaker B: That is a very specific specialty. But if you need an anal surgeon, you want them to be nationally renowned.

[00:01:15] Speaker A: That's true.

[00:01:16] Speaker B: Proper functionality there is valuable.

So Dr. Evan Goldstein says that the preferred method of wiping is actually not wiping. He describes when you're looking at someone's anus, which isn't a common occurrence unless you've had a child or a lifestyle different than mine, maybe. There's going to be a lot of editing for this episode that's staying in.

So let's think in terms of babies, if that helps you be comfortable with this subject, because we're going to talk about what an anus looks like right now. Okay.

[00:01:57] Speaker A: Button knot.

[00:01:58] Speaker B: It's like an accordion. It's got wrinkles, and it opens and closes. So there's the wrinkly part. That is specifically the anus where the waste products come out of. It opens, it closes. It's useful. However, in front of that and in back of that, the skin is not wrinkly, and it is very thin, and so the potential for damage is much higher. So he says, please, just don't wipe. Stop. It gets very irritated. Don't tear the skin. He says, it gets angry at us.

So instead of wiping, he says he's a huge bidet fan....

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Trace found some delightful random facts about birds! Today we're talking "anting", talons locked to the death, and musical cockatoos.

Show Notes:

Journal of Ornithology: Anting behavior in birds

Video of crow anting: aka the spicy spa

Bird Note: anting

Facebook video of bald eagles cartwheeling

Bird Note: Eagles cartwheeling

Palm Cockatoos playing their instruments

Research paper on Palm Cockatoos

Funny vid with Conan O'Brien and a palm cockatoo guest

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Amy Barton.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And I just saw a spider and I'm terrified. But we're going to do this episode because I'm an adult.

Today we're going to, today we're going to talk about everything you never knew you wanted to know about birds.

[00:00:20] Speaker A: Just everything about birds.

[00:00:21] Speaker B: Everything.

[00:00:22] Speaker A: People grab a hot beverage.

[00:00:24] Speaker C: Yep.

[00:00:24] Speaker B: This episode, it's going to be like 12 hours. It's an eight part episode. No, it's like three things that I really thought were cool. And that's everything. So there you go.

[00:00:33] Speaker A: Excellent.

[00:00:34] Speaker C: Yeah.

[00:00:34] Speaker B: We're winning at information, but I saw the spider. You mentioned ants, and the first thing we're going to talk about is this thing called anting. A-N-T-I-N-G. So it's perfect. It's just synergy. We're just coming together.

[00:00:48] Speaker A: Love it.

[00:00:51] Speaker B: If you don't like ants, just, you have to skip through this beginning little part.

[00:00:56] Speaker A: If you see a whole nest of them, do your feet tingle? If I see a whole pile of them, my feet are like having accidentally.

[00:01:04] Speaker B: Stood with my foot in a red ant nest in Georgia.

They're so spicy.

[00:01:11] Speaker C: Yeah.

[00:01:12] Speaker A: I feel like the warmer it gets, the spicier the ants get.

That far south. Those are some very exciting ants.

[00:01:21] Speaker B: Well, and here's the thing.

[00:01:22] Speaker C: Okay.

[00:01:22] Speaker B: So there's at least 250 species of birds like crows and robins and jays that love that acidic spa treatment.

That is what anting is.

Yeah. Okay, so the very thing that we think birds want, the formic acid.

[00:01:44] Speaker A: Whoa.

Excuse me. I'm so sorry. Did that just blow out your ears? That wasn't an ant effect.

[00:01:50] Speaker B: No, it wasn't. Also, it wasn't a. Dad. Know where you're.

[00:01:54] Speaker C: Yeah.

[00:01:56] Speaker A: Here comes one more. I'm sorry.

[00:01:58] Speaker B: Maybe look at the light.

[00:01:59] Speaker C: There we go.

[00:01:59] Speaker A: Excuse me. Goodness. Okay, Georgia. Spicy ants.

[00:02:05] Speaker C: Yeah.

[00:02:05] Speaker B: So spicy ants. The thing that makes them spicy is formic acid. Although red ants...

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We recorded IN PERSON!

Trace brought back a whole bunch of fun flavored chips from Uwajimaya, a fantastic Asian grocery store in Seattle! Check out the show notes for our 5 other taste test episodes!

Show Notes:

P.S. If you like the Non Newtonian fluid cup, it's in our Merch store!

P.S.S. in defense of the Pizza flavored chips, when Trace tried them the next day, she could taste the peperoni.

Other Taste Test episodes:

9: Crazy food (we eat cherry pickles)

138: Turkey Candy Corn

142: Socially Distanced Taste Test

229: Taco Truck Jelly Bean Taste Test!

235: Tailgate Candy Corn

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Amy Barton.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And we're in the same room together.

[00:00:09] Speaker A: I was just debating. Can I interrupt and say we're here together, right by each other.

[00:00:14] Speaker B: It's kind of weird. And we only have one microphone because equipment. And so we're very close. We're standing very not. We're not huggers. We're very close to each other. But we're here because we're going. I know. We're going to talk about. We're going to do a taste test.

[00:00:28] Speaker A: Yes. And we're having a whole sensory experience right now already. Actually, there are some smells happening here.

[00:00:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I wanted to do the fun, different potato chips that we don't get here in the United States. But every time I go on, like Amazon or something, the teeny tiny bags were an insane amount of money.

[00:00:49] Speaker A: Yes. Like 39 99 for two bags or something. Absurd.

[00:00:52] Speaker B: And then shipping.

[00:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:00:54] Speaker B: And I was at Wajamaya, which is an asian grocery store over in Seattle this weekend, and they had like a wall of a variety of chips.

[00:01:06] Speaker A: Do you remember when lay's did? They had a whole series, so it was like biscuits and gravy and there was like a korean barbecue or something. That was delightful. But that's as close as we've gotten here in the US to anything unique. Yeah.

[00:01:18] Speaker B: So all different. I immediately texted Amy and I was like, how do you feel about this? And you were like, no seafood. But what we're doing is I put tags on the little chip bags of numbers one through seven.

[00:01:33] Speaker A: Nice.

[00:01:33] Speaker B: And then I made plates with one through seven and then gave it to Chaz. And he was like, we should have double blind randomized. And I was like, no, do not take the numbers off of the bags so we don't know. So we can try to figure out what the flavor is just by tasting it, and then we can check the bags.

[00:01:52] Speaker A: Excellent.

[00:01:53] Speaker B: See how close we were, because I love that idea.

Science. Although it's only two people, I predict.

[00:02:01] Speaker A: That I am going to be very suggestible because my sense of smell is not always particularly reliable. I thought we had an electrical burning smell and they're like, oh, no, that's peach tea or something.

All right. Yeah, that could also be that it wasn't peach tea, but it was something entirely different. And so I'm...

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From wheat to mice to rabbits to...you won't believe the techniques we've used to determine if a woman is pregnant. The history of detecting pregnancy is long, inexact, and strange. Buckle up for some crazy science.

Show Notes:

Harvard University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: Pee is for Pregnant: The history and science of urine-based pregnancy tests

NIH timeline of the history of the pregnancy test

Margaret Crane the 26 year old inventor of the home pregnancy test

Dollar Store pregnancy tests

Transcript:

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain junk. I'm Amy Barton.

[00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And today is everything you never knew you wanted to know about pregnancy and pee.

[00:00:14] Speaker A: I feel like I've experienced enough and I'm done with that. But I'm sure you're going to dazzle me.

[00:00:19] Speaker C: Well, yeah.

[00:00:20] Speaker B: Okay. So have you ever done the pregnancy? I mean, you have two kids, you've done the little stick, like the ept kind of thing? I've had two different versions. I've had the huddled in a bathroom waiting feverishly for not pregnant.

[00:00:35] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:00:37] Speaker B: And then also the yes sort of version.

[00:00:40] Speaker A: Yeah.

Have you seen the commercial? There's a commercial out there where they have both scenarios too, and I think that's a smart advertising tool. It's very inclusive.

[00:00:50] Speaker C: Yes.

[00:00:50] Speaker B: Because you might be thrilled and you might not be thrilled at all.

[00:00:54] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:00:55] Speaker C: Okay.

[00:00:55] Speaker B: So while you're waiting feverishly for those two lines to appear or not appear.

[00:01:00] Speaker A: You wash your hands a lot.

[00:01:02] Speaker C: Yeah.

[00:01:03] Speaker B: You're probably not thinking about the science that got you to that moment.

[00:01:07] Speaker A: I kind of was, because I worked at a shelter and we did drug testing, but I never got any further than that. Like, what's activating this and why is it poppy seeds? It's probably not poppy seeds.

[00:01:23] Speaker B: Well, it's something. Something's in there making things turn purple. Well, for pregnancy test, it turns out that the thing that makes the test positive or negative is the amount of hcg hormone. That's human chorionic gonadotrotropin. And I'm just going to say hcg because. Yeah, it's a mouthful.

[00:01:42] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:01:43] Speaker B: Growing embryos give off hcg and that's in a pregnant person's blood and urine.

[00:01:53] Speaker A: So that's why you have to wait a little bit to have enough to show that something is growing.

[00:01:57] Speaker C: Yes.

[00:01:57] Speaker B: That's also why the test says take it in the morning when you've got the first pea of the day, because it's more concentrated. Yeah. I got to thinking about this because I was watching an episode of the great. It's Catherine the Great.

It's an odd show, but they're trying to figure out if she's pregnant or not. And so she comes out of, like a changing room and there is a sheaf of wheat with the grains on it and it's on the floor on a trace. And they have her pee on the wheat.

[00:02:27] Speaker A: Really?

[00:02:28] Speaker B: And she's told, right, if they green up and sprout that she's pregnant. And I went, ha.

[00:02:34] Speaker A:...

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