Brain Junk

It's our last week of Thanksgiving break! Hope this finds you contentedly full from a good meal and hanging out with the people you adore. Trace pulled out all the stops with audio buffet of animal episodes. The bell bird, honeypot ants, and unexpected animal buddies.

Also shout out to Hank the dog, he was a goofy guy and much loved by Amy and her family. RIP Hank, you'll be missed.

Brain Junk is still on break but whooo-boy we've got a trip down memory lane for y'all! Picture it, September 2020, Trace and Amy sitting a million socially distant miles apart while tasting the flavor sensation of the season--turkey flavored candy corn. We still have TFSD (turkey flavored stress disorder).

Brain Junk is taking Thanksgiving break! Trace has some writing projects she needs to get off the ground and Amy has a teenager at home(do we need to say more?) We've got some fun episode mashups coming the next three weeks. Don't worry, we'll be back with all new stuff in December!

We've got a vocab "argument" when it comes to the beauty industry. They say that super hydrating lotion has snail mucins. Scientists say mucins are in a protein family secreted by animals for a whole host of reasons. Come clean beauty industry! It's snail mucus.

Show Notes:

NIH National Library of Medicine: Super cool snail slime paper

NPR scientist interview

Snail Facial with REAL SNAILS!

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 Snail mucus.

[00:00:13] Speaker A: Oh, I am delighted already.

[00:00:18] Speaker B: It's not just for sidewalks anymore.

[00:00:20] Speaker A: Really? I hope there's some practical use, like this is a part of our perfume or, you know, that chapstick you just used. Okay, dazzle me with grossness, please.

[00:00:30] Speaker B: You're going to love this. Okay, so let's get into mucus first. Such a great word. What do you think of when I say mucus?

[00:00:38] Speaker A: Well, I have asthma, so I immediately think of I have to cough, so mucus is alarming to me It hits that first, not gross.

[00:00:51] Speaker B: Okay. I always think of the frog in princess and the frog when somebody's like, it's slimy. The frog is slimy. And he's like, it's not slime, it's mucus.

[00:01:03] Speaker A: Oh, that's entirely different. Fine. Wonderful.

[00:01:08] Speaker B: Well, snails use mucus as a lot of things. They use it as a glue. They use it to make a slick non stick surface to glide on. And apparently it takes a lot of work to make a snail trail biologically.

[00:01:22] Speaker A: Really? So mucus for snails is like the duct tape of the snail world.

[00:01:27] Speaker B: Yeah! Well, and I was reading this one paper, and they were saying like 10% of their energy goes into creating.

[00:01:33] Speaker A: That's a lot.

[00:01:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So slime scientist Antonio Cerullo from University of New York, comparative mucomic analysis of three functionally distinct cornu aspersum species. Say that three times fast.

[00:01:49] Speaker A: I would like to meet this person.

[00:01:51] Speaker B: Well, you know what? There's an NPR four minute long thing where he's interviewed, so I'll have that in the show notes. He is delightful to listen to. So he is digging into the importance of snail secretions.

And so, fun fact, they gathered snail slime in a lot of different ways. So they went to a snail grower who grows them for, like, escargot, that kind of stuff. And they were like, would you mind if we scraped your snails?

[00:02:20] Speaker A: I really hope you're going to tell me that snail mucus is like sweat. And if they're nervous, you can tell from their mucus.

[00:02:29] Speaker B: Oh, no. But they scrape them in different places. So you scrape the back of the snail, the top of that foot, and you get a protective mucus that does all sorts of interesting things. And then snail trail like that, they leave on the ground that has that slick slidy stuff that's going on. And then for the adhesive mucus, they take a petri dish, they stick the snail on it, and they flip it upside down. And then the snail is like, oh, I have to stick. And so it does its sticky stuff. And then the snail moves around on the upside down petri dish, and then they scrape that off, and that gets that third kind of mucus.

[00:03:07] Speaker A: Wow.

[00:03:08] Speaker B: I know! I'm imaginin...

It's the 31st of October and we've got some tricks and treats for you! We've dug up a whole bag of weird facts from ghost month in China to brain worms to devil's chairs. Settle in with your pile of candy and unwrap this creepy episode with us.

P.S. Trace's lovely sister-in-law, Kathleen made an Excel spreadsheet of all our episodes and it's coming soon to our website for you to dig through.

Show Notes:

Australian woman with a BRAIN WORM

The Nun study

Extra mouse teeth

Popular Mechanics article about supernumerary teeth

2024 tooth clinical trial

Brains at night

And the Science article: Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain

Ghost month

Legend tripping: mourning chairs/devils chairs

flying ticks and the tick video that had Trace reeling!

Let's look into the past with time capsules! People have stashed important items in clay pots or the walls of buildings for centuries. It wasn't until 1939 that the phrase "time capsule" became popular as a way to explain the fascination we have with saving bits of ourselves for the future.

image: US Army photo of 1905 Arlington national Cemetery time capsule being opened

We didn't hear him in background of the episode, but Leap says hello!

Show Notes:

Norwegian time capsule a bit of a let down: Smithsonian Magazine

Campbell House in Spokane, WA.

1939 New York World's Fair Westinghouse Time Capsule

Some of the oldest American time capsules!

MFA Boston: Massachusetts 1795 Time Capsule

Voyager Golden Records

Oglethorpe University: Crypt of Civilization

In Wisconsin's Chippewa Flowage (what the heck is that? OMG it's amazing) there are floating islands of peat. Covered with trees and doing what they want. You've got to check out the videos in our show notes!

P.S. Today is Amy Barton's birthday!!!!! DM her on our Instagram with Bday wishes!

image: Yahoo news

Show Notes:

YouTube: Discover Wisconsin

Boats moving the floaty islands! YOU HAVE TO WATCH

Back in 1984, Coca-Cola and Pepsi started a very short space race. In 1985, Cans and soda went on the STS 51-F shuttle flight. It was sticky and fizzy and burping was a DISASTER. Amy takes us on a Vomit Comet ride to the stars talking burps, tears, and all things gastrointestinal in low gravity.

Show Notes:

Check out our merch SHOP!

Air and Space museum Coke can and Pepsi can

Microgavity? What the heck is that?

No spices allowed in space!

We mentioned Mary Roach and her science writing. Check out her books!

Astronaut Chris Hadfield interview about burping in space.

YouTube: Can you cry in space?

Liquid in space video

UK Space Agency video: Fizzy drinks in space

Amy got really dark talking about the moon falling into the Earth. Here's an explanation as to why that isn't going to happen.

The Vomit Comet