0:00

Welcome along, Explorer! It is

0:02

time to search the solar

0:04

system. We are seeking out

0:07

some science secrets in a

0:09

brand new Fun Kid Science

0:11

Weekly! My

0:14

name is Dan! Thank you so much for being

0:17

there! This is the place where we trawl all

0:19

around the galaxy, a little bit further to, in

0:21

about half an hour. And we

0:23

find some science that, well, we've never really

0:25

heard before. Today we will carry on our

0:28

quest to find the greatest science

0:30

of them all, with a

0:33

big argument about something tiny. I

0:37

find new species to science and

0:40

microbes that haven't been found for more

0:42

than 100 years. So

0:45

they are extremely rare, but I

0:47

do manage to find them, and

0:49

that is great information for the

0:51

scientific world. And

0:54

we'll answer your questions. We do it every

0:56

single week with a proper genius. This week

0:58

it's all about smart speakers. These

1:02

machine learning technologies are really

1:04

quite clever. In fact, our

1:06

speakers continuously improve how good

1:08

they are at recognising our

1:11

individual voices. So these

1:13

machine learning models are continuously being

1:15

trained by our use of them.

1:19

And you can hear about something

1:21

tiny trying to burrow inside of

1:23

you. It's all on the way

1:25

in a brand new Fun Kid Science Weekly. Let's

1:33

kick things off with your science in the news.

1:37

Normally a place should see a total

1:39

solar eclipse once every 375 years. There's

1:43

one part of America though. They're about to get their second

1:46

one in just seven years. Total

1:48

solar eclipse is when the moon blocks out the

1:50

sun completely. It's quite rare because the

1:52

path of the earth in its orbit around the sun,

1:54

the part of the moon in its orbit around the

1:56

earth, and the spin of the earth have to be

1:58

completely right. never happens.

2:00

It's so precise that it's happening

2:03

for the second time in seven

2:05

years in part of America. Scientists

2:08

expect the sky to go pitch black

2:10

for just over four minutes. Also

2:12

a fossil that is 270

2:15

million years old has been

2:17

named Kermit Gratas after

2:19

Kermit the Frog. It

2:21

helps experts understand where amphibians like frogs came

2:23

from. It looks a lot like Kermit

2:25

so they've named it after him which makes

2:28

sense but if you know anything about

2:30

Kermit in movies he's very shy

2:32

isn't he? I wonder how

2:34

embarrassed he will be having a fossil

2:37

named in his honour. In

2:39

our final story this week glass

2:41

found in a prehistoric settlement was

2:43

probably made in Iran that's what

2:45

scientists say. The glass was found

2:48

in beads over in a must

2:50

farm, a place that's been nicknamed

2:52

Britain's Pompeii. It's over 3000

2:54

years old, it's almost 3000 miles away

2:57

from Iran. Let's find out more. Chris

2:59

Wakefield is an archaeologist who works with must

3:01

farm. Chris thank you for being

3:03

there. We call this Britain's Pompeii. That's a

3:05

big comparison. What makes it that? So

3:07

the comparison with Pompeii is really if you

3:10

imagine that kind of snapshot that's being

3:12

captured in time it's this moment that has

3:14

been frozen for us to find as

3:16

archaeologists. So in the same way that Pompeii

3:18

was buried in that volcanic eruption this

3:20

is a series of houses that would have

3:23

been built on stilts over a river

3:25

and a massive fire has burnt everything down

3:27

and that destruction from that blaze has

3:29

basically kept everything preserved for us to find

3:31

as archaeologists. So we're finding bowls of food with

3:33

the meal still inside them and spoons sticking out

3:36

the top of them. We're finding the preserved poo

3:38

of the people who are living there. We're getting

3:40

a huge amount of really exciting stuff that we're

3:42

digging out of the ground. How long have we

3:44

known about must farm and how long have we

3:46

been digging to see what's there? So the site

3:49

was first discovered just over 20 years ago but

3:51

we didn't really start to do a big dig

3:53

there until 2015 and that dig

3:55

took about a year of our time and in

3:57

that like over the course of that dig we found

4:00

thousands and thousands of different prehistoric objects

4:02

and it's the most incredible thing to

4:04

be working as an archaeologist. So the

4:06

question then is I guess

4:08

why are we taking so long with it

4:10

right? If you find this hoard of stuff

4:12

you're an archaeologist it's what you love. Why

4:15

are there not people there every second of every

4:17

day doing it? Why are we kind of dragging

4:20

it out like this? So within that sort of

4:22

year that we took to dig the site we

4:24

dug up everything that was in there. So we

4:26

had a team of archaeologists that were working every

4:28

minute of every day digging that up but the

4:30

reason we're talking about it now is that it

4:33

takes a lot of time to do all the

4:35

scientific research to understand exactly what the things that

4:37

we're finding are, how old they are and

4:39

so the case of those bowls of food actually

4:41

doing lots and lots of scientific techniques to find

4:43

out what exactly the meals were the recipes that

4:46

the people were eating in the Bronze Age. So

4:49

we hear about this glass that's

4:51

been found. It's been found in

4:54

beads in Must Farm and

4:56

we know it's from Iran. What's helped

4:58

us pair and link those? So if

5:00

you imagine when glass is made it's

5:02

made of lots and lots of different

5:04

materials that kind of make up that

5:06

object so we can do really really

5:08

cool scientific techniques that work out exactly

5:10

the different proportions of all the different

5:12

elements inside that and by looking

5:14

at kind of different examples of beads that have been

5:16

found and studied in different parts of the world we're

5:18

able to work out that the ones that were

5:21

found at Must Farm will probably have been

5:23

made around four and a half thousand kilometers

5:25

away. Wow over in Iran so international

5:27

travel back then was not like it is

5:29

now you can just hop on a plane

5:32

and fly to the Middle East. How have

5:34

they found themselves here do we think? So if

5:37

you imagine again this is sort of technologies that

5:39

we don't have the ways to travel that we

5:41

do today so those beads were probably traded lots

5:43

and lots of times to make their way from

5:46

that place in the Middle East all the way over to

5:48

the Fens in Eastern England but what's

5:50

really interesting is you would have thought that that

5:52

process might have taken a really long time for

5:54

those beads to travel but actually the beads aren't

5:56

that different in date to the houses that we're

5:59

finding so it must actually happened quite quickly so

6:01

those beads make their way over there. So,

6:04

Must Farm is a site that's

6:06

over 3,000 years old. What

6:08

have we learnt about how people lived back

6:10

then? What would the settlement have looked like?

6:13

How far away would it have been from

6:15

other big settlements nearby? What did they do

6:17

every day? So the site's almost 3,000 years

6:20

old. It's not over 3,000 years, it's nearly quite.

6:22

It's about from 850 BC and those houses were

6:24

quite interesting because they would have been

6:27

built on stilts. So again, quite different from a

6:30

lot of the houses that we know from that

6:32

period and they would have been directly over a

6:34

river and around the outside of that was a

6:36

really big fence of sharpened stakes that were kind

6:38

of pointed and sticking up there probably to help

6:40

be defended. So if they were attacked they could

6:43

kind of retreat inside the houses in the settlement

6:46

and inside them what's really exciting, we know loads

6:48

about exactly how they would have been living inside

6:50

the houses. So we know that they would have

6:52

had sheep and goats living inside their houses with

6:54

them. So if you were having, you know,

6:56

sitting around in your living room in 850 BC there

6:58

would have been a sheep and a goat probably pooing

7:00

and going to the toilet in there because we've even

7:02

found the little sheep and goat poos in the

7:05

floor of those buildings. We know

7:07

that they would have been kind of cooking and had

7:09

kitchen areas, they would have been making textiles and clothing

7:11

and they would have even had tool kits made of

7:13

different metal objects as well. Chris Wakefield, it's been such

7:15

a joy to have you on. Thank you so much

7:17

for telling us all about Must Farm. Great to chat

7:19

to you. Thank you so

7:21

much to Chris Wakefield for coming

7:23

on, for helping us dig underground

7:25

and hear about Britain's Pompeii. We'll

7:28

have another expert on the show

7:30

in just a second answering one

7:32

of your questions. It's my favourite

7:34

part, my favourite time when

7:36

you send over your

7:39

questions. Normally his voice notes to the Free

7:41

Fun Kids app are at funkidslive.com and then

7:43

I find a genius to sort it out

7:45

for you. First one this week, it's a

7:47

message that's from Ben who wants to know

7:49

what's the best planet to move to. Well

7:51

Ben, I've done some digging on this, it's

7:53

very hard to tell because we

7:55

haven't visited, humans haven't visited properly

7:58

any other planets. A

8:00

lot of scientists think different things. It's

8:02

all about what the atmosphere is like, how hot

8:04

it is, how strong the gravity is, whether we

8:06

could grow stuff there. Quite a

8:08

lot of experts think that mercury would

8:10

be good. It is the closest

8:12

planet to the sun though. Strangely, it's

8:15

a bit cooler than Mars. They

8:18

think there might be water on Mercury

8:20

too. Also, they think the north

8:22

and south pole of Mercury would be pretty

8:24

good because the day and night times are

8:27

quite similar to ours here on Earth and

8:29

the strength of the gravity there isn't horrendous.

8:31

So humans wouldn't be squashed as soon as

8:33

we touch down. But the

8:35

atmosphere doesn't really have oxygen and that's

8:38

what we need to breathe. That's what

8:40

makes our Earth so perfect. So if

8:42

we did go to Mercury or any

8:44

other planet really, we would need to

8:46

find a way to have oxygen, probably

8:49

build huge greenhouses really. Massive see-through tents

8:51

that we all could live in then.

8:54

Thank you so much for the question. Let's get

8:56

on another one. This is a voice note on

8:58

the Free Fun Kids app by Aiden. What do

9:00

you got? How do Alexis work?

9:02

Well, Aiden, thank you so much for your

9:04

question. How do Alexis work? Are

9:07

the smart speakers knocking around as well?

9:09

Let's find out with Pip Knight from

9:11

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of

9:13

the smartest schools in the world. Pip,

9:15

thank you for being there. So Alexis

9:18

and other smart speakers, they are all

9:20

over the place. They're incredibly smart. Where

9:23

do we begin by talking about how

9:25

they work? Yeah, that's a great

9:27

question, Aiden. Thank you very much. So

9:30

smart speakers are really interesting. And we can

9:32

start thinking about how they work by dividing

9:34

it into a few stages. So

9:36

we've got to have some kind of microphone in

9:38

our speaker that detects what

9:41

we're saying to the speaker. And then

9:43

we've got to take that output from the

9:45

microphone, which is an electrical signal, and

9:47

interpret what sentence has been said in

9:50

English. And then finally from that sentence,

9:52

decides what task we're actually asking our

9:55

smart speaker to do. So

9:57

we can delve into each of those stages in a little bit more

9:59

detail. So starting with the microphone,

10:02

I find it easiest to think about the

10:04

microphones and smart speakers as

10:07

like miniaturized drums but working in

10:09

a slightly backwards way from drums

10:11

that we've interpreted in our lives.

10:13

So when we hit a drum, it

10:15

has a drum skin which vibrates in

10:18

a special pattern and the vibrations of

10:20

the drum skin cause vibrations in the

10:22

air molecules which will then travel to

10:24

our ears and we'll hear that sound.

10:27

In the case of these microphones

10:29

which are called capacitive microphones, we're

10:31

saying a sentence which travels a sideways

10:34

in the air and then causes the

10:36

drum skin to vibrate. But in the

10:38

microphone case, we call that drum skin a little

10:41

a diaphragm. And these

10:43

are miniaturized diaphragms and they're separated

10:45

from a stationary plate by

10:47

a fixed air gap and the stationary plate

10:50

is connected to the diaphragm by

10:52

an external circuit. So we charge up

10:54

the diaphragm with one charge and the

10:56

stationary plate with the opposite charge so

10:58

that they're attracting each other. And

11:00

then as that diaphragm vibrates up and down,

11:02

the force that's attracting those two

11:04

will change which we measure over

11:06

time as a voltage. So

11:09

we've now got this electrical signal and

11:11

we need to interpret it as a

11:13

sentence in English. So the way

11:15

that this needs to be done is

11:17

by understanding that words in English

11:19

are divided into little chunks called

11:21

phonemes which make up each word.

11:23

And we use a computer via

11:26

a machine learning process to interpret

11:28

each little chunk of the sound

11:30

in the electrical signal as an

11:32

individual phoneme. So it'll take that

11:34

chunk of sound and output what phoneme

11:36

it is and then we add those

11:38

together to make words and sentences. In

11:41

fact, these days it's actually usually done all in

11:43

one step, not needing the

11:45

phonemes in a process called end-to-end deep

11:48

learning. If you're ever interested

11:50

to Google that. We imagine when we speak

11:52

to our smart speaker that there's almost like

11:54

a little person or something in there that's,

11:56

you know, tithing away at the laptop really

11:58

and searching whatever we want. Like that's how

12:00

it's able to interpret whatever we're saying. But

12:03

you're saying that in the early days, it

12:05

was understanding each part of our word separately

12:08

and just making electrical signals from

12:10

it. Well, exactly. In the early days,

12:12

it really was quite mechanical.

12:14

So the very first voice recognition

12:16

technology was only trained to interpret

12:18

numbers, so it was called Audrey,

12:21

and it was just trained to

12:23

be able to recognize the digits one to

12:25

nine. So that was really interesting, but these

12:27

days, these machine learning technologies are

12:29

really quite clever. In fact,

12:31

our speakers continuously improve

12:34

how good they are at recognizing

12:36

our individual voices. So

12:38

these machine learning models are continuously being

12:40

trained by our use of them, so

12:43

they'll get really good at understanding

12:45

your voice, but maybe not your friend's voice

12:47

if your friend isn't around so often. It's

12:49

really quite clever. Oh, that's amazing,

12:51

isn't it? It's like we've designed these things

12:54

and they are learning as they go, this

12:56

machine learning. How complicated is the inside, Pip?

12:58

If you were to break open a smart

13:01

speaker, very simply, what would you see in

13:03

front of you? These microphones that I was

13:05

talking about are really very small. So I

13:07

was talking about it like a drum, but

13:10

they're actually kind of micron scale, so

13:12

a micron is a thousandth of a

13:14

millimeter. So they're really very small. And

13:16

in fact, designs that people

13:19

are thinking about for the future,

13:21

which include kind of more exotic

13:23

types of crystals called piezoelectric crystals.

13:25

Some designs are including materials

13:27

that are literally one or

13:29

something layer six, so called

13:32

graphene, which is a two dimensional

13:34

material with these piezoelectric

13:36

nanowires. So actually in the

13:38

case of a nanowire, one

13:41

nanometer is a millionth of

13:43

a millimeter, so they're really, really, really

13:45

tiny. You'd only be able to look

13:47

at those structures with a very

13:49

special microscope. So yeah, these

13:51

designs are getting more and more

13:53

sensitive as we, as we engineer

13:55

these nanoscale materials even more carefully.

13:58

Right. Well, thank you. We've covered

14:00

that. Aiden, that

14:02

is how Alexis work. Pip Knight from

14:04

MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thank

14:07

you so much for joining us. All

14:09

right. Let's

14:14

check out this week's Dangerous Dan, then, where

14:16

we take a look at some of the

14:18

most mean, weird, strange, and unique things from

14:20

across the universe. This time, it's

14:23

about a creature from the outside that wants to

14:25

get to your inside. Now,

14:27

this is pretty gruesome. We're going to

14:29

the wilds of Central and South America

14:31

to take a look at the sand

14:33

flea. Its proper

14:35

science name is Tonga Penitrans.

14:38

It's a parasitical flea. And

14:40

parasites, they live off other creatures, right?

14:42

They let you do the hard work.

14:44

They sap your energy in your blood. Normally,

14:47

it lives just underground in the sand,

14:50

our perfect spot. It's

14:53

about 3 centimeters below because it's not

14:55

too hot there. But it's

14:57

not low enough that there isn't a lot of

14:59

oxygen. So they normally live there. That's where their

15:01

babies, their lava, can grow. But

15:03

when they come out, if it gets near

15:06

you, it can bite. It can burrow right

15:08

inside of you. It loves

15:10

to get through thinner skin, like around your

15:12

feet. So near your toenails, rubbish, if you

15:14

want to walk on the sand in barefoot.

15:16

And when it's inside you, it feeds on

15:19

your blood. It starts to grow eggs. These

15:21

can get big. They can puss. They can ooze. They

15:24

can cause a brutal infection in you. And

15:26

these infections can cause severe damage to your

15:28

skin and your muscles around your legs and

15:31

your feet. And then they break free.

15:34

They try and burrow their lava babies

15:36

in the sand. And then it starts

15:38

all over again and all over again.

15:40

And that is why the sand flea,

15:43

this strange, gross, parasitical beast goes straight

15:45

onto our dangerous land list. It's

15:50

the Fun Kids Science Weekly. Time to check

15:52

in with our battle of the sciences. Every

15:55

week, we invite a genius, an expert, to

15:57

come on and tell us why they're here.

16:00

field should be first. Today we

16:02

are headed to the University of Bournemouth

16:05

chatting to Dr. Genevieve Esteban who is

16:07

on, she's a doctor of microbiology and

16:09

she's telling us why studying microbes is

16:11

the best type of science. Genevieve, you

16:14

have one minute to tell us why

16:16

it's the best. You can start in

16:18

three, two, one, go!

16:21

Hello everyone, so I

16:24

think my research is the best

16:26

because I get to see the

16:28

invisible world. I get to

16:30

see organisms that no one else gets

16:33

to see and I feel that is

16:35

very, very special. I find

16:38

new species to science and

16:41

microbes that haven't been found for

16:43

more than 100 years,

16:45

so they are extremely rare but

16:47

I do manage to find them

16:49

and that is great information for

16:51

the scientific world. The other

16:54

very important thing about microorganisms

16:56

is that they are the

16:58

oldest life forms on Earth

17:01

and evolution on Earth wouldn't

17:03

have happened if it wasn't

17:06

for the microorganisms, so they

17:08

are really, really crucial for

17:10

the planet. They

17:12

are also responsible for the functioning

17:14

of the natural world, the

17:17

oceans, lakes, rivers, soils,

17:20

you name it, they all

17:22

depend on the microscopic life

17:25

that lives without, within them.

17:27

Genevieve, that is your minute done,

17:29

so much, thank you for doing

17:32

that, there's so much that I

17:34

need to ask you about. Microbes,

17:36

tiny organisms, you said that you

17:39

discover ones that are 100 years old

17:41

that we didn't know of before. Where

17:44

are we finding them? How do you know where

17:46

to look for these microbes? Well, I

17:48

try to find in habitats

17:50

or ecosystems that are very

17:53

rare in the sense that no one is

17:55

going to look at them, so they are

17:57

usually places that are very smelly, for example.

18:00

because there is no oxygen in them.

18:02

So there is a lot of decomposition

18:04

going on. There's a lot of bacteria

18:06

there. If you think, for example,

18:09

in the sediment of some lakes, then

18:12

I go and sample there with a special

18:14

bottle and then I find

18:16

these organisms after looking

18:19

down the microscope for many, many, many

18:21

hours. And then I find them and

18:23

then I take photos and some of

18:25

them are new species. I have to

18:27

do the whole description, morphological

18:30

descriptions explaining what they look

18:32

like. And then I

18:34

do the DNA as well, and

18:37

then I get it published. So

18:39

it's really fascinating world. And

18:41

all these organisms are just

18:44

one cell. They have one cell only.

18:46

So if we think of our body,

18:48

for example, we have maybe three trillion

18:51

cells. These organisms is

18:53

just one and they have to

18:55

find food that needs to reproduce

18:57

as well. And these

18:59

microorganisms that I study are not

19:01

bacteria. So they are bigger than

19:04

bacteria and they actually eat

19:06

bacteria. So they are very good for

19:08

the environment because they clean the water

19:10

out of bacteria. So if they're

19:13

one cell, these are tiny. How

19:15

do you know that one

19:18

microbe is completely different

19:20

from another when you're looking at them through

19:22

the microscope, what's telling you that these things

19:25

are different and strange and unique? So what

19:27

we do, we look at particular

19:29

features on the cell. So many

19:32

of these organisms that I investigate

19:34

have a proper mouth. So

19:36

we look at using special

19:39

coloring techniques, we

19:41

can look at the structure of

19:44

the mouth. And

19:46

then that is one of the features

19:48

that we use for identifying the different

19:50

species. That's one of them.

19:52

The other feature that we also look at,

19:55

so because these organisms have to swim

19:57

in the environment, for that thing, use

20:00

tiny little hairs that they have.

20:03

So they have like rows, many rows

20:05

of cilia of these

20:07

hairs to swim in

20:09

the environment. So we need to

20:11

count how many of those rows

20:13

of cilia they have and how

20:15

many, the amount of

20:17

cilia of these little hairs that they

20:19

have. So we look at different

20:22

anatomical features if you like and

20:24

then we say oh yeah this

20:26

looks as though this hasn't been

20:29

observed before. We need to go through

20:31

all the scientific literature as well. So

20:33

it is very time consuming but

20:36

also when because I've been looking at

20:38

these microorganisms for a long time now,

20:41

then I have a really very good

20:43

idea whether it's new or not. Well

20:46

there we go making a big

20:48

case for why tiny cells should

20:51

come first in our battle of the sciences.

20:53

Dr Genevieve Esteban from the University of Bournemouth,

20:55

thank you so much for joining us. Thank

20:57

you. Thank you very much to Genevieve for

21:00

coming on the show. Loved hearing all about

21:02

microbes. I think that goes quite high in

21:04

our battle of the sciences. Just

21:07

imagine spending your time searching around

21:09

the world for things that are

21:11

so so small. We can learn more

21:13

about microbes now, what they

21:15

are, where we might find them,

21:17

why they are good and bad

21:20

for you. With our series Benny

21:22

and Mal, they are our microbe

21:24

friends. They dive into the exciting

21:26

world of microbiology. They normally live

21:28

inside your gut but they're travelling

21:30

around helping us find different tiny

21:33

species. And this week they're letting

21:35

us know the different ways that microbes can get

21:37

into your body. Good

21:40

bugs bad bugs. We're support

21:42

from society for general microbiology.

21:46

Microbes get everywhere. They're on us,

21:48

in us and around us. If you've

21:50

got a microscope like me you can

21:52

see them for yourself. Look. All

21:58

right there. That's Benny. He's a helpful

22:00

sort of microbe. Lots of microbes are.

22:02

Not you again. Can't you leave

22:04

us in peace? And that's

22:07

Mal. He's not very nice. A few

22:09

microbes are horrible and they're called

22:11

germs. Charming. I'm not all that

22:13

keen on you either. Hey

22:16

easy Mal, mate. You're not doing yourself any

22:18

favours there. So what's up

22:20

guys? Well, today we thought we'd take

22:22

a bit of a look around that human body of

22:24

yours and check out the microbes you're sharing your body

22:26

with. You're crawling with

22:29

microbes, teeming with them. You're

22:31

making it sound bad there, Mal. Think

22:34

of it more like a superhero shield or,

22:36

erm, I know, a lovely city

22:38

of different types of bacteria all going about their

22:40

business. Just all over

22:43

your body. Especially the warm and wet

22:45

bits. Including in your belly button. Oh,

22:47

I love it when you get a

22:50

good bit of fluff in there. On

22:53

a normal grown up skin you

22:55

could find a trillion bacteria of

22:57

over a thousand different types and

22:59

a handful of fungi too. Including

23:02

yeast. And that grown up wouldn't

23:04

be all like, ah, get

23:06

these microbes off me, would you, Mal?

23:08

He or she or she, good point,

23:10

Mal. He or she would

23:12

just be going, oh, tumpty tumpty

23:14

tum, I feel pretty good today. Maybe

23:17

I'll have some cake for lunch. You

23:19

just wouldn't know they're there. It's just normal. They

23:21

don't do anything to humans. Come on there,

23:23

it's not quite true, is it, Denny? Not

23:27

quite. Yeah, you've got me there.

23:29

Can't lie. Some actually do human

23:31

beings a favour. Totally without being

23:33

asked. Some microbes will

23:36

fight off other invading microbes that could

23:38

be harmful. Those pesky germs. Thoughtful! I

23:40

didn't mean that. I was talking about

23:43

those harmful ones. That's

23:45

true, but can't stress this enough.

23:47

They're a tiny minority. Less than

23:49

5% of microbes and just 1% of bacteria are harmful. We

23:53

call those ones germs. Sorry mate, but

23:56

you're a germ, Mal. Guilty as

23:58

charged. Ha! There might

24:00

not be many of us germs

24:02

compared to all the helpful microbes,

24:04

but like most bacteria we're always

24:06

looking for a way inside the

24:08

human body. It's a great place

24:10

for us to be warm and

24:12

wet, perfect for making cookies of

24:15

ourselves. Difference is that when we

24:17

start making cookies, you might start

24:19

feeling sick. Go on then, spill

24:21

the beans on how it's done.

24:23

From the top, the first way

24:25

inside is... Through

24:28

the nose, straight up the hooter,

24:30

you can breathe the germs in and

24:32

when you pick your nose, any germs

24:34

on your finger are going to get

24:37

a super speedy shortcut inside the way

24:39

and I love it when that happens.

24:41

Next way in... Through

24:44

your mouth, if you're thinking of

24:46

eating that bogey you just pulled out

24:48

of your nose, you'll be giving me

24:50

or one of my closest friends a

24:52

lovely trip inside your body. Last

24:55

way... Through your

24:57

skin, if you have cuts or

24:59

grazes. So, the really important thing to

25:01

take away from what Malz just said is that

25:03

all three of those ways are pretty easy

25:06

to do something about. Don't pick

25:08

your nose, that's one isn't it? Don't

25:10

eat bogeys, obviously, that's just nasty.

25:13

Make sure you cover up cuts with a plaster

25:15

and make sure you wash your hands if they

25:17

might have picked up more germs than normal. Don't

25:20

know why you're telling them all that?

25:22

They'll be washing helpful microbes like you

25:24

always do. Yeah, but I see the bigger

25:26

picture, don't I? Humans need to

25:28

look after themselves, no different to you or me. Human

25:31

bodies are seriously impressive when it comes to

25:33

keeping germs at bay, aren't they? Tell

25:37

me about it, it's so annoying.

25:40

Shall I do the honours? Are you my guest? All

25:43

that disgusting, sticky mucus you have

25:45

up your nose and windpipe traps

25:47

the invading germs and tiny hairs

25:49

waff them into the throat where

25:52

you lot cough, sneeze or blow

25:54

the air. So you

25:56

might want to think about using a tissue to

25:58

cover your mouth, otherwise you're passing the germs

26:01

onto someone else. Little tip from me there.

26:03

I hate tissues and handkerchiefs, they

26:06

just get in the way. So

26:08

there's that. Scabs. There

26:11

another way we get lost out. They're

26:13

not just there for picking. In

26:15

fact that's a good reason not to pick your

26:17

scabs. I know it's hard. We

26:19

all love a good picky scab don't we?

26:21

Be honest. Oh I've got another

26:23

one. Tears. You know when you cry

26:26

they're actually antiseptic. They can

26:28

kill germs. I couldn't believe it either

26:30

first time I heard. It's like a

26:32

superpower isn't it? Not as scary for

26:34

us lot as the stomach. If we're

26:37

lucky enough to get all of the

26:39

way inside your tummy it's like being

26:41

dropped into a swimming pool of acid.

26:44

Stomach's definitely the worst but a lot

26:46

of the troublemakers just won't make it

26:48

through the skin. It's a pretty tough

26:50

barrier to break through and it even

26:52

produces substances to kill off germs. Oh?

26:56

I think I might possibly be about

26:58

to divide. How about you

27:00

Mal? Yeah! Biffly feeling divided.

27:03

Dividing is something we bacteria can't

27:05

help doing. Making copies of ourselves

27:07

by splitting in two basically. Here

27:10

we go! So

27:16

anyway we better go. As you

27:19

can see microbes come in all sorts.

27:22

Life majority don't bother humans at all.

27:24

It can even be helpful. I

27:27

hope Mal and I have been out

27:29

for microbes for you today. We definitely

27:31

have thanks Betty and Mal. See you

27:33

next time. Follow

27:36

the adventures of Betty and

27:39

Mal on funkidslife.com/bugs. Good

27:41

bug bad bug. Produce and support from

27:43

the Society for General Microbiology. And

27:48

that is it for this week's Fun Kids Sides Weekly.

27:50

Thank you so much for listening. If you have anything

27:52

sciency that you want answered on the show next week

27:54

we get a genius on every time for you. A

27:56

proper expert in the field answering your question. Make sure

27:58

you leave that as a voice. for me on

28:00

the free Fun Kids app or at funkidslive.com. You

28:03

heard from Benny and Mel today, loads more

28:06

episodes from them, and other brilliant podcast series

28:08

that we've got for you on Google, Spotify,

28:10

Apple, wherever you get your shows, they're on

28:12

the free Fun Kids app at funkidslive.com too.

28:15

And Fun Kids, we are a children's radio

28:17

station from the UK. You can listen

28:19

all over the place on our app, on the

28:21

website, and if you've got a smart speaker, like

28:24

we heard earlier, with Bip, with its tiny little

28:26

microphone, make sure you wake it up and ask

28:28

it to play Fun Kids.