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Cheese

Cheese

Released Tuesday, 6th February 2024
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Cheese

Cheese

Cheese

Cheese

Tuesday, 6th February 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
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Episode Transcript

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0:00

SciShow Tangents is brought to you by

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2:01

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the

2:03

lightly competitive science knowledge showcase. I'm your

2:06

host, Hank Green, and joining me this

2:08

week as always is science expert in

2:10

Forbes 30 Under 30 Education Luminary, Sarri

2:13

Riley. Hello. And our

2:15

resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hi. I

2:18

have a question for you guys. Okay.

2:21

Tell me the name of your pet and then the name that

2:23

you ended up calling your pet. Oh.

2:26

Lilu and Leeloo. I don't mess

2:29

around with those alternate names. You don't

2:31

have like a

2:33

Lulilau or anything? Nope. You don't

2:36

call her Leloo Dallas Multipath? We

2:39

used to call her that more often than we

2:41

do now. She's just Leloo now. She's transcended that

2:43

reference and it's barely just

2:46

Leloo. But I understand the

2:48

compulsion. My brother's name is Will and we call

2:50

him Wilbur and sometimes we

2:52

call him Birdman because it's Wilbur

2:54

turned into Bird, turned into

2:56

Birdman. Birdman. So

2:59

you don't have a story for your pet,

3:01

but you do for your brother. More accurate,

3:03

yeah. Our cat's name

3:05

is Inky, which is also something that you

3:08

just say and it has the same cadence

3:10

as Leloo. But we call her so many

3:12

different things. Stinko, Bug,

3:14

Bean. We have

3:17

a subset of nicknames when she's

3:19

being a gremlin in particular ways.

3:21

So sometimes we call her Grem

3:23

for Gremlin for short. Sometimes we call

3:25

her Dennis when she's being a menace.

3:28

Sometimes we call her Marvin when she's

3:31

starving. So

3:34

she's got so many names, but

3:36

they change depending on her behavior.

3:39

She is almost a different

3:41

animal. Yeah,

3:43

at all moments of the day. When

3:46

she's being great. Oh, Inky, you're being so

3:48

cute. When she's being a grem,

3:50

Stinko. And go menace. Yeah.

3:53

I have two cats. We

3:57

have our new cat Chester, who already...

4:00

He's gone from Chester to Chester cheese

4:02

to just cheese. I think maybe

4:04

it was Chester Cheetah first Was Chester

4:06

to Chester Cheetah to Chester cheese? And

4:09

now just cheese we call him mostly we call

4:11

him cheese Not

4:15

really a cat's name and then we have

4:18

gummy bear who is we

4:20

went from gummy We call

4:22

him gum and gummy and gumball

4:24

and gums And

4:26

when one day we came

4:28

home from something and my son opened

4:30

the door Because gummy bear is always

4:33

there when you open the door when

4:35

you're coming home Just sitting there and

4:37

orange said the expected gums And

4:39

so we call him the expected

4:42

gums. That's really good. The expected

4:44

gums and cheese sounds like the

4:46

best like buddy cartoon

4:48

characters Catherine also

4:50

walked by gummy bear this morning He was

4:52

like hanging his arm off the cat tower

4:55

like cats do and Catherine looked at gummy

4:57

bear said Piggy

5:00

dippin ham hock ding dong Which

5:03

are all things that we say when he does

5:05

that We call it piggy

5:07

dippin Which is a reference to it online video

5:09

and then ham hock came from us and then

5:11

ding dong was our old cat one She would

5:13

hang her tail off the tower Pull

5:16

on and go ding dong until we just had to

5:18

say ding dong and she would lift her tail up

5:26

And I was like did you say did you say

5:28

piggy dip in a ham hock ding dong She's

5:31

like I was I didn't think you were there We

5:36

call that chicken wing behavior Every

5:39

week here on slideshow tangents We get together to try

5:42

to one-up amaze and delight each other with science facts

5:44

while also trying to stay on topic

5:46

Our panelists are playing for glory and

5:48

for hank bucks the currency in this

5:50

podcast Which I have not mentioned outside

5:52

of this intro for at least over

5:54

a year according to he Hank

5:57

bucks. It has become quite abstract

6:02

We'll be awarded as we play it at the

6:04

end of the episode. One of them will be

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crowned the winner. SciShow Tangents is brought to you

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8:01

to get 50% off. So

8:04

as always, we're going to introduce

8:06

this week's topic with the traditional

8:08

science poem, usually foods

8:11

are pretty cut and dry, potatoes, a

8:13

potato, a fries, a fry, and you

8:15

get kind of weird in the noodle

8:17

zone or a chocolate versus a blueberry

8:19

scone. But usually you sort

8:21

of know what you're eating except for

8:24

cheese, which can be quite deceiving. You

8:26

might get a gooey process square that

8:28

melts on toasty bread or a hard

8:30

grainy slice from a big old wheel

8:32

that weighs seven times your head. A

8:34

soft stringy lump that stretched from curds

8:37

or a pillowy thickened whey or a

8:39

funky cube that reeks of feet or

8:41

has ribbons of blue gray. Then there's

8:43

sprays and cans or shredded blends or

8:45

neon dust to try. And

8:48

lest we forget the cheese in quotes

8:50

with nary a dairy inside. If

8:53

you have us all to learn a

8:55

few names of the hundreds or thousands

8:57

vying for fame to help us with

8:59

confidence, say yes, please, when presented with

9:01

a board of mystery cheese, it's

9:06

the topic of the day, like my cat

9:08

and you've, you've already let slip. But it's

9:10

not easy to define what a cheese is.

9:13

I thought you were going to tell us that a

9:15

lot of those things weren't technically cheeses, but they are

9:17

all indeed cheeses. It's

9:20

not actually that hard to name what a cheese is. Is,

9:23

is easy cheese, cheese? I think it's

9:25

a cheese product. Cheese whiz has, has

9:27

dairy in it. I think usually, I

9:30

think a lot of the processed cheeses,

9:32

so spreadable cheese, cheese whiz, whatnot. What

9:34

we used to call in college, uh, regular

9:38

cheese, which was craft American single.

9:42

Usually there's some sort of, well, I guess

9:44

it depends. There's some sort of cheese percentage

9:47

of it, just less than buying a hunk of

9:49

cheese. So it's like it takes, you

9:51

take some cheddar and then you add a bunch

9:54

of additives to make it more spreadable, sprayable,

9:57

dustable, or flappable.

10:00

I mean, calling it American cheese

10:02

is the greatest insult our nation

10:05

has ever received.

10:08

Also, all of the other nations

10:10

too, like, we call it American

10:12

cheese. That means South America to

10:14

some extent must feel responsible, which

10:16

they definitely are not. They

10:18

didn't have anything to do with it. That's United States

10:20

cheese. Where

10:24

was it invented, huh? It was definitely invented

10:26

in America. It was invented in a laboratory

10:28

at Kraft headquarters. James L. Kraft patented the

10:30

method. It was probably some guy, and then

10:33

he was like, I invented this.

10:35

Yeah, this is really the cheese that built

10:38

a billion dollar corporation right here. He was

10:40

Canadian. Canadian cheese! This

10:46

is the biggest news that

10:48

has ever been discovered on

10:50

SciShow Tansions. Is

10:52

he Canadian? Canada

10:55

is Canadian. Canada says

10:57

North America. That's true. But

10:59

we all know what they mean. Yeah, but that's not what you mean.

11:01

We all know what they mean. Yeah. Yeah,

11:04

he immigrated to Buffalo, New York in 1902

11:06

from Ontario, Canada. Famous

11:10

American Canadian Kraft cheese

11:12

man. His actually first name is Kraft. His

11:15

last name is Cheeseman. Anyway,

11:18

sorry what's cheese? Uh, you know, it's the

11:20

thing is... Weird

11:26

milk. Weird milk. Uh,

11:28

basically it's a cheese describes

11:30

the process of making cheese.

11:32

And so you take a

11:34

milk product, milk, cream, skim

11:36

milk, buttermilk, some combination, coagulate

11:40

it with some sort of

11:42

coagulating agent. In some

11:44

cases that is an acid. So

11:46

like paneer cheese is by

11:49

adding an acid to milk. A

11:51

lot of times it is enzymes

11:53

that we add to it. Some of the

11:55

original cheese is made

11:57

using rennet, which is... substance

12:00

within the stomachs of ruminant

12:03

babies, so like baby cows, baby

12:05

sheep, baby goats. Wild.

12:08

Sweet. Are they okay when we get

12:10

it from them? If they think probably not. Oh, no. Okay.

12:13

They eat their meat and then we use their stomachs.

12:15

But the reason they have it is because milk

12:19

usually goes through your system pretty quick, but

12:21

they have natural coagulants so that when they

12:23

drink milk from their parents and get in

12:25

their tummies, it coagulates so it lasts longer

12:27

and they can extract more nutrients from it

12:29

because that's like the whole thing that ruminants

12:31

do is have stuff hang around in their

12:34

stomachs for a while. And so at

12:37

some point, humans probably stored

12:39

milk in a stomach as a

12:41

sack because it's also in a

12:43

like nature's handbag is a

12:45

stomach when it's outside the

12:48

body. And

12:50

then it started coagulating. And then if

12:52

you remove the liquid or you can

12:54

remove some portion of the liquid and compress

12:56

the solid stuff, then the solid stuff

12:59

is technically cheese. At that point, that's

13:01

cheese. That point, it's cheese. Even

13:03

if there's some way mixed in like cottage cheese

13:06

is a mixture of curds and whey. Hottage

13:08

cheese. If you

13:10

glopped a group of cottage cheese, and I

13:12

didn't know what that was, and I ate it, I

13:15

would not say that's cheese. Yeah. You

13:18

might be looking in the yogurt family, maybe.

13:20

Yeah. I can see

13:22

it. It tastes

13:24

cheesy, but I don't know. I feel

13:26

like a cheese needs to hold its

13:28

shape. And not quite cheese is so tricky

13:31

to pin down. It's like there's soft

13:33

cheeses, hard cheeses, bready cheeses, stinky

13:36

cheeses, sweet cheeses. I feel like

13:38

that's actually kind of a pretty specific definition. As

13:40

long as you'll take out the things that have

13:42

quotation marks around it, then

13:44

cheese, cheese products have cheese

13:46

in them. And cheese is a thing

13:49

that is like the solids left over after

13:51

coagulation, or whatever you called it. Yeah.

13:54

Coagulation, yes. Okay. But

13:57

then, I don't know. I see now I'm poking holes in

13:59

my own. Out on Sacharov a whole trying

14:01

to defend she is. Is. Tofu cheese,

14:04

Because. No. made on my Mark

14:06

collaborated. Oh man. Route Mail will know

14:08

what are you married when we say

14:10

milk Fat milk with quotation marks around

14:12

it. I think I agree with Hank

14:14

though and that this is not a

14:16

complicated or turkey definition at all. Think

14:18

it's just comes in different flavors? You

14:20

know it's I think there's very brave

14:22

for having Britain. having brought his toe

14:24

food sees into the conversation. The as

14:27

a side note I section at the

14:29

grocery store where all the cheese goes

14:31

sour makes it pretty. yeah. secure it

14:33

out. Well. That actually does. I

14:35

will. I'm gonna completely make the case.

14:37

that craft the medium sees his nazis.

14:41

Were has got some.

14:44

It's not made than the way that

14:46

Sarah got any in it. Just like

14:48

my sandwich does like pizza is, it

14:51

sees himself as Canadian, sees as Nazis

14:53

right? Here I am. I'm

14:56

so mad of that seeks eighty.

14:59

It just doesn't feel right. It is like year and

15:01

it doesn't feel like we're in the. Denial

15:04

the access as bad as miss attribution

15:06

home and I think if it was

15:08

called Canadian sees everybody would. Treat.

15:10

It nicer him be more respectful of it

15:12

in my opinion. Maybe it would treat us

15:14

nicer and be more respectful of us san

15:16

that to have this the boss of the

15:18

light see this system on me as you

15:20

see a little seven times there as it

15:22

goes down with air. Yeah grilled you know

15:24

I bet it has. I probably would have

15:26

less lactose than most cheese so maybe it

15:28

is a little bit of and kind of

15:31

the season the old belly so were discovered

15:33

sees come from. Said

15:35

the word seized comes from the Latin

15:37

word Tcs. Ah much is where the

15:39

word he said so. I'm strong and

15:41

Ny yeah. thirty so and all that, or

15:44

it's. Like say sin is. The

15:46

proteins that are found in mammalian

15:48

melts that is like by. Eighty

15:50

percent of the proteins and cow's milk. So

15:52

and milan glee makes sense, but also gave

15:55

rise. To. The words Cheese. Think.

15:57

They were basically pronounced same way an old.

16:00

This. Man. A before

16:02

the Latin. The. Linguists or

16:04

duking it out with each other, some

16:06

of them think that it comes from

16:08

a proto Indo European root of. Quiet

16:10

to ferment or to become

16:12

sour and another person is

16:14

like there's no way. Flatten,

16:17

Has que sounds and at so there's

16:19

no way we could have dropped the.

16:22

The Quad. To. Turn it into

16:24

cheese from there. So I are. Now

16:26

I'm not painting a very dramatically by.

16:30

Built the number lot more than it turned out of

16:32

the for a Css. And

16:34

he'd. I guess in linguists term is this

16:36

is pretty much of a day of know.

16:39

Etymology can be found which does not require

16:41

some poorly founded assumptions which I think was.

16:43

The. In the person who thinks it's unknown.

16:46

Mainly. Monday get says. The.

16:48

For brutal, Say, Talladega does the trick with

16:50

all of these words that we made up

16:52

with. Stinky Cheese People Are Not stinky cheese

16:55

people. And we think I'm not a stinky

16:57

cheese person. I am. I'm not a stinky

16:59

cheese man. I. Am. A.

17:01

Mild lad. I'm a

17:03

professional I am I so I don't

17:06

like flavor of a time sensitive man.

17:08

I have realized recently that my favorite

17:10

cuisine is like what worry over the

17:13

Grinch with the where it's like. Very

17:15

garlic heavy, very tangy, Vinegar.

17:18

That kind of just nasty Oliver's I love

17:20

it so much I think the grown up.

17:23

To. Be. I.

17:25

Mean goggles a very unhappy ma'am girl

17:27

to be a happy garg. A million

17:29

I have one hundred kills Nerves further

17:31

than Folio I can I just be

17:33

warrior. The Grants. They both

17:35

are happy. know of warriors happy

17:37

and very heavy. She seems like

17:39

filings happy but like angry about

17:42

it. Yeah, you could be happy

17:44

and angry. Happy isn't the opposite

17:46

of anger. Yep, That's her. Now

17:49

is. Like a gleeful you for is

17:51

a gleeful gargle Now. Anyway,

17:56

that's not the thing we're going to do for a

17:58

game show today instead of that were to be

18:00

playing the secret ingredient. Of course we are,

18:02

it's cheese day. One of the incredible things

18:04

about cheese is how many variations

18:07

we have come upon with the same basic

18:09

premise. Over time, that ingenuity means

18:11

that seemingly unusual ingredients like fungi, mites,

18:13

and maggots have become part of long-standing

18:15

traditions in the world of cheese. So

18:17

today we're going to be highlighting some

18:19

of the strange ingredients of cheese in

18:21

a game of secret ingredients. I will

18:24

describe a type of cheese to you,

18:26

but I will leave out one of

18:28

the ingredients that makes the cheese what

18:30

it is. I'll give you three

18:32

options for what the secret ingredient is, and it's

18:34

up to you to figure out which one it

18:36

is. So you actually get multiple choices,

18:38

this secret ingredient, which is going to make it less

18:42

difficult. Are you ready? Yes. Our

18:44

first cheese on the menu is Cornish Yarg,

18:47

a cheese based on a 17th century recipe.

18:49

That's real, I

18:51

didn't make it up. That was

18:53

rediscovered and adapted by a group

18:55

of cheese makers in Cornwall. This

18:57

semi-hard cheese is made from cow's

18:59

milk and has a distinct mushroom

19:01

flavor. But what's particularly notable is

19:03

a very local ingredient that is

19:05

used to make its rind, which

19:07

not only acts as the rind

19:09

itself, but also provides the mushroom

19:11

flavor and enzymes needed to mature the

19:14

cheese. What is the

19:16

secret ingredient? Is it A,

19:18

lichen that grows on the

19:20

Cornish cliffside, B, stinging nettles

19:22

from the Cornish countryside, or

19:24

C, sand taken from Cornish

19:26

beaches? Lichen seems the most

19:28

mushroomy, doesn't it? But

19:31

yeah, lichen's got fungi in it. So this

19:33

is like in the rind or the whole

19:35

rind is made out of this, or you

19:37

don't know? I think that the rind is

19:39

made out of this. Okay, okay.

19:42

And sand. I'm

19:45

just gonna go with sand because that sounds like

19:47

a cool story that I'd like to hear. I

19:49

don't know why that would taste like mushrooms. I

19:51

would avoid the rind of a cheese that was

19:54

rinded in sand, that's for sure. That's true. And

19:56

yeah, sometimes you sample the rind. That

19:58

would be a big thing. I would be

20:01

mad if I didn't go with the obvious one. I think it's lichen.

20:03

I think you can pat that into a basket It's

20:05

shape and pour in cheese. Well Cornish

20:08

yarg is named for Alan Gray.

20:10

Do you know why or how?

20:13

You said a lot of words I'll

20:15

get to the answer. But first it's

20:17

named for Alan Gray. How

20:19

is Cornish yarg named for Alan Gray?

20:24

Backwards yarg So

20:28

he found he found an old book

20:30

called English the English housewife and it

20:32

can contain instructions on various tasks Including

20:34

how to make a number of cheeses

20:36

One of the recipes included a cheese

20:38

Matured on a bed of stinging nettles

20:40

though There weren't a lot of specifics on

20:43

how to make this cheese and gray

20:45

started testing out different versions of the

20:47

recipe and created Cornish yarg Eventually selling

20:49

his recipe to another farmer that further

20:51

tinkered with the recipe because of

20:53

course We got to give everybody credit for the fish

20:56

cheese The nettles didn't get

20:58

in it like ended up being an important part

21:00

of the recipe and cheese makers who've worked on

21:02

and have tested out different aspects

21:04

of the nettles like how much should be

21:06

used and how to wrap the mold and

21:10

not the fungus molds But the mold

21:12

that is molded inside of the nettles keep

21:14

the cheese protected in a breathable coating That

21:17

allows for specific molds to get attracted into

21:19

the cheese and the nettles are also gathered

21:21

from The Cornwall countryside in

21:23

the summer and then cleaned and frozen so that they could

21:25

be used throughout the year And that

21:28

cheese is in the nettles for about five weeks

21:30

while it matures I think my problem there was

21:32

that I had no idea what stinging nettles were

21:34

I was picturing like birds I got a you

21:37

know like no like st Like

21:39

like the things that get stuck on your

21:41

shirt like when you walk past a specific

21:43

plant, you know, it's just yeah It's a

21:45

leafy plant, but they do is it is

21:47

very stingy. I hate them. They make you

21:49

real puffy looking looks like in 2022

21:52

the BBC reported that the most expensive

21:54

cheese in the world is pule

21:56

a Siberian cheese I'm

22:00

making it up. Named

22:03

after Pierre Elloupe, no,

22:06

it's the Siberian G's that

22:08

became famous when the tennis

22:10

player Novak Djokovic reportedly bought

22:12

the entire stock from the

22:15

one farm that produces it. The

22:17

color was yellowish and the BBC reporter

22:19

sent to try it so that it

22:22

tasted sweet, clean, and mild. According

22:24

to cheese.com, fuel sells for about $576 per pound,

22:26

a heavy price that results from

22:31

the fact that the source of milk is

22:33

not particularly bountiful. What animal

22:36

produces milk for fuel?

22:38

Is it yak, donkey, or

22:41

deer? Oh,

22:44

well, deer are always running all over the place

22:46

around. You can't pin them down to milk them.

22:48

So I think there wouldn't be a lot of

22:50

deer milk, and that's my guess. There's a deer.

22:53

I think yak just stand there and let you milk it.

22:55

I'm gonna guess donkey because it kind of sounds like

22:57

mule. As a luxury item, you

22:59

say this is made of the finest deer

23:01

milk. You know a rich person's gonna be

23:03

like, don't mind if I do. Donkey

23:06

milk? Shrek really skyrocketed

23:08

donkey fame though, I feel like.

23:11

It's not for the rich and famous. Yeah.

23:14

He's a tastemaker. Yeah. Rich

23:17

donkey is this from precisely. The

23:19

one that made babies with a

23:21

dragon or a regular donkey? Very

23:23

luxurious. Only one rare

23:25

dragon donkey. Yeah. Expensive

23:27

cheese. Actual answer,

23:30

dragon. No, donkey. You're

23:32

a dragon. The

23:36

recipe is a secret, but one of the

23:38

few things we know about it is that

23:40

it's made using the milk from Balkan donkeys,

23:42

which is a tough ingredient because while it

23:44

takes about 25 liters of their milk to

23:46

make one kilogram of the cheese, a female

23:48

donkely will only

23:50

make around 300 milliliters of milk per

23:52

day. On top of the low milk

23:54

yield that comes from working with donkeys,

23:56

donkey's milk is tough to use for

23:59

cheese because It has a low

24:01

amount of caisson. So to use

24:03

their milk for the cheese, it needs to be mixed

24:05

with goat's milk. Cheese is 60% donkey milk and 40%

24:07

goat's milk. Ah,

24:09

this cheese doesn't sound very exciting to me. Seems

24:12

like it's only expensive because that one guy bought

24:14

it all. Well, here's what it makes me think.

24:16

I wanna eat like every

24:18

cheese. I wanna eat cheese made

24:21

from every mammal's milk. Agreed.

24:23

Except people. All

24:26

right. Once you get done with all

24:28

the rest of them, don't you think you'll be like, I

24:31

guess I have to. You're right. I guess it's

24:33

time. Working on my blog and it's just like, I

24:35

don't have anything else to post. I

24:37

guess I have to. It's the last one. All

24:39

right. So someone has a point now and that

24:41

person is Sari. Next question,

24:43

Emmental, that's a normal cheese I've

24:45

heard of, is a popular Swiss

24:48

cheese made from cow's milk that's

24:50

often found in fondue and cheese

24:52

plates. There are different varieties of

24:54

Emmental and the flavor itself can

24:56

change based on how long you age it.

24:59

And sometimes what matters is not just what

25:01

you put in the cheese or how long

25:03

it's aged, but what the cheese is surrounded

25:05

by. In 2018, a Swiss cheese maker wanted

25:07

to test a theory he had about Emmental

25:10

aging. So he collaborated with the University of

25:12

the Arts in Bern on his theory. What

25:15

did they do to the cheese's

25:17

surroundings as the cheese matured? A,

25:20

they kept the cheese in rooms, painted different

25:23

colors. B, they aged

25:25

the cheese in containers with

25:27

different fabric interiors. Or C,

25:29

they played different genres of

25:31

music to the cheese. Well,

25:34

I feel like the

25:36

colors would do absolutely nothing. Light

25:38

on the cheese. Unless

25:40

there's like something that was really photosensitive

25:42

in it. Fabric, you're

25:45

touching the cheese. So

25:47

any sort of stuff could get in there. That's

25:50

just too obvious kind of though. Oh yeah, because

25:52

you're just like dunking it. Like maybe a cheese

25:54

recipe would already say, gotta use

25:56

this fabric and everybody would just be like, whatever, makes

25:59

sense to me. Speaking of fabric and food, did

26:01

you know that this is becoming a

26:03

widely known fact now, which is amazing? First

26:07

pink lemonade was made pink

26:09

by putting into the lemonade a circus

26:12

performer's tights. Wow.

26:14

Is that true? Why do I

26:17

feel like I read it somewhere in

26:19

one of those hundred facts books

26:21

that I now know not to

26:23

bring up trivia knowledge from? That

26:25

one turns out to have been

26:28

accurate. The person who

26:30

made pink lemonade not to be trusted.

26:32

I'm going to go with the music

26:34

one. I think I got... Music.

26:37

I feel compelled. I think I'm also going

26:39

to go with the music. It feels like an art student

26:41

thing to do. Well, Swiss

26:44

cheese maker, Beat Wamfler, his name

26:46

is Beat Wamfler, and his

26:48

collaborators at the university ran their experiment

26:51

using nine 22-pound wheels of cheese, which

26:53

were kept

26:55

for six months in their own wooden crates

26:57

in a cheese cellar. Each

26:59

cheese was hooked up to a mini

27:02

transducer, which sends sound waves directly into

27:04

the cheese. From there, the cheese

27:06

was stuck listening to a 24-hour

27:08

loop of one song. The

27:12

group tried out music from different genres.

27:14

They had the magic flute from Mozart.

27:17

They had Stairway to Heaven from Led

27:19

Zeppelin. They had Monolith from Yellow. I

27:21

don't know what that is. I don't

27:23

know. But they had a band

27:25

called Quests,

27:28

and they played Techno by Vril,

27:30

which I'm sure is an artist

27:32

of electronic music.

27:36

As controls, there was a cheese left to

27:38

listen to silence, which I now feel bad

27:40

for for some reason. And three cheeses

27:42

that were stuck listening to a tone that

27:45

was either high, medium, or low frequency. They

27:47

adduced that the sound waves traveled through the

27:49

cheese bodies, and the only

27:51

test of this experiment really focused on were

27:53

taste tests. They gave it to food

27:55

technologists and a panel of culinary experts to judge

27:58

in a blind taste test and enjoy it. Gen.

28:00

The. Hip Hop Cheese. Seem. To

28:02

have. The. Strongest flavors lamb

28:04

that's a perfect name for a

28:07

guys playing music to cheese the

28:09

specifically been stressing be great for

28:11

hims beat. The left him

28:14

as one for which sounds like the noise that

28:16

comes out of the. The. Speaker when

28:18

you're listen and of real sense of the

28:20

air through a hunter. he's a young I

28:22

I'd try some out but I don't think

28:25

that it would be worth it. Next up

28:27

with an innocent break and then. Attendance

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in your campaigns vast complicated computer workspace.

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Desperate you turn to your cubicle make

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cabin and the ask, excuse me Kevin,

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could you tell me where I might

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find the queue to earnings report leaves

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and and like four seconds Kevin has

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pulled up in the skies. A real

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piece of work, giving you a nasty

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look up in a lot. Of attitude.

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Be telling everyone in the office about

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morning coffee and so a shame in

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All right, everybody welcome back series in the lead

32:29

with two to Sam's one Time

32:32

for the fact off our panelists have brought science facts

32:34

present to me in an attempt to blow my mind

32:36

and after they Presented their

32:38

facts. I will judge them and award my

32:40

Hank box anyway But the

32:42

decide who goes first I have a trivia question The

32:45

Washington State University creamery produces a canned

32:47

white cheddar cheese called cougar gold which

32:50

has been around since the 1940s I

32:53

love cheese Every

32:56

one of them sounds made up as

32:58

it was produced to send troops overseas Creating

33:01

a canned cheese was a challenge because the

33:03

bacteria inside cheese produce carbon dioxide which would

33:05

explode the cans So

33:07

the inventors of cougar gold were able

33:10

to assemble a new bacteria culture that

33:12

produced less co2 The result is

33:14

a cheese that could be stored for quite a while in 2010

33:17

the parents of a former Washington State

33:19

University alumna Called the creamery to let

33:21

them know that they were driving through

33:23

with a can of cougar gold that

33:26

might have been one of the oldest

33:28

unopened cans at the time how old

33:30

was that can of cheese uh

33:35

55 years What's

33:40

the maximum amount like so like 70

33:43

just as old it was the first can that rolled

33:46

off like the canning thing well, you know It's gonna

33:48

sound less impressive now that I've set it all up,

33:50

but 22 23 23 year old If

33:54

they called me I'd say throw it away the

34:00

90s or something is that right yeah

34:02

no it's from the 2000s I don't care about

34:04

this it

34:07

was in 2007 that's the year

34:09

I was born so I'd say bring you the cheese

34:11

actually this is exciting cheese do you guys know about

34:14

cup of cheese no we fart in

34:16

your hand and then you put it on someone's

34:18

face and like that the first

34:21

time I ever saw someone do cup of cheese

34:23

in real life I was like that's the best

34:25

thing I've ever seen that's disgusting and I was a

34:28

grown man I was like 30 years old if you

34:30

ever do that to me I'm never talking to you

34:32

again oh I would never do it to a person

34:34

but I did watch Lee Newton do

34:37

it to Joe Beretta and I was very

34:39

I was very happy so

34:42

yeah the cheese was stamped

34:45

October 9th 1987 and the

34:48

can of cheese had been given to a couple

34:50

by their daughter and they had just kept it

34:53

around thinking that they would one day have that

34:55

cheese we all have that can of cheese absolutely

34:57

well you don't see us calling the factory and

34:59

saying I got such

35:01

old beans yeah the

35:04

cheese was opened which

35:07

seems like a bad decision and it was

35:09

a little more dry than it usually would

35:11

be but overall still tasted pretty good according

35:13

to the people who put it in their

35:15

literal human balance all

35:20

right that means the surrogate to go first

35:22

that was a long question the humans experience

35:25

a whole range of emotions and one

35:27

of the trickier parts of being a

35:29

neuroscientist or psychologist is studying the bad

35:31

feeling ones like pain or anger or

35:34

disgust you want to make sure

35:36

people consent to being made uncomfortable and

35:38

some of these sensations can veer on

35:40

being dangerous our understanding of

35:43

disgust for example is that it's a distancing

35:45

response where you feel nauseated or

35:47

your body might be trying to protect itself

35:49

from a toxin or potential infection or something

35:52

you're allergic to so it's not the most

35:54

ideal or ethical research methodology to study discussed

35:56

by exposing subjects to like multi Tupperware or

35:58

sewage that's hard to find something that's

36:00

both easy to access and universally disgusting

36:03

because people have all different cultural contexts.

36:06

But there is a food that is

36:08

both polarizing and completely safe as long as

36:10

you're not eating a 23 year old can

36:12

of it, which is cheese. And part of

36:14

that is because cheese comes in so many

36:16

different varieties, including ones with really strong odors

36:18

and funky flavors that people either love or

36:21

love to hate. So there was a study published

36:23

in October 2016 called

36:25

the neural bases have discussed four

36:27

cheese and fMRI studies where

36:30

researchers conducted several different experiments and cheese

36:32

and discussed. Their main one was comparing

36:34

the brains of people who liked cheese

36:37

and people who didn't and

36:39

who were disgusted by it as they smelled it

36:41

and looked at pictures of cheese. So

36:43

we got 15 participants who liked cheese, didn't

36:45

have to love it just like it.

36:48

15 participants who didn't like cheese or were disgusted by

36:50

it and made sure that their noses were working and

36:53

they weren't sick at the time of the study. Does

36:56

not seem like they asked whether any of these

36:58

participants were lactose intolerant or not, at least that

37:00

I could find in their methodology. Would

37:03

have been a question that I might have asked, but maybe

37:05

they did. They just didn't write about it or

37:07

I missed it. And while their

37:09

brains were getting scanned using fMRI, which

37:12

is functional magnetic resonance imaging, which basically

37:14

measures how blood is moving in your

37:17

brain. And it's a pretty standard technique

37:19

to estimate which regions are active at

37:21

a certain time. They had people

37:23

smell 12 different things, six

37:25

different cheeses. So blue cheese, cheddar

37:28

cheese, goat cheese, Gruyere, Parmesan and

37:30

Tomé. Tomé, that's the only one I

37:32

haven't heard of. And six

37:34

non-cheese foods, cucumber, fennel,

37:37

mushroom, pate, peanut and

37:39

pizza. Seems like very

37:41

broad cross section of non-cheese foods.

37:44

Peanut. What they found is that

37:46

what they called the anti-cheese people

37:48

had stronger activation in some parts

37:50

of the basal ganglia region of

37:52

the brain than the pro-cheese people. Specifically,

37:56

these regions called the globulus halitis

37:58

and the ceti. substantia nigra.

38:00

And these regions are usually

38:02

associated with reward pathways. And

38:05

so what's weird is they seem

38:07

like they're also involved in these

38:09

anti-reward discussed behaviors as well. So

38:11

the same regions that are saying,

38:14

yes, you want this, are also

38:16

saying even more strongly, no, you don't

38:18

want this. And then plus the

38:20

ventral pallidum, which is a brain region that

38:22

helps us process and move forward with behaviors

38:25

that we're motivated to do, was significantly less

38:27

active in the people who were disgusted by

38:29

cheese than those who liked it. So the

38:32

desire to want or eat or act was

38:35

somehow suppressed in their brains when they smelled

38:37

or looked at a picture of cheese. They

38:39

were like, oh, there aren't any

38:41

sweeping conclusions here because it's a small study.

38:43

But I like this idea that it's

38:46

hard to ethically study disgust. And

38:48

so how do you do it?

38:50

Cheese. Cheese. Think I'm up with some cheese.

38:53

Brain studies are always so weird because

38:55

it's like, can't I tell you why

38:58

I don't want the cheese? They're like,

39:00

no, you can't. You have no idea.

39:02

We need to put you in a

39:04

very expensive machine and figure out where

39:07

the blood is in your brain while you're smelling cheese.

39:09

And then those regions

39:11

are only, we only know what they do

39:13

because of other studies where they had people

39:16

look at other things that they liked or

39:18

didn't like. And so we're all just guessing.

39:20

All these problems. So there's definitely, there is

39:22

plenty of insight to

39:25

be gleaned by being the actual thing experiencing

39:27

the sensation. Because I think that when I

39:29

smell a cheese that I don't like the

39:32

smell of, it's because

39:34

it smells like things

39:36

I wouldn't want to put in my mouth. Hmm.

39:39

Like feet. Sometimes it's not like feet. That's

39:41

okay. Sometimes it's, yeah.

39:44

But that is true. Sometimes it smells like feet

39:46

and I'm like, that smells like feet. But that's

39:48

okay. And then sometimes it smells like feet and

39:50

I'm like, that smells like feet, but too much.

39:52

Wrong kind of feet. Too stinky. Every

39:54

cheese has a little bit of a bit

40:00

of funk. Except

40:03

for craft Canadian. It just

40:06

has that glossy texture of silly buddy.

40:10

Sam, what you got for

40:12

me? Emeryville, California, home to companies

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such as Pixar, Cliff Bar, and

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Pete's Coffee. This booming city nestled

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in California's Silicon Valley is a

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a modern booming economic powerhouse. Being

40:27

situated on San Francisco Bay and

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filled with train yards, Emeryville became

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40:34

when it first was founded. Paint,

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It was all an Emeryville baby.

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But being a manufacturing center comes with

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some ugly side effects. Chief among them

40:45

being industrial waste. Corporations tend not to

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be the best stewards of the land,

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especially in the early 20th century when

40:52

most of this manufacturing was happening. So

40:54

that waste would end up dumped in

40:56

the ocean or on the ground either

40:58

accidentally, intentionally, or maybe a little bit

41:00

of both. So by the 70s, manufacturing

41:02

was moving out of the US and

41:04

mostly all that was left in Emeryville

41:06

was empty buildings and various toxic wastes

41:08

that manufacturing left behind. So

41:10

much so that a Slate article I read

41:12

while researching this said that green goo would

41:15

sometimes seep out of the ground when Emeryville

41:17

can select when people were building stuff in

41:19

Emeryville on construction sites. They dig. Green

41:22

goo would come out. So in the 80s,

41:24

the EPA moved in and started spending money to

41:26

clean stuff up either through superfund sites or

41:29

grants to smaller programs. And one

41:31

of those smaller programs is where

41:33

cheese enters the picture. But

41:35

first I gotta talk about chrome plating, which

41:38

is a process that I don't entirely understand.

41:41

Where a metal object is placed in the solution

41:43

of chromium, which is a

41:45

hard rust-proof shiny element to plate

41:48

that object in chromium, thus making

41:50

the object hard, shiny, and rust-proof.

41:52

The type of chromium used in

41:54

electroplating is called hexavalent chromium, which

41:57

is really water-soluble, but it's also

41:59

a dangerous carcinogen and really

42:01

good at seeping into groundwater,

42:04

which makes it a high priority chemical for the

42:06

EPA when it comes to cleaning stuff up. And

42:09

in Emeryville, there's a parcel of land that

42:12

used to be home to a chrome

42:14

plating factory. And even though there weren't

42:16

any major reported spills of hexavalent chromium

42:18

from the factory, the soil was

42:20

still rotten with the stuff, and it was

42:22

seeping into the groundwater, which is not good.

42:25

In 2004, a project was funded to

42:27

clean the land, and three solutions were

42:30

proposed. The first was

42:32

to wait for the chromium to break down, which

42:34

would take forever, I think. The second was to

42:36

dig up and incinerate all of the contaminated dirt,

42:38

which was crazy expensive. And the

42:40

third was to pump 15,000 gallons

42:42

of cheese whey into the ground. And

42:45

the cheese was the answer. So

42:48

while hexavalent chromium is super soluble,

42:50

trivalent chromium is not. Because

42:53

of electrons, I think, or something. So

42:56

the more electrons that are available to chromium,

42:58

the more likely it is to take its

43:00

trivalent form, which are more

43:02

stable and less toxic and soluble

43:04

than hexavalent. And something with a

43:07

whole lot of electrons to give,

43:09

apparently, is organic soil matter created

43:11

by the life processes of soil-dwelling

43:13

bacteria. So just like

43:15

probiotic yogurt helps the bacteria

43:17

in your belly, the cheese whey, which

43:20

was pumped into the ground via several

43:22

wells, helped bacteria in this contaminated

43:24

soil flourish, poop, and breathe, and

43:26

do all that stuff to make

43:28

organic compounds that expedited the trivalentization

43:31

of the chromium. And

43:33

really, I think they could have pumped any

43:35

pumpable food into the ground, probably

43:37

like yogurt or whatever, like your

43:39

belly. But

43:41

cheese whey was picked because it was really cheap.

43:44

And there was a place really close that was

43:46

making lots of cheese whey. So they said, why

43:48

not? However, much to my extreme frustration, I couldn't

43:50

actually find a newer article than

43:53

2004, basically, about this and how it

43:55

worked out. But this

43:57

is a process that's used in other soil

43:59

remediation efforts. efforts, where it's

44:01

reduced hazardous chemicals by up to 90% in three

44:03

months. But

44:06

if you are somebody who pumped cheese

44:08

into the ground in Emeryville, California in

44:10

2004, please contact us and tell us

44:12

if it works. I love

44:14

that. How

44:16

do they get the cheese in the ground? Just like- They

44:19

set a big tank and they drilled a bunch of holes and

44:21

they put cojos in it and they pumped

44:24

it into the ground. And I want

44:26

to see it so bad. I was going to say, you

44:28

said that it was because of electrons and I was going

44:30

to say, well, you

44:32

could say that up for everything. But series

44:34

kind of like, I was like, you probably said it

44:36

for serious facts. And then I was like, not really,

44:38

like, MRIs are one of

44:40

the few things that's actually about protons.

44:44

Oh. It's just

44:47

like, electrons aren't that involved in

44:49

MRIs, which is wild, very unusual.

44:53

Ultimately if I'm going to choose and I

44:55

have to, I got to go with just

44:58

pumping a bunch of cheese into the ground.

45:01

Hank, will you send me around to super fun sites

45:03

all over the world or all over the country? That

45:06

would be an amazing show. I could be

45:08

super fun, Sam. I could say, wow. Super

45:10

fun, Sam. Yeah. Did

45:13

you say super fun? No, I didn't say

45:15

super fun. Unfortunately,

45:18

really not. All

45:21

right. Well, I'm going to give

45:23

Sam, I'll say five Hank bucks for

45:25

that and, Sari, I'll

45:27

give three. Are

45:31

we tied? I think you win, Sam.

45:34

Oh, you're right. I had one from the first girl. Yeah.

45:39

And that means that it's

45:41

time to ask the science couch where we ask

45:43

the listener a question to our couch of finely

45:45

honed scientific minds. Ed Locker

45:47

on Discord asked, what makes cheese addictive

45:49

to humans? Is it some part of

45:52

the cheese itself or my own developing

45:54

sense of self-control? I mean,

45:57

I think that the thing that makes

45:59

cheese addictive... is the fact that it's

46:01

got sugar and fat and salt. And

46:04

that's what we want. We want

46:06

sugar and fat and salt. But

46:09

is there something special about cheese

46:11

that this question's referring to, or

46:13

is that just anything? I don't

46:16

know. There's ongoing conversation about addictiveness

46:18

and food, but you kind of

46:20

can't like... probably

46:22

shouldn't be talking about food as

46:24

addictive, but certainly you can develop

46:29

a thing where you

46:31

have an unhealthy relationship. And

46:33

also there is a thing where

46:35

there are certain foods that we

46:38

eat more than we otherwise would

46:40

because of their flavor, mostly.

46:44

Because of the things that they're

46:46

made up of and you can sort of design

46:48

a food to be the right mix of salty,

46:50

fat, and sweet. And you're like, I ate a

46:52

bag of Doritos just now and I loved it.

46:54

So I think the root of this question, or the

46:57

root of a lot of the is

46:59

cheese addictive phrasing, there was a bunch of

47:01

popular science articles that came out around the

47:03

year 2015 because there

47:07

was a study published called, Which

47:09

Foods May Be Addictive? The Roles

47:11

of Processing, Fat Content, and Glycemic

47:14

Load. So the study came in

47:16

two parts. One, where they surveyed

47:19

120 undergraduates at the University of Michigan.

47:21

And two, they found 398 participants on a mechanical

47:25

Turk, which is the Amazon product where you

47:27

can get paid like 50 cents, five cents,

47:29

whatever for answering the question. They basically

47:31

gave these people surveys about what

47:35

foods made them

47:37

feel like they couldn't stop eating

47:39

or like they regretted

47:41

it afterwards. And

47:44

they mapped those feelings onto

47:46

like food, quote unquote, food

47:48

addiction. Like Hank was saying,

47:50

that's not really the most accurate way to

47:52

describe it. Like addiction is a very specific

47:55

set of criteria when it comes to certain

47:58

drugs or toxins. like alcohol

48:00

or things like that, that psychologically

48:03

you become dependent on. Food, you need

48:05

it to survive. You need to eat.

48:08

And so you can get cravings for

48:10

things, and maybe there's complicated emotions around certain

48:12

foods. This is why I think we talk about it

48:14

as addiction, because you have a lot of the same

48:16

pathways in the brain, like the reward

48:19

pathways. But I think that it's mostly like, you

48:22

don't want to talk about food addiction because

48:24

food is necessary and is

48:27

a normal part of life,

48:29

unlike cigarettes or alcohol or

48:31

gambling or something. And the findings from

48:33

the study, as they hypothesized,

48:36

which is like highly processed foods

48:38

with added fat, refined carbohydrates, additional

48:40

salt appeared to be most associated

48:42

with these behavioral indicators. So the

48:45

top ranked foods, one through nine,

48:47

were chocolate, ice cream, french fries,

48:49

pizza, cookie, singular, chips,

48:52

floral, cake, popcorn, buttered,

48:55

cheeseburger. And that was like, great

48:57

foods. And so a lot of

48:59

articles were like, oh,

49:03

cheese, like cheese is Canadian

49:06

cheese singles, Canadian cocktails, are all

49:08

these things, are like

49:10

these highly processed foods. And so like, you're,

49:13

you're addicted to cheese. But

49:16

that's like not what the study was saying. And it's

49:18

kind of a classic case of,

49:21

especially in the nutrition space, I think people like

49:23

to make sweeping conclusions about what other people should

49:25

or shouldn't eat. Like a subset of this, the

49:27

rabbit hole that I fell down, is

49:30

this idea that casein, that milk protein

49:32

that is like 80% of the proteins

49:34

in cow's milk, when you metabolize casein,

49:36

and there's several different types of casein,

49:39

but specifically, like one

49:41

of them that's found in cow's milk

49:43

turns into a compound called caseomorphin. And

49:46

caseomorphins are a class of compound that

49:48

fall into the category

49:50

of opioids. And

49:52

because it's an opioid, then of course,

49:55

people make that connection almost immediately of

49:57

opioid addiction. The problem is. is

50:00

like the opioid system in your body exists

50:03

as it is. Like neurotransmitters, your

50:06

brain naturally makes our opioids that

50:08

enable communication between your neurons, help

50:11

your body communicate things like pain or pleasure

50:13

or memory or like the

50:15

movements of your digestive system, contractions

50:18

and like constipation or diarrhea, like

50:20

all of those are opioids. And

50:23

so it makes sense that a

50:25

digested compound from milk, which

50:27

is also something that's in the human body would

50:30

then interact with the opioid system because

50:32

you have to digest the food. And

50:35

there's a wave of people who are

50:39

in like the nutrition space who are like,

50:41

we're going to try and link casomorphins or

50:43

there's evidence that casomorphins are linked to diabetes

50:45

and heart attacks and like too much eating

50:47

cheese or dairy products

50:50

in general. Whereas the

50:52

reviews, I found one from 2009 from

50:55

the European Food Safety Authority and one from 2023

50:58

from like a Sao Paulo,

51:00

New Zealand team where they're

51:02

just like, we don't know. Like we haven't studied

51:05

casomorphin in humans enough. And like sure, if you

51:07

isolate a bunch of it and inject it into

51:09

animals, then it will,

51:12

you might see signs of addictive behaviors

51:14

or like weird biological effects, but that's

51:16

because it's such a wildly

51:18

high concentration and injected directly into

51:21

the bloodstream. But we

51:23

don't know how it interacts in

51:25

humans and also the people who are

51:27

having digestive problems because of it or

51:29

health problems because of it might just be like

51:32

lactose intolerant. Like let's consider that maybe. One

51:35

thing I have learned about human

51:38

bodies doing research on

51:40

cancer is that we are really good,

51:43

really good at processing

51:45

chemicals in our bodies and like

51:47

dealing with them way better than

51:49

I think most people assume. Even

51:52

like obvious carcinogens like uranium

51:54

in the air, like our

51:57

bodies are fairly good at dealing with. And I'm like, if

51:59

we can do that. Not

52:01

that there's a lot of uranium in the air. I

52:03

mean people who are like downwind of accidents

52:05

and disaster. Yeah, cool. Super

52:08

fun to say I'm inhaling

52:10

all that uranium. I'll be

52:12

okay when I'm out there

52:15

on the job site. If you want to

52:17

ask the Science Couch your question, follow us

52:19

on Twitter and on threads at SciShow Tangents,

52:21

where we will be sending out topics for

52:23

upcoming episodes every week, or you can join

52:25

the SciShow Tangents Patreon and ask us on

52:28

our Discord. Thank you to Sid, the guy

52:30

on Discord, at Soloc Homes on YouTube

52:32

and everybody else who asked us your questions

52:34

for this episode. If you like this show

52:36

and you want to help us out, super

52:38

easy to do that. First, you can go

52:40

to patreon.com. SciShow Tangents, we've got a patron

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that can get access to things like our

52:45

Discord, bonus episodes, maybe minions commentary. If

52:49

it hasn't even already, I don't know when this

52:51

episode's going to be possible. Also, the show does

52:54

a patron list seeker for this. Second, you lose

52:56

your review wherever you listen. That's super helpful and

52:58

it helps us know what you like about the

53:00

show. And finally, you want to show your love

53:03

for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about us. Thank

53:05

you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been

53:07

Sari Riley. And I've been Sam Schultz.

53:10

SciShow Tangents is created by all of

53:12

us and produced by John Stemford. Our

53:14

associate producer is Pete Schmidt. Our editor

53:16

is Seth Klitzman. Our social media organizer

53:18

is Julia Buzzbuzile. Our editorial assistant is

53:20

Daboki Chakravarti. Our sound design by Joseph

53:23

Tullimanis. Our executive producers are Nicole Sweeney

53:25

and me, Hank Green. And we couldn't

53:27

make any of this without our patron.

53:29

Thank you. And remember, the mind is not

53:31

a vessel to be filled with a

53:33

liar. But

53:51

one more thing. All

53:54

around us, there are tiny,

53:56

sometimes microscopic arachnids called mites

53:58

and certain species. Lunch on

54:00

the moldy rides of aged wheels of

54:02

cheese like Parmesan or the fungal veins

54:05

and blue cheese and you know you

54:07

have an infestation of mates when you're

54:09

fine. dust around your cheese with the

54:12

build up, their exoskeleton, dead bodies, and

54:14

of course. Poop so.

54:16

In many cases cheese makers try

54:18

to protect their food from these

54:20

pests. but at least two types

54:22

types of Jesus actually intentionally aged

54:24

with a colony of mates. The

54:27

French cheese memo let and the

54:29

German she's middle didn't casa which

54:31

translates to might seize the fittest

54:33

the German way him name and

54:35

stuff. it's just a census data.

54:37

Diseases have a characteristic lemon like

54:39

flavor and that comes from a

54:42

compound that the secreted by the

54:44

mates. Are. From their abdominal glance

54:46

at least the flavor is and from

54:48

their poop but realistically you're probably gonna

54:50

be some of that to a are

54:52

probably alley the and pay their announced

54:54

via our it's not sure that you

54:56

he a bunch of spiders every year

54:58

but it is true that you had

55:00

a bunch of might suffer year player

55:02

the seems like they're gonna get em

55:04

their ideas the george has actually eating

55:06

might. Happen

55:09

if this whole time. Assets

55:11

are. Yeah, spiders,

55:14

spiders, gag. If a lot of mates

55:16

burrow saudi of. Different

55:18

a normal amount, Such.

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