LULU MILLER: Head's up, today's show does include a couple of curse words, so anyway, here we go.

[RADIOLAB INTRO]

LULU: This is Radiolab. I'm Lulu Miller.

LATIF NASSER: And I'm Latif Nasser.

LULU: And today we have a very special thing, because all year long, we collect what we call stupid questions. There are no stupid questions maybe, but actually I think there are. You know, questions we ...

LATIF: What? There are—there are not. We—that's—the official position of this show is there are no such things as stupid questions.

LULU: [laughs] I'm not sure I agree, but it doesn't matter because as a show that is largely about curiosity, people send us questions all the time—listeners, we get tweets, we get emails.

LATIF: Mm-hmm. "My kid asked this," or my cousin.

LULU: And then also on staff, we have a little place where we collect stupid questions throughout the year.

LATIF: That's right.

LULU: And I was just looking back at the literally dozens of my own questions.

LATIF: Throw some out!

LULU: Okay, when you cut skin, do you cut through cells, or do the cells always get out of the way of the blade like Chuck E. Cheese balls in a ball pit?

LATIF: Huh, great question!

LULU: Number two: is your brain a pint of liquid more or less?

LATIF: That's a—that's an easy one to answer, I'm sure.

LULU: I don't know. Okay, if you squished the quote, "60 percent of water" out of me that is apparently inside every human, could you drink it, or is there a part of it you could drink?

LATIF: Oh, wow! You really want to drink people, Lulu. Why is that?

LULU: I don't know. That's another question. But anyway, the point is we look at all these questions, and then we see which ones have legs to kind of rise up to the level where we actually want to report them out. None of mine this year, by the way, made it.

LATIF: [laughs] Okay, we'll have that conversation at another time, but what happened was that at some point we noticed a group of these questions that all had a kind of a shared energy. Like ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Magic School Bus: I wonder where we're going today?]

LATIF: ... you know the show The Magic School Bus?

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Magic School Bus: We've been there, to the bottom of the ocean.]

LATIF: Classic PBS cartoon.

LULU: Of course! Led by Ms. Frizzle, the teacher who gets all the kids onto the Magic School Bus, and they shrink it down and go into drain pipes, up kids' noses, into space to answer questions and understand our world a little more.

LATIF: Yeah. But our stories today, and our Ms. Frizzle reporters, they had vibrating, anxious energy. I would—I would say that they have more Ms. Frazzle energy.

LULU: [laughs]

LATIF: Rather than Ms. Frizzle energy.

LULU: That is—that is totally accurate.

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Magic School Bus: Seat belts, everyone!]

LULU: And they also tend to, like, take things a little further than your average PBS kids' cartoons.

LATIF: So we've got three angsty, magical journeys today. And it just so happens that they all take us inside the human body.

LULU: That's right. Stupid questions about our stupid bodies.

LATIF: They're not stupid questions, they are good, honest questions!

LULU: I mean ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP, The Magic School Bus: Ride on the Magic School Bus!]

LULU: All right, first trip courtesy of senior correspondent Molly Webster.

MOLLY WEBSTER: Okay, so to get to my question, we're actually gonna start with a conversation that I had with reporter and former Radiolab intern Sachi Mulkey. I'm just gonna play a bit of that you.

LULU: Ooh!

LATIF: Okay.

MOLLY: And it begins like all good things do, at the New Year.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: Okay.

SACHI MULKEY: New Year's is kind of like a—it's a daytime phenomenon in Japan. Like, we don't do a New Year's Eve thing. The day of New Year's, you do your first temple visit in the morning, and then you come back home and you have this traditional New Year's soup called ozoni and it's like a mochi cake in a bowl of, like, pretty clear, almost flavorless broth.

MOLLY: And wait, what is mochi?

SACHI: It's a pounded rice flour mixed with water and kind of turned into this chewy, chewy rice cake.

MOLLY: Mm-hmm.

SACHI: And you just plop it into a soup. It kind of softens in the water. It gets this, like, very, like, gooey edge. And it's, like, chewy, right? Like, it stretches out. Like, it'll stretch inches.

MOLLY: Really?

SACHI: Yeah.

MOLLY: Wow!

SACHI: So what happens is a lot of older people will have their ozoni and fail to be able to chew it fully, or it will kind of cool down and harden in their mouths and then they choke on it. Like, I just—I was looking at this crazy chart that said something—I just want to look at it to make sure I don't give you a wrong number.

MOLLY: Yeah. No, no. Pull it up.

SACHI: Almost 800 people between 2006 and 2016 died in Japan from food-choking deaths right on New Year's. It's just this spike.

MOLLY: Like, they choke to death. It's not like a choke and a cough out. It's like people are actually dying from this.

SACHI: Yeah. People die from this. It used to be a lot higher before the PSAs.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Japanese PSA]

MOLLY: They have PSAs just about this soup?

SACHI: Oh yeah.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Japanese PSA]

SACHI: All over the news, like NHK news, Japanese, like, household news, around New Year's, they're like ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Japanese PSA]

SACHI: "Don't forget to chop it up into small pieces. Here's how to do the Heimlich maneuver. Like, don't use a vacuum to get it out." There's all sorts of news around this, like, "Be careful. Make sure they're eating this soup responsibly."

MOLLY: Okay, so that was part of my conversation with Sachi.

LATIF: Huh.

LULU: Okay.

MOLLY: And maybe sadistically, Sachi told me this story because she knows that I am terrified of choking. And I would say that at least once a day I think about the fact that as I swallow, I am pushing like a mashed ball of food past the one opening that is keeping me alive.

LULU: [laughs] Yeah.

MOLLY: And so my question is: why in the world are we designed this way where we can die of choking? Why?

LATIF: But this works way more than it doesn't.

MOLLY: No. No, but it should never not work, Latif. Like, evolution has given us so much crazy stuff. We have brains and opposable thumbs and, like, other weird shit.

LATIF: Right.

MOLLY: And you're telling me that it couldn't figure out how to breathe in one place and then eat in another?

LULU: Yeah, I'm with it.

LATIF: Okay. Okay. Okay, I am with you. Let's go. Let's go.

MOLLY: [laughs] Okay. Okay, so I went to scientists asking them: why do we have one blockable breath hole?

LULU: Did they laugh at you?

MOLLY: Yes, of course. But they also told me stuff, including the original culprit of all of this is fish.

LATIF: Huh! Okay.

MOLLY: And so fish have one tube for food, which runs from the mouth to the butt. And then for breathing, they have gills.

LATIF: Right.

MOLLY: So no choking. But the fish that eventually flopped onto land and became the ancestor of us, it couldn't do that without a pair of lungs. But the thing with evolution is it doesn't just make new things out of nothing, it builds them off of existing systems, and so it actually built the lungs out of the digestive tracts.

LATIF: Huh!

MOLLY: And the way that that works is the digestive system was already pulling nutrients out of food, so it was like, "All right, why don't I just use this to get some oxygen out of air?"

LATIF: Right.

MOLLY: And slowly, slowly, slowly, what happened over time is a pair of lungs balloon off of the digestive tract.

LULU: Wow!

LATIF: Huh, that's amazing!

MOLLY: No, it's not amazing because this is the essential design flaw. This is how you get an eating system and a breathing system that are overlapped. And this is why we choke.

LATIF: Wait, so does that mean other animals choke? Like, Jane Goodall is out there watching the chimpanzees and stuff. Like, did any of them ever—they were, like, eating a banana and started coughing and choking, kind of thing?

MOLLY: Yes, other animals can choke. There's not really any reports of it if you search the internet or something. It's not like we're going out into the wild and autopsying animals. But we do seem to be a little different than other animals.

JAMES NESTOR: We have become the worst breathers in the animal kingdom.

MOLLY: Really?

JAMES NESTOR: Yes.

MOLLY: While I was looking for answers to this question, I ended up talking to this science writer.

JAMES NESTOR: I'm James Nestor.

MOLLY: He wrote this amazing book about breathing and how we breathe. And when I asked him about choking, he said ...

JAMES NESTOR: Well, it sounds like your problem isn't with this air tube, this breath tube, it's with the larynx.

MOLLY: It's not just our one-tubiness that is to blame. It has to do with the shape of that tube and how we humans use it and how it has evolved differently than even in our closest ancestors.

JAMES NESTOR: Our larynx have sunk.

LATIF: Hmm.

LULU: Okay?

MOLLY: The larynx is the spot in our throat where the esophagus—which takes food to the stomach—and the trachea—which takes air to the lungs—split off. And it's made of, like, cartilage and muscle and stuff.

MOLLY: What does sinking mean? Where was it?

JAMES NESTOR: It lowered. It lowered.

MOLLY: It moved down from the back of our mouths to a couple of inches down into our neck, pushing the meeting place of the esophagus and the trachea into a narrower part of our throat.

JAMES NESTOR: Because now the esophagus and the trachea are too close together, so that larynx can shift food that is supposed to be going to our stomachs into that breath hole.

MOLLY: And as a result we started to choke more and more.

JAMES NESTOR: But ...

MOLLY: James said ...

JAMES NESTOR: That's the whole point, is by having more space at the back of our mouths ...

MOLLY: We created more space for something else.

JAMES NESTOR: Yes. Yes.

MOLLY: Which is while other animals sound ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Horse neighing]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Cat meowing]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Bird calls]

MOLLY: ... like this ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Screeching bird]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Baby cooing]

MOLLY: ... as our larynx lowered, it opened up our oral cavity, and along with some developments in the brain, that allowed us to make more and more sophisticated sounds.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Whistling]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Person clearing throat]

MOLLY: And we use these sounds ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: We need to get out of here!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Don't eat that.]

MOLLY: ... to ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Stop!]

MOLLY: ... warn and teach ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I love you.]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: I love you.]

MOLLY: ... and share ...

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Genuinely sorry.]

MOLLY: ... our feelings.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Oh my God!]

[ARCHIVE CLIP, Martin Luther King: I have a dream ...]

MOLLY: And we use these sounds to change the world.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: singing]

[ARCHIVE CLIP: person choking]

MOLLY: I mean, I do like talking, which sounds like such a ridiculous thing to say, but I just still wish it wasn't an all-in-one tube.

LULU: And kissing? What about kissing?

MOLLY: What do you mean, kissing?

LULU: Kissing is kind of random but, like, maybe what's so special about it is that it's like all the things. It's like, your eating, breathing, like ...

LATIF: Drinking.

LULU: It's like sustenance on every level.

LATIF: Let me put my crucial mouth hole near your crucial mouth hole.

MOLLY: And to be clear, I'm all for, like, all these things, obviously—kissing, talking, whatever. I'm not looking to change it. I just wish there was another backup.

LATIF: Right.

MOLLY: So I did ask one of the scientists about, you know, backup systems, and he was like, well, people do do tracheotomies for medical reasons.

LATIF: Right.

LULU: Mm-hmm.

MOLLY: Putting another hole in your throat.

LATIF: In your throat, though.

MOLLY: But, like, at the bottom.

LULU: Is that hole below ...

LATIF: The vocal cords?

LULU: Yeah.

MOLLY: It is.

LATIF: Oh!

MOLLY: That hole bypasses the logjam of the throat, and then it just lets air straight into the lungs.

LATIF: Oh, so that's what you want. That's exactly what you want.

LULU: Yeah, it kind of is.

MOLLY: But I don't really want, like ...

LATIF: You don't want a tracheotomy.

MOLLY: Is there a more pleasant way?

LATIF: Right.

MOLLY: And then James was, like, "Well ..."

JAMES NESTOR: I didn't think I was gonna be going here, but you asked.

MOLLY: "... there could be one thing."

JAMES NESTOR: So we can ingest oxygen through our butts. And so ...

MOLLY: No fucking way.

JAMES NESTOR: [laughs]

MOLLY: Butt breathing.

LULU: What?

JAMES NESTOR: Yes!

LATIF: Butt breathing is a real thing?

LULU: Goodbye. Literally ...

LATIF: Oh my God!

MOLLY: Lulu—Lulu, it doesn't have to do with farting.

LULU: Okay, I can't hear you if you're talking because I took off my headphones. I'm coming back. Wait. Wait.

MOLLY: Lulu, it doesn't have to do with farting, so don't worry. I don't like farting either.

LULU: It's—come on, it is breath—it is breath through the butt ...

MOLLY: No. No. No. No.

LULU: ... and I feel like every Radiolab story ends here.

MOLLY: No it doesn't have to do with farting, so take a deep breath and absolve yourself of that. We're not gonna talk about it.

LATIF: Take a deep breath through your butt.

MOLLY: Through your butthole.

LULU: Hush up. It's just—anyway. Okay fine, whatever. Okay. So he's saying in a real way you can breathe ...

MOLLY: Yeah. Well, he pointed me to this paper ...

LULU: [laughs] Come on, science! Okay.

MOLLY: [laughs] Yeah, so this paper came from this researcher ...

TAKA TAKEBE: Taka Takebe from Cincinnati Children's Hospital and also Tokyo Medical and Dental University.

MOLLY: A Japanese researcher, and he splits his time between Japan and Ohio.

TAKA TAKEBE: I'm traveling back and forth every month for the past seven years. [laughs]

MOLLY: Every month?

MOLLY: The reason that he did this study was his dad ended up having to go on a ventilator.

TAKA TAKEBE: Maybe six years ago. I think he has a pneumonia condition, and actually hospitalized in ICU situation.

MOLLY: And dad is fine. Dad came off the ventilator. But then COVID happened and everybody was getting slammed on ventilators, and Taka was like, "This does not seem sustainable."

TAKA TAKEBE: I also realized, you know, so we do the same thing as in the past, from 200 years ago.

MOLLY: Really? It was 200 years ago that we developed ventilation?

TAKA TAKEBE: Yeah, exactly.

MOLLY: So he's like, is there another way to get oxygen into the body? So he starts looking at how other animals might do it, and he comes across a fish that ...

TAKA TAKEBE: Is actually taking up the oxygen from the bowel, or from the anus. The butt.

MOLLY: And he thinks, "Hmm, maybe that's another way." And so what he does is he takes some mice and pigs and he puts them in low-oxygen conditions, what's called "hypoxic."

LATIF: Okay.

MOLLY: And he pumps O2 into a tube that is stuck up into their butts.

LULU: Okay.

MOLLY: This doesn't work so well. Their oxygen levels stay about the same.

LULU: Huh.

MOLLY: But then he's like, "What if I take oxygen that's, like, dissolved in a fluid?" So he does it again—tube up the butt, oxygen in a fluid, and what they see is that for these mice and pigs, color and warmth return to their skin and to their extremities in minutes.

LATIF: Wow!

MOLLY: So think of the butt respiration as like an enema that gives you oxygen.

LULU: Wow!

MOLLY: I know!

MOLLY: I was thinking about the fact that we did, like, evolve from fish, and you're in a way tapping into some sort of evolutionary history that lets oxygen exchange in the gut be possible. It's almost like going back to a prior way of being.

TAKA TAKEBE: [laughs] Exactly.

MOLLY: I so wish my skin respirated.

LULU: [laughs] Onto our next question.

LATIF: Great.

LULU: So we actually put a call out, an intentional call out to listeners at one point, and we got a bunch. And the one that ended up haunting, like, a bunch of us here on staff ...

LATIF: Yeah?

LULU: ... came from a listener named Logan Shannon. She lives in New Hampshire.

LOGAN SHANNON: Yeah.

LULU: And all right, here is her question.

LOGAN SHANNON: I don't understand where lotion goes after we apply it to our skin. It gets absorbed through our pores, sure, but where does it go?

LULU: Where does it go?

LATIF: That a—I—never occurred to me.

LOGAN SHANNON: So I buy these bottles of lotion, and then the contents of these bottles just disappear into my body, and it freaks me out.

LULU: She says she sometimes just lies in bed wondering, like, is the lotion traveling down into her spleen?

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: And just with her forever? So we sent producer Alan Goffinski to try to find out the answer.

LATIF: Alan "The Song Bud" Goffinski, if you've heard Terrestrials.

LULU: Yep! He creates original songs for our kids podcast Terrestrials. And anyway, so he did a bunch of reporting and delivered it directly to Logan in song form.

[ALAN GOFFINSKI: [singing] Logan is up late on Twitter, watch her scroll and scroll and scroll. Her tweeting thumbs are dry and cracking, she feels the dryness in her soul. She longs for the relief of lotion, smooth hydration, healthy glow. Her hands are dry but her mind is racing, she doesn't where does the lotion go?]

[CHOIR: [singing] Where does the lotion go?]

ADELINE KIKAM: Hey!

ALAN: Hello!

ADELINE KIKAM: How are you?

ALAN: We have questions.

ADELINE KIKAM: Oh boy!

ALAN: And you seem like the type of person who might have answers.

ADELINE KIKAM: Okay. Yeah, sure thing.

ALAN: [laughs]

ADELINE KIKAM: I am Doctor Adeline Kikam. I'm a board-certified dermatologist, all things skin care.

[ALAN: [singing] Logan's question freaked me out, so I asked a doc just what goes down each time we slop that lotion on. Here's a bit of what I found.]

ADELINE KIKAM: Logan is talking about a skin care product that keeps her skin moisturized. The good thing is cosmetic products are formulated in a way that they don't get absorbed into the bloodstream.

[CHOIR: The particles in lotion are designed to not seep in. The molecules are formulated to rest atop your skin. This is your lotion lullaby: "Go on Logan, moisturize." The lotion should not get inside, the molecules are too large in size.]

ADELINE KIKAM: But there are different components of it.

[ALAN: [singing] I knew it! Despite intentions being good ...]

ADELINE KIKAM: There's traces that we've seen in blood.

[ALAN: [singing] Small molecules don't have an issue, they squeeze through interstitial tissue.]

ADELINE KIKAM: It's all about the formulation, particle size, concentration. Some particles do end up in the bloodstream. Particles from chemical sunscreen.

[ALAN: [singing] Like avobenzone and octocrylene. Parabens and Phthalates will sink right down into your blood and to all around.]

[CHOIR: [singing] Where does the lotion go?]

[ALAN: [singing] Sometimes your skin just can't resist them.]

ADELINE KIKAM: Of course, the body has a filtration system. The liver and the renal system are how the skin detoxifies and clears anything that it doesn't want.

[CHOIR: [singing] The renal system flushes them out. Maybe there's not so much to worry about.]

[ALAN: [singing] Uh oh! But then the doctor shared how not all particles seep into you. Some just sit on your skin cells until those skin cells bid adieu. You're telling me I'm not contained? My skin cells just disintegrate? Where do I end and I begin? I am not confined within!]

[ALAN: [singing] Half a billion cells of skin sluff off your body every day. In dusty air or down the drain, into the ocean and far away. And then your biomagnetic field extends beyond your mortal flesh. Your flesh is loose electron clouds, a fuzzy subatomic mess.]

[ALAN: [singing] The cosmos shift with every breath, your every thought and word expressed. Who you are is not contained. Existence is one big exchange. Your self spills out throughout the universe! Contamination is inescapable and absolute, and corruption is your God! And nothing can save you from the existential calamity of all-encompassing ambiguous cosmic anarchy!]

[ALAN: [singing] So now I guess you kind of know where does the lotion go.]

[CHOIR: [singing] Where does the lotion go?]

LOGAN SHANNON: [laughs]

ALAN: [laughs]

LOGAN SHANNON: It was—it was so demented, I love it.

ALAN: I honestly did not expect this question to result in pondering thermodynamics and the laws of conservation of mass and energy. I think maybe I took things too far.

LOGAN SHANNON: I don't think you took it too far.

ALAN: [laughs]

LOGAN SHANNON: I think it's like—obviously, I don't think you took it too far. I'm the one who obsesses about lotion and where it goes. But, like, you know, is it Sagan who said we're all star stuff?

ALAN: Right.

LOGAN SHANNON: So I was thinking about it. If you really kind of want to think about it from a cosmological—cosmology? No. Cosmetic? No. That if—if we're all made of star stuff, if everything is made of star stuff, then so is lotion. So it's like kind of like you're just in the soup of being a human in a—on a planet with all these molecules. Like, oxygen is, like, bombarding you all the time. And so you're putting lotion on, and some of it does go down, some of it stays on top. Some of it gets sluffed off.

ALAN: Yeah.

LOGAN SHANNON: It's also nice to know that it's not bad. Yeah, it's comforting.

LULU: I don't know if I'm as comforted as Logan. But anyway, that is where the lotion goes. It is time now for a break.

LATIF: Okay. Should we do like a "More da da da da after the break?" No.

LULU: Yeah. We've got a question that really got under the skin.

LATIF: Nice.

LULU: Of our producer Becca Bressler.

LATIF: Okay.

LULU: You're gonna hear that after a short break.

LATIF: Latif.

LULU: Lulu.

LATIF: Radiolab.

LULU: Stupid questions about our stupid bodies.

LATIF: That aren't stupid questions at all. They're actually great, terrific, completely reasonable questions.

LULU: You decide for yourself. Our next one comes from producer Becca Bressler.

BECCA BRESSLER: Do you have a nemesis?

LULU: Oh God! [laughs]

BECCA: [laughs] Didn't see that one coming, did you?

LULU: I didn't! Um, I think so.

BECCA: Yeah?

LULU: Mm-hmm. I think I do.

BECCA: I actually have them on the line here, so that's what we're ...

LULU: [laughs] How did you know?

BECCA: That's what we're doing. No, but we are here—I am here to tell you about my nemesis.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: Oh my God!

BECCA: Or nemeses, rather.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: Argh!

BECCA: Which ...

BECCA: Aah!

BECCA: ... are ...

BECCA: No no no no no!

[slap]

BECCA: ... mosquitoes.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: Mosquitoes.

LULU: So this—I thought we were gonna get some, like, juicy tea, but you're just like a bug that generally sucks for humans.

BECCA: It doesn't just generally suck for me because when I get a bite, I get these fat, hot welts that at times are like the size of a tennis ball.

LULU: Whoa! Wait, honestly, tennis ball?

BECCA: It's not, like, spherical in the same way, but the circumference of a tennis ball. And they itch for days. And nothing has ever helped.

LULU: After Bite?

BECCA: After Bite, no. Benadryl doesn't work. The only thing that sometimes works is when I boil water and then take a washcloth and burn my bites.

LULU: Oh my God! Becs!

BECCA: Yeah, it's awful. It's been this way since I was a kid. But recently, I stumbled across this device, this, like, as-seen-on-TV kind of device. It was on Shark Tank.

LULU: I've never actually seen Shark Tank, but is it like, "Dun-dun-dun?"

BECCA: [laughs] Yeah. Dun-dun, dun-dun-dun!

LULU: I can picture it.

BECCA: Anyways, so it's a tube with handles on the sides, kind of like a syringe without the needle. And it's like a little plastic plunger that claims to suck out mosquito saliva, which is apparently what causes the itchy welts.

LULU: Hmm.

BECCA: And it's called Bug Bite Thing. And so ...

LULU: I like the specificity of that, the, like, Bug Bite Thing.

BECCA: I have mixed feelings about the name, but whatever. It was $10, so I bought it.

LULU: Did you, like, run into a wet woods? Were you like, "I want to test it?"

BECCA: Kind of. Because a few weeks later I went camping.

LULU: Oh!

BECCA: And so I brought it with me. And I remember the first time that I used it. A mosquito bit me on my leg. And I whipped it out, pressed it against my bite, pulled back ...

BECCA: One, two, three, four, five, six.

[pop!]

BECCA: I think I did it a couple more times for good measure. It didn't tell me I needed to.

LULU: [laughs] You really plunged it! Okay.

BECCA: And the welt flattened. The redness slowly dissipated, and then it was gone.

LULU: Hmm! Okay.

BECCA: And I couldn't believe that I finally found something that worked.

LULU: Hmm. And did, like, juice come out?

BECCA: So I didn't see anything come out.

LULU: [laughs]

BECCA: Are you giggling?

LULU: Well, I'm—I mean, I'm a little skeptical.

BECCA: Yeah. Basically, you and everybody else, any time I would talk about this, like, little miracle that had entered my life ...

FRIEND: So you're telling me this little plunger ...

BECCA: ... my best friends ...

FRIEND: ... stops your body from having a reaction?

BECCA: Some of my coworkers ...

COLLEAGUE: What?

BECCA: ... all of them said ...

COLLEAGUE: No.

COLLEAGUE: No way.

COLLEAGUE: Becca ...

COLLEAGUE: No.

COLLEAGUE: ... no.

COLLEAGUE: No.

BECCA: ... "There's no way this works."

COLLEAGUE: Mm-mmm.

FRIEND: Absolutely not.

BECCA: "It can't possibly ..."

FRIEND: ... do anything ...

BECCA: "... do anything."

FRIEND: ... physically.

COLLEAGUE: Come on, Becca.

FRIEND: I don't know!

COLLEAGUE: There's no way that works.

BECCA: And, like ...

FRIEND: No.

FRIEND: No.

BECCA: I really started asking myself ...

COLLEAGUE: I just refuse to believe what it's doing.

BECCA: ... "What the fuck is wrong with my friends?"

LULU: [laughs]

BECCA: Like, they don't know anything about this product or mosquitoes. Like, I use this thing all the time, and they just insist this is all in my head. Why don't they believe me?

LULU: Okay, so wait, so your question is what?

BECCA: I don't have a question.

LULU: Oh.

BECCA: Not a real one.

LULU: Okay, you just—so what are we doing here?

BECCA: We are here because I set out to prove to you and everyone else that this thing really does work.

LULU: [laughs] Okay! So you turned your back on the rules of the profession, which is like, have open-ended questions, don't try to prove a thesis statement.

BECCA: Okay, yes. But I went looking for scientific evidence. So, like, I want to actually convince you.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: And first thing I have for you is I found a study that's been done on the product.

LULU: Okay. All right. I like that.

BECCA: So let me walk you through it.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: So there were 40 people in this study, and they stick both arms into a box of mosquitoes until they get a bite on each arm.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: I know. And they use Bug Bite Thing on only one of the bites.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: And so the bite that got the device, the itch went away within 10 minutes, and the swell mostly went away within 30 minutes.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: And then the bite that didn't get Bug Bite Thing, the itch lasted for an hour. And the swelling lasted for one to two hours.

LULU: Huh. Okay.

BECCA: Which is, like, very significant.

LULU: I mean, 40 people is a pretty small group.

BECCA: Yeah, it is. It is.

LULU: Was it published? Was it, like, peer-reviewed?

BECCA: Uh, no it wasn't. It was commissioned by the company for potential retailers.

LULU: Okay.

KELLEY HIGNEY: Because I'm not a scientist. I don't want to misspeak on the science.

BECCA: I did ask this woman, Kelley Higney about the scientific evidence. She's the CEO and founder of Bug Bite Thing.

KELLEY HIGNEY: At least my point of view is we see pictures, right? We see the beginning of the welt or the beginning of the video, and then we can see how it looks after.

LULU: I mean, pictures and videos are great. Do they do a placebo group?

BECCA: No.

LULU: So there's no one getting a placebo device that's not doing anything?

BECCA: No.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: Okay, yeah.

LULU: So ...

BECCA: Okay.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: Okay.

LULU: So we're throwing out these results, right? I mean ...

BECCA: Are we, though?

LULU: Yes!

BECCA: How is that not so compelling?

LULU: Well, if you can't show that the Bug Bite Thing does more for a bite than some fake nothing device, you aren't really showing that it does anything.

BECCA: Sure. I will concede the study doesn't prove that it's sucking out the saliva, or that that would even make the bite go away if it did.

LULU: Right.

BECCA: But so ...

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: So let me add to the spit story a little bit, with what you just said.

BECCA: ... I decided to call up a mosquito scientist to see if it could be doing something.

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: Yeah.

BECCA: So this is Lyric Bartholomay. She studies mosquitos at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: The mosquitoes—like, it's amazing, Becca.

BECCA: She told me she enjoys getting bit.

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: Because it's fascinating to me. [laughs]

BECCA: Oh my goodness!

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: It's just this peaceful moment of being a little awestruck.

LULU: Oh!

BECCA: Yeah. But I gotta say, as Lyric described it, it is pretty amazing.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: So mosquitoes have this needle on their head called the proboscis. And the females ...

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: They're really just trying to feed their babies.

BECCA: They use that proboscis to break through your skin ...

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: ... dig around underneath your skin ...

BECCA: ... and poke around for a blood vessel.

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: I mean, she's gotta be moving cells apart ...

BECCA: Oh!

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: ... in order to find a capillary that she can break into.

BECCA: And once she finds that blood vessel, she saws it apart ...

LULU: Bleagh!

BECCA: ... sticks her proboscis into the blood and starts ...

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: Sucking the blood into her body. And the whole time she's dancing around with her proboscis under your skin, she's salivating. And so these proteins and other things are coming out of her salivary glands.

LULU: Is it leaving saliva behind just because, like, yeah it's hungry! And it's, like, drooling?

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: Yep. Just like you and I when we're hungry for a meal, she's salivating. [laughs]

LULU: Huh!

BECCA: And that saliva that she leaves behind triggers an immune response. So your body sends histamines to the site of the bite.

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: And you get this raised red welt on your skin.

LULU: The itchy, itchy, ow.

BECCA: The itchy, itchy, ow.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: So then I ...

LULU: Wait. [whispers] What do male mosquitoes eat?

BECCA: Okay. Fantastic question. They feed on plant nectar.

LULU: Mmm!

BECCA: I know. I actually didn't know before that our blood feeds her eggs.

LULU: Mm-hmm.

BECCA: When I learned that I was like, "Oh man, I feel a little more sympathetic."

LULU: Hmm.

BECCA: Yeah. Anyway ...

LULU: [laughs]

BECCA: So I asked Lyric about Bug Bite Thing.

BECCA: Does this ring a bell to you?

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: Yes. It's funny, somebody just sent me a picture of it recently and said, "Is this thing real?" [laughs]

BECCA: What'd you say?

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: Well, I guess—I mean, if you were to use a suction device almost immediately, it could be that you actually pull out some of the spit that the mosquito has left behind.

BECCA: [gasps]

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: Right? That's, like, what you're responding to.

LULU: Huh!

BECCA: [laughs]

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: Right? So ...

BECCA: So—and I'm sorry to drill down on this so specifically, but if I were to pull out the mosquito saliva, should I be able to really see it in the suction device?

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: No. It's such a miniscule amount.

LULU: Hmm.

BECCA: It's like, of course I haven't fucking seen the saliva. Do you know how big a mosquito is?

LULU: [laughs]

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: But if it's—if it's—I mean, the hole's gonna close where she's fed really pretty quickly.

BECCA: Oh.

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: And ...

BECCA: Lyric says, in the meantime ...

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: ... spit has disseminated under your skin in a way that it's unreachable by a suction device.

BECCA: But isn't the skin pretty permeable? Could you not suck it back up through your pores?

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: Well, her salivary proteins are actually going into your blood vessels as well.

BECCA: Hmm.

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: So they're long gone.

BECCA: Okay.

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: The suction device, no way would get it all. And I'm skeptical that it would get any.

BECCA: Gotcha.

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: But, you know, maybe there's some science that's been done to show what oozes out when you use it quickly enough. [laughs] I just haven't seen that science.

BECCA: Which is, like, quite—quite reasonable.

LULU: [laughs] Is there anything in the device purporting to suck the bad stuff out?

BECCA: Yeah. Yeah. And the company hasn't shown that there is.

LULU: Okay. My heart leapt, and now it's sinking again for you.

BECCA: Is it?

LULU: Yeah.

BECCA: Oh God. I mean, I will say she didn't outright deny that it could work.

LULU: Okay, so she cracked a little corner of possibility, of hope.

BECCA: Yeah, right. And I hear that it's probably not the most convincing thing in the world.

LULU: Uh-huh.

BECCA: Yeah. But I think it works. But I think if—I think if you did a study with the placebo group and if you did look in the device, I believe that it would work. I don't know. I just ...

LULU: [laughs] I mean, you just—I feel like you just—you can't just let it be—you just don't want it to be the placebo effect?

BECCA: I just—it makes no sense to me that I could have this fat mosquito bite on my leg, and because of my mind it just goes away. Like, that's what you're all saying when you say this is in my head, and it just—I—like, I just can't ...

LULU: Yeah.

BECCA: I can't—it doesn't make sense. And the study, it didn't prove that it was a placebo effect.

LULU: Right, right.

BECCA: Right? It didn't prove that I could do that.

LULU: Yeah. Fair.

BECCA: And so I wanted to go see, in this increasingly desperate journey, if I could discount the placebo effect.

LULU: Okay, so you're not—you're not going in, like, saying, "Huh, is this the placebo effect?" You're saying, "Can I strike it off the list?"

BECCA: Yeah.

LAUREN HOWE: Yeah, so I think it's a very interesting question.

BECCA: And I even managed to find a scientist who studies the placebo effect on itchy welts.

LULU: Ooh, nice!

LAUREN HOWE: Yes. So what we—should I go into the concrete details?

BECCA: Well, before we get there ...

BECCA: So this is Lauren Howe. She's an assistant professor at the University of Zurich.

LAUREN HOWE: Mm-hmm.

BECCA: And back in 2016 ...

LAUREN HOWE: As I was wrapping up my PhD at Stanford ...

BECCA: Lauren and a team of scientists brought a bunch of people into this room.

LAUREN HOWE: What we kind of lovingly call our mocktor's office in the department of psychology.

BECCA: And they each had their arm pricked with a tiny amount of histamines to give them this itchy welt.

LAUREN HOWE: Exactly.

BECCA: But then a seemingly competent and friendly doctor, or "mocktor" came into the room and ...

LAUREN HOWE: Put unscented hand lotion on that reaction.

BECCA: ... rubbed a placebo cream on their welt, which means it shouldn't do anything.

LULU: Okay.

BECCA: And for half the patients, the mocktor said ...

LAUREN HOWE: "This cream is an antihistamine. It's going to ..."

BECCA: Reduce the welt.

LAUREN HOWE: And reduce itching. And in the other condition, they were told this cream is a histamine agonist.

BECCA: It's gonna make your welt bigger.

LAUREN HOWE: And increase itching.

LULU: Okay.

LAUREN HOWE: We measured them, I think, every three minutes or so in this study.

BECCA: And over time, the people who were told "This is gonna make it worse," their welt got bigger.

LULU: Whoa!

BECCA: And I guess more to the point, the people that were told this is gonna make it better ...

LULU: Mm-hmm?

BECCA: ... their welt actually shrunk.

LULU: Huh!

BECCA: Even though they were given like a big fat dollop of nothing on their welt.

LULU: Wow, that is like beliefs on the skin. I mean, that is—that is just kind of breathtaking, that the body—like, just how the mechanisms of our body works. Like, you are seeing a belief imprinted on the skin.

BECCA: Okay. Well, hold up for a second because ...

LAUREN HOWE: We actually didn't see any effects in itchiness.

BECCA: ... the people in the study did not experience less itch.

LULU: You're saying that with some degree of pride or hope. Why?

BECCA: Certainly. Because when I use the Bug Bite Thing, my itch goes away.

LULU: [laughs]

BECCA: Okay, although I'll say for full transparency here, there was a different study at Stanford that was similar. And they did show the placebo effect on the itch.

LULU: Oh.

BECCA: However ...

LULU: And it goes down?

BECCA: ... how it—yeah, it does. However, I did talk to a third scientist, though.

LULU: I can't wait to hear how you're gonna ...

BECCA: Well, wait, wait. Well, so she told me that there's a third possibility here, which is that it's a conditioned response.

LULU: Okay. Meaning?

BECCA: Meaning if it is a placebo, your body's responding to it because it has experienced the real thing. So, like Pavlov's dog, the dog salivates with the bell because the bell was paired with the food.

LULU: Right. Initially, right. Okay, yeah.

BECCA: And so if the plunger does work for me repeatedly, then it must have, like, actually pulled something out at some point.

LULU: Okay, so can I just take a sort of recap of what we have learned?

BECCA: Go for it.

LULU: Okay. So you have found this shred of a chance that it could pull something out if you used it right away.

BECCA: Yeah.

LULU: And you're combining that with a shred of a chance that it's not placebo but instead a conditioning response. Like, I'd be willing to give you a slice of maybe. Maybe? But why—like, why are you so hostile to the placebo effect? I mean, the reactions in your body, this flood of chemicals, like the diminished welt, those things are real. Does it—does—even if a placebo effect set that chain off, does it—does it have to cheapen it for you?

BECCA: Yeah, I feel, like, so uncomfortable with that possibility.

LULU: [laughs] Why?

BECCA: Deeply. Like, I feel, like, deeply shaken by it. It just feels like this house of cards, where if you tug away at this thing that I believe has a scientific basis for, like, why it works for me, I just feel like you start unraveling a lot of other things too.

LULU: Hmm. Like what?

BECCA: Um, you know, I'm sure we probably won't air something like this for an episode about a silly little bug bite thing, but there is like a lot of resonance for me between this experience of, like, wanting to validate this bodily reaction with an experience I had a few years ago. You know, I was violated by someone, and that person kind of denied that a violation took place. And it shook me up really, really badly. Like, I stepped away from work for weeks to try and deal with it.

BECCA: I felt like I was in this constant state of panic. My chest was on fire. I felt like I had no control over these sensations in my body. And in this really weird way, opening up the potential that this mosquito plunger isn't really working, that it is me, Becca, my mind having such a visceral effect on my body, it resurfaces this fear that I had and that I thought I put to bed a long time ago that all of those feelings of pain and panic were really just, like, caused by me, that it was just in my head.

LULU: I think what I'm understanding is that, like, you just didn't want to let in the possibility that your mind could make your body feel such things. You didn't want to be any part of that. You wanted—you wanted your body to be a pure signal about something that happened in the outside world.

BECCA: Yeah.

LULU: And if you were a part of it, what? Then you're somehow to blame?

BECCA: Yeah, it's about blame, but it's really about being believed, actually.

LULU: Hmm.

BECCA: When people question my experience or say that this is in my head, fundamentally they don't believe me.

LULU: Mmm, yeah.

BECCA: And that's really what I want here. I just—I just want people to believe me.

LULU: Your journey has convinced me that maybe you should have never had to take the journey. I guess—I guess let's just say that. Like, we don't—I don't need science to believe you.

BECCA: Well, thank you for saying that. But I gotta tell you, one of the only people who said that to me from the start was the actual scientist Lyric Bartholomay.

BECCA: I don't understand, like ...

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: You know what? Like I said, I think if it works for you and it makes you less uncomfortable ...

BECCA: Yeah.

LYRIC BARTHOLOMAY: Then you gotta do it.

BECCA: Yeah.

BECCA: It isn't really working. Like, I mean, I've just been sitting here, kind of like obsessively plunging the bites. And they're not going down. At this point, I don't even know why I keep fucking plunging it. It's like, what am I thinking is gonna happen if it hasn't already happened? If this stupid fucking story is the reason why this stupid fucking plunger will not work for me anymore, if this thing stops—if this—if I cannot rely on this thing moving forward, I truly will curse this show.

LULU: Biggest thanks—and apologies, I guess—to our producer Becca Bressler. And that will do it for our show of stupid questions about our stupid bodies.

LATIF: Not quite.

LULU: What? What? Those were three acts.

LATIF: I know we—I know we said we'd do three, but I got one more little—little Magic Bus ride journey here.

LULU: [laughs] Latif, your little brain—your little brain can't rest. Okay, what is it?

LATIF: No. And this is from actually an even littler brain than mine. This is from my son, my older son.

FIVEL NASSER: My name is F-I-V-E-L.

LULU: Oh!

LATIF: His name is Fivel.

FIVEL NASSER: I work at a Fivel factory, where we make Fivels ...

LATIF: So a while back ...

FIVEL NASSER: I have a question.

LATIF: ... he'd asked me this question that just completely stopped me in my tracks.

FIVEL NASSER: Is there anything in our bodies that we have three of?

LULU: [gasps]

LATIF: We have one nose, we have two eyes, we have four limbs, we have five fingers on a hand.

LULU: Like, twelve ribs.

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: Are there any threes?

LATIF: Are there any threes in our body?

LULU: Are there?

LATIF: Well, just—just in that initial moment, like, when he asked me that, I was like, "Oh my God, I have no idea." And then I started talking to a bunch of people. I started talking to friends and doctors, and one of the first answers that I got from people—like, one of my friends was like, "I have three nipples!"

LULU: Oh!

LATIF: Or, like, some people are born with three kidneys or something like that.

LULU: Oh, really?

LATIF: Yeah, but ...

LULU: Some people have three—my uncle has three nipples!

LATIF: Yeah, so—but I was like, okay, that's—that's not the normal way things go.

LULU: So there's—you're saying there's accidental ...

LATIF: There's sort of accidental threes, but then the thing I was looking for is kind of most or all of us should—should have three of this thing.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: And at that point I was just like, I can't think of anything.

DIANE KELLY: Okay.

AVIR MITRA: Hmm.

DIANE: Three of ...

AVIR: So let me think about that.

LATIF: So I called up a few friends of the show.

AVIR: It's a great question.

LATIF: ER doctor and reporter, Avir Mitra, and ...

DIANE: Um, it's ...

LATIF: ... our fact-checker Diane Kelly, who also happens to have a PhD in comparative anatomy.

DIANE: Almost everything comes in twos.

AVIR: Because we're so symmetrical, you know?

DIANE: Or you have one thing.

AVIR: But not completely symmetrical. I mean, I'm struggling here, but ...

LATIF: But I was like, there's gotta be something. There's gotta be a trio somewhere.

LULU: Right? It really does feel like there—like, I feel like there's one on the tip of my tongue, but I'm not talking about taste buds. But, like ...

AVIR: I gotta keep thinking.

LULU: Uh ...

DIANE: Well, female mammals have three exits to their reproductive and ...

LATIF: Okay.

DIANE: ... waste systems.

LATIF: Okay, okay, okay.

DIANE: But only females.

LATIF: Only females, right.

DIANE: In mammals, in ears, the inside of each ear has three bones.

LATIF: But then that's tricky, because it doesn't quite ...

DIANE: They're each—they're each a different bone. It's a chain of three bones, but they're each a different bone.

LULU: Oh, that's a cheat.

LATIF: It feels like a cheat. Those three are different from each other.

DIANE: Yes.

LULU: That's a cheat.

LATIF: They're not the same.

DIANE: They are not the same.

LATIF: They're not the same.

DIANE: No, they are not the same.

LATIF: What I want is I want three discreet—three of the same thing.

LULU: So you want a set. Three little eyeballs.

LATIF: Yeah. Yeah.

LULU: You want three ...

LATIF: Yeah.

LULU: I feel you. Three hearts. You want that.

DIANE: Three same things.

LATIF: Right.

AVIR: Ooh, I've got a good one that's three, but it's kind of gross.

LATIF: Okay, go for it.

AVIR: There's three spongy parts that make up the sponginess of the penis, you know, that fill up with blood.

LATIF: Okay.

DIANE: Yes, there are three erectile bodies in the penis.

AVIR: Two of them are called the corpus cavernosum. And then one is called the corpus spongiosum.

DIANE: Which is underneath the two of them. And then it flares out of the—at the far end of the penis and forms the glans tissue.

AVIR: So there's three.

DIANE: But there are different—there's one pair of one kind of erectile body and then there's a third of another type of erectile body.

LATIF: Okay. Okay, so that's not gonna cut it.

DIANE: So it—it kind of—it's kind of a non-starter.

LATIF: Also that's only half the population anyway.

AVIR: Okay—ooh, okay, I got another one. Do you know that we have a third eye?

LATIF: Tell me, where's our third eye?

AVIR: It's actually, like—when you look at, like, religious drawings, you know, and, like ...

LATIF: Right?

AVIR: It's, like, where they're talking about. It's kind of in the center of your head.

LATIF: Okay.

AVIR: Most likely, that was a very old, old eye, back when we didn't even have skulls and we weren't even human.

LATIF: Really? So it's like a vestigial eye kind of thing?

AVIR: I'm just gonna go out on a limb and say yes.

LATIF: Okay.

DIANE: He's thinking of the pineal gland. It's—in us, it's, like, way deep in the brain, but it's not like our eyes.

LATIF: Okay. So you call BS on that one?

DIANE: I don't think it—I don't think it matches your parameters.

LULU: Nah, that doesn't count. That doesn't count.

LATIF: Right. And I just kept asking more and more people. Like ...

LATIF: ... in the body that we have three of.

DANIELLE REED: Hmm.

LATIF: Like, I was in an interview—completely unrelated interview with Danielle Reed. She's an expert on senses and the brain.

DANIELLE REED: Yeah, I can't think of a thing.

LATIF: And I asked her the question.

DANIELLE REED: No, I can't think of anything.

LATIF: She was stumped. And then I went to Cat Bohannon.

CAT BOHANNON: I'm Cat Bohannon. I'm a researcher and an author, just finished my PhD at Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition.

LULU: Okay.

LATIF: Just wrote a book called Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution.

LULU: Oh, neat! I was just hearing about this book.

LATIF: Yeah, so I asked her a question that had nothing to do with the book.

CAT BOHANNON: Oh, I thought you were gonna ask me something about genitals.

LATIF: Oh yeah.

CAT BOHANNON: Because, like, half of my life right now is answering ...

LATIF: So when I asked her the three body part question, she said ...

CAT BOHANNON: You're—you're very unlikely to arrive at a three. So actually, very good question.

LATIF: But why is it so hard to find threes in the body? Because I mean, like, I found a four, I found a five, I found a six. It feels easier to find every other number besides three.

CAT BOHANNON: In part that is because bodies are things which are built, actually.

LATIF: So according to Cat, because bodies are built, they need a building plan, and that plan needs to be effective, but it also needs to be efficient.

CAT BOHANNON: If you're thinking about how this body plan is building out, you—you can simply think of each half of the body essentially doing the same thing in a mirror function.

LATIF: Which means that for basically all animals, symmetry is the baseline move. It's efficient, because you have to just plan half of something and then you say, "Double it." It's good for moving around, right? Think of walking, crawling. Being symmetrical really helps. And also because it gives you a backup.

CAT BOHANNON: The central reason that most of us have two testicles, two ovaries, two things, is also that well, if one fails, we're still good.

LATIF: Now of course, there are times when you want to break the pattern.

CAT BOHANNON: But it's often a shrinking from two to one. There may be something about having two hearts that would be deeply stupid. You know, this is simply better to build as a single unit, a single pump, as it were, to just push this through the system than to try to maintain two because then you'd have to coordinate the two. It would be like this weird waltz—well, maybe not a waltz. It would probably be a four-four. But you know what I mean, right?

LATIF: And the other reason you might go from two to one is ...

CAT BOHANNON: Running the thing.

LATIF: ... the simple matter of the cost.

CAT BOHANNON: You know, how much energy is it gonna take to maintain this thing, to run this thing, to use this thing? I'm not at all surprised we don't have two brains. That is the most metabolically expensive tissue in our body.

LATIF: It feels like over the evolution of the human body, it's like the number one and the number two sort of arm-wrestled over every part of the body. It would be like, "Should we have one of these? Should we have two of these? Should we have one of these? Should we have two of these?"

CAT BOHANNON: Effectively. Effectively.

LATIF: And then number three is not even at the table. Number three is like, "Hey I got a great idea! We could do three!" And everyone's like, "No. No."

CAT BOHANNON: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

DIANE: Three is not a magic number when it comes to animal bodies.

LATIF: Huh!

DIANE: [laughs]

LATIF: But then ...

AVIR: Whew! I just, like, ran home so I could set this up.

LATIF: Avir called me back.

LULU: I can picture this getting so under his skin. Like ...

LATIF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, it really bugged him.

AVIR: I was just in bed at night and it just—like, the answer just came to me.

LATIF: So what is it?

AVIR: Okay. So basically, the aortic valve, which is the only way to get blood from your heart to the rest of your body, you gotta go through a valve. It's called the aortic valve. And that valve, the best design is for it to have three cusps.

LATIF: The design that makes sure blood goes one way out the heart and not the other way back in, because that would be very bad.

AVIR: They're triangle doors that, like, open up when you want the blood to go out, and then just flop back down when you want it to close. But actually what it is is, like, three leaflets.

LATIF: What do you mean by leaflets?

AVIR: Like, three triangular doors that add up to being a circle. Like, if you saw a Mercedes Benz symbol, it would be those three—the up, left—almost like a peace sign, you know? Like, that type of thing.

DIANE: Yeah, so that's—that's a possibility, because there's three cusps, and they're all the—they're all the same. That's true. That's a good—that's a good option. But there's more than one of them.

AVIR: Okay, so the—but the—yeah, this is where my whole thing may break down. You have more valves.

LATIF: Oh, no. You didn't just—no way! No way! That doesn't count!

AVIR: [laughs] No, no, but listen. No! Listen, listen. You have four chambers of the heart.

LATIF: Four chambers. Each have a valve. Four valves.

AVIR: Yeah.

LATIF: And so then I was like, oh, but that kind of means we have 12 cusps.

LULU: [laughs]

LATIF: Not three. And then it got even weirder, because he was like, "No, no, no, because one of those valves is not a tricuspid valve. It's a bicuspid valve, so we have two." So I was like, "11?

LATIF: Like, we found an 11?

AVIR: We found an 11.

LATIF: And we still haven't found a three?

AVIR: No, we found a three.

LATIF: I don't—that's an 11.

AVIR: Damn it!

LATIF: But I did—I did end up deciding to take it to Cat anyway to see what she thought.

CAT BOHANNON: I forgot about that!

LATIF: Do you feel like that—does that cut it for you? Does that feel like—does that feel good?

CAT BOHANNON: You know, it had—I got a little tingle. I got a little something. I got a little something thinking about it.

LATIF: Okay.

CAT BOHANNON: But keep going, because you were about to tell me why not.

LATIF: Because there are ...

LATIF: And I explained my whole thing to her. Like, isn't this actually—like, it looks like a three, but this is actually an 11, right?

CAT BOHANNON: Technically 11 cusps. However, three would share the property of having the three cusps.

LATIF: If you don't count the cusps, if you count instead the tricuspid valves ...

LULU: Oh, there are three tricuspid valves?

LATIF: There are three tricuspid valves.

CAT BOHANNON: Three sets of three, which feels satisfying and vaguely mystical.

LATIF: Three threes, literally in your beating heart.

LULU: Oh! That's beautiful!

LATIF: Okay, all right. There we go. There we go. Three threes.

LULU: Did you—did you tell Fivel? Is he excited?

LATIF: Yeah, yeah. I got him on mic. I explained the whole thing.

LATIF: Okay, my buddy. My buddy.

FIVEL NASSER: What?

LATIF: There's little doors in your heart, they're shaped like a little pizza with three slices. I laid it out for him.

LATIF: So there's this special door in your heart.

FIVEL NASSER: Heart things.

LATIF: Three heart things.

FIVEL NASSER: Heart doors.

LATIF: Three heart doors. And then in the door ...

FIVEL NASSER: It goes ...

LATIF: Yeah?

FIVEL NASSER: There's three of them, and it's three threes which make nine of them.

LATIF: Yeah. Three of these kinds of doors, with three flaps in each of them.

FIVEL NASSER: Whoa!

LATIF: So you think that doesn't count?

FIVEL NASSER: Yeah.

LATIF: But there's three of them.

FIVEL NASSER: Okay, fine.

LATIF: [laughs]

FIVEL NASSER: [laughs]

LATIF: So I found you a three in the body.

LATIF: Okay. Okay, that actually was our last Magic School Bus trip.

LULU: So, you know, go back to your—go back to your life.

LATIF: Your desk, bus is parked. You can go back to your normal school or work day.

LULU: You know, go learn about the Krebs cycle. But don't worry, because we actually have another wild ride coming up in just two weeks. Latif, this is a story of yours that has captured your heart and sent you—basically put jet—jet—jet engines on the school bus and launched your all the way into space.

LATIF: True!

LULU: So we are all gonna get to hear that. I'm very excited for it.

LATIF: In the meantime, this episode was reported by myself, as well as Molly Webster, Alan Goffinski and Becca Bressler.

LULU: And it was produced by Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Molly Webster and Becca Bressler. With help from Matt Kielty, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys and Alyssa Jeong Perry.

LATIF: With music and sound design from Jeremy Bloom and mixing help from Arianne Wack.

LULU: Original song by Alan Goffinski, with back up by his wife Alina Goffinski. Special thanks to Mark Krasnow, Kari Leibowitz and Andrea Ebbers.

LATIF: Thank you for listening.

LULU: Bye!

[LISTENER: Radiolab was created by Jad Abumrad and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulu Miller and Latif Nasser are our co-hosts. Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes: Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Ekedi Fausther-Keeys, W. Harry Fortuna, David Gebel, Maria Paz Gutiérrez, Sindhu Gnanasambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neason, Sarah Qari, Alyssa Jeong Perry, Sarah Sandbach, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters and Molly Webster. Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger and Natalie Middleton.]

[LISTENER: Hi, I'm Erica in Yonkers. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.]

 

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