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Short Stuff: Your Dirty Bed · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey you, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm josh,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck short stuff. Let's go, let's go, let's go.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: It's short stuff. Yeah. So this one is uh courtesy
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: kind of of NC State University. Go back. Oh, yes,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: thank you. I'm glad you said that. I couldn't remember
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: you about Star Heels I might have been. I'm sorry, bad, bad,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: bad move. I was gonna call them the Golden Pirates
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: of Love. Oh that's good. I like that. Well, if
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: you ever found a university, I expect you to use
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: it's Barry Manal of University Golden Pirates Love. I saw
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: that guy in person in concert front row center. Yeah.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: When was that in Vegas? I don't know, two thirteen,
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: fourteen fifteen? Was it great? Oh? One of the best ever.
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: I mean that was a huge, huge Berry Manly fan
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: as a kid, four or five of his records, And
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I'm sure my mom was just like, what is going on?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Don't right? But we're not talking about that. We're talking
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: about your gross bed and the fact that you lay
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: in it every night. Yeah. How often do you change
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: your bed sheets? Once a week? Yeah? Same here. I
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: think that's normal. Yeah. Um, And I mean it's not
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  Speaker 1: like it's not like I, um, like I used the bathroom,
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: take my clothes off, and then just go to bed
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  Speaker 1: without cleaning myself off every night either. But it turns
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: out that from investigations into the human bed, you would
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: get the impression that all of us do something very
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: similar to that every night, because apparently human bed is,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: like you said, really really gross on the microbial level
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: at least. Yeah, and then the point is not to
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: gross you out, but it because it shouldn't gross you out.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Kind of my point. If you're doing it once a week, changeover,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: that's that's not too bad, no, because you know, we
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: don't live on the microbial level, so we couldn't care less,
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: that's right. But when you get in your bed, there
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: are trillions of microbes that make up your own human microbiome,
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  Speaker 1: and you are you're shedding this stuff. Um, you're shedding well,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: kind of gross stuff at times, but it's on that
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: microbial level, so you're just try not to think about it.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: But there are fecal oral and skin bacteria, fecal bacteria
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  Speaker 1: that you're shedding in your bed on a nightly basis. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: under normal circumstances outside of this episode, you don't really
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: think about that. But that's also the reason that your
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: parents taught you never to lick your own sheets, you know. Yeah,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: well you gotta get the food stuff out of there first,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: so you lick it. Then, well you just you you
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: make a cup with one of your hands, the palm
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: one in your hands, and then you use the other
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: hand to scoop that stuff into the cup and then
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: you eat it like that, like a handful and nuts.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Don't ever lick your sheets. It's just right. That's a
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: good point. So the the point of all this is,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: like you said, it's not that gross. Everybody out chuck.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: It's to basically say, um, humans are primates. Let's find
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: out how much our beds differ from other primates. Bets
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: isn't that correct? Yeah, And these researchers at NC State University,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I think, I think inen did this and they found
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: as far as we go, about thirty of the bacteria
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and our beds come from us. Uh. Like I said that,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: the oral and skin and fecal bacteria, and they're like, well,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: that makes sense coming from our own bodies. And we
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: are really curious because chimpanzees are close to us. What
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the deal is with them. Because here's the thing I
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: never knew about chimpanzees. They make a new nut, make
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: their bed, They build and construct a brand new bed
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: for themselves every single day. I did not know that either.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I think that's a very refreshing fact that I had
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: no idea about chimps. I I see them in a
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: different light now, and I feel like kind of a
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  Speaker 1: jerk for thinking they were a little dirty before. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: so they wanted to find out like what's going on
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  Speaker 1: in a chimpanzee bed and what they were kind of
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  Speaker 1: zeerring in on. It's not like how dirty are they,
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: but how much of their own microbiome is in their
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: bed compared to um other stuff from their environment since
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: they're you know, these beds are up in trees, Like
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  Speaker 1: are their tiny little insects all over the place, and
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  Speaker 1: like gross stuff from them? Or is it mainly just
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: stuff from the chimpanzee. Yeah, the researchers were like, it's
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: gross enough talking about human beds. Let's try to make
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: everybody barth by talking about chimpanzee beds. Should we cliffhanger
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  Speaker 1: right there and take a break? You bet your your sweet,
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: but you bet your sweet chimpanzee. All right, we'll be
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: back with Zippy the Chimp right after this as skuld Okay,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: we're back and we're with Zippy the Chimp. Is that
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: a new chimper? Is that like a throwback from the fifties? Um,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: Zippy was an actual uh lovey as my daughter calls,
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: some little stuffed animal that I had when I was little,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: and it had a hand that you could squeeze. It
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: was he wearing red overalls in a red cap. I
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: think Zippy had red. Do you remember remember when we
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: used to make like galleries on the blogs as part
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: of our job. You made you made knockoff lovees, right,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: they I found like the I made it one of
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: the best galleries ever. Was like the most unsettling dolls
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: of all time, and that it was like fifty or
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  Speaker 1: sixty of them. But Zippy was definitely in there. Those
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: are those are weird times when they were like the
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: page views equal money, guys. I know, if you could
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: come up with like a hundred pictures, let's say, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it was a step up from the knockoff wallets. They
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: had a sewing prior to that. I thank god for
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: the blogs coming along. Yes, A Zippi with war Red
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: and then uh, my mom was so great. Also, my
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: one of my favorite books growing up was Cortu Roy
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  Speaker 1: the Bear, the Department Store Bear and Corturoy war green
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  Speaker 1: Corturoy overalls. And my mom took a Teddy Bear lovey
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  Speaker 1: that looked like cot Roy and made homemade these little
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: green coote Roy overalls for him. That is so sweet
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: and I still have that now. My daughter has it
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: in her room with her other fifty lovees. That is
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: very sweet. That is a great story. I'm glad you
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: you use that as a tangent and not because that
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: this this article is a little thin. Well we are
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: killing some time, aren't we. So um, we're talking about
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  Speaker 1: this study where they wanted to basically compare um human
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: beds to chimpanzee beds to just you know, basically make
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: chips look bad, point out how great humans are. And
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: they went back and they looked at their findings and
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  Speaker 1: they went what and found that no, no, no, chimps
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  Speaker 1: actually are pretty clean if you compare beds to beds
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  Speaker 1: between humans and other primates including chimps. Yeah, I think
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: they got They went to Tanzania, which is a great
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: place to go if you want to get some chimps.
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  Speaker 1: And they got swabs from forty one chimpanzee beds or
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  Speaker 1: nests they call him nests too, and then they tested
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  Speaker 1: those for the diversity, the micro microbial biodiversity. And then
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  Speaker 1: I think for fifteen of those nests they even use
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: vacuums because I talked about the insects and stuff that
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: you're invariably gonna get when you live in the woods
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  Speaker 1: in a nest, Yeah, and they wanted to see kind
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: of what was in there, so they vacuumed up about
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  Speaker 1: fifteen of them. And then, like you said, they thought
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: they were going to see about the same thing, which
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: is that chimpanzees had a bunch of gross stuff from
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: their own bodies and their beds, and they found the opposite.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: They found almost entirely the bed were almost entirely lacking. Uh.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: They did find that the bacteria, environmental bacteria is what
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  Speaker 1: dominated the nest and not chimpanzee gunk. Yeah, no oral,
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  Speaker 1: no skin, no fecal bacteria even And get this, everybody
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  Speaker 1: like if you sleep naked, yes, you're gonna get some
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  Speaker 1: fecal bacteria on your bed sheets. This is inevitable no
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  Speaker 1: matter how clean you are. I'm sorry, we're talking about
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  Speaker 1: microbes here. It's okay, it's okay, it's normal. Chimpanzees do
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  Speaker 1: not traditionally wear pants of any kind. They sleep naked
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  Speaker 1: all the time without variation, unless unless they live at
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  Speaker 1: a house and they wear pants. But that is definitely
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  Speaker 1: not the norm among chimpanzees in the wild. No pants.
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  Speaker 1: And yet not a single type of fecal bacteria that's
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  Speaker 1: known to inhabit chimpanzees feces was found in their nests
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  Speaker 1: and any of the nests that they studied, which means
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: it's sad to say everyone, chimpanzees are way cleaner than you.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: When it comes to beds. Yeah, I mean, what we've
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: done is we've gotten rid of you know, we don't
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  Speaker 1: wear shoes in bed, heaven forbid, and stuff like that,
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  Speaker 1: so we're not tracking in as much stuff from the outside.
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  Speaker 1: We generally changed into jammys or uh, heaven forbid. If
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: he sleep naked in your bed, like you were just
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: talking about, I can't do that, never have been able to.
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  Speaker 1: I have a friend who warned me never to sleep
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  Speaker 1: naked because he was in a house fire once and
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: his life was actually saved by the person whose apartment
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  Speaker 1: he was at, and um, he was sleeping naked and
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  Speaker 1: ended up outside in this condo complex totally naked in
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  Speaker 1: the middle of the night because of this fire that
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: again his life had just been saved from. So he
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  Speaker 1: was grateful to be alive, but also ungrateful to have
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  Speaker 1: been naked. And I don't believe he ever slept naked
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  Speaker 1: again after that. And he said one of the neighbors
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  Speaker 1: gave him like a blanket or something, but he was
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: standing out there naked for a little while thanks to
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: that house fire. Yeah, I sleep on top of the
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: covers generally, like sometimes i'll snuggle up under and like
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  Speaker 1: the dead of winter, but I basically just sleep completely
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  Speaker 1: on top of the bed. And the thought of sleeping
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  Speaker 1: completely on top of the bed completely naked is makes
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  Speaker 1: me feel vulnerable. I think it's disgusting. Nobody wants to
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: see that, and you know, I don't know, I just
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: I feel really vulnerable, like, oh yeah, like somebody could
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: come along and punch any terrible place, just whatever. I
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  Speaker 1: just don't want my parts exposed like that all night,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: for like eight hours in a row. So instead you
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: wear nothing but a blazer a porky biggott. Oh that's
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: good stuff. Um So, anyway, where I was going is
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  Speaker 1: is that our beds don't have a lot of that
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  Speaker 1: outside stuff because we change into other things and we
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: don't get that stuff on our bed generally. So it's
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: just a less diverse uh set of microbes that are
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: in our bed. It's mainly from our bodies. Yeah, and
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: there's no mystery to why chimp's beds are cleaner. They
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: make their own nests their beds night after night from scratch.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: They just get a bunch of twigs and leaves and
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: make a new bed every single night, which is pretty
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  Speaker 1: neat that. They're like, it's gross to sleep in the
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: same bed twice. I can't believe humans do it. That's right,
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  Speaker 1: So we want to shout out once again. N C
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: State University in their paper the Ecology of Sleeping colon
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  Speaker 1: the microbial uh and Arthur Pod Associates of Chimpanzee beds.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Very nice, quite a read, very nice, And since I
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: said very nice twice, that means, of course short stuff
• 11:34
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