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Spontaneous Generation, Part Two: "Broth Science" · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
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  Speaker 1: the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
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  Speaker 1: for tuning in. Let's hear it for the man, the myth,
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  Speaker 1: the legend, spontaneously generated, or so he says our super producer,
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  Speaker 1: mister Max Williams.
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  Speaker 2: Hello, I'm here and I grew out of cheese and bagels.
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  Speaker 2: That's very true. I mean, they definitely they created the
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  Speaker 2: circumstances in which for you to thrive. That's also true.
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  Speaker 1: And speaking of thriving circumstances, folks, I am over the
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  Speaker 1: Lamarckian Moon to introduce you to the one, the only,
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  Speaker 1: mister Noel Brown. Noel, how's it going.
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  Speaker 2: It's going, my friend, It's going in a forward direction.
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  Speaker 2: It's about all we can hope for.
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  Speaker 1: And for the record, I am still going by.
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  Speaker 2: Ben Bowleen indeed, and we are picking up where we
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  Speaker 2: left off on the topic of spontaneous generation courtesy of
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  Speaker 2: our research associated Extraordinary Doctor Z for a quick little recap.
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  Speaker 2: Previously on Ridiculous History, we left off introducing a new
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  Speaker 2: character to our not really a rogues gallery. What's the
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  Speaker 2: opp They're all stand up individuals. Jean Baptiste Lamark and
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  Speaker 2: his theory that was beginning to approach what we know
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  Speaker 2: as the kind of modern theory of evolution. He was
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  Speaker 2: from the school of thought that led to individuals like
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  Speaker 2: Charles Darwin with his insatiable appetite for all of God's creatures,
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  Speaker 2: and he also was referencing quite a bit Aristotle's Scala neturei,
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  Speaker 2: Aristotle being one of the first characters that we introduced,
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  Speaker 2: and his you know, kind of belief largely in the
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  Speaker 2: concept of life being generated from non living things. But
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  Speaker 2: we also mentioned that Aristotle also did understand as much
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  Speaker 2: as was possible, the idea that life generated from sexual reproduction.
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  Speaker 2: And so Jean Baptiste Lamark was trying his best to
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  Speaker 2: reconcile his views the idea of spontaneous generation and Aristotle's
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  Speaker 2: views that were espoused in that work Scala neturei, and
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  Speaker 2: created sort of a new theory that, like I said,
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  Speaker 2: largely resembled what we think of as the theory of
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  Speaker 2: evolution today, leading us to what the next step is
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  Speaker 2: in terms of other scientists who began to turn their
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  Speaker 2: high powered intellects toward the notion of spontaneous generation.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, and the idea of spontaneous generation at this point
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  Speaker 1: is the prevailing scientific theory to explain the origin of
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  Speaker 1: living things for several millennia, as we know. Please please please,
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  Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians, check out part one of this special
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  Speaker 1: two part series. We shout out Babylonia, We shout out
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  Speaker 1: the Shang Dynasty. We shout out folks like an axe
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  Speaker 1: amander of Malitius. We also are entering in in media
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  Speaker 1: arrests the exploration of science.
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  Speaker 2: So fast forwarding a handful of decades past the work
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  Speaker 2: of our buddy Jean Baptiste Lamarc, Let's turn our attention
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  Speaker 2: again to Italy and the Italian botanist Pierre Antonio Michelli,
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  Speaker 2: who in seventeen twenty nine describes nineteen hundred plants and
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  Speaker 2: nine hundred fung guy By a series of very specific characteristics,
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  Speaker 2: he was able to observe the formation of fungal spores
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  Speaker 2: that then led to the formation of fungi themselves. In
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  Speaker 2: order to do this, he did a very scientifically methodical
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  Speaker 2: series of tests involving melon slices.
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  Speaker 1: He did, indeed, and the idea was reproduction. As we
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  Speaker 1: talked about previously, the origin of the scientific method is
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  Speaker 1: you observe something, you ask why it happens, You give
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  Speaker 1: your pitch on why you think it happens, You try
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  Speaker 1: to predict it, you test it, you get the information,
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  Speaker 1: you make conclusions. So this guy is practicing this, even
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  Speaker 1: if he doesn't call it scientific method quite at this
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  Speaker 1: point he is able to you enter that reproduction phase
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  Speaker 1: and he's creating the same type of fungus that he
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  Speaker 1: observed in the original spores. And with these observations, he says,
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  Speaker 1: come on, man, this doesn't just happen. It doesn't spontaneously generate.
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  Speaker 1: These living things come from somewhere. And he says, also,
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  Speaker 1: by the way, guys, I bet if you boiled broth
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  Speaker 1: in flask, which was a very common thing at the time,
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  Speaker 1: then it will somehow eliminate these living things. But if
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  Speaker 1: we don't seal them up when we cool them down,
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  Speaker 1: those broths are going to cloud. Something in the soup
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  Speaker 1: will go sour.
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  Speaker 2: Indeed, the soup is sour. Shout out to pet Cemetery
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  Speaker 2: ruined me as a kid, really really scary. You know.
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  Speaker 2: It's interesting though, too. Ben. You mentioned the idea of
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  Speaker 2: boiling things in flasks, and I'm always kind of blown
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  Speaker 2: away by the fact that a lot of the basic
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  Speaker 2: materials that you find in science labs today are very
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  Speaker 2: similar to the types of materials you would find in
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  Speaker 2: science labs of yesteryear, things like erlin Meyer flasks and
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  Speaker 2: graduated cylinders. And while there there certainly have been, you know,
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  Speaker 2: small changes, largely there are very similar pieces of equipment
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  Speaker 2: today that are highly low tech, you know, and that
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  Speaker 2: is what it takes to do some of these trials.
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  Speaker 2: It doesn't necessarily require, you know, high levels of technology.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, shout out to my favorite of the flask, the
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  Speaker 1: earl Meyer, which I only remember from a brief, brief
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  Speaker 1: interaction in high school chemistry. It's true, though, your point
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  Speaker 1: about finding what works and keeping it around the The
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  Speaker 1: discoveries of our buddy Mitchelle allowed the belief in spontaneous
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  Speaker 1: generation to persist because when he was boiling these flasks,
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  Speaker 1: he said, what, who these things still somehow create life.
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  Speaker 1: The microscope became available, i'd say for early adopters in
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  Speaker 1: about the six late sixteen hundreds, late seventeenth century, sixteen eighties,
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  Speaker 1: and people started going ham on this. Folks like the
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  Speaker 1: influential French naturalist George Louis Le Claire Conte de Beau.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say affoon not before.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they they concluded with microscopes, they concluded that
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  Speaker 1: there is some sort of ever present life general rating
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  Speaker 1: force that simply occurs, like there's a vibe to certain
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  Speaker 1: types of inorganic non living matter, and if you leave
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  Speaker 1: them alone, under the right circumstances, they will create living things.
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  Speaker 2: Right. So, they are still to some degree leaning on
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  Speaker 2: the spontaneous generation concepts, but it is definitely advanced. But
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  Speaker 2: they do still seem to think that that cloudy broth
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  Speaker 2: is essentially creating something new from what was there before,
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  Speaker 2: as opposed to having new elements introduced into the equation. Right. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And it's funny, isn't it, because we see echoes of
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  Speaker 1: this in modern discourse about how life, like the provenance
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  Speaker 1: of life, the provenance of living things, the idea of
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  Speaker 1: spontaneous generation only becomes more interesting as humans learn more
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  Speaker 1: about the world around us. Right, So, the idea of
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  Speaker 1: Earth as this sort of lottery level fight against probability.
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  Speaker 1: We know amino acids were around, did lightning strike them?
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  Speaker 1: Shout out to of course, throwing copper by live or
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  Speaker 1: classic stone cold, classic yeah, or did did some other
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  Speaker 1: iteration of life arrive on the planet and find the
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  Speaker 1: environment somehow was suitable.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, No, that's right, And I mean we are
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  Speaker 2: starting to. Yet It's very interesting to me because I mean,
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  Speaker 2: we have clearly in the past scientific inquiries that we've discussed,
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  Speaker 2: like leading up to this point, come to these correct
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  Speaker 2: conclusions when it comes to larger creatures, larger organic life forms,
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  Speaker 2: like the whole flies and meat situation, they very quickly
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  Speaker 2: realized through scientific method that it wasn't the rotting meat
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  Speaker 2: that was creating the flies, but creating a situation that
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  Speaker 2: attracted flies who would then lay their eggs on the meat,
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  Speaker 2: and then the flies would arise from the patching of
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  Speaker 2: the eggs the maggots and then creating more flies. And
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  Speaker 2: yet they still seem to not be applying that concept
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  Speaker 2: directly to some of these more microscopic elements. Yeah, right on.
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  Speaker 1: A rose is a rose is a rose, A flies
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  Speaker 1: of flies a fly.
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  Speaker 2: So life is life is life, you know what I mean.
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  Speaker 2: But they're not there yet. And I guess I understand
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  Speaker 2: that we are looking at this stuff through hindsight where
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  Speaker 2: we're like, of course they're the same, but they don't.
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  Speaker 2: They're not there yet.
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  Speaker 1: So there's this Italian I'd call him a man of letters,
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  Speaker 1: a man of insurance. He's a priest, which gives him
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  Speaker 1: the social opportunity to also be a biologists and dabble
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  Speaker 1: in physiology. His name Lazaro Spallanzani. He is the guy
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  Speaker 1: who who says, look, buddy, need him. It doesn't These microbes,
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  Speaker 1: these small versions of life. They don't just come out
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  Speaker 1: of boiling broth because I can seal broth in a container,
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  Speaker 1: and if I seal it, then I don't see the
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  Speaker 1: microbes because raising the temperature of the liquid kills most
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  Speaker 1: of the small things living in there. They're always like
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  Speaker 1: it's almost like a mystery novel where you see people
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  Speaker 1: getting very close to the answer and the answer is
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  Speaker 1: always under their nose. So our buddy Lazarro says, here's
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  Speaker 1: what's happening. Microbes are moving through the air and they
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  Speaker 1: can be killed through essentially altering their environment through boiling
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  Speaker 1: the water. And over time, there were many other observations
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  Speaker 1: that demonstrated this. It was a panopoly of weird experiments,
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  Speaker 1: probably its own podcast series. Over time, the main thing
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  Speaker 1: we need to know ridiculous historians is that these observations
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  Speaker 1: showed one thing biological reproduction is based on existing complex
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  Speaker 1: structures rather than on mud or dead material or you know,
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  Speaker 1: hiding grapes from your parents in a cellar.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting we're talking about broth here because you
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  Speaker 2: know I buy I'm sure you do too, Ben buy
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  Speaker 2: a lot of chicken broth and beef broth, and typically
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  Speaker 2: that stuff if it's shelf stable because you buy it
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  Speaker 2: at the store, it's not refrigerated, but the moment you
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  Speaker 2: open it, you have introduced something into that situation. And
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  Speaker 2: if you're refrigerating it, it's not gonna do its thing
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  Speaker 2: for a long time, but even refrigerated, it will eventually
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  Speaker 2: those microbes that are introduced in at the moment you
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  Speaker 2: open it and expose it to the air. We don't
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  Speaker 2: have the kind of refrigeration that we have today in
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  Speaker 2: the late seventeen hundreds.
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  Speaker 1: That's true. We'll also explain at the end that raising
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  Speaker 1: grape reference if we have time. More proof of this
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  Speaker 1: idea came about in eighteen thirty seven, in an exercise
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  Speaker 1: of independent parallel thought. A German physiologist named Theodore Schwan
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  Speaker 1: and a French inventor and physicist named Charles Cagnard de
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  Speaker 1: la Tour. They discover the geese is a thing that
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  Speaker 1: is alive and reproduces, and they said, look, you get
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  Speaker 1: your microscopes, this new hot thing, the microscope. If you
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  Speaker 1: look at yeast when it is part of fermentation, then
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  Speaker 1: you see that yeast cells divide the way that a
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  Speaker 1: living cell would divide. And if we put sterile air
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  Speaker 1: in there, if we don't allow yeast into you know,
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  Speaker 1: our weird barrels or vats or erlami or flask or whatever,
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  Speaker 1: then fermentation doesn't start.
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  Speaker 2: Right because fermentation is essentially like a harnessing of this
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  Speaker 2: kind of process where it's like there's good bacteria that
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  Speaker 2: get in there and allow this chemical reaction to take
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  Speaker 2: place and it yields something different. It's this interesting. I
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  Speaker 2: always find it neat to see historically how people harness
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  Speaker 2: this kind of stuff before they really understand the science
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  Speaker 2: of it. They just know it works.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And that's that's a good observation. The fancy
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  Speaker 1: word for that would be a heuristic. We don't have
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  Speaker 1: to know why a certain process delivers favorable results. We
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  Speaker 1: simply obey the process. These are the questions folks like
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  Speaker 1: folks like Dutch scientist Anthony van Lewinhuk excuse my pronunciation.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he is largely known, you know, by many in
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  Speaker 2: the scientific community to be the father of microbiology, and
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  Speaker 2: he I believe he created one of the very first microscopes.
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  Speaker 2: If not like is considered to be the inventor of
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  Speaker 2: the microscope, because I think that was another thing where
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  Speaker 2: it was a lens. Everyone already knew what a telescope was,
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  Speaker 2: so there was a lot of parallel thinking involved in
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  Speaker 2: the creation of the microscope. It's more about a use
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  Speaker 2: case than it is like creating something from whole cloth,
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  Speaker 2: right right.
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  Speaker 1: It's invented in in or around fifteen ninety so our
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  Speaker 1: buddy Luinoake was born in sixteen thirty two or so,
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  Speaker 1: is an early adopter. But the microscope's origin comes from
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  Speaker 1: a Dutch father and son team. As far as we know,
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  Speaker 1: the originators of the of caveats because it's science. The
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  Speaker 1: originators of the predecessor of a modern microscope are Hans
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  Speaker 1: and Zacharias Johnson Jansen Jansen exactly.
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  Speaker 2: But lewinhak was an advancer of microscopic technology. He created
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  Speaker 2: I believe twenty five different designs for single lens microscopes.
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  Speaker 2: And he also, you know, you cut I guess, for
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  Speaker 2: lack of a better term, more than five hundred different
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  Speaker 2: kinds of optical lenses. So he was a very, very
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  Speaker 2: big deal in terms of advancing that technology that had
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  Speaker 2: been already invented.
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  Speaker 1: And so our buddy Tony as we'll call him, he says,
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  Speaker 1: look at this, I can see all kinds of things
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  Speaker 1: with these special lenses invented just a few decades before
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  Speaker 1: I came in the game. And I see that I
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  Speaker 1: can explain what is happening with this conundrum of boiled broth,
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  Speaker 1: right or boiling broth, And I can see that certain
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  Speaker 1: small spherical globules respond differently in cold broth versus heated broth,
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  Speaker 1: or in the presence of heated air. And he is
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  Speaker 1: what he's really doing is interrogating one of the great
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  Speaker 1: assumptions of the concept of spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation proponents
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  Speaker 1: argue that there must be oxygen, there must be air
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  Speaker 1: around for generation to observe.
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  Speaker 2: So aration right yielding generation.
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  Speaker 1: You're right, So, going back to part one of our series,
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  Speaker 1: the most famous example, you wrap bread or cheese and
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  Speaker 1: a rag and leave it in a cellar. The argument
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  Speaker 1: there seems to be that if this stuff is sealed
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  Speaker 1: off from the environment, then the mice or the rats
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  Speaker 1: will not grow. And with all this he concludes, Look,
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  Speaker 1: he is probably killing some of these living things that
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  Speaker 1: we can't see. And for him this is like a
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  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this is so cool. I don't know
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  Speaker 1: if we want to sound cute, but Max, this is
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  Speaker 1: like the end of the third act of Usual Suspects
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  Speaker 1: where they figure out who they killer is, and the
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  Speaker 1: killer is the killer is the germs. It's the things
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  Speaker 1: you cannot see.
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  Speaker 2: Oh.
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  Speaker 1: People are still debating over the authenticity of the spontaneous
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  Speaker 1: generation idea, and it goes all the way up to
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  Speaker 1: like we said in part one, it goes all the
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  Speaker 1: way up to the mid nineteenth century. I think it
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  Speaker 1: doesn't get put to rest until like the eighteen fifties.
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  Speaker 2: That's absolutely right. That debate was still very much alive.
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  Speaker 2: In France. There was a French naturalist who is very
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  Speaker 2: interested in this question, Felix Archimede Pouchet, who was in
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  Speaker 2: fact a very large booster for the concept of spontaneous generation,
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  Speaker 2: and he started to challenge the views of Swan as
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  Speaker 2: well as Louis Pasteur, who we know being the father
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  Speaker 2: of pasteurization and another hugely influential figure in this field.
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  Speaker 2: Both of those folks were into the idea of germ theory,
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  Speaker 2: which is very new at the time. They believe that
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  Speaker 2: microorganisms and germs arose from parents of the same species,
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  Speaker 2: and the germs were everywhere, including in the air and
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  Speaker 2: on inanimate matter. Pouchet, however, who was a big deal
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  Speaker 2: in the field of animal physiology, he believed that living
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  Speaker 2: things originated from inanimate matter and including air. Rather than
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  Speaker 2: these living microbes and bacteria being present, he believed they
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  Speaker 2: sprang forth from these elemental materials. He called the process heterogenesis.
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  Speaker 1: Ah, yes, evolving from different things.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: It's eighteen fifty eight, and our buddy is contesting Tony's results,
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  Speaker 1: and he says, he says, look, I've done the same experiments, right,
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  Speaker 1: And our buddy, Louis Pasteur writes to Bouchet in eighteen
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  Speaker 1: fifty nine and says, hey, man, oh, my cat's shouting
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  Speaker 1: us out.
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  Speaker 2: Let's get in.
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  Speaker 1: And he says, he says, hey man, hey, Pouchet, you
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  Speaker 1: know I get you. You're not a dummy. I respect
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  Speaker 1: your belief in spontaneous generation. But I can't really agree
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  Speaker 1: with your conclusions because you didn't have the right methodology
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  Speaker 1: or a poor setup.
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  Speaker 2: Well, and we know that the story of scientific discovery,
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  Speaker 2: and you know, to this day is largely about different scientists,
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  Speaker 2: different schools of thought, clashing with one another, and then
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  Speaker 2: usually hopefully over time, given enough analysis of various results,
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  Speaker 2: a kind of more or less clear winner is determined.
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  Speaker 2: And we are in an era right now where we
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  Speaker 2: see who ended up on the right history. It's Pasteur
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  Speaker 2: and Schwan, but we have somebody in Pouchet who is
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  Speaker 2: holding on to the old ways that have been kind
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  Speaker 2: of tempered with some more modern thinking. But clearly he
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  Speaker 2: is in the wrong here. But this was very much
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  Speaker 2: still a civil scientific debate.
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  Speaker 1: Do you think that I don't. I don't feel like
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  Speaker 1: it's a highlander thing. I think these folks are all
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  Speaker 1: trying to figure out stuff together.
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  Speaker 2: That's what I mean. But it's it's well, I think
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  Speaker 2: that's you could argue that that's the case with any
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  Speaker 2: kind of scientific discussion, But they oftentimes are a little
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  Speaker 2: bit cantankerous, you know, And you'll have people on different
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  Speaker 2: sides of an issue, basically thinking the other people are idiots,
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  Speaker 2: and you're right. There was a very diplomatic approach that
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  Speaker 2: Pasteur took when writing to Pouchet. But I don't know.
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  Speaker 2: It just seems to me like Pouchet was on the
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  Speaker 2: wrong side of history here and it would ultimately be disproven.
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  Speaker 2: But it probably wasn't particularly productive for Pastor to call
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  Speaker 2: him an idiot because he was so well respected. Right.
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  Speaker 1: Pastor obviously did not call him an idiot. So Pouchet,
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  Speaker 1: in the course of this dialogue publishes his primary, what
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  Speaker 1: we call his his opus right, his major scientific work,
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty nine. It's in French. There are English translations.
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  Speaker 1: It's called Heterogenesis, or Treatise on Spontaneous Generation, which I
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  Speaker 1: would argue is one of the one of the last
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  Speaker 1: do not do not go gentle into that dark night kind.
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  Speaker 2: Of holding on, yeah, to the idea of a spontaneous
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  Speaker 2: generation of.
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  Speaker 1: This idea, and in this Pouchet says that he believes
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  Speaker 1: eggs of adult organisms, whatever they may be, are spontaneously generated.
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  Speaker 1: And he adds a little bit of judge to it,
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  Speaker 1: and he says, not the adults themselves, it's the eggs
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  Speaker 1: they're created. And this goes all the way to one
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  Speaker 1: of the supreme courts of nerds at the time, the
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  Speaker 1: French Academy of Sciences. They favor pale pasture, and they say,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: look in it's January eighteen sixty. We can give a
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: prize for the detailed experimentation to solve this matter once
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: and forever. Pasteur, as history shows us, did participate in
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: this competition and did, by the way, win the competition.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Want to shout out once again our friends at the
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology who wrote just an
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: absolute awesome primer for us the lay people. Give a
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: shout out to our editor in chief for that, Melanie
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: more Meal.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: That's right. And so this competition is almost like a
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: Iron Chef type situation, and essentially the prize for the
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: victory at this iron chef level competition was the publication
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: of his results as being the kind of end all
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: be all of this particular argument. Mm hmm. Yeah.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: And if you have listened to part one, hopefully you have, folks,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: you're going to be familiar with some of the methodology. Here.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: We're going to cut past the seaweed. We'll round rob
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: in this pasteor pasteor absolutely rocked the old spontaneous growth
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: suptaneous growth question. He had his number one observations and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: he proved that bacteria was something that could be an
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: intervening variable. And he also proved that if you wrote
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: moved it, then the soup didn't get cloudy.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: I'm keeping that very eye level. That's right. And he
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: cites some of the big names that we've mentioned thus far,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: including Needum and Spalenzani because from those experiments, he said
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: that it was known that soup that was exposed to
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: the air spoiled bacteria grew. However, containers of soup that
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: had been boiled for one hour and were then sealed
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: remained sterile. However, boiling for only a few minutes wasn't
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: enough to kill all the bacteria, therefore sterilizing the soup.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Pasture had demonstrated that the dust collected by drawing air
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: through a single cotton ball had enough cultures of bacteria
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: contained within it to do the job. There were large
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: numbers of these. He knew that bacteria was, in fact,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: because of this observation, present in the air and could
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: only be filtered out by using the cotton ball. They
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: could be removed from the air and held on the
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: cotton ball. He also knew the bacteria could settle out
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: on the walls of a bent glass tube as air
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: was passed through it.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: So that's number one Again. Number two is the question,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: is there indeed some sort of life force present in
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: air or oxygen or nitrogen, et cetera that can cause
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: bacteria to develop spontaneously? Is there a means of allowing
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: air to enter a container, and if so, would that
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: not allow any life force to enter? But is there
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a way to allow these things to exist without allowing bacteria?
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: And could we, says Pasteur, build a wall. His hypothesis
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: three is that there is no such life force inherent
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: in the chemicals that make up air. So a container
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: of sterilized broth will remain sterile even if exposed to air,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: so long as you don't have the bacteria entering the flask.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: The flies are what create the flies.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Air is just a medium, you know, for transmitting the
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: stuff that creates the other stuff, Right.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent. So nol riddle, is this what
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: is the prediction arrived at here?
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: He predicts that if there is no life force contained
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: in air, which we have established, broth in a in
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: that swan neck flask that we also described ought to
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: remain sterile even if it is exposed to air, because
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: any of the bacteria in the air is going to
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: settle on the walls of the kind of the tapered
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: portion of the flask. The neck broth and flasks plugged however,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: with cotton ought to remain sterile because the cotton filters
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: the bacteria out of the air. So now let's put
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: this to the test, and that is number five testing.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: As we mentioned earlier in part one, our buddy Louis
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: Boyle's broth in these different shaped flask guests fellow nerds.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: One of them wasn't erle Meyer flask, just to shout
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: out my high school chemist. So they sterilize the broth,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: they let it cool, and as they cool it, they
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: get fresh air from the room drawn into the containers.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: And they don't seal any of the flask. They've just
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: boiled it to sterilize it, and then they expose it
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: to the outer environment. Some of them are open straight up,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: so anything present in that air, any bacteria, can get
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: into it. The experimental that's our control group. The experimental
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: group is using flask with those long, like you said,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: swan neck shapes s shaped. I guess they sort of
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: have like different little little bends.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Right, They got a clothes in them. Others are plugged
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: with cotton, which is similar to our earlier gauze experiment,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: like a porous.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Border which the flies in the meat right right, right right.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: And so he does this, he replicates, he uses several
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: of these flasks in each of his groups, and some
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: of his original flask get this. According to you know,
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: your local freshman biology textbooks, some of them are still
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: on display in France and are still sterile today.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's pretty cool. So now we get to the
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: data sets that are generated brought in flasks with the
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: next opening straight up get spoiled because they're just directly
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: in contact with the air that contains them. Some of
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: these microbes they get the cloud. That's why they get cloudy.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: And this is evidence by a nasty odor, the cloudiness
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: you described and previously clear broth, as well as upon
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: microscopic examination, the presence of bacteria that can be observed visibly. However,
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: broth in the s curve necked flasks didn't because there
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: were these buffers against that stuff. Right, they were getting
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: caught in the walls of the bendy parts of the flask.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: Then the broth at the bottom was spared right, Ugh,
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: it was.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: It was a whole thing. What we what we do
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: learn is the conclusion our buddy Louis says, look France
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: science overall, there is no inherent life force in air.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: There are organisms so plenty in air. Organisms do not
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: arise by spontaneous generation. If you have a if you
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: have a lovely broth, right, then it's not going to
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: automatically generate a bunch of people in line for soup.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Louise.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: Maybe we get close to end date on this one.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Louis specific quotation wash life is a germ, and a
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: germ is life. Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Mic drop Indeed, we can dropped that bike. It took
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: all of this experimentation to realize that, I mean, I
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: know this is maybe oversimplifying, but that it is the
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: same as the flies and maggots and meat experiments. You know,
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: It's all about things being open and exposed to outside elements.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Things aren't being created out of nothing. They are introduced
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: to a situation because whatever the material is that's being
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: spoiled or continued or whatever, attracts the contaminant.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: And with that, folks, with great thanks to our spontaneously
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: generating ridiculous historians, we cannot thank you enough for joining us.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: As you can tell, Max Noell and Doctor Z and
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: yours truly are big big fans of Louis Pasteur for
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: several reasons that we will explore in a future episode.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: We can't wait for you to hang out with us well.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: We examine some very strange sports in future future iterations
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: of this show. In the meantime, big big, big thanks
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: to super producer mister Max Williams, and big big big
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: thanks to our research associate Doctor Z. Absolute legend, absolute legend.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: This guy indeed, thanks a lot, talk to Zee. Huge
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: thanks to Max william superroducer extraordinaire as well as Christophraciotis
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: and Eves Jeff Coats both here in spirit and Jonathan
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Strickland the Quizzer and Aj Bahamas Jacobs the Puzzler.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: M Yes, AJ, Let's see you in a bit. Also,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: big big thanks to Gabe Luesier first of his name,
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: probably don't fact check us, big big thanks to Alex
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: Williams who can pose this track, and big big thanks
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: to anyone who spontaneously generates a nice little review for
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: us on what do they call it it, Apple podcast,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, whatever, podcast pod.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: Choice, catcher of choice. Yeah, we we love that. It
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: hopes people discover the show, and you know it may.
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: It makes us feel feel good, so please do do
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: that geez in the meantime. Thanks to you, Ben, and
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: also with you Let's see you next time, folks. For
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.