Speaker 1: Oh kay, it's that friend who never carries a purse,
Speaker 1: which must feel so liberating. But also she always asks
Speaker 1: you to keep her lipstick in your purse and you're like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I mean sure. Ali Ward back with another episode of Ologies. Boy,
Speaker 1: Howdy hot, damn you all this one is. It's super exciting.
Speaker 1: This is like introducing someone to their future spouse. Like
Speaker 1: you're about to not know what hit you. Okay, First,
Speaker 1: I'm going to hit you with a thank you. Thank
Speaker 1: you to everyone on patreon dot com, slash ologies who
Speaker 1: supports a show so I keep making it and for
Speaker 1: submitting all of your excellent, rapid fire around questions to
Speaker 1: the ologists. Also thank you to everyone tuning into the
Speaker 1: new Netflix science show I'm on called Brainchild. It's really weird,
Speaker 1: it's really funny. You do not have to have kids
Speaker 1: to like it. Feel free to tweet about it using
Speaker 1: the hashtag Brainchild and hopefully we'll make another season. Let's
Speaker 1: just make a little noise, okay. Also, thank you ologites
Speaker 1: for exchanging your money for merch at ologiesmerch dot com
Speaker 1: and for spreading the word. Thank you for zero dollar
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Speaker 1: lady who drives the ice cream truck about the podcast. Rating, reviewing,
Speaker 1: subscribing keeps this thing up in.
Speaker 2: The charts every week.
Speaker 1: I read you a very piping hot tongue burner of
Speaker 1: a review fresh off the press.
Speaker 3: We speak.
Speaker 1: Painted Novus says, this podcast is the Cloaca of science facts.
Speaker 1: It's got a little bit of everything going on. I
Speaker 1: can't stop talking about trees and squid arms and the
Speaker 1: long long life span of sharks. I'm putting a solitary
Speaker 1: bee house in my yard and fighting to overcome my
Speaker 1: fear of snakes and legless lizards. Thank you, Painted Novus.
Speaker 1: I think a snake would love to have you as
Speaker 1: a friend. To be honest, Okay, microbiology the workings of
Speaker 1: a live tiny little things. You're about to get to
Speaker 1: know yourself in a way that will shatter how you
Speaker 1: think of yourself as a beast and as a human.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited for all of us.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Now, I had email this ologist repeatedly, creepily, over and
Speaker 1: over for the better part of six months. I thought
Speaker 1: this would never happen. Honestly, I had pretty much given
Speaker 1: up hope until we finally found a time we could
Speaker 1: boastit down in her office on the UCLA campus where
Speaker 1: she runs her own microbiology lab. Also in her office
Speaker 1: on a couch a pillow in the shape of the
Speaker 1: poop emoji, but with hearts for eyes. True story the
Speaker 1: Ologies Instagram has proof seek it out.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this.
Speaker 1: Ologist has authored so many papers about the inner drama
Speaker 1: and triumphs of the critters that live in our guts
Speaker 1: and ostensibly make us us and I am in very unsubtle,
Speaker 1: very obvious awe of her work. I was freaking out.
Speaker 1: I was also very sweaty and frazzled because even though
Speaker 1: I got to campus half an hour early, the parking
Speaker 1: was a hellscape, and I walked into her lab fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes late. Did you do the math on that, because
Speaker 1: that means it took me forty five minutes to park.
Speaker 1: You're correct, so that was mortifying. But as you will
Speaker 1: soon discover, she is chill as hell.
Speaker 3: She wasn't even mad at me. So please pat.
Speaker 1: Your belly and let the trillions of tiny, invisible friends
Speaker 1: who control your mind get ready to listen to gut
Speaker 1: biome expert and microbiologist doctor Elaine Shao. Once again, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry that I'm so sweating.
Speaker 3: No, I like to arrive moist to my interviews. Just Dewey,
Speaker 3: And what is your title?
Speaker 4: It's assistant professor in Integrative biology and Physiology.
Speaker 2: Oh, a lot of ologies.
Speaker 3: I know.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, do you think that you
Speaker 1: are molecular biologist, a microbiologist, physiologist?
Speaker 3: What would you call yourself?
Speaker 4: I am a crisis ologist, I in to many things. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so our work touches on microbiology, but we also use
Speaker 4: molecular biology approaches, and it also touches on neurobiology.
Speaker 1: We'll go with microbiology. We're just we're going with microbiology
Speaker 1: because you're like one of those D and D dice
Speaker 1: with all those different facets. You're like a twenty sided
Speaker 1: oh DND dice pretty much. Oh man, that was too nerdy,
Speaker 1: too soon.
Speaker 3: When did you decide that biology was for you?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So I did choose a biology related major. So I
Speaker 4: had to make the decision in high school. To be honest,
Speaker 4: at the time, it wasn't that informed. I wasn't one
Speaker 4: of those kids that just love science forever know, nobody.
Speaker 2: In my family does science.
Speaker 4: I was really into other things like performing arts and music.
Speaker 2: But I just thought that I had to choose.
Speaker 4: Something practical, and I'd just taken biology in high school
Speaker 4: and I thought it was neat, So that's my little
Speaker 4: choice at that moment. Thankfully, it turned out well, so
Speaker 4: I stuck with it.
Speaker 1: And now you have your own lab, which means that
Speaker 1: you're the boss, which is pretty dope. What was it like,
Speaker 1: Do they have a ribbon cutting ceremony? What happens when
Speaker 1: you get your own lab?
Speaker 2: There was no ribbon cutting.
Speaker 4: Basically, you get faced with an empty space and then
Speaker 4: you have your pot of money and then you just
Speaker 4: go and there's no instructions on how to set it up.
Speaker 4: So different labs will have different styles and you know,
Speaker 4: different structures, so it's really.
Speaker 2: Up to you.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's so boss.
Speaker 2: It's fun. It's really fun.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Did you think when you started out in biology that
Speaker 1: you would go this far with it? Did you think
Speaker 1: that you'd be kind of heading operations like this?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: No, Actually, I first decided to enter grad school because
Speaker 4: I thought that I really enjoyed teaching and that's all
Speaker 4: I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: And in the.
Speaker 4: First half of grad school I seriously considered dropping out, like.
Speaker 2: Not really doing well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but afterward, you know, things started rolling and kind
Speaker 4: of got the hang of doing research and just really
Speaker 4: got sucked in and I really love it.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: That's interesting though, that you were that there was a
Speaker 1: kind of a hump to get over and then you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: oh wow, I'm really good at this. Like you see
Speaker 1: people who are so successful in what they do and
Speaker 1: you think, oh, it must have just been kind of
Speaker 1: a straight path, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not at all for me.
Speaker 4: But what really kept me in it is the science
Speaker 4: is a lot of fun. You know, there's a lot
Speaker 4: of room for creativity. You get to decide what you
Speaker 4: want to study, and you get to decide on what
Speaker 4: the important questions are, and then you get to decide
Speaker 4: on how you're going to try to answer those questions.
Speaker 4: So I find that it's really fun.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Elaine studied microbology during undergrad and at that time, the
Speaker 1: program's focus was really on the so called bad bugs
Speaker 1: that cause infectious disease.
Speaker 3: But then she became.
Speaker 1: Fascinated by the somewhat neglected study of for drama's sake,
Speaker 1: we'll just say the good guys, the helpful bugs.
Speaker 4: I was just watching this new field develop where more
Speaker 4: of the focus now is on good bugs rather than
Speaker 4: bad guys. The bad ones turn out to be super
Speaker 4: small portion of all the bacteria that are that are
Speaker 4: out there. So yeah, that's how I became interested. It's
Speaker 4: just watching the field develop and wanting to, you know,
Speaker 4: help explore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so we focus on these bad bugs because
Speaker 1: they can take us down. But meanwhile, how many things
Speaker 1: do we have living on and in us? Because there's
Speaker 1: always that number you hear that's like ten to one,
Speaker 1: because one of for every cell of yours there's maybe
Speaker 1: ten microorganisms.
Speaker 2: Is that total bullshit?
Speaker 3: I mean, no pun intended.
Speaker 4: You know, the actual numbers are a little bit fuzzy.
Speaker 4: It gets down the nitty gritty. It depends on what
Speaker 4: you count as a cell. So there are some cells
Speaker 4: that don't have a nucleus, so they don't have like
Speaker 4: the DNA that you're thinking of. If you had to
Speaker 4: give someone, like a dinner party estimate of how outnumbered
Speaker 4: you are, what would you say, Like, roughly, I would
Speaker 4: stick to the ten to one. I would actually I
Speaker 4: also just reference the raw number. The actual number that
Speaker 4: people have found based on sequencing is like one hundred
Speaker 4: trillion bacteria in your gut, Yeah, just in.
Speaker 1: Your gut, What about your nose and your eyes and
Speaker 1: your hair and your mouth and stuff. They're everywhere, and
Speaker 1: they're everywhere so quick aside, why do we call these
Speaker 1: bacteria bugs?
Speaker 3: Anyway?
Speaker 1: So the etymology of the word bug is ancient Welsh
Speaker 1: for ghost or goblin, which in this case kind of
Speaker 1: makes sense. You figure invisible, scary things that can exert
Speaker 1: mysterious forces on us. I mean, yeah, it tracks. So
Speaker 1: Elaine is essentially a ghost hunter who's just out looking
Speaker 1: for caspers. And so what makes a good bacteria versus
Speaker 1: a bad bacteria?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 4: I mean, a very superficial level normal is that they
Speaker 4: don't actually cause disease.
Speaker 2: And now people.
Speaker 4: Are finding that the bugs that are in and on
Speaker 4: us that some of them play really important roles. Like
Speaker 4: there's some bugs that help us digest things that we
Speaker 4: wouldn't otherwise be able to digest, Like there's no way,
Speaker 4: like the complicated fibers in your granola bar, there's no
Speaker 4: way ourselves could actually digest that ourselves.
Speaker 2: We rely on bugs to help us do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So if there are certain foods you can't eat,
Speaker 1: do you think you just need better bugs?
Speaker 2: That's a good question.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, some people are actually studying that,
Speaker 4: and yeah, I think that's an active area of research.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, going back to going back to your research a
Speaker 1: little bit. Was there anything at the intersection of biology
Speaker 1: and psychology that really intrigued you? How are you studying
Speaker 1: all these different ways that our stomachs and our guts,
Speaker 1: our intestines affect our brain.
Speaker 3: That's nuts, that's so cool. What was it that intrigue
Speaker 3: you about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, the same thing that you're mentioning is what really
Speaker 4: sucked me in. I started grad school not really intending
Speaker 4: to study bacteria at all. We were studying in my lab.
Speaker 4: My mentor's name was Paul Patterson at Caltech, and he
Speaker 4: kind of pioneered these animal models for studying autism and
Speaker 4: also animal models for studying schizophrenia. And it was really
Speaker 4: just noticing that at the time, if I changed the
Speaker 4: microbiome somehow, that these mice started behaving differently.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, It's like, oh this is really weird.
Speaker 2: I can't stop. I'm getting sucked into this.
Speaker 3: I need to know why.
Speaker 1: I mean, so, we're puppets to a bunch of strangers,
Speaker 1: friendly strangers that are living like in our colons.
Speaker 3: Essentially, you could.
Speaker 4: Put it that way, but the lines are getting blurred.
Speaker 4: It's like, do you count them as strangers or do
Speaker 4: you also count them as self? You know, there's no
Speaker 4: animals that don't there's no animals that exist without microbes,
Speaker 4: so some people like prefer to count them as part
Speaker 4: of yourself.
Speaker 1: I mean they're definitely close collaborators. Yeah, I'd have to say, well,
Speaker 1: it's a team effort over here, definitely.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that's the idea now, is that there's this
Speaker 4: maybe what people like to say, like, oh, coevolution. Then
Speaker 4: you know, we grew together and they do some things
Speaker 4: and we do some things, and it's this symbiosis.
Speaker 1: You know, it's so it's so bizarre, and it also
Speaker 1: makes you feel never lonely.
Speaker 4: Have one hundred jillion friends at least a big party.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're that, You're a party bus is what I
Speaker 3: like to think of it. As can you explain to me.
Speaker 1: A little bit how the things that are living in
Speaker 1: your guts how they affect your brain?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a great question. At this point, the field
Speaker 4: is really excited just by you know, acknowledging that they
Speaker 4: do affect behaviors so most of it this work comes
Speaker 4: from animal studies, Like if you study mice or or
Speaker 4: flies or fish, if you get rid of the microbiome,
Speaker 4: then they start behaving differently, or if you change the microbiome,
Speaker 4: then they'll behave another way. And now labs are just
Speaker 4: trying to figure out how that happens. What are the
Speaker 4: signals that microbes are sending to us. Are they sending
Speaker 4: these signals to neurons, or are they seconding these signals
Speaker 4: that just float around and enter your brain, or are
Speaker 4: they sending signals to immune cells? So all of these
Speaker 4: different possibilities.
Speaker 1: So they might be putting out some kind of chemical,
Speaker 1: some kind of signal and your brain's like, oh, got it,
Speaker 1: ten four, I'll do that.
Speaker 3: Or they might just be.
Speaker 1: Like pooping out things and our brain is receiving them
Speaker 1: being like, oh, I think I'm going to go in
Speaker 1: this direction just from having them pass like a blood
Speaker 1: brain barrier.
Speaker 2: Is that it that works? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: So that's a really good and that's a really good
Speaker 4: reference that some molecules that bacteria make can cross over.
Speaker 4: It can get absorbed into the intestine, can get into
Speaker 4: the blood stream, and some of them can enter the
Speaker 4: brain across this blood brain barrier.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what a blood brain barrier is,
Speaker 1: but I just said it because it sounded like I
Speaker 1: knew it.
Speaker 2: I was, Oh, really, it sounded like that. It was perfect.
Speaker 2: It was perfect.
Speaker 4: It's basically that not everything you know that's in the
Speaker 4: bloodstream enters the brain, and so there's this barrier like
Speaker 4: sandwiches of many cells that are there that kind of
Speaker 4: you know, are the gatekeepers of what can enter real quick.
Speaker 1: So I looked into this, and so the blood brain
Speaker 1: barrier is a semi permeable situation that happily lets in water,
Speaker 1: some gases glucose, which is delicious sugary think fuel. And
Speaker 1: in some cases, like with neurological disease or trauma or inflammation,
Speaker 1: this blood brain barrier can become more lax, kind of
Speaker 1: like a bouncer who gets distracted by their phone and
Speaker 1: starts admitting douchebags like toxoplasmosis, lime causing bacteria, syphilis, and
Speaker 1: other party runers. So you want the blood brain barrier
Speaker 1: alert and only letting in those folks on your guest list.
Speaker 3: Oof. Okay, so when you're looking at human beings.
Speaker 1: Are you like we are all maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: off of our rockers, just gently because our diets are
Speaker 1: maybe so different than they would be in the wild.
Speaker 1: Is there a really big correlation like the fact that
Speaker 1: we're eating honey crisps for breakfast and like a Venti
Speaker 1: frap for lunch, Like, is that really screwing us over
Speaker 1: a lot?
Speaker 4: So that's also a huge area of study in microbiome work,
Speaker 4: and other scientists have done these huge amazing studies. So
Speaker 4: for example, there's one Maria Domingos Bello and Rob Knight
Speaker 4: and a bunch of their colleagues where they sampled microbiomes
Speaker 4: from indigenous tribes of you know, people that have not
Speaker 4: had any exposure to any you know, modern medicine or
Speaker 4: our normal you know, what we consider Western lifestyles, and
Speaker 4: they basically find that they have these extremely diverse, super
Speaker 4: rich microbiomes with bugs that are there that are not
Speaker 4: seen in any people here in the US at least
Speaker 4: that they sample. And so there's this idea that maybe
Speaker 4: we've lost the diversity of microbes over time through things
Speaker 4: like our lifestyle and practices, our hygiene practices here, and
Speaker 4: that maybe it's a bad thing that could contribute to
Speaker 4: more like chronic diseases.
Speaker 1: Is there any truth that our serotonin is made largely
Speaker 1: in our intestines?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely.
Speaker 4: So that work was from Michael Gershon and he first
Speaker 4: published this finding that about ninety percent of the body's
Speaker 4: serotonin is made from gut cells.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's so many numbers, that's so much.
Speaker 3: It's made in our guts. It's just simmering in our
Speaker 3: in these big hoses full of poop down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, the gut is so cool. It's not just a container.
Speaker 4: It's really important that they hold poop, but they're really cool.
Speaker 4: There's actually a lot of neurons that are in there,
Speaker 4: maybe like five times more than in the spinal cord.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 4: So yeah, there's a lot of neurons that you know
Speaker 4: are there. It's one of the few organs that if
Speaker 4: you take it, if you sever it from the brain,
Speaker 4: it can work by itself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, if ninety percent of your serotonin is made
Speaker 1: in your gut, what cells are pumping it out or
Speaker 1: is it the bacteria that are pumping it out?
Speaker 4: So there are these endocrine cells that are basically cells
Speaker 4: that are in the gut lining and their role is
Speaker 4: to make lots of serotonin and some hormones, so they
Speaker 4: do things like control your appetite, when you get full,
Speaker 4: when you feel nauseous, things like that. And yeah, what
Speaker 4: we found a couple years ago, oh, is that bacteria
Speaker 4: are really important for communicating with these cells to control
Speaker 4: how much serotonin is being made and released.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, my colon is blowing my mind right now.
Speaker 1: How do you ever look at like the way that
Speaker 1: we treat depression and anxiety and are you ever like
Speaker 1: on the sidelines being.
Speaker 3: Like you're doing it wrong.
Speaker 4: We wonder how much the gut plays a role even
Speaker 4: in side effects. So it's known that antidepressants have a
Speaker 4: lot of like GI related side effects. It's important to study,
Speaker 4: you know, how the systems interact. That being said, there
Speaker 4: are dedicated neurons in the brain that make the remaining
Speaker 4: you know, ten percent of serotonin of the body, and
Speaker 4: those are really important for depression too.
Speaker 1: But gosh, that sounds like when you think someone's the
Speaker 1: boss and then you find out that like it's the
Speaker 1: assistant does all the work, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you could just go ahead and make sure you.
Speaker 3: Do that from now on, that would be.
Speaker 1: Great because you'd think the brain, thanks for the serotonin.
Speaker 1: You're doing you're doing your job, but downstairs is just
Speaker 1: a serotonin factory. Yeah, how does serotonin even make us happy?
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, that's a really good question. So in the brain,
Speaker 4: it's serotonin is a really important neurotransmitter and it's only
Speaker 4: made from certain neurons, so very select few of neurons
Speaker 4: make it. And so it's thought that these the serotonin
Speaker 4: will activate these circuits that are really important for things
Speaker 4: like reward and happiness. And yeah, that's how people think
Speaker 4: that works. And so with antidepressants, there's this way that
Speaker 4: when serotonin gets secreted, it'll get recycled and it'll get
Speaker 4: taken up by the cell that secreted it, and so
Speaker 4: antidepressants will block that reuptake. So basically you've got more
Speaker 4: outside that we'll just keep activating this circuit. And it's
Speaker 4: thought that's how antidepressants help, you know, boost activity of
Speaker 4: these like reward and things circuits that make you happy.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, and our animals are people who are depressed, do
Speaker 1: they have less serotonin than people who maybe aren't depressed.
Speaker 4: I think that's one thing that could happen. I feel
Speaker 4: like there's probably many different you know, pathways that contribute
Speaker 4: to depression. But yeah, decreases in serotonin are associated.
Speaker 1: Man, I feel like you're going to look back. We're
Speaker 1: all going to look back and be like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: it was so obvious, like what caused certain things? You know,
Speaker 1: when you look back at medical practices of your and
Speaker 1: you're like, that's horrible.
Speaker 2: How did we do that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that might be that might apply with the vehicle
Speaker 4: translates right now.
Speaker 3: Maybe like remember the days you.
Speaker 1: Couldn't go to like a jiffy loop type of a
Speaker 1: situation where you just pop in. I'm just gonna pop
Speaker 1: in for a quick feak. Trans You're like, Okay, when
Speaker 1: you describe your job to someone who's never met you,
Speaker 1: how do you talk about it?
Speaker 3: Like, what do you say that you do?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 4: It depends on I would probably give a boring answer
Speaker 4: about you know how. I'm a professor, I run a
Speaker 4: research lab and I teach. But to lab members, I
Speaker 4: often tell them that I'm the hype person of their work.
Speaker 4: They make really cool findings. I communicate the findings, I
Speaker 4: pitch the findings to try to get funding more funding
Speaker 4: for their work and so I'm kind of the hype
Speaker 4: person for what they discover.
Speaker 1: Your job is just so fascinating, Like I mean, you
Speaker 1: know that I have been like kind of mildly stalking
Speaker 1: you on email for a long time.
Speaker 3: I'm like, Hi, can we record?
Speaker 2: How can we record?
Speaker 1: I'm just like so fascinated by this field. But how
Speaker 1: do you kind of describe the importance of what you
Speaker 1: do to people?
Speaker 4: That is a really good question because I'm still not
Speaker 4: good at it.
Speaker 2: Usually, you know, when you're.
Speaker 4: On an airplane and you have like a couple minutes
Speaker 4: to talk, I'll give an explanation that I'll just shut
Speaker 4: down the car station. What okay, But let me think
Speaker 4: of a cooler way, maybe taking you know, recommendations. Maybe
Speaker 4: one way I should explain it is that we study
Speaker 4: how gut bugs control brains.
Speaker 1: So allow me to be the hype man for the
Speaker 1: hype man, but holly, actual shit. Elaine studies have involved
Speaker 1: some truly wonderful and very important things like the microbiomes
Speaker 1: effect on neurotransmitters, how it relates to autism, and even
Speaker 1: how the microbiome can affect seizure occurrence in epilepsy.
Speaker 3: It's big stuff.
Speaker 4: The most recent stuff we are studying is really whether
Speaker 4: we could use microbes to replace dietary effects on the
Speaker 4: nervous system. So we chose this diet. You may know
Speaker 4: the ketogenic diet. It's kind of a fad diet right now,
Speaker 4: but it's been used for almost one hundred years to
Speaker 4: treat epilepsy.
Speaker 3: So side note.
Speaker 1: This ketogenic diet is high fat and very very low
Speaker 1: carb like max thirty grams a day or lower, depending
Speaker 1: on how you do it and your frame of reference.
Speaker 1: Maybe Joe Rogan proselytizing like a shredded pastor, or maybe
Speaker 1: you have a coworker who just like drops a dollup
Speaker 1: of coconut oil in her coffee and only eats the
Speaker 1: toppings off of a pizza. But research shows that keto
Speaker 1: can reduce seizure occurrences by half in half of the patients,
Speaker 1: and a third of patients report up to a ninety
Speaker 1: percent reduction in seizure frequency, which is huge. But it
Speaker 1: can be hard to stick to, especially for kids who
Speaker 1: are already struggling with epilepsy and just want a frickin
Speaker 1: apple or a piece of birthday cake, so Elaine explains, so.
Speaker 4: In kids that don't respond, to normal medications that are
Speaker 4: out there as a last resort treatment, they'll often get
Speaker 4: enrolled in the hospital and put through this really severe diet.
Speaker 4: And so we wondered if we could study whether the
Speaker 4: microbiome changes and whether the microbiome is important for how
Speaker 4: the diet decreases seizures. And so, yeah, our most recent
Speaker 4: findings were basically, yes, the microbe change, the microbiome changes,
Speaker 4: and we could pick out the very specific bacteria that
Speaker 4: basically replace the diet in terms of protecting against seizures.
Speaker 1: So instead of doing the diet, would you maybe be
Speaker 1: able to increase that proportion of microbes to affect seizures.
Speaker 4: That's the idea the calveat is we've done that all
Speaker 4: in mouse first, you know, to start. Who knows it
Speaker 4: will work in people, But that's the pie in the sky,
Speaker 4: is that we'll either be able to have say a
Speaker 4: very specific probiotic or a companion treatment to help the
Speaker 4: diet work better, or even you know, the extreme version
Speaker 4: of this, if we can have this type of treatment
Speaker 4: replace the diet entirely so that people can you know,
Speaker 4: cheat or be on normal diets but still get the same.
Speaker 2: Kind of effect.
Speaker 1: And then what about microbes and gut flora and autism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was actually my grad work.
Speaker 4: So now we're going to kind of my first works
Speaker 4: in the microbiome field. The reason I got into the
Speaker 4: microbiome is came really intrigued by this finding that some
Speaker 4: cases of autism are correlated with lots of gi abnormalities.
Speaker 2: Oh so some kids with.
Speaker 4: Autism have severe gi abnormalities, not all.
Speaker 2: Of them, but some of them.
Speaker 4: And you know, for the fundamental biology, I always like
Speaker 4: to you know, keep it, you know, temper my enthusiasm
Speaker 4: where you know, a lot of things that are found
Speaker 4: in animals don't translate well to humans. So there's a
Speaker 4: big gap there, but I think inspires.
Speaker 2: You know, more work to be done.
Speaker 4: So if we do a good job on studying mechanisms
Speaker 4: and animals, then we can justify studying kind of similar
Speaker 4: pathways in humans and maybe doing some you know, safety
Speaker 4: trials to see whether the microbiome related treatments we tested
Speaker 4: in animals are also safe and effective in humans.
Speaker 1: And what was the mechanism in terms of the autism
Speaker 1: or the epilepsy that told the brain to work a
Speaker 1: little bit differently. Yeah, so we don't have all the answers.
Speaker 1: But what is really cool is that a lot of
Speaker 1: gut bacteria have this unique chemistry that they can, you know,
Speaker 1: make biochemicals that our body doesn't normally have. And so
Speaker 1: we became really interested in what for the diet story,
Speaker 1: what are the microbes doing with these components from the
Speaker 1: diet and what do they make that's unique. And similarly,
Speaker 1: in the autism.
Speaker 4: Story, we also were looking at, you know, in this context,
Speaker 4: what do microbes make, what do their molecules do to neurons,
Speaker 4: things like that.
Speaker 1: So they may have been making certain chemicals that made
Speaker 1: neurons fire differently.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Yeah, So in the epilepsy work, we think that
Speaker 4: they're making they were metabolizing molecules that ultimately restricted GABA,
Speaker 4: which is inhibitory ner transmitter. So GABA is this molecule
Speaker 4: in the brain that neurons use usually to silence activity.
Speaker 4: So we were seeing that these microbes were controlling brain
Speaker 4: levels of this molecule that is like telling neurons to
Speaker 4: quiet down, and we think that's what's helping with seizures.
Speaker 1: So the dietary change upped the GABA in the brain
Speaker 1: and reduced seizures, so potentially very life changing all because
Speaker 1: someone had the sense to think, I wonder if these
Speaker 1: trillions of tiny animals living in my intestines are sending
Speaker 1: messages to my brain loaf when you have people who
Speaker 1: are looking at your work and they're like, boy, howdi
Speaker 1: hot dam that's a big deal. And then we go
Speaker 1: to the store and we're like whole foods in the
Speaker 1: probiotic aisle, being like, which one of these will make
Speaker 1: me less depressed? Is there any advice or any correlation
Speaker 1: or is it kind of a bunch of flim flam?
Speaker 4: Oh? Man, those are the hardest questions to answer, because
Speaker 4: on the one hand, I believe in the promise of
Speaker 4: probiotics and what bacteria can do. But on the other hand,
Speaker 4: the stuff that's on the shelves and the supermarket, they.
Speaker 2: Weren't rigorously tested to.
Speaker 4: Treat disease or to be anything more than nutritional supplements
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 2: And also some of those probiotics have bugs that.
Speaker 4: Are not native to the body, So there are things
Speaker 4: that came from dairy or fermented foods which are really
Speaker 4: different from bugs that are normally in the body.
Speaker 2: So yeah, those are so hard.
Speaker 4: I can't even advise on which ones work or not.
Speaker 2: I did take.
Speaker 4: One before, just to see if I felt any differently,
Speaker 4: and I didn't.
Speaker 2: But that doesn't mean that it doesn't work.
Speaker 4: There are some people that respond really well to them,
Speaker 4: especially some people that experienced GI problems or have intestinal disease.
Speaker 4: Probiotics could help.
Speaker 1: So the bad news is that despite the thirty two
Speaker 1: billion dollars we citizens of Earth spend yearly on probiotics,
Speaker 1: they may not be effective. I read one report in
Speaker 1: the Anals the Annals the Annals of Internal Medicine that
Speaker 1: certain shelved brands of probiotics can be harmful to folks
Speaker 1: who already have shaky floor to begin with. And there
Speaker 1: was a recent New York Times article that noted that
Speaker 1: the studies are almost all low quality, small in size,
Speaker 1: and are usually funded by companies with significant conflicts of interest. So,
Speaker 1: in terms of shell probiotics, see what works for you.
Speaker 1: Some do work for some people. And more importantly, maybe
Speaker 1: eat a lot of fruits and veggies because that is
Speaker 1: feeding the good bugs. So maybe your mouth is like uugh, cabbage,
Speaker 1: we are not friends, but your gut flora is just
Speaker 1: losing its mind with excitement, like you just walked in
Speaker 1: with a tray of fireball shots and flevor nutters cabbage salad.
Speaker 3: It's party a clock for those little motherfuckers.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is just a new field that's
Speaker 1: just cracked open, and we're all peering in, being like,
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen. This is amazing because we just never
Speaker 1: we never even looked at any kind of psychological or
Speaker 1: mental health issues. We never really looked at those as
Speaker 1: like a holistic like a full body situation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it seemed like.
Speaker 4: We it's so cool to think that we're all here
Speaker 4: when this field was born, you know, like it was
Speaker 4: only maybe ten years ago that people even were able
Speaker 4: to name the bacteria that we're in the body, and
Speaker 4: the majority of them no one knows.
Speaker 2: Anything about what they do.
Speaker 4: And so now now is the time it was just
Speaker 4: born and people got to get in that people have
Speaker 4: to get in on this to study it.
Speaker 1: I feel like you're kind of like a cosmologist of butts.
Speaker 1: Like there's so many stars in the universe, and then
Speaker 1: there's so many things we don't know happening every day.
Speaker 1: I mean not of butts specifically, but in general. But
Speaker 1: it's like this unknown that's so important to us. But
Speaker 1: when it comes to anxiety and DEPRESSI because we've talked
Speaker 1: about autism and epilepsy. When it comes to anxiety and depression,
Speaker 1: how does gut flora affect those flora?
Speaker 4: Really interested in that a lot of anxiety and depression
Speaker 4: is also comorbid with GI problems, and so some people
Speaker 4: are really curious about whether we could use microbes to
Speaker 4: correct GI problems and influence you know, these disorders right
Speaker 4: now in animals. Again, I always like to like distinguish
Speaker 4: in animals. We can clearly see that behaviors that are
Speaker 4: related to anxiety and depression seem to be changed when
Speaker 4: we change the microbiome.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm sorry, I'm trying to contain myself.
Speaker 4: But again I can't. It's not always a one to
Speaker 4: one from a mouse is not not a human. Yeah,
Speaker 4: so what kind of things are these mice doing? Are
Speaker 4: they just like scrolling on social media too long and
Speaker 4: like talking about their ex boyfriends too much? Sure?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean everyone is at this party, and probably
Speaker 5: my ex is like with a new girlfriend who probably
Speaker 5: has a way longer tail than me. Mine is so
Speaker 5: short and stumpy, no one will ever meet with me.
Speaker 5: I'll never have a litter of forty babies, some of
Speaker 5: which I might eat.
Speaker 1: Okay for real, So, though, what do anxious mice really do?
Speaker 4: There's a lot of really cool behavior tasks that you
Speaker 4: could put them through.
Speaker 2: They don't. They're pretty benign.
Speaker 4: Is just you know, for one, common anxiety task is
Speaker 4: just to put them in a box. Usually they'll just
Speaker 4: you know, kind of be scared and be around the
Speaker 4: edges of the box and after a while go and
Speaker 4: venture into the center. So that's kind of what people
Speaker 4: measure as an anxiety related behavior. And when you treat
Speaker 4: them with SSRIs or anxiety drugs, you can see that
Speaker 4: they change the duration of time that they spend along
Speaker 4: the edge versus center.
Speaker 2: Yeah, gosh, they're actual wallflowers. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Who knew that was a thing. Yeah, let's get down
Speaker 3: to the nitty gritty of your work. So you have
Speaker 3: a stuffed poop emoji sitting next to me.
Speaker 1: How much of what you do is cultured matter from
Speaker 1: our bodies or other people's bodies?
Speaker 3: Where are you getting them? How do you keep track
Speaker 3: of them?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: So we do usually start with poop itself, So we'll
Speaker 4: often take either even like human poop, or we usually
Speaker 4: start with animal models and we'll sequence well, you know,
Speaker 4: for example, in the diet study, we take mice, we
Speaker 4: put them on the ketogenic diet, and then we sequence
Speaker 4: off of their poop to see how the micro.
Speaker 2: I am changed.
Speaker 4: And once we get some interesting hits from that sequencing,
Speaker 4: then we might get like very specific species and culture
Speaker 4: them in the lab. And those you can usually buy
Speaker 4: from there's from a culture collection, like there are companies
Speaker 4: like nationwide or country specific culture collections.
Speaker 1: Real, Yeah, like a catalog of bugs you could just
Speaker 1: flip through. Yes, that you're like, I'll take a lactobasilicus
Speaker 1: or whatever exactly exactly.
Speaker 4: And you just buy them and we can grow them
Speaker 4: in the lab.
Speaker 1: And so when it comes to sequencing, what happens when
Speaker 1: you're sequencing things but you they're unknown species.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so sometimes that happens. And what you can do
Speaker 4: is keep tabs on those what those sequences are, and
Speaker 4: then you just kind of consider them as unknown or
Speaker 4: like new species when you analyze them. Okay, but that's
Speaker 4: a big problem too, is that not everything.
Speaker 2: Has been identified.
Speaker 3: How many different species do we have in our guts?
Speaker 4: People say that across humans that over a thousand different
Speaker 4: species have been identified from the microbiomes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you get tripped out by microbiology and all?
Speaker 1: Like are you when you touch a keypad at CVS
Speaker 1: or something, are you like what am I touching? Or are
Speaker 1: you like you know what?
Speaker 4: The more the merrier when you study microbiology, you realize
Speaker 4: that there are a lot of bugs that are just normal,
Speaker 4: and that it won't kill you to be exposed, that
Speaker 4: maybe some of them are really important for educating your
Speaker 4: immune system. So exposing yourself is not that bad. Of course,
Speaker 4: you don't want to take it to an extreme. There
Speaker 4: are things that I would not do, like don't lick
Speaker 4: the door?
Speaker 2: Yees?
Speaker 1: What do you think of the hygiene hypothesis? Just a
Speaker 1: side note, So this is a theory proposed by British
Speaker 1: epidemiologist David Strachan in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 3: Ps.
Speaker 1: He might pronoun set stracken and I'm sorry, but essentially
Speaker 1: this theory says that the rates of autoimmune conditions and
Speaker 1: allergies have gone up in Western cultures because of sanitation
Speaker 1: and antibiotics and smaller family size means exposure to less
Speaker 1: diverse microflora. Also, Western cultures have something called low oro
Speaker 1: fecal burden and I google that with one eye closed
Speaker 1: for safety, and yeah, it means what you think, it
Speaker 1: means less pooh in our mouth. So the hygiene hypothesis
Speaker 1: has also been called a few different things. It's been
Speaker 1: called the biome depletion theory and the lost friends theory,
Speaker 1: which just produced a millage of feelings in me, like
Speaker 1: you're sick with autoimmune disease, possibly because you've lost a
Speaker 1: bunch of your friends because you grew up with less
Speaker 1: pooh in your mouth, which is sad and disgusting and
Speaker 1: also adorable all at once.
Speaker 2: I think it's really interesting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this idea that you should encourage your kids to
Speaker 4: go play in the dirts so that exposure to microbes
Speaker 4: helps educate your immune system and protect from chronic diseases,
Speaker 4: I think, yeah, I think that's really interesting. I haven't
Speaker 4: seen anything that is outright refuted that idea, only things
Speaker 4: that have kind of supported it.
Speaker 3: So we're maybe a little too clean for our own good.
Speaker 4: When you look at big population white studies, definitely you
Speaker 4: could see that we're really good at treating infectious diseases,
Speaker 4: so historically that rates of infectious disease have gone down,
Speaker 4: but rates of chronic diseases like you know, metabolic disease
Speaker 4: A diabetes and obesity and multiple sclerosis, things like that
Speaker 4: have gone up. There's a different problem now that's not infection.
Speaker 4: So people wonder whether it's just this we're too clean
Speaker 4: for our own good.
Speaker 1: Wow, Like it feels like whack a mole with diseases,
Speaker 1: you get one and another pert. Yeah, what is the
Speaker 1: correlation between multiple sclerosis and gut biome? I did want
Speaker 1: to ask that because my mom has MS super quick.
Speaker 1: If you're not sure what MS is, I'm going to
Speaker 1: do a PSA right now because my mom has it
Speaker 1: and I want people to know more about it. So
Speaker 1: it stands for multiple sclerosis, and it's a neurological condition
Speaker 1: in which your immune system wants to be so helpful
Speaker 1: by attacking things, but it goes for the myelin sheaths
Speaker 1: around your nerves, and myelin is kind of like the
Speaker 1: rubber around an electrical cord. So imagine if your roommate,
Speaker 1: in trying to clean house, was like, great news, I
Speaker 1: stripped all of the electrical chords. So we got a
Speaker 1: bunch of raw spots. Now I cleaned them, and you're like, well, no,
Speaker 1: actually that was unnecessary. And now the lights keep flickering
Speaker 1: and there's a fire in the kitchen, please calm down.
Speaker 1: So for my family, treatments and possible cures for MS
Speaker 1: would be aces. Thank you to anyone out there who's
Speaker 1: working on that.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: If you're not affected by MS, this info is important too,
Speaker 1: because chances are that you or someone you know is
Speaker 1: affected by an autoimmune disease and has an immune system
Speaker 1: that somehow got jolted up and is cleaning attacking things
Speaker 1: that you don't want it to. So if you know
Speaker 1: someone with an autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis or hair loss,
Speaker 1: or psoriasis, or lupus, type one diabetes celiac, this inflammation
Speaker 1: and autoimmune disease is of interest.
Speaker 4: First people were studying how the microbiome interacts with the
Speaker 4: immune system because there's a situation where, you know, if
Speaker 4: you've got one hundred trillion bacteria in the gut, how
Speaker 4: do we keep them in check? And the way that
Speaker 4: we do that it's that you know, about eighty percent
Speaker 4: of your body's immune cells are right there, and it's
Speaker 4: this boundary where there's like microbes talking to immune cells
Speaker 4: and immune cells always serving what's going on. And so yeah,
Speaker 4: out of these really pioneering microbiome immune studies, people found
Speaker 4: that you could use certain microbes to control basically inflammatory responses.
Speaker 4: So there are these cells called T cells that in MS,
Speaker 4: they infiltrate the brain and people think that it causes
Speaker 4: some of the damage. T cells that are super reactive,
Speaker 4: that are hyperreactive enter the brain and start attacking myelin
Speaker 4: on neurons and so yeah, in these early microbiome studies,
Speaker 4: people found that if you temper, if you use microbes
Speaker 4: to quiet down those T cells, then you can kind
Speaker 4: of ameliorate the MS symptoms.
Speaker 1: Is that used in any kind of therapy at this
Speaker 1: point or are we still so far off?
Speaker 4: I think people are developing that, so I know people
Speaker 4: are taking that to human studies and so I'm not
Speaker 4: sure how far along it is right now in what
Speaker 4: phase of trials, but it is being developed.
Speaker 1: So if we very very highly suspect that the microbiome
Speaker 1: is involved, what kinds of illnesses are being treated through
Speaker 1: restoring a healthier one, like through a doctor. Not as
Speaker 1: much as you'd hope yet.
Speaker 4: The only thing right now that can be treated with
Speaker 4: microbiome is C. Difficile infection, so an intestinal infection. That's
Speaker 4: the only thing that currently is being treated with these
Speaker 4: fecal transplants.
Speaker 2: We wanted to get there.
Speaker 3: That was on my list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I had so many patrons that asked
Speaker 1: about it, and it was like, gonna be on my
Speaker 1: list because I feel like.
Speaker 7: There's just this like like a golden cure that's a
Speaker 7: poop transplant, but it's not legal yet, and it seems
Speaker 7: like it's a bit frowned upon, But yeah, can you
Speaker 7: run me through what is a vegal transplant?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it is.
Speaker 4: It is legal for se diff infection. So in this infection,
Speaker 4: basically there are some people they'll get this basically opportunistic pathogen.
Speaker 4: So this bug that's normally in a lot of us,
Speaker 4: but can turn bad in certain situations and then cause
Speaker 4: intestinal disease. And usually the first line of treatment is antibiotics.
Speaker 4: But what ends up happening is you clear out all
Speaker 4: these good bugs with antibiotics, and then you just make
Speaker 4: space for seadift to grow more if you didn't clear
Speaker 4: it out completely, and so the disease can often people
Speaker 4: will get recurrences. So in that case, what ends up
Speaker 4: being one of the most effective treatments is this vehicle
Speaker 4: transplants is basically we'll clear everything out and then repopulate
Speaker 4: with a whole new community.
Speaker 3: How is that actually done?
Speaker 6: Yes, so it's much better now, So, oh God, back
Speaker 6: with it before before, I think Before, I think that
Speaker 6: you would actually have to find a donor, usually someone
Speaker 6: in your household, and you'd go in and the donor
Speaker 6: would poop and.
Speaker 4: Then you would get enema of what they gave and
Speaker 4: that was the treatment.
Speaker 2: Nailed it.
Speaker 4: Now there are more controlled, you know, materials to transplant with,
Speaker 4: so you can buy from a company that really rigorously
Speaker 4: screens what was in there and what's being transplanted, and
Speaker 4: they make sure that it's safe. And so the doctor
Speaker 4: can either buy the liquid material or they could have
Speaker 4: capsule versions.
Speaker 1: Oh so I started looking into this and I think,
Speaker 1: I think this is a prescription formula with a very
Speaker 1: romantic name called VSL number three, which has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with PSL's pumpkin spice lattes or going number three
Speaker 1: if you know what I mean. Though, it does help
Speaker 1: with it and in one newspaper of India it was
Speaker 1: reported that this could help the condition of Lucy's which
Speaker 1: is a word I will never forget. No matter how
Speaker 1: hard I try. Anyway, VSL number three has own some
Speaker 1: potential as a clinical remedy formalities such as ulcerative colitis
Speaker 1: and irritable bowel.
Speaker 3: So it's legally.
Speaker 1: Called medical probiotic food, which is perhaps a more palatable
Speaker 1: administration than say some other methods.
Speaker 4: So you could either take a series of like several
Speaker 4: capsules in a row, or what's what works.
Speaker 2: Better is if you get that enema.
Speaker 1: Basically, yeah, do they have to make sure that you're
Speaker 1: pretty much clear of the bad ones?
Speaker 3: So do you have to take a ton of antibiotics first?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so you take antibiotics first to clear
Speaker 2: out and then you immediately transfer it.
Speaker 1: What do you think about people who are doing it
Speaker 1: just pinterest DIY style.
Speaker 2: I've seen that. I mean, it's really dangerous. Who knows
Speaker 2: what you know?
Speaker 4: If I wouldn't, You wouldn't know what's in it until
Speaker 4: you sequence it and really test it. And now that
Speaker 4: people are studying the microbiome so deeply and finding like
Speaker 4: neurological things that are related, or metabolic or chronic diseases
Speaker 4: that are related, you don't want to be in this
Speaker 4: situation where you cured your ce diff but then you
Speaker 4: predisposed yourself for other diseases in the long run.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I would recommend not doing it at home,
Speaker 4: but I can see that, you know, people are eager
Speaker 4: to try since since currently you can only use that
Speaker 4: treatment for this one intestinal disease.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder if that's going to change in the future.
Speaker 1: I'll be like, Okay, we let we let ibs in. Okay,
Speaker 1: we let arthritis in. Or you know, just different different
Speaker 1: ailments will get the pass for it, you know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I wonder too. Or you know, alternatively, people are
Speaker 4: trying to, you know, parse out the transplant material into
Speaker 4: just the select bugs that are important, and maybe you'll
Speaker 4: just have cleaner capsule.
Speaker 2: Versions for each of these diseases.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, is that slurry of fecal transplant that doctors
Speaker 1: obtain is that from a donor base.
Speaker 4: It's from donors, Yeah, heavily screened professional poopers. Are they
Speaker 4: good question? I'm not sure, But I think you can
Speaker 4: make a good living off of it.
Speaker 1: I bet you can, because I mean, you'd have to
Speaker 1: be even better than a sperm donor. I feel like, like,
Speaker 1: because you'd have to make sure that you had the
Speaker 1: best work ever, right, you gotta look up their salary.
Speaker 1: I bet it's pretty good, maybe more than the doctors
Speaker 1: who knows. Okay, citizens of planet Earth, you're welcome. I
Speaker 1: google this for you. So a Boston area nonprofit stoolbank
Speaker 1: called open Biome does collect fecal donations to help treat
Speaker 1: patients of severe microbiome imbalance like a seedff intestinal infection,
Speaker 1: and they pay forty bucks a stool, which in terms
Speaker 1: of extra income is more than just a drop in
Speaker 1: the bucket. And you can donate as many times a
Speaker 1: day as you are productive, so each contribution can potentially
Speaker 1: help up to five patients in case you're looking for
Speaker 1: not just some income from your outcome, but also some
Speaker 1: good ass karma and some good ass karma. But don't
Speaker 1: get your hopes too up there. One spokesperson quoted in
Speaker 1: the New York Times dropped the knowledge that only three
Speaker 1: percent of screened applicants are accepted as being perfect boopers.
Speaker 1: So that means statistically, it is twice as easy to
Speaker 1: get into Harvard then to get money for your waste. Now,
Speaker 1: I had to lob one question at or regarding a
Speaker 1: very serious situation that happened to me recently. I have
Speaker 1: a personal question. That the something that happened to me
Speaker 1: last week, And I'm glad I'm sitting down with you
Speaker 1: because there's probably no one who could better educate me.
Speaker 3: I dropped my wallet in a Starbucks toilet. It was flushed,
Speaker 3: but I was.
Speaker 1: Like, I there was a moment where I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do do I just cut
Speaker 1: and run? So I grabbed it out of the toilet
Speaker 1: with a bunch of tissue and then I washed my
Speaker 1: hands forever, and then I like sprayed bleach on it
Speaker 1: and then I bleached everything in there.
Speaker 3: But like, am I gonna die?
Speaker 2: No, that's exactly what I would have done. I probably would.
Speaker 4: I would have fished it out and just you know,
Speaker 4: washed it was so the bleach will do it for sure.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's okay.
Speaker 4: I used to decan't decontaminate things in the lab.
Speaker 2: Okay I did.
Speaker 1: I sprayed everything with like a bleach solution afterward, in
Speaker 1: that wallet is now in the garbage.
Speaker 2: But I was like, what do you do?
Speaker 3: And then I thought, well, you know what, maybe this
Speaker 3: will be good for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, no.
Speaker 3: Not good for me. Oh my god, what a whrror?
Speaker 1: And so is there anything that's kind of on your
Speaker 1: list that you want to study next, like any particular
Speaker 1: angle that you really want to go for.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have a lot of things going on in
Speaker 4: the lab. I mean, at the end of it, what
Speaker 4: we really want to study is how is the microbiome
Speaker 4: doing so many things behavior? What are the molecules, what
Speaker 4: is the pathway? You know, what's the cascade of events
Speaker 4: that's happening to allow them to do things like that?
Speaker 4: And we study these mechanisms and lots of context. So
Speaker 4: one context is I mentioned epilepsy. Another context that we're
Speaker 4: really interested in is neuro degenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
Speaker 4: We are interested in depression too, And then otherwise, some
Speaker 4: other people in the lab study more than nitty gritty
Speaker 4: of like, we don't care what disease it is, but
Speaker 4: I'm just going to study how do microbes communicate or
Speaker 4: signal to neurons and how many different messages can be
Speaker 4: sent in this manner.
Speaker 1: So right now you have tiny critters just gabbing over
Speaker 1: your influx of morning coffee like doe, old men gossiping
Speaker 1: in a.
Speaker 3: Park over a chest set.
Speaker 1: Now, who funds this microbiome research.
Speaker 3: Do pharmaceuticals fear.
Speaker 1: The day when we can get good pooh for free
Speaker 1: to fix of our problems. So funding, Elaine says, comes
Speaker 1: from some federal sources and the National Institute of Health.
Speaker 1: Even the Department and Events want to study the mental
Speaker 1: and physical health of deployed personnel. The EPA is even
Speaker 1: getting in on the action figuring out how environmental toxins
Speaker 1: can make our microbiomes take a hit. So there are
Speaker 1: of course more intentional bacterial wipeouts out there. Now, what
Speaker 1: about all the antibiotics that we take just for everyday thing, So, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you have a sinus infection, whatever, we take
Speaker 1: those and they save a lot of lives, But what
Speaker 1: are they doing to our microbiome?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so antibiotics are not specific, they're broad spectrums, so
Speaker 4: they'll kill you know, the bad bugs, but they'll also
Speaker 4: kill off your microbiome too.
Speaker 5: Whoa.
Speaker 4: And so after you're on antibiotics, then you basically need
Speaker 4: to repopulate. Your microbes will grow back and repopulate your
Speaker 4: body basically.
Speaker 1: So this is like the cops come and shutting down
Speaker 1: your party because there are a few obnoxious guests, like
Speaker 1: even your trusted pals tossed out the door. Cops are like,
Speaker 1: I don't care if she was your maid of honor
Speaker 1: and is cleaning up empty cups. That guy over there
Speaker 1: is wrapping along the sublime and getting the dog high.
Speaker 4: Everyone is out, and so people are really interested in
Speaker 4: how do you control this? How do you get them
Speaker 4: to repopulate correctly, back to healthy state rather than into
Speaker 4: some alternate like poor microbiome state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you do that?
Speaker 4: Yeah that's right, Yeah, nobody really considers that. One question
Speaker 4: is whether, you know, maybe after a course of antibiotics,
Speaker 4: should we be considering taking you know, a probiotic to
Speaker 4: replenish or transplants to replenish the microbiome correctly. People are
Speaker 4: considering the same idea for sea sections. For example, if
Speaker 4: you have sea section babies, they end up not being
Speaker 4: expose the same types of microbes, And does that mean
Speaker 4: we should inoculate them immediately so they do grow a
Speaker 4: normal microbiome?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: What happens?
Speaker 1: Because if you're squeezing out of the v I imagine you
Speaker 1: probably get a little something from the back door on
Speaker 1: you and you're like thanks mom. She's like I couldn't
Speaker 1: help it, but you enjoy it. But if you see
Speaker 1: section you skip all that. So do they swab babies
Speaker 1: with a little bit of poo or what happens?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Right now.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's normal practice in the US, but
Speaker 4: in some other countries I think it is normal to
Speaker 4: kind of, you know, swath the baby in mom's stuff.
Speaker 1: Stuff stuff, miscellaneous items, things with possessive personal effects.
Speaker 2: That's the creations.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just like a little dabble doo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and yeah, how do you interact with kind of
Speaker 1: pop or spa science when you see articles on like
Speaker 1: Goop or Instagram products that are like.
Speaker 2: This too will restore your whole microflora?
Speaker 3: Like, are you like that's a little true? Are you like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, how dare you?
Speaker 4: I mean, what grad school and science trains you to
Speaker 4: do is be skeptical of anything.
Speaker 2: We have everything, So that's my default.
Speaker 1: If you could give one tip to people about how
Speaker 1: to build a good microbiome, would it be just like,
Speaker 1: don't wash your vegetables as much if they're organic? Like,
Speaker 1: how do we do it without running through whole foods
Speaker 1: and spending a bunch of money? I think what is
Speaker 1: safe to say, hopefully this is not just more of
Speaker 1: what we already knew is that you could eat a
Speaker 1: diversity of different fibers to feed all of the different
Speaker 1: types of microbes in your gut. So but gut bacteria
Speaker 1: have food preferences too, So if you just keep eating
Speaker 1: that same thing, then you might only be feeding some
Speaker 1: bugs and not others. And so many diverse things.
Speaker 3: Is wow. I never thought about that.
Speaker 1: I read that Martha Stewart eats the same bagel, the
Speaker 1: same bagel sandwich every morning.
Speaker 3: She's got to dive. If I heard gut bacteria.
Speaker 1: You sequencing steady, I know they're just like it's the
Speaker 1: bacteria that like a bagel with a slice of onion or.
Speaker 3: Whatever it is.
Speaker 1: I swear to gut that I read this somewhere, and
Speaker 1: I just want you to know. I spent over an
Speaker 1: hour while on semi vacation in Hawaii, sitting on a
Speaker 1: porch with slow as fuck Wi Fi trying to fact
Speaker 1: check this, and now I think I just hallucinated it
Speaker 1: because I can't find it anywhere. But I did learn
Speaker 1: that every morning Inagarten eats the same coffee and an oatmeal,
Speaker 1: and Mariah Carey's diet consists of just two items Norwegian salmon,
Speaker 1: and capers. Now, Martha Stewart apparently has the same cappuccino
Speaker 1: with whole milk and a green smoothie every morning, and
Speaker 1: it involves spinach, celery, parsley, mint, and a piece of fruit,
Speaker 1: either a pair a mango or a papaya. She said,
Speaker 1: it's very good juice. Everybody loves the juice. Okay, we
Speaker 1: get it, Martha, you like juice. But honestly, the woman
Speaker 1: has been in prison. Let her eat as many bagels
Speaker 1: as she wants. So, really, a diversity of foods and
Speaker 1: probably maybe that's a little bit why.
Speaker 3: We feel better if we're eating a lot of fruits
Speaker 3: and vegetables.
Speaker 4: Yeah, diversity of fibers mainly is what the carbs basically
Speaker 4: is what they eat on complex carbs. Do you ever
Speaker 4: notice that if you eat terrible food that you feel
Speaker 4: kind of grouchy for a couple days.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 4: It's so good in the moment and then after where
Speaker 4: it is just remorse.
Speaker 1: Can we do a rapid fire around? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: these are questions from listeners. They were so pumped, they're
Speaker 1: so excited. Okay, but before we take questions from you,
Speaker 1: our beloved listeners, we're going to take a quick break
Speaker 1: for sponsors of the show.
Speaker 3: Sponsors. Why sponsors? You know what they do?
Speaker 1: They help us give money to different charities every week.
Speaker 1: So if you want to know where Ologies gives our money,
Speaker 1: you can go to Alleyward dot com and look for
Speaker 1: the tab Ologies gives back. There's like one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty different charities that we've given to already, with more
Speaker 1: every single week. So you need a place to go
Speaker 1: donate a little bit of money, but you're not sure
Speaker 1: where to go. Those are all picked biologists who work
Speaker 1: in those fields, and this ad break allows us to
Speaker 1: give a ton of money to them. So thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and thank sponsors. Okay, your questions one of the
Speaker 1: most frequent questions I got, which really surprised me by
Speaker 1: how many times I got this question. I got it
Speaker 1: by probably twenty people, and I will read their names
Speaker 1: very quickly in and Aside.
Speaker 5: Riddia Aguinnis Tyler, Beth Frosto, Lisa Tang, Mark Larson, Nickenna Hopwood,
Speaker 5: Serene Karaga, Jamie Katananch Kennedy and Tony Thompson.
Speaker 1: Is kombucha really worth all the hype? What's the deal
Speaker 1: with kombucha? Can kombucha actually be helpful. So many kombucha questions.
Speaker 2: Oh man, okay, these are hard.
Speaker 4: I mean, in general, I think that I've only seen
Speaker 4: the positive things, if not neutral things about fermented foods.
Speaker 4: So kombucha included fermented drink. So I think it's definitely
Speaker 4: doesn't seem harmful and if anything, it could only help.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, it's yeast, it's it's a fungus an a bacteria, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that being said, and a lot of people make
Speaker 4: their own kombucha at home, so you've got to be
Speaker 4: careful that you keep the culture clean because sometimes there
Speaker 4: are these rare cases of growing. You know what the scobie, Yes,
Speaker 4: what it stands for?
Speaker 1: Okay, So a scoby stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria
Speaker 1: and yeast. And it looks like a beige, flabby, slimy
Speaker 1: disc that feels in texture what I imagine preserved dolphin skin
Speaker 1: might feel like. And after finding a feathery brown thing
Speaker 1: in my store bot kombucha, I thought I'd do a
Speaker 1: science And now I have grown it and it is
Speaker 1: sloshing around in a large jar in one of my
Speaker 1: kitchen cabinets. It's just growing larger and larger and probably
Speaker 1: more sentient by the hour.
Speaker 3: Now if you.
Speaker 1: Smell them, I would say Scoby has kind of an
Speaker 1: acrid musk, which I imagine is similar to the groin of
Speaker 1: an ox. But they brew some great, fizzy, yummy stuff.
Speaker 1: It kind of tastes like a mix between a snapple
Speaker 1: and a PBR.
Speaker 3: And I mean that in.
Speaker 2: A good way, like kind of gross. But I know Scoby,
Speaker 2: I trust me.
Speaker 1: I have grown them, and they are like a big,
Speaker 1: slimy pancake in a jar.
Speaker 4: It's more frightening than the things we grown. But yeah,
Speaker 4: there are certain cases, I think rare cases where they
Speaker 4: got contaminated with maybe pathogen, and it was like, really
Speaker 4: made people sick.
Speaker 2: Be careful with your Scoby.
Speaker 1: Okay, good to know, so probably couldn't help unless you
Speaker 1: got unless you get a bad apple. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: many people asked al Martinez, A Forrest, Craig Curry.
Speaker 5: Also Henry Strong, Christopher and Brewer, Ryan Moore, Athena Alas Ferri,
Speaker 5: Caitlin Donald and Sarah Weas.
Speaker 1: Everyone was like, do stowbought probiotics? Do anything?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think that it's another case for certain people they
Speaker 4: seem to really help, especially people that have GI problems
Speaker 4: or intestinal diseases that it seems like they can help. Actually,
Speaker 4: there's one case that of a medical grade probiotic for
Speaker 4: intestinal diseases that truly seems to help.
Speaker 2: Then your doctor prescribes.
Speaker 1: It the aforementioned spy name sounding yes.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Another Patreon question, PA Foxhall asked, what is the weirdest
Speaker 1: thing you've learned about how the gut microbiome influences us
Speaker 1: so far?
Speaker 2: Oh, weirdest thing. Let me think.
Speaker 4: None of it seems weird now because we study it
Speaker 4: so deeply. I mean, I think one thing, it's not
Speaker 4: super weird, but we're really interested in this idea that
Speaker 4: that gut bacteria can control these neurons that connect Basically,
Speaker 4: they touch your gut and they extend directly in the brain.
Speaker 4: And so that's weird idea that there's like this long
Speaker 4: telephone where gut bacteria can send these molecules and control
Speaker 4: messages that are being.
Speaker 2: Sent up to the brain.
Speaker 4: So that's one thing that I think is really cool,
Speaker 4: maybe kind of weird.
Speaker 2: Cool is that the vagus nerve, the vegas nerve.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean, so from what I understand, this is
Speaker 1: how I envision it, which is probably wrong. There's like
Speaker 1: a nerve, like a corny thread fiber that just hangs
Speaker 1: out from your brain to your stomach, and it's just
Speaker 1: like a remember those pneumonic tubes where they would send
Speaker 1: like bank tellers would send checks through, And it's just
Speaker 1: like that, but with feelings. And I know that that's
Speaker 1: not right. But what exactly is that vegas?
Speaker 2: No, I mean that's pretty close. It's a bundle of neurons.
Speaker 4: On one end it touches is your brain stem, and
Speaker 4: the other end it touches a bunch of different organs.
Speaker 4: And so there are the fibers that extend to the
Speaker 4: intestine too, and they are bidirectional, so you can send
Speaker 4: messages up. Some of them relay messages up into the brain,
Speaker 4: and other neurons relay in the other direction from brain
Speaker 4: back to the gut. And so yeah, that's how they work.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's so weird. What happens if they
Speaker 3: sever that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of things. It's so.
Speaker 4: Animals wand up having behavioral problems. This has actually been
Speaker 4: done I think historically in people too. Is vagueotomies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 4: What the original indication was, but their outcomes from it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So vagotomies. All right, I look this up.
Speaker 1: In animals with damaged vegus nerves can gain weight even
Speaker 1: with super restricted diets because the signaling that turns off
Speaker 1: energy storage and turns on burned energy gets whack. So yes,
Speaker 1: and in humans this can lead to increased insulin and
Speaker 1: increased fat storage. So vegas, nerve important.
Speaker 5: Vegas, baby vegas.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing they don't do those anymore.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's another thing where you know, they used
Speaker 1: to be like someone acting up, give them a lobotomy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we'll look back on the way
Speaker 1: that we treat mental illness as like.
Speaker 3: Oh man, we really did that wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anonymous Bob wants to know which.
Speaker 1: By the way, Anonymous, you said your name was Bob,
Speaker 1: So anonymous mob okay. But difference between pro and prebiotics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So probiotics is where you have the actual cultured
Speaker 4: bacteria the bacteria, and then prebiotics is related to what
Speaker 4: I was mentioning before, where different bacteria have different food preferences.
Speaker 4: So prebiotics often have very specific types of fibers basically
Speaker 4: that will feed a certain type of bacteria. So prebiotics
Speaker 4: is giving food that will enrich particular bacterium, and then
Speaker 4: probiotics is where you give the bacterium itself.
Speaker 1: It's so cute to think of our little bacteria as
Speaker 1: like little fish that we have to feed, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean.
Speaker 3: That kind of to sprinkle use some prebiotics. I hope
Speaker 3: you like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And we do that with our diet all the time.
Speaker 1: And I guess it's so interesting too that we're like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's good to eat a lot of fiber, and part
Speaker 1: of that might be just to feed all of our
Speaker 1: little dudes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and ladies. And I mean they're asexual, you know.
Speaker 3: Let's see.
Speaker 1: Todd McLaren wants to know do various microbes have a
Speaker 1: form of brain.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's an interesting question.
Speaker 4: So they don't have a brain, of course, they don't
Speaker 4: have any organs through the single cells, but they can
Speaker 4: still do really cool things. They have behaviors. They don't
Speaker 4: have an official brain.
Speaker 1: Though, but they can still do stuff, yeah, and have preferences.
Speaker 1: Evidently they're like I love a rootabaga. Tom Meyer says,
Speaker 1: to what extent is a septic system and extension of
Speaker 1: our digestive system. A septic repair person told me some things.
Speaker 1: This sort of blew my mind real.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh my god, Oh my gosh, I
Speaker 4: want to know, because I have no clue how to
Speaker 4: answer this.
Speaker 1: Look this up and again you're welcome. Yes, true stuff. So,
Speaker 1: in a twenty fifteen paper entitled Sewage reflects the microbiomes
Speaker 1: of Human populations, researchers reported that quote the distribution patterns
Speaker 1: reflected human population variation and predicted whether samples represented lean
Speaker 1: or obese populations. With get this and eighty one to
Speaker 1: eighty nine percent accuracy, scientists can analyze sewers and figure
Speaker 1: out whether or not the population is lean or obese.
Speaker 1: That is, how involved your body your microflora is. So
Speaker 1: just think behind your walls, under your feet, every murky
Speaker 1: pipeline tells your story. Julie Noble, Heather Wills, and ironically,
Speaker 1: someone with the last name Brewer wants to know how
Speaker 1: alcohol affects gut bacteria.
Speaker 4: Oh okay, that's also a really interesting one. I mean,
Speaker 4: in general, in the lab, we'll use certain alcohols to
Speaker 4: basically decontaminate things.
Speaker 2: So we think that, you know, particular alcohols will probably
Speaker 2: kill bacteria. But I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: I feel like these studies must be underway now is
Speaker 4: what people are looking at as how like sequencing studies
Speaker 4: or something in response to drinking. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 4: the outcome, so right.
Speaker 1: I imagine if you're drinking a lot of Ever Clear
Speaker 1: on Friday night, but maybe your gut bacteria is.
Speaker 2: Like, oh no, yeah, are you doing this to me?
Speaker 3: That's interesting?
Speaker 1: Ariel asks, have you investigated these gut brain interactions in
Speaker 1: species with different types of digestive systems? I'm thinking specifically
Speaker 1: ruminants who have such a rich gut microbiome and if
Speaker 1: that plays a role similar to.
Speaker 3: What you've seen in humans and mice.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: So as a field, my lab doesn't study ruminants. We
Speaker 4: mainly study animals and or mice, and sometimes we'll get
Speaker 4: human microbiomes to study, but they're definitely labs that do
Speaker 4: study ruminant microbiomes and it's really cool. As a grad student,
Speaker 4: I did one rotation through a termite lab studying termite
Speaker 4: microbiomes and basically what allows termites to digest wood is
Speaker 4: the microbes that are that they have. So yeah, I
Speaker 4: think studying microbiomes across species is really cool and will
Speaker 4: be important.
Speaker 1: That is interesting because ruminance guy got a whole other.
Speaker 1: They have so much work to do. We got so
Speaker 1: much cellulose. I gotta brete that stuff down. Kathy Arnell says, okay,
Speaker 1: gross one for me? What is the culprit of the
Speaker 1: intensely grotesque smell that emanates from my hubby's time in
Speaker 1: the back room? And she says, I'm not talking about
Speaker 1: the average smelly pooh, but the kind that drives you
Speaker 1: from the room. No discernible pattern happens five six times
Speaker 1: a month. I believe that his biome is whack.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. I have no clue.
Speaker 4: I mean, normally this would be like methane gas or something.
Speaker 4: But if it's unusual, there are other Actually there's there
Speaker 4: are microbiomes that are being studied that make this molecule
Speaker 4: that underlies the like fishy fouls, fishy odor. So maybe
Speaker 4: there's are microbes that could be related there.
Speaker 2: And in general, people.
Speaker 4: Are really interested in how microbes can make molecules with
Speaker 4: different odors and like where the microbes make chemicals that
Speaker 4: are basically like olfactory cues.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh wow, so they might be telling other microbes
Speaker 1: by stinking a certain way inside us. They might be
Speaker 1: telling other microbes to do something certain things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that they actually yeah, kind of are determinants of
Speaker 4: different sense. And so there are some labs that are
Speaker 4: also studying microbiomes on the skin and maybe that they
Speaker 4: can make olfactory chemicals that influence how likely you get
Speaker 4: bitten by a mosquito.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Oh that's nuts. Let's see.
Speaker 1: Tyler Q wants to know. Is it true that your
Speaker 1: gut influence is what you want to eat more than
Speaker 1: your brain does.
Speaker 2: I'm not.
Speaker 4: I think that's a really cool question, but nobody has
Speaker 4: really shown in definitively. I'm really interested in that too,
Speaker 4: since if microbes have food preferences, I'm really interested in
Speaker 4: micro food preferences influence my food preferences. Yes, I haven't
Speaker 4: seen anyone shown show that yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, so quick aside. I watched this documentary on Vimeo.
Speaker 1: It's a short documentary called gut Hack, and it's about
Speaker 1: noted biohacker Josiah Zeyner's quote grueling and grotesque DIY fecal
Speaker 1: trans plant. And apart from the fact that he appeared
Speaker 1: to do a lot of the dirty work in his kitchen,
Speaker 1: I was struck by how after he finds that the
Speaker 1: donation from a healthy friend was successful. He's looking at
Speaker 1: the gene sequencing of his new microbiome and he starts
Speaker 1: breaking down.
Speaker 2: That is pretty insane.
Speaker 3: The experiment actually worked.
Speaker 6: I don't know. I haven't like crying.
Speaker 3: This is crazy, which was very moving. It's one of
Speaker 3: those things where you're just so moved and impressed by
Speaker 3: how science works or just how.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Side note, he also developed the same sweet tooth as
Speaker 1: his buddy, So your sweet tooth is really really deep
Speaker 1: in your bowls Metaphorically, I have heard that if you eat,
Speaker 1: you start eating a healthier diet, you start to crave
Speaker 1: that more.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Eleenia Zach, Eliana Zach, and Kayla Jane both had questions
Speaker 1: kind of about Crohn's disease, alterative colitis and and ibs, like,
Speaker 1: if someone has debilitating symptoms like that, you know, are
Speaker 1: there any suggestions you have for good gut health that
Speaker 1: might also help?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think with the alternative colitis that that
Speaker 4: might be a situation where where you could talk to
Speaker 4: your gastroentrologist about this, like.
Speaker 2: Medical grade probiotic.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure if it as actually indicated for UC
Speaker 4: or if it's some other variant of IBD, But all
Speaker 4: of those disorders that you just listed off, I think
Speaker 4: maybe kind of next in line for microbiome based treatments
Speaker 4: that get to humans after cedif of sill infection. I
Speaker 4: think maybe the most likely candidates would be these types
Speaker 4: of disorders.
Speaker 1: So we're kind of going to start using them on
Speaker 1: the guts and then work our way up to using
Speaker 1: them for the brain.
Speaker 4: Probably maybe maybe I wonder if it'll ever get up
Speaker 4: to the brain. I think if we can really do
Speaker 4: a good job on the science side, then yeah, that
Speaker 4: it would maybe that would be a possibility in the future.
Speaker 1: Well, you're like doing that, It's amazing. I mean that's
Speaker 1: I'm like, huh, I'm sorry, that was a sound of
Speaker 1: me fan girling. Also, if we live in close proximity
Speaker 1: with others, do.
Speaker 3: You think that our gut biomes are kind of contagious?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good one.
Speaker 4: So it is known that people that live together have
Speaker 4: more similar microbiomes to each other, and that your pet
Speaker 4: has a more similar microbiome to you than to some
Speaker 4: stranger whoa So I think there is some degree of
Speaker 4: sharing and transfer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I wonder if your partner has a certain
Speaker 1: like let's say depression, anxiety, or serotonin deficit. If you
Speaker 1: can kind of influence each other's microbiome and then you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: we both got to get ours on track.
Speaker 2: Oh, that would be crazy. Yeah, I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: But I mean if we if we end up finding
Speaker 4: if science tells us in the future that the microbiome
Speaker 4: is the root of, you know, certain diseases, and I
Speaker 4: think this type of transfer or sharing would become a
Speaker 4: big issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what's the part in this but the shittiest thing
Speaker 1: about your job, Like what's the hardest, the most annoying,
Speaker 1: the most tedious. Just what is the one thing that
Speaker 1: you hate about your job?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Oh man, there's just a lot of I mean, I
Speaker 4: was not trained to be a good manager, but there's
Speaker 4: a lot to manage. There's a lot of little nitty
Speaker 4: gritty things to manage all at once, you know, like
Speaker 4: safety related things, coordinating purchasing, and so I personally do
Speaker 4: not enjoy getting stuck in emails and administrative duties.
Speaker 2: But it's not I can't complain.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: That's the price you pay for having an awesome job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for having your own lab Yeah, being the captain
Speaker 3: of the ship. What do you love the most about
Speaker 3: your job?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: I love the discovery part so fun. I mean everything,
Speaker 4: there's always new things going on, So I love working
Speaker 4: with the students and seeing data that they're producing and
Speaker 4: all the cool discoveries going on. I also really love conceiving,
Speaker 4: like new projects, things that we should work on in
Speaker 4: the near future.
Speaker 1: Do you have like a list that you keep, like
Speaker 1: in a moleskin notepad of like things I'd like to discover?
Speaker 4: Almost I have a really plain Excel document that's called
Speaker 4: projects or experiments or something, and a list of everything
Speaker 4: that I would love to work on sometime.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, what's on there?
Speaker 4: All sorts of things like what you mentioned this food
Speaker 4: preference idea, whether microb's influence our food choices. Oh, there's
Speaker 4: just so many things. Usually when people come to the lab,
Speaker 4: I like to, you know, let them study what they enjoy.
Speaker 4: But if they can't think of something, I'll pull up
Speaker 4: this document and say, hey, what about that one.
Speaker 2: It's like ten foot scroll. Yeah, it produces out of
Speaker 2: a cloak.
Speaker 1: I have some ideas, and it seems like you could
Speaker 1: do this for decades and decades and still have so
Speaker 1: many questions to answer.
Speaker 2: It never ends. It never ends.
Speaker 4: Actually, the more that you discover, there's just like more
Speaker 4: questions and it's just exponential, like yeah, curiosity.
Speaker 1: Basically, well, you're doing such a great job. I'm a
Speaker 1: literal fan of your work. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: doing this. So gather your guts and ask smart people
Speaker 1: stupid questions because chances are the questions are not crappy.
Speaker 1: So to learn more about Doctor Show's work, check out
Speaker 1: show dot Science, h s I AO dot Science, or
Speaker 1: you can find her on Twitter at pipett hero p
Speaker 1: I p e t h e r O pipet hero
Speaker 1: I will link both of those things in the show notes.
Speaker 1: Ologies is on Twitter and Instagram at Ologies. I'm on
Speaker 1: both at Ali Ward with one L. I also host
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Speaker 1: on CBS Innovation Nation with Morocca every Saturday morning, and
Speaker 1: also on Brainchild on Netflix. You can watch all three
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Speaker 1: shirts and now there are wintry items like science socks
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Speaker 1: Dutch and Shannon Feltis for helping out with all of that.
Speaker 1: The Ologies podcast Facebook group is so great. It's full
Speaker 1: of really smart, chill, funny people sharing links and stories
Speaker 1: and science facks. Thank you Aaron Talbert and Hannah Lippo
Speaker 1: for being such great admins. The theme song was written
Speaker 1: by Nick Thorburn of the band Islands, and I appreciate
Speaker 1: the editing so much of Stephen Ray Morris also hosts
Speaker 1: the per Cast and the Dino Podcast see Jurassic Right
Speaker 1: and Now. If you listen to the very very end
Speaker 1: of the episode through their credits, I tell you a secret,
Speaker 1: and today's secret is I'm in a hotel room in Hawaii.
Speaker 1: I'm on a business trip for Innovation Nation, and I'm
Speaker 1: crouched behind a bed recording this to try to get
Speaker 1: like the least echoey sound. And I started to see
Speaker 1: that the sun was going down, and so I paused
Speaker 1: record to go see it. But one of my legs
Speaker 1: was so asleep it was just like lumber attached to
Speaker 1: my body. So I just crawled across the carpet to
Speaker 1: stick my heat out the window to see the sunset,
Speaker 1: and then I just crawled back with one leg. That
Speaker 1: was like, no, I'm not into this. And now that
Speaker 1: I'm done recording the sides and the outro, I think
Speaker 1: I might have a drink with Raminett. I'm in Hawaii, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: my microbes are gonna hate it. They're gonna hate it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a side salad too.
Speaker 3: Please calm down, Okay, bryebye.
Speaker 1: Germantology, hobbiology, cryptozoology, lithology, zerminology, meteorology, satology, ethnology, seriology, philology.
Speaker 7: A dirty, filthy slab, dirty boy,