The science of bathing (featuring Dr. Katrine Whiteson)

26:34And apparently they still shower with water. And that's kind of a ritual that people have as a part of their day that must be hard to lose, right? And so even if it's not necessary, I think they were just using only water. the reporter who tried to use the product, she went back to just a simple shampoo and soap after that. All right. So we've laid the groundwork to understand what critters are growing on our skin and how they contribute to our individual particular human smells. Let's take a break. When we come back, we'll talk to Katrina about the effects of showering and how it influences your health.

27:20For business owners and entrepreneurs, there's a constant challenge, getting things done fast and done well. Why not have both? That's why Wix Harmony stands out. It's an AI website builder that helps create a website quickly without compromising your vision. A fully functional site can be built for any business just by describing the idea. Then you can choose to chat with AI or edit everything manually to get it exactly right. There's also ARIA, an AI agent available to answer questions or help complete tasks. And here's what makes it even better. ARIA doesn't just live in a chat box. You can click anywhere on your site and ask her to make changes instantly.

28:05It's these details that make creating with Wix Harmony feel seamless. Join millions of businesses already using Wix and try Wix Harmony for free at Wix.com slash Harmony. That's Wix.com slash Harmony.

28:39The all-new Mazda CX-5. More to move every side of you. See it in five films at mazdausa.com slash five sides. Google is a trademark of Google LLC. Sequences shortened and simulated. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't-miss Fourth of July concert, happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving Fourth, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party tickets now for$17.76 at America250.org slash LA.

29:21Change comes fast. So wouldn't it be nice if one thing stayed the same? Like the price of your Wi-Fi. Thanks to the Xfinity five-year price guarantee, you're guaranteed five years of the most reliable, fiber-powered Wi-Fi with no annual contracts and our best equipment. Plus, get online in minutes with same-day Wi-Fi and stream your favorite podcast on iHeartRadio. Lock in your price and unlock the possibilities. Xfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply. Select plans only. Not available in all areas. Use a fiber coaxial cable. With my mom and dad living in Orange County, when we bring my five and seven-year-old to visit, we are sometimes in for a two-hour drive that could feel like 10.

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30:56okay we're back and we're talking two whitesons and one wienersmith about the science of bathing three smelly scientists giving you advice on hygiene speak for yourself man That's right. That's right. I meant smelly in a positive way, like smelling like, you know, recently fermented kombucha. Oh, that is a good smell, but I think you're trying to insult us still. All right. Well, let's keep this healthy. I want to know about how my skin microbiome influences the rest of my health. Like we've been talking about the critters that live on our bodies and how they vary from place to place and how that's all different, but we haven't really answered the question of what critters do we want on our body?

31:41Are we washing away good guys or bad guys, or is that just a totally arbitrary human distinction? So Katrina, how does our skin microbiome influence us and our health? What a great question. And to be honest, you kind of have to back up a little bit because our skin health is very affected by our immune health and our general health. So your skin is the largest organ in your body, and it really does reflect your health. But for example, eczema and allergy have become much more common in the last century. And we really think that starts in the gut. Wait, what? Yeah. So the prevalence of eczema, so in California, for example, by the age of two, something like half of California children are experiencing eczema, atopic dermatitis to some extent.

32:29Are you saying that's only for Californian children? Like Virginians are spared from this? Well, no. I mean, actually, industrialized children have very high rates of eczema, atopic dermatitis. And maybe you've heard me tell this story a million times where they compared Hutterite children and Amish children, where the Amish children had more exposure to microbes and dirt. Their farming was being conducted very close to their households. They found like more particles of bacterial endotoxin, which is like a cell surface part of a bacteria that makes big immune responses happen. They found more of that in the household dust and in the children's lives in general.

33:08And they found that the rates of eczema were much, much smaller. Same for the rates of allergy. Whereas in the Hutterite families, where the farming was conducted a little farther away from the houses, they had higher rates of eczema, although probably half of what industrialized people have on average. So you're saying that the more you were exposed to like dirt and dust and farming byproducts, the weaker your immune response or the lack of inflammation, lack of over-response. The lack of over-response, exactly. Yeah. And is eczema just itchy skin? Yeah, it's itchy skin. It's like red, rough patches.

33:45It can have a lot of staphylococcus in it, but it really does seem to have an immune origin that isn't only on the surface of the skin. But all those exposures I just talked about are going to be influencing all parts of your body for sure. But a lot of the solutions we've been reaching for have been related to cultivating a healthy baby gut microbiome in order to avoid the development of those over immune responses. So make the connection for us, Katrina, which I think is implied in your comment. You're saying that exposure to these allergens avoids an allergic response later on in life. There's something about the immune system not having seen it, and then it reacts too strongly to it later?

34:26Yeah. I mean, this is very much a hypothesis. There's a lot of science to do to really connect the dots on what you just asked. But yes, that's exactly the idea. So the hygiene hypothesis, which initially this episode was about the hygiene hypothesis, and I didn't realize we were going to talk about showering specifically so much, because to me, the hygiene hypothesis is all about the changes in the 20th century where our hygiene changed. So we've had wastewater treatment, which obviously is wonderful. I love tap water. We've got vaccination, antibiotics, smaller family sizes, just personal hygiene, I do think makes a difference.

35:04I mean, imagine how different it would be if you grew up in a place where there were like tons of kids and babies around and no clean water. I mean, there's a lot of downsides in terms of diarrheal illness in a situation like that. But the people who are growing up in communities like that, they actually don't get eczema. They don't get acne. They have actually really amazing skin health. And so that combination of different exposures is associated with better skin health outcomes. But all the details are like a huge science question that people are really working on right now. But it suggests that like healthy living is dirty living in some sense, that you want to be exposed to all these crazy things so that your immune system learns to respond appropriately.

35:49Is that the idea? Yeah. I mean, dirty living is maybe not how I would put it. I mean, what about forest bathing? There you go. Wow.

36:00We do farm bathing. Farm bathing. There you go. Yeah, that's a great idea. Like there's a wonderful institute in Finland, which has done a bunch of different interventions where they've studied the impact of better connection to nature and microbiome and immune health outcomes. So, for example, they took a paved over kindergarten and they ripped up the pavement and put a bunch of garden boxes in and got the kids getting their hands in the dirt more. And that group of kids had better outcomes when it came to allergies and asthma and other eczema and so forth. And why in particular do we think that is?

36:39So it's like if by playing with dirt when you are in kindergarten can solve the problems, then that means it wasn't something that was like. kicked off when you were a baby and is now in place for the rest of your life. It means it's something that you can change at least when you're in kindergarten. So it's something about what those bacteria are doing in the moment. What do we think that they're doing? Do we know? I mean, this is a huge question, but I think it has to do with tolerization. So if you are exposed to something consistently, your immune system becomes tolerant of it. And so I think that's a big part of it.

37:14I do think it'd be better to have it happen in infancy. I really could imagine a future where we are more carefully constructing our baby gut microbiomes and not just letting that happen willy-nilly. So akin to vaccination, that we have a plan for making sure that babies get good exposures in their guts early on. Because I think if you, you know, for example, preterm babies who have a lot of antibiotic exposure are much more prone to some of these eczema and allergy and asthma type of outcomes. So I think there's a big moment in early life where we could have a lot of influence. But it is fascinating.

37:48And this is true for a lot of different allergies and food tolerances that you can build up better tolerance as an adult. So I mean, many people get allergy shots where you use exposure to protect yourself from future allergies. Or, you know, maybe you've heard of people going and getting like the tiniest one 10 ,000th of a peanut amount of exposure weekly and building it up over time until they can eat a peanut without having an anaphylactic shock, which is like life-changing. So those are amazing changes that we are feeling around with how to make use of those changes that can still happen in adulthood.

38:26Exposure therapy, I mean, I get that it works, but it always reminds me of like, somebody's afraid of spiders. Let's put them in a box with a bunch of spiders, as a way to solve their problem or throw them out of an airplane if they have a fear of heights or something. But you're saying it actually works. There is so much variation and I am really not an expert in that. So I don't want to pretend I understand it. But I mean, I'm a part of our society. I've watched people in my life going through these processes where they use exposure and are able to tolerate things better. And I really love this doctor who wrote a book called Fiber Fueled.

39:02and he always says your gut does sound like a book you'd like and he always says that your gut is a muscle and you just have to build up to things and you wouldn't go to the gym and try to deadlift your body weight the next day you would build up to it over a year and most people can eat most things if given small exposures and growing them slowly And there's exceptions like celiac disease and gluten, obviously, and some severe allergies. But I like that thinking that if you build up to it, you can get your body to handle a lot of different exposures. And just because I'm paranoid, I'd like to mention that if you're interested in this building up tolerance thing, you should talk to a doctor.

39:47Yes. And do it under their supervision. Because we don't need any extraordinary saying, my kid had anaphylactic shock. Yes, exactly. That's for sure. But make the connection for us between all this interesting stuff about the gut and the skin. Because initially we were talking about skin microbiome and like Hutterite or Amish children exposure via the skin to stuff on the farm versus like, you know, urban kids who aren't exposed to that. But now we're talking about gut health. And you said earlier that the two are connected. What is the connection? Aren't these microbial communities very different?

40:18The microbial communities are different. They're more on the surface. But underlying everything is your immune system. Your skin reflects your immune health because your skin is your biggest organ and you see it all the time. Oh, I see. So if your gut, I mean, 70 % of your immune system is in your gut. Oh, that's the piece. If you are promoting your gut health through your diet and your life, then all those immune cells will protect your skin. So your immune system is like this army that doesn't have to be with such an aggressive term. But, you know, they're a team that's out there cleaning stuff up for you.

40:56They're like a marching band. Yes. A nice, quiet one, though.

41:03Okay. So just to make sure I understand, the connection between the gut and the skin is that they're both affected by your immune system. But your immune system is centered in your gut, even though your skin, as you were saying, is the largest organ? That's right. Right. So your gut is lined with really large numbers of immune cells, also neuroendocrine cells. Your gut has this amazing network of cells that are promoted by your diet and your microbiome. And those immune cells are going to reflect your systemic health big time. All right. So now to bring it back to the question in the episode, we're trying to understand whether showering is good for you.

41:43And you're telling us that you have microbial communities on your body, but that... It seems to me, if I can jump in and say what maybe the point is, is you should be rolling around in farms until you get the right kind of bacteria in your hair follicles, and you should be creating the right kind of microbiome. And then it's not so bad if you shower once a day to rinse off the ones that are on the outside part, but you want to establish a good microbiome initially, and then it's okay to shower? That's a really cool thought. I don't know if that's true. I do think that when you shower, you remove many of the environmental microbes that might be helpful on your skin, like those ammonia oxidizing bacteria.

42:28They don't do well if you shower with soap. So we are changing our microbiomes by showering in that sense. But we live in a society where everybody's showering. I mean, I personally am not going to stop. You were asking me for personal stories. Well, Daniel will remember a few years ago. I'm terrified. about what this story is going to be. I wanted to use this soap that's like in a bar. So it's not liquid. So it's more environmentally friendly because it's easier to transport it. So I got shampoo and conditioner in the form of a bar and I tried to use them for like a month. And I was like thinking it was going okay.

43:04And then one day, I think I was like at a poster session with my students or something and they were taking pictures and I saw the picture and I was like, oh my gosh. I need some real shampoo. So like, so my question is, how would we transition to, you know, the way these people who haven't been showering for 10 years? I mean, I find that fascinating. So I think there must be a way to transition yourself towards that and to need less showering. I think right now the products we're using, use soap to strip the oils and then add the oils back. Think of shampoo and conditioner or soap and lotion.

43:46And I think if we cut both of those steps out of the process, we could probably get to a pretty good balance. And I would imagine that you would have a different skin microbiome if you were to do that. Now, if you go swabbing people in the industrialized world, you're not going to find a whole lot of people who live that way. So it's pretty hard to know what the microbiome would look like. We have done microbiome studies in parts of the world that are relatively uncontacted. Like I actually got to do a study in the Amazon and Ecuador. We didn't collect skin samples, but the people in that community did not have eczema or acne.

44:20So that was kind of amazing. And Dr. Armpit, he also went down and he studied, he went with Yanomami, a guy named David Good, who's a PhD student at Gelf in Canada. and he is Yanomami and they went down to where he's from and they did collect skin samples. And so they did see different types of microbes on the skin of the people in this community. So I think that's a hard question to answer in a modern context because all of us are showering. But in principle, you could like gather up the armpit microbes of people who don't shower and smell fine and you could bottle that up and like sell it and people could effectively all have armpit transplants instead of taking showers?

45:05Is that a real business opportunity? In theory, I think it is. And what's actually really interesting was I followed up on AO Biome last night and I learned that they are taking their product in a more medical direction for wound healing and other medical applications. They're doing clinical trials and so forth. So, I mean, I think there's a lot of potential here beyond just cosmetics or smells, but actually for health and wound healing. All right. Well, that's exactly what I wanted to ask you about because it seems like you're saying that the largest health conditions that affect your skin, like eczema and acne, whatever, are actually driven by your immune system, which is controlled by your gut.

45:46And that's not something we're talking about cleaning today. But so if we're talking about whether you want to shower, that's going to impact the microbiome on your skin. But that's a lesser player in these questions of like acne or eczema. They mostly seems like affect how you smell. So it's not about health. It's about smell. Is that right? I think there are some exceptions to that. I think wound healing, for example, or your capacity to heal from skin injury. I think that is also your gut and your immune health is important. But I think the local conditions could actually be quite important.

46:20And so I think that's actually a really fascinating future for intentional probiotics to make sure that the microbial environment in a wound is promoting healing. So if I eat more fiber, my leg will heal faster when I trip on my farm. Maybe? I think so. I'm pushing it. No, I mean, I think that's totally on par with what we understand, that if you have fiber in your gut and then that promotes the immune health and all those immune cells in your gut, that leads to systemic improvements in healing. Well, go grab a can of beans while we take a commercial break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about more reasons to love fiber.

47:04Actually, that's not what I'm planning on, but I'm guessing we're going to get to it.

47:17For business owners and entrepreneurs, there's a constant challenge, getting things done fast and done well. Why not have both? That's why Wix Harmony stands out. It's an AI website builder that helps create a website quickly without compromising your vision. A fully functional site can be built for any business just by describing the idea. Then you can choose to chat with AI or edit everything manually to get it exactly right. There's also Aria, an AI agent available to answer questions or help complete tasks. And here's what makes it even better. Aria doesn't just live in a chat box. You can click anywhere on your site and ask her to make changes instantly.

48:01It's these details that make creating with Wix Harmony feel seamless. Join millions of businesses already using Wix and try Wix Harmony for free at Wix.com slash harmony. That's Wix.com slash harmony.

48:35The all-new Mazda CX-5. More to move every side of you. See it in five films at mazdausa.com slash five sides. Google is a trademark of Google LLC. Sequences shortened and simulated. This July 4th, come celebrate at America's Block Party, hosted by America 250. America's Block Party is a can't-miss 4th of July concert happening at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Experience music performances by major artists, patriotic tributes, and the kickoff to Giving 4th, helping to make July 4th the largest day of giving in American history. It's more than just fireworks. Join this landmark celebration and get your America's Block Party tickets now for$17.76 at America250.org.

49:17Change comes fast. So wouldn't it be nice if one thing stayed the same? Like the price of your Wi-Fi. Thanks to the Xfinity five-year price guarantee, you're guaranteed five years of the most reliable, fiber-powered Wi-Fi with no annual contracts and our best equipment. Plus, get online in minutes with same-day Wi-Fi and stream your favorite podcast on iHeartRadio. Lock in your price and unlock the possibilities. Xfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply. Select plans only. Not available in all areas. Use a fiber coaxial cable. Mom, can I have Lingo Kids? Dad, Lingo Kids, please! When did we become the Lingo Kids house?

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50:29Okay, we're back and we're talking to Dr. Katrina Whiteson of the Whiteson Research Institute, CEO of our upcoming startup, which will sell you other people's armpits. And beans. And beans. Wow. Not a very normal combination, I gotta say. So Katrina, take us to the forefront of research. What are people doing right now to understand the microbes on your skin and how that relates to showering and, of course, fiber and guts? what is being funded right now? What are avenues of investigation currently? Oh, what a cool question. My mind is lighting up. I mean, I can't not tell you about Julie Segre at the NIH, who is a leading skin microbiome research.

51:12And believe it or not, she's collaborating with our colleague and neighbor, Susan Huang, who's an epidemiologist who studies staphylococcus in nursing homes and infections in nursing homes. And I just got to see Julie speak at a conference last week where I learned all about their studies in nursing homes where they swab the skin of nursing home residents and look for pathogens and look for transmission of infection between people. She's done this in hospitals and now they're moving to nursing homes. There's a lot of antibiotics in nursing homes and they do see a lot of transmission. So, I mean, this is a big area where we could improve health.

51:50And I think showering is actually a very big positive in the context of transmission of microbes in a healthcare setting. So score one for showering. Yeah, that's a definite score one for showering. Wait, are we keeping track of the score here? I feel like we haven't said too many pro-showering. I think we've implied it, but let's go ahead. Showering got a point there. Yeah, and then actually that makes me think of another whole effort that I've watched happening in the last 10 years, which is to understand how the aerosolization of microbes in the shower can affect lung health and susceptibility to lung infection.

52:28And there are some gram-negative bugs in our tap water. So if you aerosolize that and stand around breathing it in for 10 minutes every day, and you're susceptible to lung infections, that could sound kind of dangerous. And so there were questions about whether, for example, children who have cystic fibrosis would be safer in a bath and they shouldn't take showers, which is an enormous endeavor to ask all the parents of people with cystic fibrosis to take on, like, what if you don't have a bath? And actually, the final message on that was that those small environmental exposures actually did not change risk in a meaningful way.

53:05And that you should, your kids should jump in the pool in the lake and enjoy the shower and living a healthy lifestyle like that had way more impact on your long-term prognosis than any one exposure. So that was, I like really listened to the outcome of that public health message because otherwise I was really feeling for families that were going to try to avoid showering for that reason. And so I think when it comes down to it, they collected massive amounts of data and I felt very convinced that it was safe to shower, even if you had cystic fibrosis. So that's, I guess, another plus one. But they didn't have a control group that showered like a horse.

53:46No, they did not do dust bathing in this study. That's right. And then, yeah, then actually I had a really big life experience this week that I can share where I got to hear about several different cancer microbiome research studies, many of them connected to diet and exercise. So when you say cancer microbiome, you mean whether or not the microbiome contributes to causing cancer or treatment of cancer? Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot of different angles there, but whether or not the microbiome and the associated immune impacts influence the risk of the development of cancer and then also influence the treatment outcomes of cancer therapies.

54:28For example, there were talks about melanoma, and I learned that eating a high-fiber diet can actually really help with slowing the progression of melanoma. So people who are eating a high-fiber diet, they're less likely to develop melanoma. And if they do develop a small beginning smoldering melanoma, that will be curtailed by a high-fiber diet. They're less likely to have it progress. Showers one, fiber two. Yes, exactly. Keeping score. And believe it or not, this event that I was invited to, it was kind of shrouded in secrecy. We didn't have an agenda or know who was going to be there. And there was heavy security.

55:07And it's like I went in through like an airport. And then I get in there and I see all these colleagues from all around the country. Some I know, some I don't. But like it's clearly a big crowd. And we all sit down and guess who walks in? RFK Jr. Oh, OK. And so we got to hear him talk about health for 45 minutes. And there were a lot of diet parts that I agreed with in terms of like eating more whole foods. And maybe the NIH is going to invest more in cancer and diet and microbiome. And did you offer him your personal kombucha? And if no, is it because the Secret Service would have tackled you halfway there?

55:47Recognizing the danger of kombucha? I mean, I do not think they'd find it dangerous. I bet RFK Jr. is a kombucha drinker, let's face it. Not sure. Not sure. I don't know if that's a team member I'm necessarily wanting. I want it on our team. But no, I did not try to take kombucha through the security, if that's your question. Interesting. Interesting. All right. Well, how do you feel about the direction the NIH is taking and that RFK Jr. is steering the medical research community towards? I have really mixed feelings. I mean, I feel really sad about the way that the research enterprise has just been like completely disrupted.

56:28There's been so many people who have lost their jobs or like really important projects, like 26 year long passion projects of teams of people that were really centrally important to health and they've just been canceled. So, I mean, that type of tragedy is very hard to even begin to understand. But I think there are elements of what they're trying to do in terms of focusing more on diet. I think that is actually wise. I don't always agree with the types of diets that they're talking about, but I do agree with the idea that a big part of why Americans are less healthy and there's a lot of chronic disease is connected to our food environment.

57:09and fixing that is a massive project. It's not just about telling people that they should eat healthier. We've been doing that forever. I mean, what second grader doesn't know that they should eat more fruits and vegetables? We've all heard that. So getting ourselves to do it is not a small project. I don't want to derail us and I won't, but I just want on the record that I am like massively opposed to what RFK Jr. has been doing with like the vaccination schedules for kids. And so I'm just going to take a second to plug the American Academy of Pediatrics. They've got a website that has what I think is the best schedule for vaccines for kids and adults.

57:47And so I'd like to just go on the record as being massively opposed to that in particular. Yeah, I could not agree more. And that's a really important resource, which I teach that in every micro class, like to make sure that the students are ambassadors for microbiology and for vaccination. It's like one of the most important advances our society has ever come up with. Whoop, whoop. So Katrina, give us the bottom line. My takeaway is that to influence your health, it's mostly affected by what you eat. So you should eat more fiber if you want less eczema and fewer allergies, et cetera. But also while it's fine to shower, it's important to also be exposed to all sorts of crazy stuff out there in the environment so that your immune system doesn't overreact.

58:33Is that a fair way to bottom line it or give us some more nuance on it? Yeah, I like that bottom line. I think in early life, the exposures both for your gut microbiome and your general exposures in your world make a really big difference to how your immune system develops. And then throughout your life, like the way Kelly brought up the fact that these changes can keep occurring in adulthood, that's fascinating and definitely true. It's something you have some control over. So it's a good thing that way. I'm thinking about diet that we can change our exposures that way. In terms of showering, I mean, I think the way that most of us are living, showering every day.

59:09In fact, I heard Julie Segre say many times that by showering every day, you are protecting yourself from infection. And in those healthcare contexts, I think that's very true. As she was saying that, I was also thinking about these groups of people who are most of humans before 100 years ago, we were not showering every day. And so I think it's interesting to imagine a future where we don't use products to strip the oils and then other products to add the oils back. But I personally don't know how to change that in my daily life. And it's going fine for me. So I think our current way of doing things works.

59:42But I could imagine a future where we're more savvy about that and we get ourselves to a more balanced state where we don't need to use products to strip the oils and different ones to add them back. I will continue showering, but eat more beans, which I always do more of in the week after you've been on the show. But I get to sustain that. But I always really remember in that week. And so does this nuanced understanding of hygiene, you know, that it's good to be exposed to these things and to be out on the farm, does that extend to, for example, office hygiene? Is there potentially some science to Zach Wienersmith's claim that he works better in an office with like Dorito bags on the floor and inspires his creativity?

1:00:26Can we make that sort of leap? Oh my gosh, I have the best favorite study to share with you. So last year, my lab didn't just do spring cleaning, we did spring greening. And we were inspired by the same Finnish Institute I told you about where they stripped the concrete off the playgrounds and put gardens and dirt for the kids to play with. Well, they extended this to offices and they made these green walls and they were very fancy. I can share the reference. The green walls cost seven thousand dollars or euros or something. So we did not buy a seven thousand euro green wall for my lab. But what they found in this study was when they put these green walls that allowed for air to be filtered over the leaves of the plants.

1:01:08And I don't know if it was hydroponic or if there was soil, but certainly there wasn't a lot of soil. But the point of this greening was to have the plants filtering the air akin to an HVAC system. And they had, you know, airflow organized around it. And they put them into modern office buildings and also into hospitals and also into less modern office buildings that had less current circulation. And they found that the buildings that started out with less circulation had the biggest improvements. But they did study, I believe they studied the skin microbiomes of the office workers. And the message I got was that there was general improvement.

1:01:48I'm happy to share the paper. And so my lab took that result and took it upon ourselves to build a green wall in our lab. And it's been a real source of joy. And so I'm not sure how that relates to Zach Wienersmith's, you know. Office hygiene. Office. Let's give Kelly some ammunition here. Come on. organization. But if he were to add a green wall to his office, I think that is likely to have positive impact. And we don't mean let mold grow on the walls or something. I mean, purposefully, you know, bring nice plants in. Yes. Mold is usually not a positive for health, but I mean, I'm open to ideas there.

1:02:31I'm not. Not in my home. All right. So talking about weird critters, my last question for you is maybe predictable. When we meet aliens, are we going to discover that they take showers? Oh, wow. I mean, think about how space travel would be so much easier if you didn't have to take a shower. Like maybe there's going to be future technologies where it is like a shower in the sense, I'm sure the aliens will have good hygiene. I mean, if they make it all the way here from where they are, I'm guessing they have figured hygiene out. And so I would say I would anticipate good hygiene, but I'm not sure that they'll take water-based showers.

1:03:10So when the craft lands in the center of UC Irvine and the door opens, you're expecting like nice smells to come out. I was just thinking about that. Like fried beans. Alien kombucha. I think it's possible that their smells will be pretty foreign to us. So I can't really promise that a modern human will like the smell. Fair enough. All right. Thank you, Katrina, for coming on the show again and answering our absurd, ridiculous questions with a good sense of humor and scientific basis. We can't wait to have you back on the show again.

1:03:54Thanks, everybody, for listening. Please go and do us a favor and rate the show on whatever podcast app you're using. It really helps people find us. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is edited by the amazing Matt Kesselman. He really is a wizard. You can also find us online on Blue Sky, Instagram, and XDNKUniverse. Come engage with us. You can email us at questions at danielandkelly.org. We really do want to hear from you. And you can find our website, www.danielandkelly.org, where you'll also find an invitation to join our Discord where everybody comes and talks about the amazing universe.

1:04:33And we also have the most amazing moderators. This is an iHeart Podcast. Thanks for joining us.

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