Noise Pollution: Pipe Down, People!

Like any other form of pollution, loud noises can seriously affect your health over time -- and that's just the beginning. As Robert and Allison break down the science behind noise, they also explain how noise pollution affects the natural world.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alice, I don't know if the science editor
at how stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb,
science writerer at how stuff works dot com. And uh,

(00:23):
I have to ask, what's the most annoying sound for you? Personally?
Most annoying sound has got to be my dad snoring.
I'm sorry, Dad, but it's sure anyone snoring really, But
I have this vision of going across the country and
I think we're going on a college tour, and my
dad and I shared a hotel room and he snored.
He just snored so loudly. And I remember contemplating sleeping

(00:46):
in the bathtub, although I never did. And this is
really before I got familiar with all the different kinds
of your plugs out there. Yeah, I want about um, Well,
I I've had to be around some snoring people before,
such as like I think, and I'm like some sort
of like youth trip in in high school. I really
tempted to ask if you're a snore, but I will not.
I do not think I am a snore. If I

(01:07):
am a snore, then people that have slept near me
have been just amazingly polite in my entire life. It
would really be a shocking revelation. Um. But but now
that the noise, probably the noise that annoys me the
most is anything in a movie theater that's not the
movie like and I'm actually really like this wine. I
never go to the theater because I'm just super picky

(01:29):
about this, Like if if I have to hear somebody
eat popcorn, I get kind of irritated, even though people
are like popcorn is have two I have to Like
people who don't even like popcorn go to the movie
theater and they feel like they have to eat popcorn,
and I'm like, I'm trying to listen to it, like
you know, some heartfelt scene or it's like something really violent, disturbing,
and here's somebody like chomping down or it's nachos and
things like that much. And then there's the whole you know,

(01:51):
anything else too, like cell phones, chitter chatter. It just
it gets to me. I have to confess. When you
first asked me if when we were talking about this
podcast with the most annoying sound in the world, was
was thinking about the movie dumb and dumber. Yeah. Anyway,
So moving on to noise pool. Basically we're talking about

(02:12):
noise pollution, and a lot of noise pollution, at least
as far as it concerns humans. Does come down to
sounds that are annoying and disruptive that are allowed. Yeah,
Like I keep thinking back to Um, there's this awesome
segment on this British comedy show called look Around You,
which is a parody of science shows for young people. Um,

(02:33):
so it's great if you get if you get a chance,
you know, do like a Google or YouTube search on
the name Leonard Hatred and I'll take you right to this.
This guy's like he comes on the show and he's
like talking about how this is a fictional character about
how his parents snored when he's a child and they
lived by Heathrow Airport. Then they moved because it was
too noisy, but they moved into a house that was

(02:53):
next to Gatwick Airport. Uh. Then he left, he got married,
he moved to the countryside and then they built this
somebody build an apatoire directly across the street from the house,
so he had to listen to the sounds of cattle
being slaughtered all the time. And to top that off,
his wife and the sister in law that lived there
with him suffered from a condition that caused them to
scream uncontrollably. So he developed this spray called silence with

(03:17):
a P and if he would spray it onto his ears,
and he admitted that it contained quote liquid skin, So
we'd spray it on and it would just like cause
skin to temporarily grow over his ears, so he couldn't
hear anything. He just had a solid ear structure, just
a solid like fleshy knob for an ear. Yeah, no
nifty ear canal all that stuff gone. It's pretty grass, Yeah,
pretty gross. Mr Hatred. So so yeah, let's talk about

(03:40):
um about noises and how how these different noises and
different levels of noise affect human health. Let's take it
down and let's break it down to decibels. All right,
So near total silence, you're gonna have zero decibles gone on. Yeah,
here's an example, got it all right? Next, Well, we're assuming,

(04:02):
I mean, we're assuming that listeners are listening to us. Well,
I assume that I demand it. Actually, if you don't
have time to like listen to us, and like a
closed environment, and then come on, what are you in
your car? Pull over? What are you doing? Now? We
have a whisper, so give us a whisper. I don't
think I've ever heard you whisper. Give us a whisper. Hey, guys,

(04:23):
thanks for listening to the podcast. That that would be
kind of a whisper. Right, so running roughly around fifteen decibels.
And then we get into a normal conversation, right like
we're having now, and that's what So sometimes we get excited,
so it escalates a little, but like just normal conversation,
that will be sixty decipls. Okay, vacuum cleaner, Yeah, that's

(04:44):
going to be what do you think you're robotic? The
vacuum cleaner does probably around seventy decibles? Is it loud?
I would think it might be a little it's a
little quieter, but the roomboat tends I don't know, it's
still you can't sleep with it running, you know, it
still sounds like a vacuum cleaner. Doubtless there is somebody
who does sleep with their vacuum cleaner running, maybe like
it's a time saver. Well, I mean, I guess by

(05:04):
nature is supervise it and actually I would be a
little you know, hesitant to let that thing have free
run of the house. So your average passenger car going
sixty that's going to be about seventy seven decibles. Yep,
somebody hanks a horn, you've got a hundred and ten decibles,

(05:27):
all right, So we're ratching up the levels. So now
we're heading to a rock concert. What do we got now,
hundred and twenty decibels fire off a gun or a
light of firecracker hundred and forty deciples. And if you're
you know, within close proximity to a jet taking off,

(05:53):
you're looking at a hundred and fifty decibles and a
ruptured ear drum. That's great. So yeah, that the basically
breaks down to any sound above eighty five decibels can
cause hearing loss, and the loss is related to both
the power of the sound um and the length of
exposure and like the proximity to it, you know. So

(06:13):
it's like, you know, it's a difference between having your
head next to a jackhammer, hearing a jackhammer, you know,
across the street, and having to work in like a
you know, a sandwich shop next to the jackhammer all
day long, right, which is why. Um, you know, agencies
like osha I regulate a noise exposure on the job. Um.
So as an example of this, if you have to
raise your voice to be heard, you're probably dealing with

(06:35):
noise of about eighty five decibles. Yeah. So ye, I
think back to the last time you were at a
at a club or at a rock concert, etcetera. You
were if you were having a shout to be heard,
then you know you were in a pretty noisy environment. Yeah.
And when you're talking about eight hours of about ninety decibles,
then you were talking about ear damage. Yeah, and that
a hundred and forty decibls like the gun shot. Yeah,

(06:58):
you're not waiting eight hours at that point. At that point,
it's immediate, immediate damage and actual pain. Yeah. Like did
you ever see Copland? I don't think I did see that.
That was like there was the movie where Sylvester salone.
You played like a cop and you're like put on
weight for it and all, and like he has like
hearing damage in one ear and like the villain of
the piece. So I think it is Harvey Kitel, Like

(07:19):
they're they rough them up at one point and they
like fire a gun next to his other ear to like,
you know, because they're bad guys. So yeah, so that
would be a situation where you would have immediate hearing
damage and pain in the ear. Yeah. And even when
a noise isn't actively deafening you, you can have a
health effects like of course hearing loss. You know, you

(07:40):
can disturb your sleep, you can have cardiovascular problems, um,
and you can even affect your social behavior. Actually, yeah,
actually ran across some really cool studies because there's something
a lot of people looked into, um usually with the
advent of iPods. I should think that there's a whole
lot of money pouring into research on hearing loss and
stuff like tonitas um. With the you know, just ubiquitous

(08:02):
nous of iPods. That actually is what you guys are
probably listening to us now, or many of you at least.
So I'm hesitant to I'm not, you know, knocking on iPods,
but a lot of us just listen to them that
are levels that are way too loud. Yeah. And and
part of it too is because it's like you'll be
listening you're on the train, right, so there's like a
noisy train sound. But and then there's also some like annoying, um,

(08:22):
you know, chatter or like, you know, whatever is else
is going on the train. You want to block that out,
so you crank up the headphones a little and uh
and yeah, so that it all sort of adds up.
So to talk to me about some of these studies, Yeah,
So the Department of um Psychiatry at the University of
London conducted an in depth study in two thousand three

(08:42):
and they came to some interesting conclusions. They said, the
risk of developing mental or physical illness due to environmental
noise is actually pretty small. You know, you're probably not
going to be driven completely crazy, and this is of
course ruling out again actual light damage to your hearing.
But they said that part of the problem is the
interaction between people, noise and ill health is a complex relationship.

(09:06):
Humans are are not usually passive recipients of noise exposure,
and they developed these coping strategies to reduce the impact
or they just you know, they move away from the noise.
Have you heard about situations in which prisoners are subject
to constant noise in a modification of torture? I suppose, Yeah,

(09:27):
I mean that sounds horrible, horrible. It's like when they
were trying to get uh noriega okay out of his compound,
remember in Panama, I don't remember this, and they were
like pumping rock music, you know. Or actually there there
was like a recent you know document that that came
out talking about you know, different music that was used

(09:47):
as a an instrument of interrogation um or you know,
torture on on Guantanamo and going Tuantamo Bay inmates. Yeah,
I think that's right. Yeah, and like and it's like
some like I think like Trent some Trent Resiner's music
for n inch Nails came up and he was like
legitimately offended, you know, because you create this art and

(10:09):
uh and then somebody's gonna use your art to inflict
you know, pain on somebody, psychological pain. So so yeah,
that one of the factors here is that people can
cope with with different levels of noise pollution and they
can move away from it, well, assuming they can move
away from it, right, So there's an element of choice. Yeah.
But then but and then a lot of it comes
down to how it affects your your quality of life,

(10:32):
all right, you know you have again it's like hearing,
there's the hearing lots. Yeah, but it also disturbs your sleep. Uh,
you know, if you have to listen to the jackhammer
all night or or you know, if you have some
sort of your you know, you live next to an
airport or something. Um, not getting enough sleep can severely
harm your ability to function during the day. In children,
chronic aircraft noise exposure has been found to impair reading, comprehension,

(10:55):
and long term memory. Yeah, and maybe associated with raised
blood pressure from you know, further research pending on that
this and h Then there's a two thousand five study
from a team of Spanish researchers and they found that
in urban areas, households are willing to pay approximately four
euros per descibel per year for noise reduction. So that's

(11:16):
kind of interesting to think in terms of this, like,
you know, your ability to move away from it. It's
kind of becomes a privilege, Yeah, or at least in
some places depends on how you know an urban the
urban environment happens to work. And in two thousands seven, UH,
the World Health Organization Noise Environmental Burden on Disease Working
Group published findings on the health related effects of noise

(11:36):
for Europeans and They concluded about two percent of Europeans
suffer severely um disturbed sleep and fiftcent suffer severe annoyance
due to environmental noise. And that's to find as community
noise emitted from like road traffic, trains, aircraft flying over. Yeah. So, um,
when I was younger, I lived in the city. I

(11:57):
lived in a big city for a long time, almost
a decade. I went to college and then lived there
for a couple of years after in the city. And
it's weird to me because I am really sensitive to noise.
I mean, if you were to come visit us in
our Atlanta office, Um, you know, even the editorial department,
you can kind of hear pin drop. A lot of
the other departments around house stuff, works, dot com. You

(12:17):
a little noise, you're a little bit more rambunctious, especially
when the development guys were around and they were doodle
all sorts of crazy stuff. But editorial department tends to
be a little quieter. Yeah, people are. But anyway, point
in the story is that it was it was just
surprising to me. I would have thought that I would
have gotten used to noise exposure living in urban environment
for a period of a couple of years when the

(12:39):
in laws come in to visit. Um they are there, Uh,
they always comment on the sound of airplanes flying overhead
right from the airport in back of your house. Do
you guys have an airport in back of your house. Well, no,
but there's an airport, you know, in the area, like
we have the huge airport in the Atlanta area, and
but yeah, it's not in the backyard. And I did
not even think about it. But but then they come
and stay in They're like, oh, I don't see, got

(13:00):
you deal with this because they're you know, all the
planes flying overhead and I have to actually think, stop
and think, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess there
are planes flying overhead kind of constantly. Yeah. Same here
we have a train that runs through the middle of
the town and I really don't notice it. And then
again with with the parents staying, they're like, oh, that
tram was so loud last time. So again it comes
down to, you know, you can grow accustomed to certain

(13:22):
levels of noise or figure out how to cope with it. Right,
And we're not the only life forms that are affected
by noise. Pollution of other animals have been a little
selfish so far in this podcast ecocentrics, let's talk about
some animals and ways in which they deal with noise pollution. Okay,
a lot of us have heard about stuff affecting whales
and um all sorts of marine creatures, although we don't

(13:44):
really know a lot about how noise pollution affects fish.
That's what that's one interesting factory about. We're researching this.
But for whales, noise pollution can mean a couple of
things as a way to cope. It can mean that
they call louder to be heard above the ruckus. Again,
it's like you're the rock concert and having to speak louder.
They're having to do the same thing in the ocean
to communicate or use their echolocation. Yeah. Actually, uh the

(14:08):
blogger over Discovery News, Jennifer Viegas cover this um in
in July two articles and the title was whales scream
over noise pollution And that's sort of a disconcerting idea
of whales screaming that we're causing them to scream. Yeah,
that's a great headline because screaming whales that's like immediate outrage. Yeah,
pretty much. And uh So there's also research that North Atlantic. Right,

(14:30):
whales and other whale species are are in fact engaging
in this behavior to be heard above stuff like commercial
ships and other man made noises in the ocean. Uh.
A lot of that is sonar or offshore drilling stuff
like that. Yeah, we we went into some of this
in our podcast about beach whales. That's right, because that's

(14:51):
one of the things they've been looking into, like navy vessels, um,
interfering with their their echolocation and driving them off course. Yeah,
and it's particularly be troublesome when the man made noises
are occurring in the same frequencies as the whales calls, right,
because that's gonna start affecting stuff, um, you know, whether
it's migration or mating or just generally whales communicating with

(15:12):
each other. Yeah, it's like, you know, you get an airplane,
they ask you to turn off your cell phone and
what have you during a key parts of the flight
so you don't interfere with anything. It's kind of like that.
We're just not very considerate, Like when it comes to
us going out in the ocean, we're the the jerk
that won't turn your cell phone off. It's important to
note that Noise pollution can also come from natural sources

(15:34):
like earthquakes for example. So what's the deal with whales?
I mean, is it easier to constantly shout or just
go quiet? Well, I mean, we get tired of shouting
in whales, I imagine do too, So shouting can be
this huge energy expenditure, so sometimes they will wind up
going quiet. And what does that mean. It means that
we're never going to know what's being said. And whale
calls or songs like such as that of the male humpbacks, right,

(15:55):
they engage in these beautiful whale songs. Yeah, it's kind
of like, you know, it's like the dude with slide
hearing loss that goes to a noisy restaurant and you
can't really hear anybody, so it just doesn't say anything.
So you know, it's out on the whole conversation you
could be getting with that guy, right, And it's not
just in the in the oceans, in a marine environment,
it's also on land. I mean, like we were talking

(16:16):
about before, you have aircraft and traffic noises doing a
lot to contribute to really noisy environment and you think, okay, well,
well just you know, take it over to Yellowstone or
I'll go to some national park and you know, I
won't be affected by noise pollution. But again, just as
we were talking about with light pollution, you can't really
escape the noise there. Yeah. I actually was in Yosemite

(16:38):
recently on vacation. Yeah. And uh, and it really doesn't
like you. It's it's interesting to go there. And like
you you hear these stories about how the park it
used to be, like they used to do this thing
called the firefall, where they like like have burning embers
and go over the side of this this cliff. Or
then they would do stuff like like the park rangers
would would feed up trash from the um leftovers from

(17:01):
the restaurants directly to the bears so that everybody could watch.
And uh and and and and like we we're laughing
now and sort of you know, outrage now. But they,
you know, they like to point out that, you know,
this was considered okay then, and uh, you know, like
thirty years ago, this was this was perfectly fine. Thirty
years from now, who knows that, you know, people will
look back and say, I can't believe they let people

(17:22):
drive cars into these places, the noisy vehicles or they
let them have a golf course, you know. Um. Yeah,
So you go into even these these pristine environments, um,
you know, in places where nature is the you know,
the center attraction that you still you know, there's a
sound of construction or the sound of you know, a
truck bringing you know, groceries up the mountain. So let's

(17:43):
talk about a couple of the animals that are being
affected by noise pollution, such as the great tits persis
major they're singing at at higher frequencies. Then you also
have female gray tree frogs and those are exposed to
the sound of passing traffic, so it takes them takes
them longer to locate and find males. Uh. European tree

(18:04):
frogs on the other end, are just calling less overall. Um.
Then you also get the sound of overhead aircraft can
disturb the behavior of harlequin ducks as well as goats.
Remind me again what a harlequin duck is. It's a
duck that is frequently used as in it for entertainment
purposes in the courts of Europe. That's just a variety

(18:24):
of duck. Um. Yeah. And then you have stuff like,
of course the greater stage grouse and mules deer. They're
steering clear of noise producing oil and gas developments. And
it can also affect the ability of a lot of
animals like owls and bats to find and hunt their prey. Yeah,
these guys depend on unsound to find their food, so
they'll have the laboratory studies have shown that if they

(18:45):
encounter areas where there's a lot of noise, they just
start avoiding those areas. I mean, we're talking about reduced habitat,
which can ultimately, uh put a species at a higher
risk for extinction. Like the way I like to think
about it is, if you have an animal, a wild
animal in its natural habitat, if you were to build
a mini mall where its habitat is, then it cannot
live there anymore. If a mini mall occupies that space. Likewise,

(19:09):
you have the what is a mini mall mini mall,
like I don't know, like a strip mall. Right, um
but but but but likewise, even if like it was
just an open space and you had a tremendous amount
of noise, that space is occupied by a noise that
it cannot cope with. So it's that cuts off that
whole area it's as if you built a mini mall there. Well,
and a lot of land in the US and the

(19:30):
continent of US is in fact really close to roads,
which are a great source of noise. So there was
a stat that we found of land is within just
one kilometer of a road. Yeah, this distance, the sound
of an average car is around twenty deciples and the
at the same distance trucks and motorcycles forty deciples. That's

(19:51):
a lot of noise. Yeah, so what can we do. Well,
a lot of it kind of breaks down to make
less noise. It's kind of quiet people, It's kind of simple.
The The thing is, our lives are pretty noisy, so
you can't just say, like stop driving vehicles or stop
using roads. So the better solution ends up being things
like have quieter road surfaces, um put up noise barriers

(20:13):
like the walls you see you know a lot when
the whenever the interstate goes through a major city or something.
Here's a good one appropriate signage in protected areas. But
this also reminds me of the signs that you'll sometimes
encounter in different neighborhoods about no honking your horn or
the laws they have about you know, you can't cruise
this neighborhood, so you can only go buy it, you know,

(20:34):
once in some set amount of time. And I assume
they're also uh laws regarding like how loud your radio
can be and stuff like that. Yeah, or even on
the on the subway, you know, you can't bring a
boom box. Other people do and it's crazy how loud
people can make their cell phones on subway. But that's
something that gets me. It's like, not as much like
if a dude were to bring a boom box on

(20:54):
and listen to his music at least you yeah, yeah, totally, um,
like I would respect that a lot more than the
guy who brings on a cell phone and is going
to play his cell phone, like to play some track
off his cell phone. Allowed, And you can't even under
like it's just this tinny noise you know, coming out.
It's like what do you you You're not even able
to do. You don't even hear anything on the subway anyway,
because you're a Mr Anonymous with your sunglasses and your

(21:17):
your music or your podcast, I'll turn up loud so
but still sometimes they'll be that one dude and you're like,
what's going through your mind. Get some headphones for that thing,
like it's got a headphone jack on it, and they're
not that expensive. All right, So now we know when
Robert's Pitt peeves. So what else can we do. We
can restrict motorized travel, like you guys are gonna think
in protected areas in addition to appropriate signage, and that

(21:38):
would be like maybe you you don't let people drive,
you know, along all the roads that go through a
national park. And certainly I think they've they've cut down
on travel through a lot of a lot of the
road like that. I think there was a time where
it was like roads everywhere, let's just drive. Yeah, certainly,
like nineteen fifties in the United States. I mean they
were just building out the highway system everywhere. Yeah. So

(22:00):
so I feel like some of the things that we've
mentioned so far are really addressing the symptoms and not
the cause of the problem, not the illness itself. So
this next one is pretty interesting and that it actually
tries to tackle aircraft and it's called maybe guys have
heard of this, the Silent Aircraft Initiative. So, um, this
is a Cambridge m I T venture that was discussed
a couple of years back. Yeah, and they have this

(22:21):
this awesome idea for the silent aircraft. The model that
they're looking at particularly is the Essay X forty. That's
the silent Aircraft experimental. Uh and uh there have been
other designs on it as well, and it's it's basically
read because the thing is when you when people design
an airplane, they really tend not to think about the noise,
even if you're dealing like a stealth airplane or something.

(22:43):
It's it's not the noise you're thinking of, like noise.
It's just it's gonna be as loud as it's going
to be. Deal with it, you know. That's kind of
the approach. So these guys have like redesigned the airplane,
thinking well, what can we do from a design standpoint
that cuts down on the noise. Yeah, and I think
that we should take a second just to note that
it's not going to be silent, right, yes, yeah, silent.
Whenever they refer to silent, they put in in quotations

(23:05):
because right, so we're talking about an aircraft whose noise
would probably be hopefully imperceptible. Um, if you're going outside
the perimeter of your regular urban airport. Yeah, and it's
also not like I think the time frame they were
looking at was maybe twenty thirty they'd have something. So
so you guys are not going to be flying on
this anytime soon. But the mere fact that people are

(23:25):
working on it is great. I'm curious about some of
the engineering stuff that they have going on in here
to lower noise pollution. Can we just check out some
also there as a side, they're also looking at improved
fuel efficiency. That's but yeah, they're they're looking installing the
engines embedded within the fuselage with intakes above the wings
to shield most of the engine noise from listeners on

(23:47):
the ground. So I guess they're kind of redirecting the noise.
It sounds like, okay, yeah, And then there's they have
this novel ultra high bypass engine. Would they quote variable
area exit not? Also okay. This just means that the
engine can operate for low noise with low speed exhaust
jets and take off and during climb at takeoff and

(24:07):
during climb, and then it can be optimized for minimal
fuel burn during cruise. So it's just you know, geering
it down a little in terms of how much noise
is putting on how much fuel it's consuming. Yeah, they've
also rejiggered the engine exhaust dex so that they can
kind of absorb the sound, which I thought was pretty
cool as well. But again, this is not going to

(24:28):
be coming to an airport near you. Yeah, but but
for a while. Yeah, but it is. It's just such
a great idea that like maybe the ultimate um take
home from this is that like what can what can
be applied to every other aspect of our lives, you know,
sort of redesigning, rethinking in a way like how it's like,
you know, let's redesign airplane so it makes less noise,

(24:49):
Like could you redesign the house or redesign our lives
so it has less of an impact on the environment
and the lives around us. But I think culturally speaking,
noise has such an important part in our lives. Like
even talking about we're talking about driving cars before, right,
and if you happen to drive a Prius, say, and
they've come up with this invention to a noisemaker for

(25:10):
your Prius, if you're not used to how silent your
your Prius drives. So it's just I mean, it's interesting
to me in the that noise provides cues to us,
so we can't really live without, or we're not used
to living without, you know what I mean. Yeah, Well,
like this is another not to just continually harp on
public transportation, but I like think of there's nothing wrong

(25:31):
with going on public transportation, Mista. Well, like when you
go to the the train stops here in town, the
Marta stops and h there's a lot of noise there,
obviously because you have a train moving through it, but
then they also pipe in this like horrible you know,
music kind of noise that nobody's listening to. Like I
can't imagine anybody's I do. At the holidays, I totally
listened to it. Yeah, but when you take Marta, do you? Yes,

(25:52):
I do, okay, especially in the morning when I'm too
brain dead to do anything else. You know, when somebody's
cheerily singing, I'm not talking about singing, I'm talking about
music that they're piping in. Well, I can't think of
its music or if it actually has voices, but I listen, Okay, Well,
maybe something will like it. What I'm just saying, it's
like it's strictly speaking, is it necessary, you know, for

(26:14):
something we could scale back on and make the world
a quieter place. Yeah, do you guys have ideas on
how to make a quieter planet? Please send them to us.
We're at science stuff at how stu first dot com.
But before you wrap it up, let's hear from a listener.
I've got a cool email here from Mark and he writes,
just listen to your August thirty one podcast in which

(26:35):
you chatted about evolution and slugs. At the end of
the show, it made me think of the Ricky Gervei
podcast audio book as Carl Pinklington pink Pilkington. I think
it's Pilkington has some interesting theories about evolution and absolutely
hate slugs. And then he points out it is a
free promo of it that came out on like YouTube

(26:57):
a few years back. But I actually listened to it,
and um, a lot of it is this guy just
sort of not understanding evolution and Ricky Gervei trying to
explain evolution, and then the guy talking about how he
hates flux, which I hate as well. But but Jurvet
made an interesting point about slugs that may had me
that made me have to stop and rethink them because
I tend to think that they're worthless and they're disgusting,

(27:18):
and already talked about why they were the worthless well
he well, he pointed out that that they're they're they're perfect,
like they've been around for so long, they're they're filling
this this particular role in in life itself. Like that's
a perfect design. So you may be grossed out at it,
but that slug is perfect. Same thing you like, do
you think snakes or spiders are gross? Well, you're looking

(27:40):
perfect design. Yeah, sure, basis of ecology. I gotta love them. Yeah,
So thanks Mark, I appreciated checking out that link. Yeah,
if you guys want to send us your thoughts on
slugs or the noisy world we live in again, Brett
science stuff at housta first dot com and over on
Facebook and Twitter. We're kind of quiet but but very active,
So check us out on face Book where we're stuff

(28:00):
in the science lab or um. You can also go
to Twitter where we're lab stuff and we'll try and
keep you updated on cool stuff that we're finding out
about and stuff that we're podcasting about. So yes, that's
all we got. Thanks for listening, guys for more on

(28:21):
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