October 13, 2015 • 44 mins
Darwin asserted that seemingly useless organs and behaviors are left over from our evolutionary history. But as more are found to have a function, the idea has become a flashpoint for the battle between science and religion.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know from How Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's no al over there.
So this is stuff you should know. Sure, everyone is
(00:22):
wondering if Jerry has been kidnapped. She has been, and
we are refusing to pay the ran. It's only like
twenty bucks, but I don't know. They sent her finger
and we said we need more proof. You know why
we won't send the twenty bucks because we don't negotiate
with kidnappers. No, it's just good policy. Jerry probably understands.
(00:43):
Who'd you think? I don't know that finger they sent
was pointed in our direction. I know that well, Jerry,
from all of us here at How Stuff Works, we
miss you and we wish you'd the best of luck.
That breeding too holds up so Chuck, yes, you were
correcting me. I think we should get this out on
(01:04):
the air as well. Vestigial organs. You have to say
it like you're all like you're eating a meat ball. Vestigial. Yeah, sure,
well you so you're saying it's vestigial. It's not vestigile. No, vestigialstial.
I'm a vestigial fan, alrighty, and you're the correct fan.
(01:29):
I'm not a fan of either. I just for once
looked up the pronunciation of something. So how are you
feeling about vestigial organs? Are you liking it? Uh? Yeah,
I mean I thought it was good. Organs is a
little misleading. It should be just be like body parts,
I think, yeah, vestigial parts. It can also be traits behaviors. Yeah,
(01:52):
you know, like what about what's like the go to
vestigial trait? Oh, the palmer grass brief X. Yeah, it's
a great one. Yeah, that's one of the first things
they test on a baby. Yeah, it says a lot
about the baby. It's like, can you hold onto my
fingers and lift your little body? Yeah, So we just
(02:13):
go ahead and say human babies are born with the
ability where if there if the palm of their hand
is um stimulated, you know, you like, tell it a
joke or give it some candy or something like that. Um,
the baby will grasp onto the finger just reflexively, and
the baby grasps so hard, and we're talking like newboards.
(02:35):
The baby grasps with enough strength that it can you
you could pick the baby up with your finger and
it'll dangle from your hand and look very cute. Of babies,
I think they said. So that doesn't make any sense.
Why would a baby be able to do that? So
they can hang on to your furry coat as you
run through the jungle. That's the uh, that is the
(02:57):
predominant answer amongst science. Yeah, and uh, Ruby grabs my
beard like it's rope. Yeah, I remember you saying that,
and pulls herself up my chest, so it's like it's
like a little animal. Yeah. Apparently have you ever tickled
her feet? Because they grasped with those two had leg
(03:18):
hair pinched by little feet. Man already, boy, having a
kid sounds like a lot of fun. That's right. Your beard,
your leg hair getting climbed on. It's all worth it those,
isn't it. I don't know. We'll see good for you, chucker.
I'll let you know in eighteen years. So uh so,
um uh what is that called again? The palmer grass
(03:39):
reflects and the one that's also from the feet. That's
a vestigial trait. It's something that used to serve a
purpose further back on our ancestral line. It still serves
a purpose in things like um primates, higher apes, UM,
but it doesn't in humans anymore. The thing about it, though,
is that the whole idea of vestigial organs, vestigial body parts,
(04:03):
of vestigial traits is gives a tremendous amount of credence.
In fact, it's one of like the the main points
of the theory of evolution that we have these traits
left over because if you trace our ancestry back far enough, um,
chimps and we had a common ancestor. Yeah, And if
you trace it back even further, snakes and we had
(04:25):
a common ancestor and so on and so on. These
are just remnants from that distant past when we needed things,
uh like uh, a tailbone to support a tail sure,
or you know, to be able to grasp your mom's
for the moment you're you're born basically so you can
hang on. And there's a couple of different definitions to UM.
(04:47):
If you asked Darwin, he will say that it doesn't
necessarily mean that it has no function now. It just
means that it doesn't have served the original purpose that
it once did. And that's a huge point because UM
vestigial organs is a flashpoint between creationists and scientists. Yeah, huge, man,
(05:07):
I had no idea, but it's like a it's like
a battlefield, but in that in that battle between creationism
and science. Yeah, I looked that up about the conflict
of religion in the vestigial organs and uh, at least
some of the sites I went to said that we're
fine with vestigial organs and we think that after God
(05:30):
created Adam and Eve that they may have changed over
the years. So I didn't run into that at all. Yeah.
I saw a bunch of sites that said that that
they can co exist basically and said that we agree
there could be a loss of genetic information over the years,
or that Adam and Eve uh were created and changed
as well, but it was just all God's work hand. Yeah,
(05:52):
which I mean the scientists would be like, no, still disagree,
but I like the way you're thinking. Generally, the sites
I ran into were just like, no, evolution is flat
out wrong. I think one of them said that, um,
and there is no such thing as a vestigial vestigial organ.
The very fact that you're saying that there are vestigial
(06:12):
organs because of evolution begs the question and you like,
the whole idea is that we don't understand what these
organs are for, not that they're useless. God wouldn't put
anything useless in the human body, right and science? Um
(06:33):
does face palm. Yeah, well so it I mean, it
goes on and on. It's not they're not neither sides
winning this. But I was very um, I was. I
was surprised to find that this was a like, you know,
you just kind of stumble onto a social war or
a battle of the or I knew that that war
(06:58):
was being waged, but I didn't realize that this is
one of the I don't field. It was just really
interesting to me. But you mentioned Darwin Man, Yeah, he
was not the first person to point out vestigial organs. No,
and we should point people to our Charles Darwin episode
that in the Natural Selection is what we did and
those I am very proud of those two because he
(07:19):
was a fascinating guy. Whether or not you agree with
us all that science science junk. You may also want
to go listen to our Enlightenment episode. It kind of
ties in. Yeah, agreed, So, like you said, he was
not in the first dude, Um, there was another guy
in name Robert Vida Scheim, who said he had a
big list, running list going that had up to ninety
(07:42):
parts that he claimed were vestigil and a lot of
those were proved not to be, and even some of
the ones. You might as well go ahead and talk
about the appendix a little bit, because everyone for a
long time said, we don't need the appendix. It does
nothing in our bodies. We can just take it out
and suffer no ill consequences. Yeah. So the idea is, well,
(08:05):
if you can take it out and not die, then
what's the point. Yeah, then it's vestigial. And I write
an article and you're like, you kind of have to
be careful saying stuff like that, because I can cut
my leg off and not die. But I still could
have used it, sure, you know, and with the appendix.
For for many years, like you said, after successful appendectomy,
(08:25):
after successful appendectomy, um, there were there was this predominant
idea that it was just this useless organ. One of
the reasons why um it was officially labeled vestigial right
out of the gate is because you can find it
elsewhere in the animal kingdom, which is another big part
of the definition of a vestigial organ. Is functioning organ
(08:47):
in the animal kingdom. Correct, Yeah, so you you can
find the same thing elsewhere in the animal kingdom, and
it it's it performs a more robust function. So with
the appendix, in particular for animals that have of a
m diet high in fiber, this serves as an extra
like digestive tract or an extra part of the digestive
(09:08):
tract um in humans that has no role in digestion whatsoever.
So scientifically speaking, it's lost its original purpose. Yeah, which
people long thought when we used to be plant eating. Uh,
for the most part, plant eating people's that that's what
the appendix aided in digestion and cellulose when you ate
(09:28):
a lot of plants. But now we don't eat plants,
so we don't need it. So it's just a little
a little sad sack. It is pretty sad looking compared
to compared to a chimp's mighty appendix. This is uh,
this is sad. But chuck, they have found and this
is pretty much the story for almost all of us.
(09:48):
To Jill Organs, there's really only two that remain where
we're just like, we have no idea what these do. Yeah, um,
but but with the appendix. We've come to find that
either it performed this role simultaneously to um chewing cud
for us, or it evolved to perform this role, so
(10:10):
it's not totally useless. It's like, don't cut me out,
and I'm I'm doing something. But it's a store for
um beneficial bacteria. Yeah, it's basically a reserve in case
you get really sick with diarrhea or some other gut
infection and and it vacates all that good bacteria. Then
you have this appendix waiting in the wings to say, hey,
(10:30):
I've got this, I'll reboot your system. Stand by, I'm
gonna spit them up right, and it's spits bacteria into
your gut. But they say, because we have medicines that
take care of all that stuff, that we never need
the appendix, right, because we have medicine now to do
that perform that same function essentially. Yeah, and I mean
(10:51):
that that makes a that's a pretty pro Western medicine
concept though, Like if you um, if you take a
bunch of antibiotics, you're probably going to be able to
use your appendix to repopulate the floora in your gut,
you know what I mean? Because antibiotics go through and
they just like laid a waste all bacteria beneficial or otherwise.
(11:13):
And you know, so after a round of antibiotics, if
your appendix is functioning, and you should probably be able
theoretically to recover better than if you've had your appendix removed.
So we mayn't even know that our appendix is functioning. No,
but Molly Edmonds comes up with an evil genius idea,
and she doesn't know vertly say that we should try it,
but she suggests that at the end, the only way
(11:35):
to really tell if we need an appendix is to
start taking them out of people in um, the undeveloped world,
who have less access to the same health care that
we have. I think what she meant was study people
who have had appendectomies, not necessarily like just bring people in,
like what happens, and if they have an appendicitis. I'm
(11:59):
hopefully that's a pretty routine procedure and that it can
be removed. But that's another thing that people argue, like, no,
this thing is useless. Not only not only does it
not chew cud for us any longer, um, it can
become really infected and kill you and so we should
just take appendixes out. That was the predominant thought. And
(12:20):
I think that you're kind of slowing it down lately. Yeah, like, uh, well,
we should talk about wisdom teeth. I was just about
to bring those up. You want to take a break first,
or you want to keep coming with wisdom teeth? Break?
Stop you stop? Stop you alright? So I teased everyone
(12:55):
with wisdom teeth. Ah, there was have heard Duck Dennis say,
you know, you should just always take out your wisdom teeth,
and others say, well know if your mouth has enough room,
like not everyone needs their wisdom teeth outright. But this
goes back to the evolution as well, Like we needed
back when we ate roots and tuberds and plants and
we had bigger jaws, we had room for those teeth
(13:17):
and we needed them. See that. To me, wisdom teeth
are the definitive evidence of vestigial organs as as support
for the theory of evolution, because our jaws don't they're
not shaped like they were before because our diet has changed,
our skulls have changed shape, and so there's not room
(13:38):
for that third moler that there used to be room for,
which is why it grows in all messed up a
k A impacted. Yeah, we needed uh once we started
cooking food and vegetables and making them soft, unless you're
on the Paleo diet and you eat raw edgies. Yes,
but if you're rich and you're on the paleod diet,
you probably pay for somebody to chew them up first,
(13:59):
since at them in your mouth. That's what rich people
on paleot so. Uh. Yeah, so now we don't need
those those teeth, and so clearly that's an example of
a vestigial body parts. Correct. But yes, but not only
do we not need them, there's no room for them
in most people's jaws. I just think, like, there you go,
(14:21):
that's it. Drop drop the mic right there. Yeah, we
talked about this before, but I had might not know. Sixteen.
I think they're seventeen. How old are you? Like, Yeah,
I feel like it's usually in that range. Whenever I
hear about someone that's older that has their wisdom teeth,
then it just I don't know, it seems like an outlier. Yeah, yeah,
I think it's about the normal age, like in your
(14:43):
teen's late teens. Mentally, yeah, kind of like tonsils. I
don't know many adults who have their tonsils removed. No,
I'm sure it happens. But then I mean, now that
you've brought up tonsils, this is a rabbit hole. So
that's another thing that that um, a lot of people say,
just go ahead and get room moved. The thing is is,
if history is taught as anything, just getting vestigial organs
(15:06):
removed electively is not a good move. Just in case
if they are getting infected a lot and they threaten
your health, yeah, you probably should get your tonsils removed.
But just as wisdom teeth to me are definitive evidence that, um,
we've evolved and have vestigial organs, so to our tonsils,
because no one has any real idea why we have tonsils,
(15:29):
and as a matter of fact, they can harm our health. Yeah,
this one article you since says they are supposedly the
first line of defense against inhaled pathogens. That's the best
they can come up with. I like it, Yeah, I guess,
but that's a pretty weak system. I mean, like there's
this kind of it rings the edges. I mean, it's
not even like a net. No, we should be able,
(15:51):
we should evolve a net, you know, a throat net,
a throat net that falls to the side when we
need like food to go through, but when we're just breathing, Like, yeah,
if you're dieting, you can have the throat net shut
and everything will just bounce back up. Yeah, that'd be great.
It's a great idea. They're uh, you know, chewing up
food and spitting it out as a weight loss method
(16:12):
is dangerous, but some people think that, Hey it makes sense. Man,
I just want to taste it. Uh what else? Oh,
I like the goose bumps. That's a good one. Yeah,
that's one of my favores too, because when you get
scared or chili, you'll get you'll see the goose bumps.
What are they called the erector peli. Goose bumps is
so much more fun. Well, the erector peli are the
(16:33):
muscles that give you goose bumps. It's kind of like
the Marines Awajima raising the flag. These muscles do that
to your hair follicles, right, and you get goosebumps. Yeah,
and that is left over from when we wanted to uh,
we're animals and we wanted to appear larger. We could
puff up our fur in defense or to hold in
(16:54):
to keep yourself warm. You know, the air gets trapped
in between the hair when it stands up. And if
you think about it, when you have a adrenaline running
through your veins and you're scared or you're you've got
the fight or flight thing going on, you can get goosebumps.
Same thing with when you're cold, get goosebumps left over
from when we have for I never get goosebumps, really well,
(17:15):
I'm never cold. The only time I get him is
when I like a I get the creepy sugar you know. Um,
and that doesn't happen much either. That's because the horror
movie industry is just really stinks. Man. No more goose bumps.
I'm working my way through that list that the Grabster
prepared for us. So nice of him. You've been on
(17:35):
a horror kick? Yeah, have you seen pre October horror kick?
Even Yeah, right when it started to get a little
even slightly cool, you got a blankie out and you
and you may snuggle up and watch horror movies. That's great. Um,
Emily won't watch him at all, which is very disappointing. Well, yeah,
I mean you it will be in the room. But
like she's like not paying that much attention, and I'm like,
(17:57):
why are you watching? But um, I saw a Pontypool
on the grabster's recommendation has a very good creative movie.
Have you seen it? No, so I haven't seen that one.
It's on Netflix, and I don't think it's ever been
off Netflix in the history of Netflix. I think it's
always been there. See. The problem is because Emily doesn't
watch him in then I'm saying, well, I'd like to
spend a couple of hours alone tonight with Ponty Pool,
(18:20):
which happens enough with sports, so horror in there, and
all of a sudden, what's the point of being married?
You know? I think that's that's that's good if you chuck,
that's upstanding choosing your wife over horror movies. Yeah, I'll
watch Nashville. Actually that's not true. You won't watch Nashville. No,
(18:40):
I'll be in the room when it's on. But again,
I'm not watching. I've never seen it. Am I missing it? No?
Even she's like it's so terrible, but still watches it.
It's one of those why do people do the things
they do? You know? Speaking of tangents like the one
we're on now I listened to our pez episode. It
is tangent city. Yeah, I mean even as far as
(19:04):
our normal stuff goes, it is tangential. We could call
our tangents vestigial material. Yeah, serves a purpose kind of
some some people like it, some people hate it, hate it. Uh.
So we brought up the tailbone earlier. Um, the cock
is it coxas I thought it was cossacks. Cossacks, I'll
(19:26):
go with that. Um, that is not the same thing
as when you were born with a tiny little tail
bump that can happen, but that's an atavism. Yeah, Um,
not the same thing as the cocksack. Cossacks. Well, it's
attached to the cossacks. So the cossacks is itself a
vestigial thing, right, Yeah, Like we don't need that bone,
and those bones are found in other animals that have tails,
(19:49):
and it's where the muscles connect to to control the
tail and everything. Right, Yeah, so we don't need that.
But then some people are even born with with an
actual tail. And then, like you said, that's an ad
of his, which is a relic that appears once in
a while rather than in most people. But that's the
only difference isn't it. I think so, And I was
gonna say we should do an episode on that, but
(20:11):
I looked at our article and I don't know, there's
not a lot to it. So there you go. We
just did atavism, I guess so. But with the cossacks, um,
some folks think that there is in fact a reason
that it. Kind of the best I could see is
that it acts like as the holder of things in
that area, kind of cinches everything up, like the anus
(20:34):
and other organs in that area. Is that right? Um? Yeah, Yeah,
that's that's the best they could come up with. But
they've removed cossacks from people before, and you know, the
anus didn't pro lapse or anything like that from what
I understand. Yet, they're just taking time. That's a horror
(20:55):
movie waiting to happen. I have never seen, or at
least I've never noticed Darwin's point on someone's ear. It's
a no. I know what they are, but I've never
noticed that anyone had one. Yeah, but that's not the
ones I've seen online. Is is a literal extra bump
(21:19):
that looks like an elf mine's going downward. Yeah, the
ones I've seen on the outside online I've never seen
in real life, is what I'm saying. So it's called
the Darwin's point, right, And they're just saying like it's
left over from when our ears used to be bigger
and weird. Yeah, like when we had to listen out
for stuff. Yeah, ears a weird period. If you really
look at them, I think supposedly people who can wiggle
(21:42):
their ears that's a sign of less evolution. That's your forehead,
my ears. My ears are wriggling too, No, just your
four Well, your forehead's wiggling too. I really can't wiggle
my ears really well. I must be tired because I
can do them like one at a time and do
(22:02):
the Star Spangled banner to it. Can you raise both
eyebrows individually? Oh that's pretty good. I can also rule
my tongue. Can you do this? Yeah? I can do
the clover too, but I can't. I can't do I
can't raise my left eyebrow by itself, which is weird.
You can do your right now. You just look very
suspicious of me, right, I don't believe you, but your eyebrow.
(22:24):
I wish you guys could all see this. Oh yeah,
it's scintillating. Also, with the ear. There are there there
are muscles in the ear that uh, we say we
don't need anymore because we don't need to move them
to locate things like, uh, like a satellite dish. That's why.
That's why if you like not everybody can wiggle their ears,
and people who can have an atavistic trait, which is
(22:47):
that muscle group is still left over. Yeah, And there's
a lot of different muscle groups that pop up um
as far as vestigial organs go. Um, there's one called
the subclavius muscle, which is up here in your chest
around your upper arms and chest um. And that's supposedly
left over from when we could walk on all fours
(23:07):
or mostly walked on all fours. Now some people have
it and some don't. Is it something you can see
or is it give you the ability to, like, you know,
how muscle dudes bounce their pecks. I'm sure the ones
with subclavio muscles are aces that that's so gross. There's um,
there's a pal mayris and a plant harris um muscle
(23:28):
that we don't need anymore. So much so that if
you are having some sort of muscle or tendon surgery,
the doctor will go in and harvest those for use
elsewhere in your body. So you can like move your
forehead like Reuben Kincaid and in the Partridge family, remember him,
he could like separate his forehead from his hair. What
(23:48):
was it? Just a trick he did? Yeah, I don't
remember that. It was his thing. The guy couldn't act,
He wasn't an actor. He could just basically move his
hair from where where it was normally too, like halfway
back his head, um on his head with his own
just muscle, or with his hands with his muscles. See.
I worked at the job, a commercial job with with
(24:08):
punch from chips once and um, yeah, he did a
trick where he did it with his hands, but it
was so like it looked like it was a two pay. Yeah.
The way he could move it with his hands, it
was really like imagine if you could do that without
his hands. Yeah, that's what Ruben Kincaid could do. I
got a great picture of him acting like he was
(24:29):
arresting me. He had like put me up against the
police car and had a hand behind my back. Yeah,
he's a nice guy. He sounds like he's still loved
being punched too. Man. I gotta tell you, well, I
mean like that was it for him. Yeah, But like
the other guy, John was in his trailer the whole
time for the most part. What were you doing? It
was Chips had that um that reboot TV movie, like
(24:53):
I don't know, probably fifteen or sixteen years ago, and
they did a promo for the movie that I were
on in the art department. Um, and John stayed in
his trailer and punch was all about like the ladies
in the neighborhood. He was like hanging out, let's go.
Let's Yeah. He still got a lot out of it,
(25:13):
you could tell, which is good for him, you know. Alright,
let's take a break. Okay, we'll talk about some more
vestigil organs. All Right, we're back. What else you got, Oh,
(25:44):
we can keep going. So, Um, I've found a couple
of articles. One was from I O nine that was
pretty helpful. Yeah, it's a great website. I found another
one on Discover magazine. They had even more. Um, there's
some people have neck ribs. Have you heard of this?
What neck rib? Talk about a throat net? This is
(26:04):
like a neck rib. Basically, you've got your highest ribs
up here. You're clavical not the mick rib, which I
think we can all agree because they're less delicious than
the mic rib. Okay, so if you right here, that's
your clavical yah, yeah, that's your top rib. People have
higher ribs. They go into the neck. Yeah, they go
from your your neckbone and an angle above that, and
(26:26):
those are called neck ribs. And they think that that's
left over from reptilian ancestors. Are those the people that
have really long necks or does that not matter? I didn't,
I didn't notice that sinuses. Yeah, that's another one. It's
like there's no reason for us. Yeah, well they think
there are reasons. Uh. They enhance our voices. Uh, they
make our skull not so heavy, and they think that
(26:48):
One theory is that they help with the mucus help
humidify the air we breathe in so it's not so dry. However,
a lot of other people say, I don't know about
that stuff. We may not need this is at all
know And they think that if if you look around
the animal kingdom, sinus has found in other animals, um
are most useful, and ones that have something called the
(27:11):
um the merrow nasal organ, which is like a pheromone
sending organ. We have them, which is another vestigial thing.
It's in our septums. It's on either side of our
septum um, but it's not connected to our brain. So
we can sense pheromones, but we can't actually sense them
because the vero valmarrow nasal organ that's a tough one
(27:35):
to say. Um, it's just not it's not connected anymore,
So how do we sense it? We don't remember that
one thing we talked about this before, There was like
that one um that one TV show had people like
smell shirts of other people and ended up like choosing
mates based on it, and it turned out those people
had the most varied immune systems from our own, So
(27:58):
we would make more us children, right Exactly. The thing
is is there's we don't have any way as far
as science knows to actually sense pheromones. We have the
means to do it, but we can't actually like pull
the trigger on it, because that that organ isn't connected
to our brains anymore, but it's located around the scientuses
and then in other animals, the scinuses um contain muscles
(28:20):
for moving whiskers and a lot of olfactory receptors for
sensing smells interesting, but in humans they just get infected up.
I was thinking if I were a mad scientist of
like the human centipede ilk, that's probably what I try
to do. Oh, you wouldn't just put someone's head in
(28:41):
the person's butt in front of them over and over. Yeah,
I wouldn't. That seems like a waste of time. I would, Uh,
I would. I would try to connect the um vomero
nasal organ to the brain. Yeah, or maybe bring back
all of the original purposes of our vestigial parts. Okay,
that's pretty issous. So just one thing at a time,
(29:02):
all right. Yeah, I would use anesthetic and um, I
would make sure the pudding cups were top notch for recovery.
What's the top notch pudding cup consist of? Just a
good brand? Yeah? You just don't want an off brand,
you know what I mean? Sure, Like if you haven't
heard of it, or there's a boy wearing overalls and
(29:24):
no shoes on the on the label, Yeah, like Uncle
Dance pudding cups. You don't want that pudding cup? Uh?
What else do we have in here? Oh? Yeah, here's one.
What's it called the third eyelid? Yeah, of course, there's
another name for it, Chuck. It is the um go
(29:45):
ahead plaka semilunaris. Yeah, I think that's perfect. Actually, so
you know a little almond. H that's something else. It's
the thing next to that, right, and this, uh, I
think was when in your eye we should say it's
your third eyelid. Yeah, it's it's from reptiles and amphibians
and birds, and I think i've seen this in lizards
(30:06):
and things when they have like you know, it's sort
of it's it's clear, like a membrane that watches over
their eye and goes back, but it moves horizontally rather
vertically like our eyelids. So this is a leftover trait
from when we could do that, because that was probably
pretty neat to do. Yes, Oh man, can you imagine
how free if you could do that. So we've got
the tissue, we just apparently don't have the muscles to
(30:28):
move it any longer. Did you? Were you one of
those kids that would turn their upper eyelids inside out?
I never knew how they did it. I couldn't do
it either. It was just freak show. Yeah. I always
admired them deeply for it, but I couldn't do it there.
It was always just some creepy boy trying to get
a girl's attention, usually like tap tap her on the shoulder.
I don't think I ever saw a girl do it,
(30:50):
of course not. It's always a boy, yeah, because girls
are smarter. Yeah, but yeah tap brothers fellers. She turned
around and scream yeah uh and then everybody laugh. But
then we'd go have uncle dance pudding cups. Because I
went to public school, we got taken to task for
for me saying dumb guys and an email that it
was like, I'm just kind of kidding around, even though
(31:11):
I do think women are generally smarter and guys do
a lot of dumb stuff that women don't do. Just relax,
you know, did someone really need to take up the
mantle for men? I know it's kind of like men
have a pretty good here on earth. Agreed. I think
you can get away with saying dumb guy here there. Agreed.
(31:31):
All right, Well, there's a couple of more body hair
in general. I think we did a whole show in that,
didn't we or did we? I don't remember, Uh, there's
it seems like it, because didn't we talk about like
the water Ape theory, I think so well recap it
the water ap theory. I think there's this idea that
humans actually um lost their body here because we went
(31:53):
in the water for a little while after we as
we were evolving from apes, lost our hair there because
we didn't need it, and then came out of the water.
If I'm just totally going from memory, so we won't
hold you to that, um, but essentially aside from your eyebrows,
which keep sweat out of your eyes, which is pretty
good function, and I guess hair on your head which
(32:14):
will keep your head warm. Um, and the hair and
your nose you used to it like traps, gnats and yeah,
juju fruits and whatever is trying to get up there.
I think generally they're referring to like leg hair and
back hair and arm hair. There really is no use
for that any longer. Yeah, but we still have it. Yeah,
there's no use for back hair, I can assure you.
(32:34):
I agree, Man, Yeah, kind of stinks, but we still
have it. It's evolving out. It seems like either that
are a lot more dudes wax than I realized. Yeah,
I need I haven't done that in a while. Have
you done waxing? Before. H Yeah, Emily would get a
little at home kit. She'll just clean up my neckline
a little bit. But I don't have a super hairy back.
(32:56):
It's just sort of up top there. I've never tried
waxing you. You usually just like uses matches, what burns it?
I mean that would work, but it's stinky. Yeah, oh yeah,
and that would stink, so you're like, yeah, we have
to do it outside. Uh. And then male nipples we
I know, we did a show on this um and
(33:17):
it's really pretty simple. We have nipples because women have nipples,
not for the same function, but because we're made of
the same uh stew essentially right, exactly, Like there's this
single um plan or blueprint or whatever for humans, and
nipples emerged before sex differentiation takes place. So everybody has nipples.
(33:40):
And I found from researching this there's actually um useless
tiny ovaries attached to men's um uh prostates. Oh really yes,
And there's supposedly um the beginnings of little vast deference
nodules on women's ovaries totally useless. So yeah, sex differentiates.
(34:02):
So we have ovaries, we have like ovary like overrets. Yeah. Wow, Yeah,
I had never knew that it's crazy, it's true or
over retest. Yeah, there you go, that's more appropriate. I think,
Um well, there are other animals too, I mean it's
not just humans. Um well, that's another thing. Yeah, that
(34:22):
an ostrich has wings but they don't fly, same with
penguins still have the wings. That's true. It's vestigial, but
this lend's further credence too. Vestigial organs as evidence for evolution. Yeah.
Or we did our podcast on cave dwellers and some
of those have non functioning eyes. It's like, why are
(34:43):
they still there at all? And seriously go listen to
that one. That was one of my favorites. It's a
tuck deep in the archives. It's called biospeleology was the
name for that one. Yeah, I think we did too.
I think we did one on cave dwellers specifically, even
and then we do one on caves. Maybe I'll bet
we did, because you went caving after we did caves,
(35:06):
So I think we did too. It's really getting tough
now to remember all these episodes. And then there's another one.
Two whales and snakes actually have pelvis bones donate them
because they don't have legs, but at some point they
may have before um and creationists thanks to uh uh
(35:29):
paper that came out. It said it was a scientific paper.
But the guy in in doing interviews with media's like, yeah,
we're having to totally rethink this, like maybe it's not vestigial.
They found that it actually enhances and aids and sex. Um.
But that, I mean that could be a secondary thing. Interesting. Yeah,
and get this, this is one extra thing that I heard.
(35:53):
I think it was on Fresh Air. There was a
woman who wrote a book about dolphins and dolphin research,
and specifically this researcher who used to take a lot
of acid with dolphins that he would also give acid
to and try to teach English language too. He would
give dolphins LSD. That's not nice. Um, you have to
hear this thing on on fresh Air. It's mind blowing.
(36:15):
But the they believe that dolphins evolved from wolves. What Yeah,
it's kind of like that water ache theory for humans
that like some wolves just started hanging out in the
water and eventually evolved into dolphins. Wow. I definitely need
to hear that. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, I'm pretty
(36:37):
sure that's right. You're there. I blacked out while I
was listening to it and form that false memory. But
I'm pretty sure that was in that interview LD somebody
was on LSD. Yeah. Maybe, Well, if you want to
learn more about vestigial organs, type that word those words
(36:59):
into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
You don't have anything else, do you know? Uh? And
since I said search barts, time for listener mail. Uh, no, sir,
it is time for Facebook questions. So occasionally I will
have gotten not a lot of great listener mails lately,
(37:21):
and so we will throw out ask us some questions
on Facebook. For the next couple of episodes, we're gonna
read some of these an answer, So pick at your
own will my friend, I'll go ahead and start with
Matt Thurman says, would you ever consider live shows in
the UK? Matt, not only would we consider it, we
actively want to and we are hoping to at some point.
(37:44):
So it's not the easiest thing in the world to
pull off. You know, we have to book a ship
to sail over there, not a night ship either. It'll
take a while, but I mean, um, we have a
pretty good idea that London might be a good talent
to hold old show in in the UK. But if
you have a recommendation of other places to do too,
(38:05):
let us know we're actively looking. I think we could
get support in London and uh in Ireland and maybe
even Scotland. So we would like to hear from people
on that. Okay, I got another one. This one's from
Avery W. Krouse. What is a controversial topic you haven't
covered yet that you're a little hesitant to do? What's yours?
(38:26):
Remember it used to be scientology for both of us,
and now we're just like it's done. Yeah. Uh for me,
it's breastfeeding. I really want to do it and we
will eventually, but we have to like really know what
we're talking about because it is a horn's nest. Yeah.
Mine would be uh vaccines, Oh man, I wouldn't want
(38:47):
to touch that with a tempo pole. Sure, all right?
I got one from Matthew Matsuto. Keep meaning to write
you guys and ask whatever happened to the young man
who was helping come up with ideas for stuff you
should know? Can't remember his name. That was Sam and
uh Sam is in college now and we haven't heard
from Sam. So Sam, if you're listening or Sam's Mom,
(39:10):
if you're listening, we would love an update. But I
even wrote letters of recommendation for Sam and he's in school,
so maybe he's all grows up now and doesn't need
us anymore. He's fine, we'll see. Remember he was in
our TV show as well. Yeah, he played at player.
He's the bat Boy. That's right. That was great. So yeah,
if you've ever wondered what Sam looked like, and you
(39:31):
can figure out how to get your hands on the
what was that one Make It Rain? To Believe? Make
It Rain? Episode? Check out The bat Boy and you
will see Sam from the famous Summer of Sam. That
was the same day the unions shut us down and
we had to leave for it. Man, what a day. Uh.
Here's one from Dave malin Chuck. This is a question
(39:52):
for you. When is Chuck's Beer going to get its
own podcast? Now? Come on, people like your beard? Yeah
you want to hear let's hear the Beard's voice at least.
So okay, it's a bit regurgitating right now, we'll get
used to that. Dave Mallen. Uh, this is from Mike Uh,
(40:16):
mikel Duff Mickel Duff. He says, how much do you
guys personally remember from podcasts you've done. Um, well, I
think we kind of demonstrate it today, not a lot. No,
it's really weird because, like they say, the brain is
has a basically an infinite capacity to remember stuff, but
like old stuff is getting crammed out as new stuff
gets pushed in these days, and that's it hasn't always
(40:39):
been that way. Yeah, it's been that way for like
a year and a half maybe two year. Yeah. I
always like to say that I think I remember about
as much as the average listener might, like a few
tidbits here and there from each topic. But like anytime
a hardcore listener comes up to us and wants to
talk to about something, or even an average listener it
comes up and just heard something from like two thousand thirteen,
I'm like, sorry, I have to go back and research again. Yeah,
(41:03):
and then we'll hold this conversation. But that'd be like
going up to KNA and being like, remember that joke
you told him that monologue three years ago. It's just
not fair, you know. Yeah, he didn't have something funny
and charming to say instead of, uh, go ahead, your
next this is a great one. I don't have an
answer for it. But we're going to get to the
bottom of this. Is from Brian Geppert. Why do coupons
(41:25):
have a cash value listed at the bottom smile emoticon?
Do they? Yeah? It's they're like worth one one hundredth
of a cent. The actual coupon itself is wow. So
he could trade that in I guess or stores. Can
you know what I mean? Interesting? That's probably it, But
well we'll look into that. You know what I heard
(41:47):
recently that you know, when you go to the grocery
store and they'll have a drive to like, hey, would
you like to donate a dollar or whatever? Not, Supposedly
they just gather that up as a big massive tax
right off. Is that true? Yeah? And I mean the
the charity is going to ultimately get that, but the
store is getting all the right off and your one
dollar gets bundled in with not even necessarily that one drive.
(42:08):
They may bundle it in with other drives, and who
knows where that dollar is actually going. You should not
that's pretty sneak. You should not feel bad about saying
not today when they ask you. But you should also
take it as an impetus to go donate yourself or
go do some volunteering or something like that as a
reminder rather than actually being pressured to giving a dollar
(42:29):
for that grocery stores tax right off, which is disgusting.
You to get your name on a balloon piece of
paper that they shape like a hot air balloon. All right,
let's do like two more. Uh. This is from Shane
Elliott when you guys gonna do a blooper real? Shurely,
Jerry has stored them up in the archives. Uh, my
friend Jerry about once a season. I don't like telling
(42:51):
people this, why because they're going to hack in and
find it. Yeah, Jerry does a blooper real and only
we can hear it, and you will never ever hear
although I think we could. We could sell them for
a dollar apiece and probably get rich. I got the
last one. This one's from Marco Rippola. Which one of
you is the Batman and which one is Robin? And
(43:13):
Marco you've been looking at it all wrong. Yeah, you
should have asked which one is the Joker and which
one is the penguin? WHOA Yeah, great answer, and we're
not going to answer. I love that. I got nothing more.
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can post questions any day or night on our Facebook
page at Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
(43:34):
You can tweet to us at s y s K Podcasts.
You can email us directly at stuff podcast at house
stuff works dot com, and, as always, join us at
our super awesome home on the web, Stuff you Should
Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(43:55):
other topics, how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you should know from How Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
There's Charles W Chuck Bryant, and there's no al over there.
So this is stuff you should know. Sure, everyone is
(00:22):
wondering if Jerry has been kidnapped. She has been, and
we are refusing to pay the ran. It's only like
twenty bucks, but I don't know. They sent her finger
and we said we need more proof. You know why
we won't send the twenty bucks because we don't negotiate
with kidnappers. No, it's just good policy. Jerry probably understands.
(00:43):
Who'd you think? I don't know that finger they sent
was pointed in our direction. I know that well, Jerry,
from all of us here at How Stuff Works, we
miss you and we wish you'd the best of luck.
That breeding too holds up so Chuck, yes, you were
correcting me. I think we should get this out on
(01:04):
the air as well. Vestigial organs. You have to say
it like you're all like you're eating a meat ball. Vestigial. Yeah, sure,
well you so you're saying it's vestigial. It's not vestigile. No, vestigialstial.
I'm a vestigial fan, alrighty, and you're the correct fan.
(01:29):
I'm not a fan of either. I just for once
looked up the pronunciation of something. So how are you
feeling about vestigial organs? Are you liking it? Uh? Yeah,
I mean I thought it was good. Organs is a
little misleading. It should be just be like body parts,
I think, yeah, vestigial parts. It can also be traits behaviors. Yeah,
(01:52):
you know, like what about what's like the go to
vestigial trait? Oh, the palmer grass brief X. Yeah, it's
a great one. Yeah, that's one of the first things
they test on a baby. Yeah, it says a lot
about the baby. It's like, can you hold onto my
fingers and lift your little body? Yeah, So we just
(02:13):
go ahead and say human babies are born with the
ability where if there if the palm of their hand
is um stimulated, you know, you like, tell it a
joke or give it some candy or something like that. Um,
the baby will grasp onto the finger just reflexively, and
the baby grasps so hard, and we're talking like newboards.
(02:35):
The baby grasps with enough strength that it can you
you could pick the baby up with your finger and
it'll dangle from your hand and look very cute. Of babies,
I think they said. So that doesn't make any sense.
Why would a baby be able to do that? So
they can hang on to your furry coat as you
run through the jungle. That's the uh, that is the
(02:57):
predominant answer amongst science. Yeah, and uh, Ruby grabs my
beard like it's rope. Yeah, I remember you saying that,
and pulls herself up my chest, so it's like it's
like a little animal. Yeah. Apparently have you ever tickled
her feet? Because they grasped with those two had leg
(03:18):
hair pinched by little feet. Man already, boy, having a
kid sounds like a lot of fun. That's right. Your beard,
your leg hair getting climbed on. It's all worth it those,
isn't it. I don't know. We'll see good for you, chucker.
I'll let you know in eighteen years. So uh so,
um uh what is that called again? The palmer grass
(03:39):
reflects and the one that's also from the feet. That's
a vestigial trait. It's something that used to serve a
purpose further back on our ancestral line. It still serves
a purpose in things like um primates, higher apes, UM,
but it doesn't in humans anymore. The thing about it, though,
is that the whole idea of vestigial organs, vestigial body parts,
(04:03):
of vestigial traits is gives a tremendous amount of credence.
In fact, it's one of like the the main points
of the theory of evolution that we have these traits
left over because if you trace our ancestry back far enough, um,
chimps and we had a common ancestor. Yeah, And if
you trace it back even further, snakes and we had
(04:25):
a common ancestor and so on and so on. These
are just remnants from that distant past when we needed things,
uh like uh, a tailbone to support a tail sure,
or you know, to be able to grasp your mom's
for the moment you're you're born basically so you can
hang on. And there's a couple of different definitions to UM.
(04:47):
If you asked Darwin, he will say that it doesn't
necessarily mean that it has no function now. It just
means that it doesn't have served the original purpose that
it once did. And that's a huge point because UM
vestigial organs is a flashpoint between creationists and scientists. Yeah, huge, man,
(05:07):
I had no idea, but it's like a it's like
a battlefield, but in that in that battle between creationism
and science. Yeah, I looked that up about the conflict
of religion in the vestigial organs and uh, at least
some of the sites I went to said that we're
fine with vestigial organs and we think that after God
(05:30):
created Adam and Eve that they may have changed over
the years. So I didn't run into that at all. Yeah.
I saw a bunch of sites that said that that
they can co exist basically and said that we agree
there could be a loss of genetic information over the years,
or that Adam and Eve uh were created and changed
as well, but it was just all God's work hand. Yeah,
(05:52):
which I mean the scientists would be like, no, still disagree,
but I like the way you're thinking. Generally, the sites
I ran into were just like, no, evolution is flat
out wrong. I think one of them said that, um,
and there is no such thing as a vestigial vestigial organ.
The very fact that you're saying that there are vestigial
(06:12):
organs because of evolution begs the question and you like,
the whole idea is that we don't understand what these
organs are for, not that they're useless. God wouldn't put
anything useless in the human body, right and science? Um
(06:33):
does face palm. Yeah, well so it I mean, it
goes on and on. It's not they're not neither sides
winning this. But I was very um, I was. I
was surprised to find that this was a like, you know,
you just kind of stumble onto a social war or
a battle of the or I knew that that war
(06:58):
was being waged, but I didn't realize that this is
one of the I don't field. It was just really
interesting to me. But you mentioned Darwin Man, Yeah, he
was not the first person to point out vestigial organs. No,
and we should point people to our Charles Darwin episode
that in the Natural Selection is what we did and
those I am very proud of those two because he
(07:19):
was a fascinating guy. Whether or not you agree with
us all that science science junk. You may also want
to go listen to our Enlightenment episode. It kind of
ties in. Yeah, agreed, So, like you said, he was
not in the first dude, Um, there was another guy
in name Robert Vida Scheim, who said he had a
big list, running list going that had up to ninety
(07:42):
parts that he claimed were vestigil and a lot of
those were proved not to be, and even some of
the ones. You might as well go ahead and talk
about the appendix a little bit, because everyone for a
long time said, we don't need the appendix. It does
nothing in our bodies. We can just take it out
and suffer no ill consequences. Yeah. So the idea is, well,
(08:05):
if you can take it out and not die, then
what's the point. Yeah, then it's vestigial. And I write
an article and you're like, you kind of have to
be careful saying stuff like that, because I can cut
my leg off and not die. But I still could
have used it, sure, you know, and with the appendix.
For for many years, like you said, after successful appendectomy,
(08:25):
after successful appendectomy, um, there were there was this predominant
idea that it was just this useless organ. One of
the reasons why um it was officially labeled vestigial right
out of the gate is because you can find it
elsewhere in the animal kingdom, which is another big part
of the definition of a vestigial organ. Is functioning organ
(08:47):
in the animal kingdom. Correct, Yeah, so you you can
find the same thing elsewhere in the animal kingdom, and
it it's it performs a more robust function. So with
the appendix, in particular for animals that have of a
m diet high in fiber, this serves as an extra
like digestive tract or an extra part of the digestive
(09:08):
tract um in humans that has no role in digestion whatsoever.
So scientifically speaking, it's lost its original purpose. Yeah, which
people long thought when we used to be plant eating. Uh,
for the most part, plant eating people's that that's what
the appendix aided in digestion and cellulose when you ate
(09:28):
a lot of plants. But now we don't eat plants,
so we don't need it. So it's just a little
a little sad sack. It is pretty sad looking compared
to compared to a chimp's mighty appendix. This is uh,
this is sad. But chuck, they have found and this
is pretty much the story for almost all of us.
(09:48):
To Jill Organs, there's really only two that remain where
we're just like, we have no idea what these do. Yeah, um,
but but with the appendix. We've come to find that
either it performed this role simultaneously to um chewing cud
for us, or it evolved to perform this role, so
(10:10):
it's not totally useless. It's like, don't cut me out,
and I'm I'm doing something. But it's a store for
um beneficial bacteria. Yeah, it's basically a reserve in case
you get really sick with diarrhea or some other gut
infection and and it vacates all that good bacteria. Then
you have this appendix waiting in the wings to say, hey,
(10:30):
I've got this, I'll reboot your system. Stand by, I'm
gonna spit them up right, and it's spits bacteria into
your gut. But they say, because we have medicines that
take care of all that stuff, that we never need
the appendix, right, because we have medicine now to do
that perform that same function essentially. Yeah, and I mean
(10:51):
that that makes a that's a pretty pro Western medicine
concept though, Like if you um, if you take a
bunch of antibiotics, you're probably going to be able to
use your appendix to repopulate the floora in your gut,
you know what I mean? Because antibiotics go through and
they just like laid a waste all bacteria beneficial or otherwise.
(11:13):
And you know, so after a round of antibiotics, if
your appendix is functioning, and you should probably be able
theoretically to recover better than if you've had your appendix removed.
So we mayn't even know that our appendix is functioning. No,
but Molly Edmonds comes up with an evil genius idea,
and she doesn't know vertly say that we should try it,
but she suggests that at the end, the only way
(11:35):
to really tell if we need an appendix is to
start taking them out of people in um, the undeveloped world,
who have less access to the same health care that
we have. I think what she meant was study people
who have had appendectomies, not necessarily like just bring people in,
like what happens, and if they have an appendicitis. I'm
(11:59):
hopefully that's a pretty routine procedure and that it can
be removed. But that's another thing that people argue, like, no,
this thing is useless. Not only not only does it
not chew cud for us any longer, um, it can
become really infected and kill you and so we should
just take appendixes out. That was the predominant thought. And
(12:20):
I think that you're kind of slowing it down lately. Yeah, like, uh, well,
we should talk about wisdom teeth. I was just about
to bring those up. You want to take a break first,
or you want to keep coming with wisdom teeth? Break?
Stop you stop? Stop you alright? So I teased everyone
(12:55):
with wisdom teeth. Ah, there was have heard Duck Dennis say,
you know, you should just always take out your wisdom teeth,
and others say, well know if your mouth has enough room,
like not everyone needs their wisdom teeth outright. But this
goes back to the evolution as well, Like we needed
back when we ate roots and tuberds and plants and
we had bigger jaws, we had room for those teeth
(13:17):
and we needed them. See that. To me, wisdom teeth
are the definitive evidence of vestigial organs as as support
for the theory of evolution, because our jaws don't they're
not shaped like they were before because our diet has changed,
our skulls have changed shape, and so there's not room
(13:38):
for that third moler that there used to be room for,
which is why it grows in all messed up a
k A impacted. Yeah, we needed uh once we started
cooking food and vegetables and making them soft, unless you're
on the Paleo diet and you eat raw edgies. Yes,
but if you're rich and you're on the paleod diet,
you probably pay for somebody to chew them up first,
(13:59):
since at them in your mouth. That's what rich people
on paleot so. Uh. Yeah, so now we don't need
those those teeth, and so clearly that's an example of
a vestigial body parts. Correct. But yes, but not only
do we not need them, there's no room for them
in most people's jaws. I just think, like, there you go,
(14:21):
that's it. Drop drop the mic right there. Yeah, we
talked about this before, but I had might not know. Sixteen.
I think they're seventeen. How old are you? Like, Yeah,
I feel like it's usually in that range. Whenever I
hear about someone that's older that has their wisdom teeth,
then it just I don't know, it seems like an outlier. Yeah, yeah,
I think it's about the normal age, like in your
(14:43):
teen's late teens. Mentally, yeah, kind of like tonsils. I
don't know many adults who have their tonsils removed. No,
I'm sure it happens. But then I mean, now that
you've brought up tonsils, this is a rabbit hole. So
that's another thing that that um, a lot of people say,
just go ahead and get room moved. The thing is is,
if history is taught as anything, just getting vestigial organs
(15:06):
removed electively is not a good move. Just in case
if they are getting infected a lot and they threaten
your health, yeah, you probably should get your tonsils removed.
But just as wisdom teeth to me are definitive evidence that, um,
we've evolved and have vestigial organs, so to our tonsils,
because no one has any real idea why we have tonsils,
(15:29):
and as a matter of fact, they can harm our health. Yeah,
this one article you since says they are supposedly the
first line of defense against inhaled pathogens. That's the best
they can come up with. I like it, Yeah, I guess,
but that's a pretty weak system. I mean, like there's
this kind of it rings the edges. I mean, it's
not even like a net. No, we should be able,
(15:51):
we should evolve a net, you know, a throat net,
a throat net that falls to the side when we
need like food to go through, but when we're just breathing, Like, yeah,
if you're dieting, you can have the throat net shut
and everything will just bounce back up. Yeah, that'd be great.
It's a great idea. They're uh, you know, chewing up
food and spitting it out as a weight loss method
(16:12):
is dangerous, but some people think that, Hey it makes sense. Man,
I just want to taste it. Uh what else? Oh,
I like the goose bumps. That's a good one. Yeah,
that's one of my favores too, because when you get
scared or chili, you'll get you'll see the goose bumps.
What are they called the erector peli. Goose bumps is
so much more fun. Well, the erector peli are the
(16:33):
muscles that give you goose bumps. It's kind of like
the Marines Awajima raising the flag. These muscles do that
to your hair follicles, right, and you get goosebumps. Yeah,
and that is left over from when we wanted to uh,
we're animals and we wanted to appear larger. We could
puff up our fur in defense or to hold in
(16:54):
to keep yourself warm. You know, the air gets trapped
in between the hair when it stands up. And if
you think about it, when you have a adrenaline running
through your veins and you're scared or you're you've got
the fight or flight thing going on, you can get goosebumps.
Same thing with when you're cold, get goosebumps left over
from when we have for I never get goosebumps, really well,
(17:15):
I'm never cold. The only time I get him is
when I like a I get the creepy sugar you know. Um,
and that doesn't happen much either. That's because the horror
movie industry is just really stinks. Man. No more goose bumps.
I'm working my way through that list that the Grabster
prepared for us. So nice of him. You've been on
(17:35):
a horror kick? Yeah, have you seen pre October horror kick?
Even Yeah, right when it started to get a little
even slightly cool, you got a blankie out and you
and you may snuggle up and watch horror movies. That's great. Um,
Emily won't watch him at all, which is very disappointing. Well, yeah,
I mean you it will be in the room. But
like she's like not paying that much attention, and I'm like,
(17:57):
why are you watching? But um, I saw a Pontypool
on the grabster's recommendation has a very good creative movie.
Have you seen it? No, so I haven't seen that one.
It's on Netflix, and I don't think it's ever been
off Netflix in the history of Netflix. I think it's
always been there. See. The problem is because Emily doesn't
watch him in then I'm saying, well, I'd like to
spend a couple of hours alone tonight with Ponty Pool,
(18:20):
which happens enough with sports, so horror in there, and
all of a sudden, what's the point of being married?
You know? I think that's that's that's good if you chuck,
that's upstanding choosing your wife over horror movies. Yeah, I'll
watch Nashville. Actually that's not true. You won't watch Nashville. No,
(18:40):
I'll be in the room when it's on. But again,
I'm not watching. I've never seen it. Am I missing it? No?
Even she's like it's so terrible, but still watches it.
It's one of those why do people do the things
they do? You know? Speaking of tangents like the one
we're on now I listened to our pez episode. It
is tangent city. Yeah, I mean even as far as
(19:04):
our normal stuff goes, it is tangential. We could call
our tangents vestigial material. Yeah, serves a purpose kind of
some some people like it, some people hate it, hate it. Uh.
So we brought up the tailbone earlier. Um, the cock
is it coxas I thought it was cossacks. Cossacks, I'll
(19:26):
go with that. Um, that is not the same thing
as when you were born with a tiny little tail
bump that can happen, but that's an atavism. Yeah, Um,
not the same thing as the cocksack. Cossacks. Well, it's
attached to the cossacks. So the cossacks is itself a
vestigial thing, right, Yeah, Like we don't need that bone,
and those bones are found in other animals that have tails,
(19:49):
and it's where the muscles connect to to control the
tail and everything. Right, Yeah, so we don't need that.
But then some people are even born with with an
actual tail. And then, like you said, that's an ad
of his, which is a relic that appears once in
a while rather than in most people. But that's the
only difference isn't it. I think so, And I was
gonna say we should do an episode on that, but
(20:11):
I looked at our article and I don't know, there's
not a lot to it. So there you go. We
just did atavism, I guess so. But with the cossacks, um,
some folks think that there is in fact a reason
that it. Kind of the best I could see is
that it acts like as the holder of things in
that area, kind of cinches everything up, like the anus
(20:34):
and other organs in that area. Is that right? Um? Yeah, Yeah,
that's that's the best they could come up with. But
they've removed cossacks from people before, and you know, the
anus didn't pro lapse or anything like that from what
I understand. Yet, they're just taking time. That's a horror
(20:55):
movie waiting to happen. I have never seen, or at
least I've never noticed Darwin's point on someone's ear. It's
a no. I know what they are, but I've never
noticed that anyone had one. Yeah, but that's not the
ones I've seen online. Is is a literal extra bump
(21:19):
that looks like an elf mine's going downward. Yeah, the
ones I've seen on the outside online I've never seen
in real life, is what I'm saying. So it's called
the Darwin's point, right, And they're just saying like it's
left over from when our ears used to be bigger
and weird. Yeah, like when we had to listen out
for stuff. Yeah, ears a weird period. If you really
look at them, I think supposedly people who can wiggle
(21:42):
their ears that's a sign of less evolution. That's your forehead,
my ears. My ears are wriggling too, No, just your
four Well, your forehead's wiggling too. I really can't wiggle
my ears really well. I must be tired because I
can do them like one at a time and do
(22:02):
the Star Spangled banner to it. Can you raise both
eyebrows individually? Oh that's pretty good. I can also rule
my tongue. Can you do this? Yeah? I can do
the clover too, but I can't. I can't do I
can't raise my left eyebrow by itself, which is weird.
You can do your right now. You just look very
suspicious of me, right, I don't believe you, but your eyebrow.
(22:24):
I wish you guys could all see this. Oh yeah,
it's scintillating. Also, with the ear. There are there there
are muscles in the ear that uh, we say we
don't need anymore because we don't need to move them
to locate things like, uh, like a satellite dish. That's why.
That's why if you like not everybody can wiggle their ears,
and people who can have an atavistic trait, which is
(22:47):
that muscle group is still left over. Yeah, And there's
a lot of different muscle groups that pop up um
as far as vestigial organs go. Um, there's one called
the subclavius muscle, which is up here in your chest
around your upper arms and chest um. And that's supposedly
left over from when we could walk on all fours
(23:07):
or mostly walked on all fours. Now some people have
it and some don't. Is it something you can see
or is it give you the ability to, like, you know,
how muscle dudes bounce their pecks. I'm sure the ones
with subclavio muscles are aces that that's so gross. There's um,
there's a pal mayris and a plant harris um muscle
(23:28):
that we don't need anymore. So much so that if
you are having some sort of muscle or tendon surgery,
the doctor will go in and harvest those for use
elsewhere in your body. So you can like move your
forehead like Reuben Kincaid and in the Partridge family, remember him,
he could like separate his forehead from his hair. What
(23:48):
was it? Just a trick he did? Yeah, I don't
remember that. It was his thing. The guy couldn't act,
He wasn't an actor. He could just basically move his
hair from where where it was normally too, like halfway
back his head, um on his head with his own
just muscle, or with his hands with his muscles. See.
I worked at the job, a commercial job with with
(24:08):
punch from chips once and um, yeah, he did a
trick where he did it with his hands, but it
was so like it looked like it was a two pay. Yeah.
The way he could move it with his hands, it
was really like imagine if you could do that without
his hands. Yeah, that's what Ruben Kincaid could do. I
got a great picture of him acting like he was
(24:29):
arresting me. He had like put me up against the
police car and had a hand behind my back. Yeah,
he's a nice guy. He sounds like he's still loved
being punched too. Man. I gotta tell you, well, I
mean like that was it for him. Yeah, But like
the other guy, John was in his trailer the whole
time for the most part. What were you doing? It
was Chips had that um that reboot TV movie, like
(24:53):
I don't know, probably fifteen or sixteen years ago, and
they did a promo for the movie that I were
on in the art department. Um, and John stayed in
his trailer and punch was all about like the ladies
in the neighborhood. He was like hanging out, let's go.
Let's Yeah. He still got a lot out of it,
(25:13):
you could tell, which is good for him, you know. Alright,
let's take a break. Okay, we'll talk about some more
vestigil organs. All Right, we're back. What else you got, Oh,
(25:44):
we can keep going. So, Um, I've found a couple
of articles. One was from I O nine that was
pretty helpful. Yeah, it's a great website. I found another
one on Discover magazine. They had even more. Um, there's
some people have neck ribs. Have you heard of this?
What neck rib? Talk about a throat net? This is
(26:04):
like a neck rib. Basically, you've got your highest ribs
up here. You're clavical not the mick rib, which I
think we can all agree because they're less delicious than
the mic rib. Okay, so if you right here, that's
your clavical yah, yeah, that's your top rib. People have
higher ribs. They go into the neck. Yeah, they go
from your your neckbone and an angle above that, and
(26:26):
those are called neck ribs. And they think that that's
left over from reptilian ancestors. Are those the people that
have really long necks or does that not matter? I didn't,
I didn't notice that sinuses. Yeah, that's another one. It's
like there's no reason for us. Yeah, well they think
there are reasons. Uh. They enhance our voices. Uh, they
make our skull not so heavy, and they think that
(26:48):
One theory is that they help with the mucus help
humidify the air we breathe in so it's not so dry. However,
a lot of other people say, I don't know about
that stuff. We may not need this is at all
know And they think that if if you look around
the animal kingdom, sinus has found in other animals, um
are most useful, and ones that have something called the
(27:11):
um the merrow nasal organ, which is like a pheromone
sending organ. We have them, which is another vestigial thing.
It's in our septums. It's on either side of our
septum um, but it's not connected to our brain. So
we can sense pheromones, but we can't actually sense them
because the vero valmarrow nasal organ that's a tough one
(27:35):
to say. Um, it's just not it's not connected anymore,
So how do we sense it? We don't remember that
one thing we talked about this before, There was like
that one um that one TV show had people like
smell shirts of other people and ended up like choosing
mates based on it, and it turned out those people
had the most varied immune systems from our own, So
(27:58):
we would make more us children, right Exactly. The thing
is is there's we don't have any way as far
as science knows to actually sense pheromones. We have the
means to do it, but we can't actually like pull
the trigger on it, because that that organ isn't connected
to our brains anymore, but it's located around the scientuses
and then in other animals, the scinuses um contain muscles
(28:20):
for moving whiskers and a lot of olfactory receptors for
sensing smells interesting, but in humans they just get infected up.
I was thinking if I were a mad scientist of
like the human centipede ilk, that's probably what I try
to do. Oh, you wouldn't just put someone's head in
(28:41):
the person's butt in front of them over and over. Yeah,
I wouldn't. That seems like a waste of time. I would, Uh,
I would. I would try to connect the um vomero
nasal organ to the brain. Yeah, or maybe bring back
all of the original purposes of our vestigial parts. Okay,
that's pretty issous. So just one thing at a time,
(29:02):
all right. Yeah, I would use anesthetic and um, I
would make sure the pudding cups were top notch for recovery.
What's the top notch pudding cup consist of? Just a
good brand? Yeah? You just don't want an off brand,
you know what I mean? Sure, Like if you haven't
heard of it, or there's a boy wearing overalls and
(29:24):
no shoes on the on the label, Yeah, like Uncle
Dance pudding cups. You don't want that pudding cup? Uh?
What else do we have in here? Oh? Yeah, here's one.
What's it called the third eyelid? Yeah, of course, there's
another name for it, Chuck. It is the um go
(29:45):
ahead plaka semilunaris. Yeah, I think that's perfect. Actually, so
you know a little almond. H that's something else. It's
the thing next to that, right, and this, uh, I
think was when in your eye we should say it's
your third eyelid. Yeah, it's it's from reptiles and amphibians
and birds, and I think i've seen this in lizards
(30:06):
and things when they have like you know, it's sort
of it's it's clear, like a membrane that watches over
their eye and goes back, but it moves horizontally rather
vertically like our eyelids. So this is a leftover trait
from when we could do that, because that was probably
pretty neat to do. Yes, Oh man, can you imagine
how free if you could do that. So we've got
the tissue, we just apparently don't have the muscles to
(30:28):
move it any longer. Did you? Were you one of
those kids that would turn their upper eyelids inside out?
I never knew how they did it. I couldn't do
it either. It was just freak show. Yeah. I always
admired them deeply for it, but I couldn't do it there.
It was always just some creepy boy trying to get
a girl's attention, usually like tap tap her on the shoulder.
I don't think I ever saw a girl do it,
(30:50):
of course not. It's always a boy, yeah, because girls
are smarter. Yeah, but yeah tap brothers fellers. She turned
around and scream yeah uh and then everybody laugh. But
then we'd go have uncle dance pudding cups. Because I
went to public school, we got taken to task for
for me saying dumb guys and an email that it
was like, I'm just kind of kidding around, even though
(31:11):
I do think women are generally smarter and guys do
a lot of dumb stuff that women don't do. Just relax,
you know, did someone really need to take up the
mantle for men? I know it's kind of like men
have a pretty good here on earth. Agreed. I think
you can get away with saying dumb guy here there. Agreed.
(31:31):
All right, Well, there's a couple of more body hair
in general. I think we did a whole show in that,
didn't we or did we? I don't remember, Uh, there's
it seems like it, because didn't we talk about like
the water Ape theory, I think so well recap it
the water ap theory. I think there's this idea that
humans actually um lost their body here because we went
(31:53):
in the water for a little while after we as
we were evolving from apes, lost our hair there because
we didn't need it, and then came out of the water.
If I'm just totally going from memory, so we won't
hold you to that, um, but essentially aside from your eyebrows,
which keep sweat out of your eyes, which is pretty
good function, and I guess hair on your head which
(32:14):
will keep your head warm. Um, and the hair and
your nose you used to it like traps, gnats and yeah,
juju fruits and whatever is trying to get up there.
I think generally they're referring to like leg hair and
back hair and arm hair. There really is no use
for that any longer. Yeah, but we still have it. Yeah,
there's no use for back hair, I can assure you.
(32:34):
I agree, Man, Yeah, kind of stinks, but we still
have it. It's evolving out. It seems like either that
are a lot more dudes wax than I realized. Yeah,
I need I haven't done that in a while. Have
you done waxing? Before. H Yeah, Emily would get a
little at home kit. She'll just clean up my neckline
a little bit. But I don't have a super hairy back.
(32:56):
It's just sort of up top there. I've never tried
waxing you. You usually just like uses matches, what burns it?
I mean that would work, but it's stinky. Yeah, oh yeah,
and that would stink, so you're like, yeah, we have
to do it outside. Uh. And then male nipples we
I know, we did a show on this um and
(33:17):
it's really pretty simple. We have nipples because women have nipples,
not for the same function, but because we're made of
the same uh stew essentially right, exactly, Like there's this
single um plan or blueprint or whatever for humans, and
nipples emerged before sex differentiation takes place. So everybody has nipples.
(33:40):
And I found from researching this there's actually um useless
tiny ovaries attached to men's um uh prostates. Oh really yes,
And there's supposedly um the beginnings of little vast deference
nodules on women's ovaries totally useless. So yeah, sex differentiates.
(34:02):
So we have ovaries, we have like ovary like overrets. Yeah. Wow, Yeah,
I had never knew that it's crazy, it's true or
over retest. Yeah, there you go, that's more appropriate. I think,
Um well, there are other animals too, I mean it's
not just humans. Um well, that's another thing. Yeah, that
(34:22):
an ostrich has wings but they don't fly, same with
penguins still have the wings. That's true. It's vestigial, but
this lend's further credence too. Vestigial organs as evidence for evolution. Yeah.
Or we did our podcast on cave dwellers and some
of those have non functioning eyes. It's like, why are
(34:43):
they still there at all? And seriously go listen to
that one. That was one of my favorites. It's a
tuck deep in the archives. It's called biospeleology was the
name for that one. Yeah, I think we did too.
I think we did one on cave dwellers specifically, even
and then we do one on caves. Maybe I'll bet
we did, because you went caving after we did caves,
(35:06):
So I think we did too. It's really getting tough
now to remember all these episodes. And then there's another one.
Two whales and snakes actually have pelvis bones donate them
because they don't have legs, but at some point they
may have before um and creationists thanks to uh uh
(35:29):
paper that came out. It said it was a scientific paper.
But the guy in in doing interviews with media's like, yeah,
we're having to totally rethink this, like maybe it's not vestigial.
They found that it actually enhances and aids and sex. Um.
But that, I mean that could be a secondary thing. Interesting. Yeah,
and get this, this is one extra thing that I heard.
(35:53):
I think it was on Fresh Air. There was a
woman who wrote a book about dolphins and dolphin research,
and specifically this researcher who used to take a lot
of acid with dolphins that he would also give acid
to and try to teach English language too. He would
give dolphins LSD. That's not nice. Um, you have to
hear this thing on on fresh Air. It's mind blowing.
(36:15):
But the they believe that dolphins evolved from wolves. What Yeah,
it's kind of like that water ache theory for humans
that like some wolves just started hanging out in the
water and eventually evolved into dolphins. Wow. I definitely need
to hear that. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, I'm pretty
(36:37):
sure that's right. You're there. I blacked out while I
was listening to it and form that false memory. But
I'm pretty sure that was in that interview LD somebody
was on LSD. Yeah. Maybe, Well, if you want to
learn more about vestigial organs, type that word those words
(36:59):
into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
You don't have anything else, do you know? Uh? And
since I said search barts, time for listener mail. Uh, no, sir,
it is time for Facebook questions. So occasionally I will
have gotten not a lot of great listener mails lately,
(37:21):
and so we will throw out ask us some questions
on Facebook. For the next couple of episodes, we're gonna
read some of these an answer, So pick at your
own will my friend, I'll go ahead and start with
Matt Thurman says, would you ever consider live shows in
the UK? Matt, not only would we consider it, we
actively want to and we are hoping to at some point.
(37:44):
So it's not the easiest thing in the world to
pull off. You know, we have to book a ship
to sail over there, not a night ship either. It'll
take a while, but I mean, um, we have a
pretty good idea that London might be a good talent
to hold old show in in the UK. But if
you have a recommendation of other places to do too,
(38:05):
let us know we're actively looking. I think we could
get support in London and uh in Ireland and maybe
even Scotland. So we would like to hear from people
on that. Okay, I got another one. This one's from
Avery W. Krouse. What is a controversial topic you haven't
covered yet that you're a little hesitant to do? What's yours?
(38:26):
Remember it used to be scientology for both of us,
and now we're just like it's done. Yeah. Uh for me,
it's breastfeeding. I really want to do it and we
will eventually, but we have to like really know what
we're talking about because it is a horn's nest. Yeah.
Mine would be uh vaccines, Oh man, I wouldn't want
(38:47):
to touch that with a tempo pole. Sure, all right?
I got one from Matthew Matsuto. Keep meaning to write
you guys and ask whatever happened to the young man
who was helping come up with ideas for stuff you
should know? Can't remember his name. That was Sam and
uh Sam is in college now and we haven't heard
from Sam. So Sam, if you're listening or Sam's Mom,
(39:10):
if you're listening, we would love an update. But I
even wrote letters of recommendation for Sam and he's in school,
so maybe he's all grows up now and doesn't need
us anymore. He's fine, we'll see. Remember he was in
our TV show as well. Yeah, he played at player.
He's the bat Boy. That's right. That was great. So yeah,
if you've ever wondered what Sam looked like, and you
(39:31):
can figure out how to get your hands on the
what was that one Make It Rain? To Believe? Make
It Rain? Episode? Check out The bat Boy and you
will see Sam from the famous Summer of Sam. That
was the same day the unions shut us down and
we had to leave for it. Man, what a day. Uh.
Here's one from Dave malin Chuck. This is a question
(39:52):
for you. When is Chuck's Beer going to get its
own podcast? Now? Come on, people like your beard? Yeah
you want to hear let's hear the Beard's voice at least.
So okay, it's a bit regurgitating right now, we'll get
used to that. Dave Mallen. Uh, this is from Mike Uh,
(40:16):
mikel Duff Mickel Duff. He says, how much do you
guys personally remember from podcasts you've done. Um, well, I
think we kind of demonstrate it today, not a lot. No,
it's really weird because, like they say, the brain is
has a basically an infinite capacity to remember stuff, but
like old stuff is getting crammed out as new stuff
gets pushed in these days, and that's it hasn't always
(40:39):
been that way. Yeah, it's been that way for like
a year and a half maybe two year. Yeah. I
always like to say that I think I remember about
as much as the average listener might, like a few
tidbits here and there from each topic. But like anytime
a hardcore listener comes up to us and wants to
talk to about something, or even an average listener it
comes up and just heard something from like two thousand thirteen,
I'm like, sorry, I have to go back and research again. Yeah,
(41:03):
and then we'll hold this conversation. But that'd be like
going up to KNA and being like, remember that joke
you told him that monologue three years ago. It's just
not fair, you know. Yeah, he didn't have something funny
and charming to say instead of, uh, go ahead, your
next this is a great one. I don't have an
answer for it. But we're going to get to the
bottom of this. Is from Brian Geppert. Why do coupons
(41:25):
have a cash value listed at the bottom smile emoticon?
Do they? Yeah? It's they're like worth one one hundredth
of a cent. The actual coupon itself is wow. So
he could trade that in I guess or stores. Can
you know what I mean? Interesting? That's probably it, But
well we'll look into that. You know what I heard
(41:47):
recently that you know, when you go to the grocery
store and they'll have a drive to like, hey, would
you like to donate a dollar or whatever? Not, Supposedly
they just gather that up as a big massive tax
right off. Is that true? Yeah? And I mean the
the charity is going to ultimately get that, but the
store is getting all the right off and your one
dollar gets bundled in with not even necessarily that one drive.
(42:08):
They may bundle it in with other drives, and who
knows where that dollar is actually going. You should not
that's pretty sneak. You should not feel bad about saying
not today when they ask you. But you should also
take it as an impetus to go donate yourself or
go do some volunteering or something like that as a
reminder rather than actually being pressured to giving a dollar
(42:29):
for that grocery stores tax right off, which is disgusting.
You to get your name on a balloon piece of
paper that they shape like a hot air balloon. All right,
let's do like two more. Uh. This is from Shane
Elliott when you guys gonna do a blooper real? Shurely,
Jerry has stored them up in the archives. Uh, my
friend Jerry about once a season. I don't like telling
(42:51):
people this, why because they're going to hack in and
find it. Yeah, Jerry does a blooper real and only
we can hear it, and you will never ever hear
although I think we could. We could sell them for
a dollar apiece and probably get rich. I got the
last one. This one's from Marco Rippola. Which one of
you is the Batman and which one is Robin? And
(43:13):
Marco you've been looking at it all wrong. Yeah, you
should have asked which one is the Joker and which
one is the penguin? WHOA Yeah, great answer, and we're
not going to answer. I love that. I got nothing more.
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can post questions any day or night on our Facebook
page at Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
(43:34):
You can tweet to us at s y s K Podcasts.
You can email us directly at stuff podcast at house
stuff works dot com, and, as always, join us at
our super awesome home on the web, Stuff you Should
Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of
(43:55):
other topics, how stuff works dot com
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The Bobby Bones Show
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