77. Hot Hands!

AlexThis is Do By Friday, a weekly challenge podcast with Merlin Mann, Alex Cox and Max Temkin. This week's challenge, swab your bacteria.

I hate Windows for... Why would Microsoft decide, you know what would be a great noise to do on Skype? Oh, man. Oh, do we have the doctor?

Speaker AI'm here. I'm here. I didn't want to interrupt your noise rant.

AlexI am a Mac user, but our studio uses two PCs to bring in Skype, and it is not the same ringtone for Mac and Windows. It's not like bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop, which I think is a much more pleasant noise. How are you this morning?

Speaker AI am good, and I agree. I think it is a much more pleasant noise.

MaxI'm surrounded by, I've sort of built a little ring of disgusting Petri dishes around me. They're absolutely repulsive. Don't they smell delicious? They smell pretty funky. Now, I think Alex and I both did ours, we'll get to this, but I think Alex and I both did ours wrong, but we did them wrong.

MerlinI know I did mine wrong.

MaxBut we did them wrong in different ways. Yes.

MerlinExcellent. I think I did mine wrong differently, too. My results are very, very strange.

Speaker Ait's it's science there's no there's no such thing as a wrong answer you just asked the wrong question no rules just right yeah um can i can i ask you guys before we get started can i ask you

Maxguys uh uh an important um uh topical uh uh question that i need some input on what would happen if we said no well i'd do it anyway yeah exactly for sure so last night veronica and i went out for ice cream it's super nice out in chicago and we went out at like eight o'clock and we're like, let's walk to ice cream. Jenny's? Oh, absolutely. We walked to Jenny's. Huge line. We waited in the line. We'd get to the ice cream counter. And Jenny's has a new thing that they do where you can get three mini scoops in a bowl as like a trio.

Like a flight. Like a flight of ice creams. And it's like a very fancy artisanal ice cream shop. And Veronica was like, let's get a flight and share it. And then we'll get to each have the three flavors. And I was like, what are you talking about? like I'm not gonna I'm a fucking adult the whole point of being an adult is that you get to go to the ice cream store whenever you want and you get your own ice cream I'm not gonna share with someone else like I want my own bowl of ice cream and listen I'll get a whole flight for myself if I wanted that like I'll get I'll fucking get ten flavors for myself if that's what I want that's how

it works and you gotta pound into your credit credit card you can get six flights if you want Veronica was so she was she was so you can get flights and not even eat them you're a grown ass man

Merlinyou can throw it at the dude Veronica was so

Maxoffended she's like she's like why wouldn't we share the flight and like because we and no that's like sharing an email account don't do that well we didn't we each got our own ice cream

Merlinand then we got home there's plenty of email and ice cream for everyone we so we we got home and

Maxwe and then we each threw about half of our ice creams out because we couldn't finish the quantity that we got but i but i said i would ask the podcast for a ruling okay if in case veronica

Alexis listening i have frequented jenny's as well and it is typically in the summer when you want

MaxWhat flavor could you possibly get at Jenny's?

AlexWell, here's, but this is the thing. It's like going to a restaurant. I go to a nice restaurant. They have like the best bread.

MaxDo you just order the cone?

AlexNo, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. So you're waiting in the 45 minute line. It's so bitter. And I know that you're concerned about Max's budget, but he deserves a treat. And again, you're going to throw half of it away, but why not? You guys could get six flavors. You could get 12 flavors. I don't understand why sharing you have to wait at least 45 minutes it seems like

MerlinI'm worried about this are you on good terms with your lady friend right now yeah I don't know I assume so okay but like it's not like you were just you just had a fight and you were making up no it wasn't makeup ice cream you asked the question Max if you just had a fight and were making up I would capitulate on the grounds of let her win. And also it's kind of a dainty 50s, like fancy Dutchess thing to do to share a bowl of ice cream. But the truth is you're a grown ass man and you can have all the fucking ice cream you want

and she should stand down.

MaxEven in the scenario where we had a fight and we were going to get my ice cream to make up, I mean, I would still be doing the list of pros and cons. I would still be making the little table of like, okay, pro, I saved the relationship, but con, I only get half the ice cream flavors I want. that's just science i mean you know dr don do you have a ruling on this you're a scientist so what's the what's the issue matt is it double dipping is that what you're concerned about well of course you go to the food science right away to me it's that to me it's that we usually

eat the ice cream on the way back and the thing is i don't want to i want it when we're on the on that walk back with the ice cream i want to have a bite of the ice cream whenever i want it i don't I want to wait for someone else to have to pass me the bowl so that I can have a bite.

AlexReally? It's time for that. I want, exactly.

MaxI want it right then. Listen, if I didn't want a treat going into my mouth exactly how I wanted, I wouldn't be walking to ice cream at eight o'clock at night. But I wanted, I want a whole bowl of ice cream just to myself that I can eat however I want. And not to be judged. I think the silence is silent.

MerlinYou're back on your heels now.

MaxThis is terrible. It's a terrible way to live. They were when they were getting the ice cream. It was very busy last night at Jenny's because it was kind of the first hot day we've had in Chicago. And the ice cream girl that was giving us the ice cream, they have these big barrels of ice cream behind the counter. And she's putting her whole torso into the barrel. She's getting down in there into the bedrock and the sediment, just scraping it out. And her whole face was in there. And I was like, this can't be sanitary. That's not hygienic.

AlexAlso, to answer your question, I get vanilla. It's the best vanilla.

Maxuh what else i have um did you uh i had a couple of other pieces of follow-up i don't know if i'm kind of excited about the challenge i kind of want to start talking about that

Merlinoh we have so we have some related medical news this week but it can wait till later we have some very exciting medical updates this week i i think please please proceed Oh, come on. Did you guys look at the dock?

AlexI'm opening the dock right now.

MerlinThere's a dock? Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Digga, digga, digga. Digga. Digga. You may remember Dr. Harold Bornstein.

MaxYes. I forgot that this happened yesterday.

MerlinThere are two very important pieces of Dr. Harold Bornstein-related news. the first piece the first piece is that apparently this is Dr. Harold Bornstein who has reportedly been the personal physician to Donald Trump for 36 years contemporaneous somewhat with him mentioning that he most deaf has prescribed hair medicine to the president his office was raided by Keith Schiller and another large man

Alexan exclusive

Merlinticka ticka An exclusive interview in his Park Avenue office. Bornstein told NBC News that he felt raped, frightened, and sad. When Keith Schiller and another large man came to his office to collect the president's records on the morning of February 3rd.

MaxI know we're all going to have a laugh here about Trump and his doctor. But, I mean, whom among us hasn't sent two huge goons to our imaginary, you know, physician's office. Lebowski doctor. Yeah, to our Lebowski doctor to confiscate some records. It's talking about your hair implants and your dentures.

MerlinYou're the law boy here, but it's my understanding that the paper belongs to the doctor, but the facts belong, the medical facts, the science facts, in some sense, HIPAA, belong to the client, to the patient. We say client now. But yeah, I can see from the photos here that Dr. Harold has updated his hair a little bit. He's gone from Lebowski to a little bit Bruce Valanche. Bruce Valanche cosplaying Steve Jobs.

He's got some Warby Parkers. They must have been here for 25 or 30 minutes. It created a lot of chaos. He described the incident as frightening. There's a framed photo of Donald Trump giving the thumbs up. So I just wanted to toss that out. The second piece of news is even more amazing. First piece of amazing stuff. Again, the greatest threads are often Darth threads. But the second greatest thread on Twitter is Matt Gertz and his now two years long thread of if you try to work with Trump, he will humiliate you. It's just amazing.

So now, oh, oh, wait, there's one more fact. I didn't know if there's a release form attached. So basically, I can't find the paragraph, but he has been cut out of the circle now. He has not been even been in touch with Trump for a really long time. He's been cut out of the circle.

AlexWho do you think is on Trump's HIPAA form?

MaxHis guardian ad litem.

AlexDo you think Polanyi's on there?

MaxIt's an interesting question because who would he trust that much?

AlexExactly.

MaxA Pence or mother? Maybe. Maybe we're meant to think that that's his tragic downfall, that there's nobody that he loves enough to put on the HIPAA form, but it turns out that there was one person.

MerlinMaybe the HIPAA form was the Friends We Made along the way. My understanding of HIPAA, I mean, like everything, nothing fucking means anything anymore, but HIPAA's a big deal. A friend of the show John Syracuse is in an industry that involves HIPAA. My wife is in an industry that involves HIPAA. And it's something that people in the industry take extremely seriously. Now, Dr. Don, you're a kind of doctor. Is that true? Is HIPAA a thing?

Speaker AWell, it's something that we've been wrestling with at Rutgers because we recently merged with a medical school. And then now we've got to reconcile what are the normal review board stuff at the university with the medical stuff. And yeah, HIPAA gets into it. It's crazy.

MaxA lot of people don't know this, but HIPAAs are actually the animal that kills the most humans every year. You're kidding me. I did not know that. That's even if you cut their tusk off? Mm-hmm. Is that in the Wild Max or are those domestic hippas? You're going to need one of those to get a boner.

MerlinOkay. Okay. And is that like a pot-bellied hippa that you'd have in your home as a domestic pet? Mm-hmm.

MaxYeah. Okay.

MerlinYeah.

MaxSo Trump has Gamora on his hippa form.

MerlinOh, God.

MaxThe sacrifice for the soul star. All right.

MerlinWell, um... Just real quickly, the other one was that Bornstein now says that, gosh, who would have guessed it, but that wonderful fawning letter about how Donald Trump would be the most healthy president of all time, this I can promise you. We'll see what happens. That actually, as it turns out, it was not the doctor who had written that. It was dictated to the doctor. The doctor says he was very busy that day. He had many patients to see in his definitely real doctor office practice. And so Donald Trump dictated the form to him, and he signed it and put it on letterhead and signed it.

MaxI did that once to a doctor. I needed to graduate college and what I was supposed to have done was taken three years of foreign language classes and I was supposed to have been learning Spanish and then I got to the month before I graduated and I realized I had not taken any language classes so I had to exercise.

MerlinThey should tell you about that earlier. I ran into that too. They should tell you that way earlier.

MaxWell, I'll go ahead and say that the issue was not that the school didn't tell me about it. But I just somehow thought that I just somehow thought that I wouldn't have to do it if I waited long enough. And the school called my bluff on that, and they said, hey, we're not going to let you graduate. And so I looked up, like, what are the ways out of the language requirement, and basically if you have, like, a learning disability, you can do... Oh, my God. There was a provision at the college that said if you have a learning disability, you can do what they call culture classes

instead of language classes, and they had a list of classes that counted as culture classes. So I called my doctor, and I was like, listen, I need you to say that I have a learning disability, so I don't have to take Spanish, and I can graduate college. And he was like, yeah, I don't care. Okay. And I wrote me a letter and he was like, to whom it may concern, Max is too stupid to learn Spanish and it would cause him a medical amount of anxiety to try to learn Spanish.

MerlinNo bueno.

MaxAnd if he were to take Spanish, he would be the healthiest individual ever to undertake the college Spanish program. And he sent it in the school. And I was like, can't argue with that. And they were like, I guess we can't. And they let me out of it. And that's how I graduated. Wow. Yeah.

AlexNow, what's the, do you know the Spanish word for brother?

MaxHermano.

AlexOkay, just checking.

MaxYeah, but that's Arrested Development. I mean, I know all the Spanish words in Arrested Development.

AlexExactly. Merlin, this is a big day for me. I'm having what might be considered a coffee because we ran out of Diet Coke in this office. I don't know.

MaxIs that going to make you vomit again?

Speaker ANo, it wasn't.

MaxIt was your gross matcha milk. Leave it in. We should get the little, we should get the. No, there's no milk in this. What's the little recorder, the little thing that you plug the XLRs into?

AlexA little Zoom. We should get the Zoom in case you throw up. No, no, no.

MaxAnd you take the Zoom with you.

AlexNo, no, no, no. Take it to go, yeah. Oh, man. Dr. Don, I don't enjoy coffee ever at all. Or, ooh, dietary fiber. What is, it looks like candy in a bottle.

MaxCan I talk about the vegan Twitter drama that happened this week?

AlexOh, my God.

MaxYes, please. So this was a guy named Anthony, and he advertises himself as a non-religious vegan on Twitter. and I saw this going around I follow a bunch of vegan friends on Twitter and I saw this going around vegan Twitter and people were having very strong reactions to this whole thread so basically so this is a story posted by a woman named Avocado and she says and so she said pulled up to my driveway

to find a little girl crying she didn't have money for the ice cream van like her friends did so I gave her enough money to get herself a big, nice ice cream cone with sauce sprinkles and a flake. She was so happy and soon had ice cream around her mouth. And then that post had like one retweet, 42 likes. And then this dude, Anthony, the non-religious vegan, slides into her DMs. And he says to her, I know this because he screenshotted it and posted the screenshots. So he slides into her DMs and he says, hi, I am just sending this to ask if the ice cream van

was selling vegan ice cream, which would be surprising. Wanting to help others is of course great But we should of course be helping them Without basically harming and killing non-human babies Which buying non-vegan ice cream basically does That means that if the ice cream Was the typical kind Which I generally assume is the case It definitely would have been best to help the girl in some other way I'm really hoping that it was an unexpected case Of the ice cream being vegan In which case that is awesome And then she writes back and says I bought a kid an ice cream It isn't that deep fam And he writes back

it is that deep if the ice cream was non-vegan, which it obviously is quite deep to any actual vegan and a severe mistake. And then the woman writes back and says, mate, I'm vegan, my mom's vegan, my boyfriend is vegan, and I'm not about to push the message onto a crying child. Lighten the fuck up. And then he posts a call, he posts all those screenshots and says, I usually do not do this, but I feel that this is appropriate to post since this person is claiming to be a vegan, even though she admitted to buying non-vegan ice cream for someone else, defending what she did when I spoke with her privately,

hoping this will make her less likely to be defensive. And that post blew up. It had thousands of retweets.

AlexJesus. Hold on. There is vegan Twitter? Oh, yes. And how do you infiltrate vegan Twitter? Do you know people who are retweeting this in a positive way? Like, yeah, look at this guy's callout.

MaxMost of the people I knew were retweeting and dunking on this guy, but I understand it to be kind of divisive in vegan Twitter. But I do, I guess what I took away from it, what was funny to me was like, on Twitter, Twitter is the social network where you cannot even buy an ice cream for a crying child and then someone will not. Find it problematic. Deeply, not just that it's problematic, but they're like personally offended and they need a moment of reckoning. Like, you know, it's like their hero's journey that they need to like venture into the like underworld.

MerlinHe usually, I mean, I think you can see what a fit of peak this was for him. The bald hypocrisy of this person. He usually doesn't do things like this. But this was a red line for him. He needed to make sure this monster was outed.

AlexYou know he slid into those DMs just waiting to take a screenshot. And be like, look, I tried to go badly.

MerlinDo you think he was cranking his hog while he was sliding?

AlexOh, sure, sure.

MerlinIs that vegan? Are you allowed to, Dr. Don, you're a doctor. Are you allowed to masturbate when you're a vegan? Is that considered baby killing? That's not my kind of science, Merlin. I'm sorry.

MaxIt's a HIPAA thing, right? I think it is if you do it like the Navajo way and you use every part of the buffalo. You know what I'm saying? That's true. Every part of the hog. Every part of the hog.

AlexI mean, really, though. Read all the balls. If you swallow, are you not a vegan? Because technically...

MerlinOh, wait a minute. Now we're getting Talmudic. Hang on.

AlexI'm sorry.

MerlinNope, I'm done.

AlexNope, I shouldn't have said it.

MerlinIs it vegan to swallow?

AlexI shouldn't have said it.

MerlinDr. Don, you're a scientist.

AlexIs it... No, I'm sorry. John, I'm sorry.

Speaker AIt's probably more like milk than like meat, right? As long as the cow gave the milk willingly. Oh, like milk is good to swallow. It's got cow babies in it. If the cow was nicely treated and gave the milk willingly.

MerlinNow, you're an extension professor, Dr. Don. You do science. Don't you go out and deal with cows sometimes? I've talked about raw milk on occasion. Oh, raw milk.

AlexThis coffee is gross. Like I expected.

MerlinCan I, I'm sorry. I realize we're only 18 minutes into recording. B, what are you drinking? And A, is anybody going to introduce Dr. Dawn?

AlexPlease.

MaxOh, man. I forgot that not everyone listened to the after show. This is one of our least professional moments that we've ever had on the podcast. Yeah.

Speaker AWe could fix it in post, right?

MaxWe'll fix it in post. All right. Well, hey, everybody. Welcome to Dubai Friday. I'm your host, Max Temkin, and I've got a great panel for you here today. I'm joined by my co-hosts, Alex Cox and Merla Mann. Hi there. Oh, hey, guys. And this week we have a very special guest joining the podcast, Dr. Don Schaffner. He is at Bug Counter on Twitter. He is a, I think, professor of microbiology at Rutgers University. Is that correct?

Speaker AMy full title is, well, I won't give you my full title, but I'm a food scientist,

Maxand I study food microbiology. There we go. And also host of the very educational and very funny food safety talk podcast. And Dr. Don is joining us today to do some follow-up on all of our sort of bathroom safety and hand-washing topics that we've been talking about the last few weeks and set the record straight on that, as well as do our challenge with us, which we will get to in a few minutes. And we did, of course, introduce Dr. Don in the after show of last week's episode and he set the challenge up with us and taught us how to do a little bit of science.

And if you're curious to hear that, you can go to giveusyourfuckingmoney.com. You give us $5 a month on our Patreon and that gives you access to a whole second episode of Dubai Friday every week where you can hear our funny hijinks like preparing Petri dishes with Dr. Don. Thanks for joining us, Dr. Don. Hey, Max. It's a real pleasure to be here. All right. Now edit in the rest of the show, all the stuff that we talked about.

AlexDo you want to get right into the challenge? I think my Petri dishes are leaking.

MerlinI need to get these out of my office as soon as possible. All right. Well, did we want to ask? Max, I'm guessing you've got some science questions for Dr. Don.

MaxWell, I really do. But I actually think maybe we should get into the challenge because it does kind of provide a nice segue into all of our topics. And then we could also put these outside and have them where you are. Well, all right. I mean, so this week was my challenge, and we've been talking a lot about hand washing, and we were talking about the dryers that suck in the—

MerlinFecal miasma?

MaxYeah, they suck in the diarrhea particles and create a miasma of fecal particles. So anyway, I had sort of secretly conspired to have Dr. Don join us last week with a challenge. Dr. Don, would you tell people about the challenge that we did? What exactly did we do?

Speaker ASure. Well, the idea was that we were all sent Petri dishes or we were sent. So we were sent sterile Petri dishes. We were sent some special elixir to pour into those Petri dishes and sterile swabs. And the specific kind of Petri dishes and liquid that we ordered would would polymerize when we poured it in. And so and we went through in the after show, we went through instructions on swabbing and we brainstormed some ideas on things we wanted to swab.

I think, Max, you and I were really anxious to, like, use all 30 to collect as much data as we could. I think Merlin and Alex were maybe a little bit less enthusiastic. And, you know, the results are interesting and I think might require some interpretation. And like any kind of science experiment, you'd never really know what's going to happen. And one of the notes that I had prepared in thinking about the after show last week was I always love that experience when a graduate student comes into my office for the first time and has to explain to me how the very simple experiment that I asked them to do didn't work.

And that's a rite of passage for all graduate students. And so just FYI, it never works. And that's okay. And we can talk about what worked and what didn't work and maybe why and talk science.

MerlinCan I ask for some – provide or maybe ask for some context? You sent us a very useful link to – and this is in show notes. You should be able to find this. You sent us a link to the instructions for doing this. So what we got, it's called a – is it correct? It's called a restaurant swab kit. Is that correct? Yeah, that's how the company markets it. But it was interesting because in reading that article, because I always read the manual, it sounds like what you do normally – the protocol they're describing for using the restaurant swab kit is you go in and you – You totally spring it on them and you walk up to the dishwasher or the sous chef and you say, let me swab your hands.

And you do before and after. You get their hands in situ, as you say, and then you have them go wash the shit out of their hands and then you do like a before and after. Is that one of the ways that this is used? Is that correct?

Speaker AYeah, that's absolutely. And the idea is then that you'll sort of critique their hand washing. Now, I don't think that's a particularly good tool for teaching hand washing. And one of the things that – and we can also talk about this. If you want to teach somebody handwashing, there's a much less expensive, much more immediate way to do that with something called glow germ, which is these fake fluorescent bacterial particles that you can put on your hands.

MerlinAre they like plaque pills? Is it like a shame pill?

Speaker AYeah, it's like plaque pills except for handwashing. And it's a lot more fun and it's immediate feedback. And it's probably more realistic and representative and helpful. But, I mean, whatever. I mean, this was a means to an end in terms of us being able to swab our keyboards and et cetera.

MaxWell, the first one, the first swab I want to talk about is, I think this is the first one on our list, which was to swab our hands when they were dirty and then to go wash your hands and then swab them again when they were clean. Did everyone do that experiment? Can we talk about?

AlexYes.

MaxThis was probably the single most perplexing result that I had. Okay. So I want to talk about that one. So let me describe what I have here. So I had mine, and then Veronica came and did the swabs with me too. And so I have a—

MerlinJust for our listeners' sake, just so people know, so you can visualize. Well, you know what a Petri dish looks like. It looks like it's about three and a half, four inches in diameter. And it's got a top and a bottom. Mine are taped. And what we've done is on each one of them, we've written what it was that was swabbed in the stuff called Total Count and then poured in. So in each case, you can go in. And how would you describe the pattern that gets created?

Speaker AWell, I would say it's going to be random, right? I mean, it really depends on how well you swirled it and what you sampled, et cetera.

MerlinBut there should be a pattern. Some of mine are very, I'll describe it as dusty looking. It's like, so that's, so you described this in the actress last time, Dr. Don. I'm sorry, this is just kind of such a visual thing. You described this last time that when you use this total count stuff and it sits there, it sits for a while, it sets up in the medium, you flip it over. And then within two days, something happens as a result of, you're essentially multiplying the number of bacteria in there to make them more visible? Is that what it is?

Speaker ARight. So imagine you have 10 bacterial cells that end up in this matrix. They're going to distribute themselves randomly. They're going to be sort of suspended in stasis in this auger or this nutrient medium. And then each of those 10 cells over time, as they absorb nutrients from the environment, from the petri plate nutrient environment, they're going to double. And so one is going to become 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, et cetera. And, of course, the 10s start out being microscopic. You can't see them. They're microorganisms, right?

But eventually, each microorganism becomes a macroscopic colony, which is each of those colonies that you see on your petri plate is probably composed of millions of bacteria, right? And so those 10 colonies turn into 10 million, but they're clustered into those 10 clumps. And then so then you basically sit there with your, you know, with your clicker or your counter or, you know, if you're doing science and you say, OK, I've got 10 bacteria on this plate. I've got eight on this plate. I've got what we call TMTC, too many to count on this plate, et cetera, et cetera.

MerlinTMTC?

Speaker AYeah.

MaxDr. Nam, what do you think of my proposal? I mean, I look at these colonies of bacteria. They're growing out of control. And I think that what's needed is that we have to restore balance. And my plan would be to kill half of the bacteria in every Petri dish. I think if you think through it, it's just reasonable

Speaker AThe malthus of bacteria One of the really interesting things And I apologize for being a little bit nerdy and scientific One of the things that we have to understand about bacteria Is if you kill 50% of the bacteria To a microbiologist

MerlinThis is why I didn't like the movie You can't kill half the bacteria It doesn't even make any sense

MaxDr. Don, instead of killing half the bacteria What if I put in twice the amount of agar? If I had the power, right? wouldn't I just give them more food?

MerlinYeah, or wouldn't you even just go ahead and just, if you had the power, wouldn't you just retire without killing any of the bacteria? You could still have a nice back porch.

Speaker AWell, if they're good bacteria, it's fine, you know?

MerlinOh, I see. You're a eugenicist with the bacteria.

Speaker AYeah, well, if it's salmonella and it's going to make me sick. Is that a Jewish name?

MerlinMax, is that a Jewish name, salmonella?

Speaker AWell, the salmonella bergs.

MaxOh, God, this is taking a turn. Now, what if I, here's the thing is, I think that the really good plan would be to kill half the bacteria, but then the remaining half give them no memory of the half that I killed.

Because, do you see what I'm saying? Because then they wouldn't get mad and try to kill me.

AlexOh, okay.

MaxAnd there wouldn't have to be a second movie. That's a really good idea.

AlexGod damn it.

MaxOkay, can I talk about the hands, please? Or wait, I think Dr. Don might have actually had a serious point he's trying to make. I'm sorry.

Speaker AWell, no, the serious point that I was trying to make is when you're thinking about microorganisms, it doesn't make sense to think about halves, right? It makes sense to think about orders of magnitude. And so a 50% reduction is meaningless to a microbiologist. Really, you want to talk about orders of magnitude reduction. And so rather than worrying about the exact number of bacteria on our plates, what really matters is do you see one? Do you see 10? Do you see 100? Do you see 1,000, right? Like those are the kind of differences that are meaningful microbiologically. And so and I think that may help to kind of understand maybe some of the what might be

confusing or apparently complicated results.

AlexWould you say that what we sort of made was a simulation? Because normally it would not reproduce in this way. So really, these microorganisms are living in a simulation.

MaxBut it would in your body, Alex. It would in your body.

AlexOkay, fine, fine. That's the point. Fine, fine. Okay.

MerlinOh, shit, dog. They got a whole glow germ kit on Amazon.

AlexOh, I have already ordered it. Yeah.

MaxObviously this is a forthcoming challenge Okay, please, I want to talk about hand washing Please, can I talk about hand washing now? Yes Okay, I just want my treat So, alright, so now, Dr. Don I sent you, I put some pictures in the chat And I have Max's I have Max's dirty hands And Veronica's dirty hands I have Max's dirty hands and Veronica's dirty hands Now, on yours, you got What I saw on the internet Which is a little colony of red dots that you could sort of point to and count.

And what I have are sort of muddy circles in the solution. And those muddy circles do correlate with where I would expect the dirtiest swabs to be. But it's not how yours look. What does that mean?

Speaker AI'm not following you. And again, this is all visual and we're not in the same place. So it's a little bit confusing. But if you are getting, and I did get some plates that had those swirls. And I suspect.

MerlinYou sent us your wet dog.

Speaker AIt looks kind of like a little wet dog a little bit. That's a live photo, just so you know, Dr. Don. Yeah, sorry. You can explain to me how I fix that on another podcast, maybe.

MaxSo if you click on the picture, the first picture I sent that's Mac's dirty hands, do you see around at noon on that Petri dish? You're getting some spotting down at 530, it looks like.

Speaker AThere's a sort of a dark... That looks like a mold colony, right? It's kind of black with a lighter on the outside.

MaxThat looks like mold. So nearly all of mine have those molds in them, and I have no other interesting results. Max, you might have sick building syndrome as a person.

Speaker AYeah, I mean, and those molds might, yeah, you might have done it wrong, but it's okay because we learned about molds.

MerlinWell, there's one important fact that I gleaned from the instructions. Wait, wait, wait.

MaxWait, I'm sorry. What does it mean that I have the mold in there? Because not all of them have the mold. So my dirty hands have the mold, but my clean hands don't have the mold.

Speaker AWell, and this is why, and we could do this all over again to another challenge. If we really wanted to study hand washing, the glow germ is a much more effective teaching tool. The problem with this particular experiment is it's dependent upon you to do the technique correctly. It's dependent on where you swab on your hands. And really, we're using – it's much more – this particular technique is much more able to pick up – like, so for example, we've done some experiments in my laboratory on hand washing.

But before we do those experiments, we load people's hands up with a non-pathogenic microorganism. These experiments that we did use the natural microorganisms on our hands. And so the numbers might not actually be that different just because, you know, if you start with really clean hands and then you wash your hands, well, they're going to be about the same level of dirtiness afterwards.

MaxOkay, but what I'm saying is I did about – so I did 14 swabs. And I think let's say five of them are like – I would anticipate them being very dirty. Like I swabbed some really gross stuff, right? And on all the gross ones, I have the mold. And on all the clean ones, I have no mold.

Speaker AWell, maybe you were swabbing things that had a lot of mold. Actually, the one place where I saw quite a bit of mold was my wife kind of got a little bit involved in the challenge. And she said, hey, would you swab my yoga mat? And I swabbed her yoga mat. No!

MerlinWould you swab my yoga mat?

AlexSo someone got a new yoga mat, I assume.

Maxso okay so on mine the result that i see is on my dirty hands which you know i think what did we do on that saturday i think veronica and i both went out to like brunch and then we came into the office so you know i had some just normal brunch germs on my hands so i have a little mold colony going there and veronica has about half that amount of mold she has one order of magnitude less than than the amount of mold that I have. And then we both went and washed our hands and those dishes,

I don't really see anything. Honestly, they look very clean. Right. And, and that's,

Speaker Aand that's what I would expect. So I'm going to send you, I'll send you the yoga mat one in a minute, but I'm going to, I'm going to send you another one. Now, now what did anyone else see

Maxanything interesting in their hand washing? Oh yeah. I mean, okay. So I can, it's hard for me

Merlinto tell like which ones, Oh, there's my control. Yeah, for sure. I sent you mine, uh, with the hands and the clean hands quote unquote clean hands they definitely got some colonies going on the dirty hands uh kind of it's a little bit uh neil degrasse tyson like there's some kind of like a galaxy going on with the dirty hands so that was definitely that one definitely came through

Maxman none of i have to say none of mine did i get that speckled bacterial pattern alex's are a disaster not only did she not get anything growing but hers are somehow are leaking there's liquid coming out of them? They look like they're sweating. Are they perspiring?

AlexWell, what if, I'm wondering if maybe there's just exactly the same amount of bacteria on everything I swabbed. That could be a thing, right?

MaxNo, because you didn't grow any bacteria and there's liquid coming out of them.

AlexLet me ask you this. That is the one I flipped wrong.

MerlinAfter you did the swab and you put it into the total control bottle, did you bang it around the sides real good?

AlexI think that's where I went wrong. I did not swab thoroughly enough.

MerlinI think you need to loosen what's on the swab by banging it against the sides. Yeah, and to Merlin's point,

Speaker Aif you get a clump off the swab, and then you don't, so you need to get it off the swab, and then you need to swirl it around in the total count bottle. And if you don't do that, and then you just simply pour it into the Petri plate, then you may get those galaxy formations because what's happening is that you've just sort of got a clump of bacteria that haven't been fully spread out yet.

AlexOh, well, so they're very pretty.

MaxI swirled the hell out of mine, and I did rub it on the, I did sort of scrape it on the sides. I don't know.

MerlinOh, Dr. Don, is that your sample, P-O-O-P?

Speaker AWell, let's just say, you know, there's two people that live in the house and there's two dogs. So you can guess.

MaxOkay, okay. Now, that's a hell of a sample. Dr. Don, where did you incubate your samples?

Speaker AActually, I thought that was going to be the biggest problem because we've had a cold snap here in New Jersey. And we turned the heat off in the house, you know, just because it doesn't get that cold. And it was just, honestly, it was either on my TiVo or it was on my desk in my office or on a table. So it really...

MerlinMine definitely could have been warmer, I think.

MaxAlex and I set up a folding table in the server room. And the server room is a nice, I would say it's probably 78 to 80 degrees in there most of the time.

AlexNo, 72 to 78.

Max72 to 78, okay. Oh, did you put a thermometer in there?

AlexYes, I care very much about our server room.

MaxGood for you. So it's 72 to 78 in there. And then, yeah, no natural light or anything like that. And the lights are off most of the time. Look at that.

AlexOh, my God.

MaxSo let me talk about hand cleaning before we move on to the other ones. So, okay. So we've talked a lot in past weeks about the hand dryers that blow the fecal particles onto your hands. We've sort of, Alex and I have questioned about the soap that we have in the office and the soap that you find in public restrooms. I don't know where, I literally have so many questions about this. I don't even know where to start, but could you kind of walk us through, like, knowing everything that you know, how should we be using a public bathroom, a public restroom?

How should we be washing our hands in a public restroom?

Speaker AWell, as I think I have said at some point, I would really love to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons where I'm the dungeon master and you guys have to get out of a public restroom, right? We did a whole doctor work like that. That's what made me think of it.

MerlinSo we basically did a pub. Dan and I played a public restroom as a module. It's basically an entire adventure to see how you get into and out of a bathroom, like without having the dragon slay you.

AlexI think that we might want to save this for the end of the show, but I got an email from Dr. Don, which I didn't see until yesterday because I completely ignored my personal email for about a month. But you will be in Chicago in July. and I wonder if we could sort of live out this fantasy of like, all right guys, now go swab this. Now go, I don't know, maybe a glow challenge, but.

MerlinCould he wear one of those Sorcerer's Apprentice hats? Oh, of course, of course. Oh my God, I did get a galaxy.

MaxI didn't even see it until just now. Which one? Oh my God, oh my God. Because we're talking about wizards. Which one? Oh my God, I swabbed a kombucha. And that thing is fucking, that thing is fucking popping off in here. there's an entire civilization of bacteria in here it is a living beverage oh my god you're still doing hand washing are we getting serious about this i'm sorry guys no no no no i do want

Alexto know hand washing i just got i just got excited i'm sorry well and dr don also shared a paper with me about the titled influence of soap characteristics and food service facility type on the degree of bacterial contamination of open refillable bulk soaps and that rolls right off the tongue doesn't I just closed it, and I'm like, nope, nope, nope.

MaxWe've got Dr. Non here, so could you – yeah, give us some – talk us through, like, what our best practice is for really cleaning the shit out of our hands.

MerlinYeah, like, what are our character classes, just hit points, just general abilities? Do I have any cantrips? Like, how many spell slots do I get?

Speaker AWell, you know, so we study handwashing in my lab, and I sometimes feel bad when I talk to audiences, including professional and lay audiences, because I know there are people in the audience that maybe are a little bit overly concerned about germs. And I guess the bottom line is, don't worry too much, but of course, if you have poop on your hands, get the poop off your hands. You can get the big stuff off, right?

MerlinI want to make sure I'm writing this down correctly. What if it's a smear? Get the poop off your hands. If you've got a little blueberry on there, you can take it off.

Speaker AWhat if it's a smear? Use soap and use water, And then wash for 20 seconds. That's the professional recommendation.

MerlinDo you have a song you like to sing when you're washing your hands?

Speaker AI don't. But often people will say happy birthday twice or the ABC.

MerlinI sing the bridge from the big star song, September Girls. There you go. Sometimes I do it twice.

Speaker AAnd then if you're still concerned, use hand sanitizer. And then, of course, I mean, and there's another article that was recently published, which I put a link to in notes. deposition of bacteria and bacterial spores by bathroom hot air hand dryers. And certainly these air hand dryers can be problematic. I prefer to use a paper towel if one is available, as I think I shared earlier today on Twitter. If there's not, I might use the hair dryer, the hot air hand dryer, depending on how I feel, or I might just wipe my hands on my pants,

you know, and again, assuming my pants are clean. Now, you guys have seen, I think we've talked

Maxabout this before, but there's a very popular TED talk called like how to wash your hands. and he talks about just sort of you flick your hands like seven times before you get the paper towel and i do that and that is a fucking game changer it makes the hand drying process if you just do seven flicks into the sink it makes your hand it gets an unbelievable amount of water off

Merlintotally it would be like putting your bowls taking your bowls out of the dish dish sink and putting them right into the cupboard without without shaking out the water it's crazy and if they're i gotta be honest with you i don't want to be something like a weirdo but if i'm in some situation where all I got is a fucking Dyson blade, you know I'm going to be shaking the shit out of those motherfuckers. No way is my hand going into the dirt, dirt toaster. I'm putting it in here. Try not to touch the sides. Hi, it's a roll of saving throw. Fuck you.

MaxThat thing is just a little incubator. It basically is a giant Petri dish. It's like at a nice comfortable germ temperature. Why don't they just have a big bucket of poop?

MerlinDry your hands in here. It's okay. It's science. He's English. Give me a fucking break.

MaxLet me get some, I want some straight answers from Dr. Don here. Soap, does soap matter?

Speaker ASo, yes or no, does soap matter?

MaxIs that what you're asking? Well, I'm sure that it does, but what are the, like, what are you looking for?

Speaker AWhat are the characteristics of your, so there's two issues, right, which we should separate. First of all, we should separate the work that we've done on bulk soap dispensers or open refillable soap dispensers, which are just a horror that should be banned in my opinion.

MerlinOh, no. It really – that's what I guessed. Is that really true? Oh, no. Well, sometimes, yes. So this is the sort of industrial – I hope that was being weird, Dawn. I don't need to know that. This is the sort of – Because you touch it with dirty hands, right?

Speaker AI wanted me to be paranoid. The issue with these open refillable soap dispensers is that they get colonized by bacteria. The good news is that there are kinds that have the little bag and box. Those are okay, right? But the ones that you open the top and you pour in the soap, those can be problematic. That's what we have at the office. We've made a huge mistake. You should change those, at least before I come to visit.

MaxWash your hands with this. I've been washing my hands with those for three years.

AlexOh, my God.

MerlinIf you want to brush your teeth, you can just lick the bottom a little bit. Oh, my God.

AlexAnd now I just keep gasping and putting my hands over my mouth. What am I doing? Okay. No. Oh, boy.

MerlinOh, this is real bad.

AlexNot to call you out, Max.

MerlinThat's so bad. You guys need to stop the call. You guys need to make some phone calls right now about getting some shit changed.

AlexMax, who made the decision about the Dyson? Who made the decision about what?

MaxSomeone got a Dyson Airblade from a family member who owned a real estate company or something. Yeah, it was given to us. So we had a Dyson. When we were moving into our old office, someone gave us a Dyson Airblade. Talk about a monkey's paw. Jesus Christ.

AlexAnd I knew everybody in that office very well, so their shit was just percolating on my hands all day.

MaxEvery day. So, okay, I understand what you're saying about the open refillable containers. Beyond that, does the type of soap matter that you would find in a bathroom?

Speaker AWell, so again, I'm sorry this is going to be complicated. So we've done some research on antibacterial soaps. Funded by the Soap and Detergent Association. So if that makes me a corporate shill, I'm a corporate shill. But the antibacterial soaps do work better than the plain soaps. However, FDA has recently stopped the – is not letting those be sold for consumer use anymore. The issue of whether they can still be used in food service is up for debate, and they can still be used in hospitals.

MaxThat's because of – you don't want to breed antibiotic resistance.

Speaker AYeah, it's because of concerns about triclosan and also environmental accumulation of triclosan, which may have some merit. But again, my research has focused on do they really have benefit or not. And certainly, depending upon how dirty your hands are and depending upon your technique, certainly washing for longer is better and washing with soap is better. But again, the devil is in the details and also realize that different people are different, right? Like in other words, we go and we do experiments in the laboratory where we study 20 different people.

And there's a lot of variability from person to person, both in terms of technique as well as the characteristics of their skin, et cetera. And so it's not – it's a variable process from person to person.

MaxWhat I'll do if I go into a public restroom or somewhere where I'm a little bit sort of suspect of the setup or if my hands are really dirty even if I'm at home, I'll hit my – I'll blast my hands twice. So I'll get them in there. I'll get the soap. I'll wash, rinse, and then reset, do it again.

Speaker AThat's good. But what I would suggest as an alternative is to use some alcohol-based hand sanitizer. If you want it, because when you wash your hands, and this is a little bit informed by science, but it's also a little bit of my opinion. So I want to try to separate that. So washing again with soap is going to be good. In my opinion, I think using hand sanitizer is going to be better just because it's going to be a sort of a different technique, right?

MaxNow, but it is – would you do the hand sanitizer first and then wash your hands with the soap? Because I don't want a film of Purell on my hands.

Speaker AWell, you know, and again, I have to say I'm friends with folks at the Gojo Corporation that make Purell. And so –

MaxWell, no offense to your friends, but it's a disgusting – You're really bogged down in big soap.

Speaker AOh, so bogged down. So bogged down.

MaxNo, I don't want to offend your corporate masters, but it's a disgusting, disgusting product. I cannot stand putting Purell in my hands. It smells terrible. It leaves a gross film on your hands. Do you ever Purell your hands and then you go to eat a banana or something? You get that bitter Purell film in your mouth.

AlexI've grown to enjoy it over the years. Whoa, Max.

Speaker AThis is a side of you I hadn't seen before. It's really gross. Well, anyway. See, here's the thing. If your hands are dirty, right, if you have poop on your hands or if you have like hamburger or raw chicken on your hands.

MerlinI'm literally pouring 91% alcohol on my hands right now.

Speaker AJust this conversation. But here's the thing, Merlin.

MerlinOh, no.

Speaker AIt's too late.

MerlinIt's already on my hands.

Speaker A60% is better than 90%. As odd as that means. Shut your dirty mouth.

MerlinIt's crappy. Science.

MaxWhat?

MerlinThis is what I use for cleaning my mouth and my surfaces, but you say it's not as good for my hands. The science says that 60% is better than 90% Why would that be? Well, something about Because there's more water in it?

Speaker AWell, it's something about the nature of what the ethanol does to the cells of the microorganisms And the relative concentration of that versus water And I don't think we completely understand it But the experimental evidence

MerlinYou come into my house with that dirty mouth and give me a fucking turns out Jesus Christ

MaxWait, can I propose a theory? I've thought about this for almost 30 seconds since you told me, and I have a theory. What's your theory? Go for it. Is it possible that the 90% evaporates so quickly that it doesn't fully interact with all of the organisms, whereas the 60% evaporates a little more slowly, and it really can get in there and destroy everything? It's more of a caring lover.

Speaker AYeah. I'd say think about it for another 30 seconds, and then we can talk about it. I don't think you're right, but it's a good hypothesis. There's no bad hypotheses, Max.

MerlinDr. Don, have you ever tested the outside door handle on a restroom where you got to open it with your hand like an animal? Because my theory is that's the one that gets me. So it's all the things you have to touch while you're quote unquote getting clean, including the faucets, the taps, including the dingus that you hit for the soap, including like getting your hand into the dirt toaster, including trying to open the goddamn door. Am I right or wrong to guess that that is a source of a ton of bad hand monsters?

Speaker AWell, I think a ton might not be accurate, but certainly that is a point of cross-contamination.

MerlinIs it normal for me to think it's weird? No.

Speaker AI think about these things. I mean, unless I'm weird. I guess, you know, whatever. Weird in the same way.

MerlinLet's see if Postmates can bring me some 60%.

AlexYeah, that's my other thing. Where can I, it's kind of like the, I've heard a lot of science that I don't believe about, what's it, like sunscreen and stuff, how you should switch it up. Is it kind of like, where would I buy 60%?

MerlinYou've got to have leg day, right?

AlexI mean, you've got to switch it up.

MaxYou don't want to just exercise it. So I'm a little bit lost here. So are you saying that instead of Purell, you put alcohol on your hands? Me or Don? Anyone. Could anyone explain this to me? I don't know what you're talking about.

MerlinPurell is just, and I jump in because you know science, Dr. Don. My sense is that Purell is just a vehicle, a scented vehicle for isopropyl alcohol mostly.

Speaker AWell, and again, not to be an apologist for the industry, but it's not just about scent. Oh, God, here we go. But it's about things to soften your hands and things to basically, you know, because just pouring pure alcohol in your hands is probably not a good idea. But they do formulate these products. They put other things in there to keep your hands soft and to make them nice smelling, which, again, maybe Max doesn't like when he's about to eat a banana.

MaxMy feeling about Purell is that it's a kind of Agent Orange-style defoliant. So it's like you can't just put the harsh chemicals on the trees to flush out the villagers. You need the stuff that makes it stick, you know? It's got jelly. That's right. Jelly it up.

Speaker AYes. It has to have the additives. Well, and then also you don't want to kill the trees, right? just the villagers.

MerlinWell, you gotta do what you gotta do.

MaxThat's what Robert McNamara says. If you want a clean hand, you gotta destroy the village. Hey, we're not gonna reduce the population by one half without breaking a few eggs, you know?

MerlinI mean, you know, it just seems like there's so many other things you could have done, you know? Okay, now what about, see, I get so fucking mad because I keep thinking about like, okay, here's this thing that's nominally clean, but to interact with it, everybody touches exactly the same part of it when their hands are dirty. So when somebody comes up to me and says, hey, you ready to be a clean boy? Let me give you some of this Purell. My thought is, I think not. That little soap nipple you're rubbing all over my hand has touched so many. It's been to Gen Con. It's been over in the board game area, and now you want that to touch my hand?

Am I wrong to worry about that?

AlexOne, real quick, I like that Merlin knows what Gen Con is, too. I've been texting everybody in the office, and my good platonic life partner, Kara, brought me Purell, which I now know is bad.

MaxGive me that Purell.

AlexBut I just need it. I've never needed it more in my life. Oh, boy. That feels good.

MerlinYou guys, I'm seeing, I don't know about where you are, I'm seeing Glow Germ 1003 Gel Products Experiment Kit, free prime, free same-day delivery.

AlexOh, let me check. Let me check. Well, we're not, you're close to... I'm sorry.

MaxI need an answer on my question, which is... I don't think you want an answer.

MerlinNo, no. I really do need an answer on this. I think you're a searcher. And you like not knowing.

MaxSo here's my problem. I do not want to wash my hands and then put the Purell on because then I'm left with the sticky floral napalm on my hands that I don't want to go through life smelling like that. And I don't want to have that kind of a life. But would it also be equally effective to do the Purell and then wash my hands?

Speaker ARight. So a couple of different points here. First of all, as I was saying before, if your hands are actually dirty, then you should use soap because the Purell is just going to kill bacteria. it's not going to actually really be very effective for cleaning your hands. And so use the soap first, okay, to get the gunk off, the crud, the poop, the chicken, the beef off your hands, okay? And then wash your hands and then Purell. And then if you're concerned about the lingering smell, then maybe just a water rinse. But the other question I have to ask, Max, is that like name brand Purell

or is that just like no-name knockoff hand sanitizer? Because I find that the formulation of the brand matters.

AlexWell, one, this really sounds like big soap. Two, it's definitely brand name Purell.

MaxYeah, I've got a clear little thing here. It's two fluid ounces of Purell brand refreshing gel. It says kills more than 99.99% of germs and leaves hands feeling soft. And then it furthermore says the number one brand in hospitals. Boy, now let me ask you. All right, I have a couple more questions. Number one. This is about hand washing, Max? You know how sometimes in movies there's a woman who's upset and Anthony Hopkins comes along and he's got a handkerchief in his pocket and he takes it out and he offers it to her? That's one of the most disgusting things I can think of.

MerlinEven if it is quote unquote clean, it's been fucking in Anthony Hopkins' pocket all day.

MaxDon't touch that in your...

MerlinHere's the thing from my pocket. Put it on your face. Don't touch that to your face. Here, have some keys.

MaxYeah. Gross! But someone, I mean the whole point of that is that it's his thing that he blows a snot rocket into, right? But even if it's clean, it's still disgusting.

MerlinOh, here's a piece of cotton I rub body things on, and I keep it in my pocket to impede things.

MaxIt would be weird if there was a crying woman in our office, and I got her toilet paper off of the toilet paper roll, and was like, here, dry your eyes.

MerlinMy lady. You get down on one knee. You lean down on your tactical jacket.

MaxJust a wad of toilet paper here.

MerlinStop crying. Okay, listen. Okay, so Max wants to know about handwashing. Dr. Don, is it possible, and I know you're in the pocket, literally in the handkerchief pocket of Big Soap, so say whatever's not going to enrage your corporate masters, but it seems to me, is one thing that you're getting at here is that washing your hands does one kind of work

and sanitizing your hands does a different kind of work. Is that part of it?

Speaker AYou've nailed it, right? So it's cute. Holy shit. What we say in the food industry is you can't clean a dirty, you can't sanitize a dirty surface, right? You can't clean a dirty boy. You have to clean the surface first, get the crud off, okay?

MerlinLet me use this sponge I've been using for six weeks.

Speaker AI've got this sponge to make things clean. I got a sponge picture I want to send you guys.

MaxYou can take the boy out of the dirt, but you can't take the dirt out of the boy.

MerlinYou can really get in there and sponge him hard, but it's still going to have some.

AlexYou guys are really digging in for show titles. Well, what I do is what I do is I keep more.

MerlinThis is so bizarre. I keep more sponges than we need around. OK, now you may know when I was taught to use a Macintosh. The first thing they said to me is, when you're writing a document, save, save every paragraph and every time you think of it. So I do the same thing with sponges, where as soon as I look at a sponge and I go, huh? I get a look at that guy. I'm like, fuck this guy. I take out a Sharpie and I put a big X on the yellow side of the yellow and green sponge. And that is now not to touch food things ever.

That is now, that's a dirty sponge now used for dirty boy things. You can clean things that never touch food, but the things that you use to clean your dishes should always be a nearly new sponge. Now, a lot of people, they think they're being tidy. They think they're being tidy. So they take the sponge, they squeeze it out just a little bit, and then guess what? They've got a little bowl they keep it in. And they put it in, and it just sits there.

Speaker ANow, Dr. Don, I know you're mobbed up with big soap, but is that a good idea to have a sponge that's sitting in a container? No. Well, first of all, you want to change the sponges as often as they need to be changed. You want to put them, either microwave them, as we talked about in the after show last week, or put them in the automatic dishwasher. And then, yeah, for sure, I mean, let them dry out, right? I mean, because you don't want them to stay wet. Don't leave them in the sink.

MerlinWould you say it's a good idea to not squeeze them out at all and let them just sit in the sink? Is that a good idea? No. Okay, I'll share that. But please don't, you know. I don't really mind. I don't have an opinion one way or another. But if there's science involved, maybe I can make a case.

Speaker AOh, my God. Jesus Christ. And I have to apologize, guys.

MerlinIt's been here all day.

AlexOh, my God. It's been here all day. In the sink where all the food parts are.

Speaker AWell, and food, right? Like, that's the bacteria need nutrients, yeah.

MerlinHow's your hand-washing game feeling, Max?

MaxYou feeling like you've learned a lot? Well, so I'll say we had this sort of cataclysmic, like, flu season. I think it was bad nationwide. Chicago was especially hit hard. Almost everyone I knew got the flu. And I really worked myself into a panic about it where every time I would sneeze, I would have a panic attack because I'm like, I am getting the flu right now. And I was very, very, very, very anxious about it all winter. And I did a couple of things. So I did not get the flu. Spoiler.

So I did get the flu shot this year. First time in a long time I got the flu shot. And, you know, who knows? Maybe that helped. Um, but, um, yeah, basically I, I, I did, uh, I was aware of when I had a hot hands. Is that, is that, this is a thing, right?

I'm like, you should go to Vegas. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, it's like, um, so like anytime I would basically leave the house, like if I go to the grocery store, if I touch anything, you just aware that your hands are, you have to be careful. You have to, yeah, they're hot. Your hands are hot. and you can't touch them to your face or eat anything. You're not going to prepare food.

MerlinWell, Max, not to put too fine a point on it, but if you were to sit down and visit a deuce upon the throne and you did happen to get a smear on your hand, you wouldn't just walk around with that and go, I'm sure this will be fine. No. That's the situation with hot hands. It's just you can't see it with hot hands,

Maxbut you might feel it. At a minimum, you've got to brush that off on your jeans. Yes, on your clean jeans. Yeah. Well, yeah.

Speaker AAnd so I experience hot hands, Max, Like I've been walking the dog and I got to pick up his poop and put it in a bag, right? And then when I come in from that dog walk, I know I didn't touch any poop, but the poop was on the other side of the plastic bag, right? And so I think about, okay, hot hands, right? I got to go in, put some sanitizer on or wash my hands. And yeah, absolutely.

MaxWell, I think that it's been – so I'll say since I started doing this and then I also switched to my double hand wash technique. So wet the hands, blast them with the soap, give it a good rinse, rinse it off, blast it with the soap again, go in for a second round. and then I dry them. So since I've been doing my patented double hand wash technique and then just practicing hot hands, I have to say not only did I not get the flu, but I have not gotten sick one time. And it's been a long stretch of me not getting sick. And the only thing I can really think of that I've changed at all is that...

You've adopted the hot hands technique. Yeah, I've been very, very aware of my hands. Like every time I eat anything, I wash my hands. Also, another one is like anytime I'm in a doctor's office, this is a great life tip for anyone. Anytime I'm in a doctor's office for any reason, even if it's an office visit, if I'm in the little waiting room or in the little, you know, the little room where the doctor comes to see you, you know how there's a little sink there and a little station? Just avail yourself of it. Just go wash your hands right there. Like you probably touched something.

MerlinYou know what I always think about? Everything about going to the pediatrician sucked when I was a kid because I had a mind like a child. And I like childish things. I was a little kid. You go into Sniffles. And you know, one of the only good things about going to the doctor's office to me then was you got to play with really good Fisher-Price toys. Oh, no!

Hang on. Hang on. Dr. Dine had popped for the whole airport set with the garage. So you could go down and get your little people and they can go up and down. There's like a little escalator. And it was so fun. And now I think about those conditions. And I feel like I just need to pour rubbing alcohol on my head right now. Because basically, what is the condition of that? Every single child that touched that was sick.

Alexevery single child. There's this new trend, I think, that doctor's offices have like granola bars and cliff bars. And I'm like, what is wrong with you? It started with bottles of water and then Gatorade. And now it's like a buffet. And why? Why? No, no, no. Oh, my God. A vending

Merlinmachine is too much. I'm with you, Max. Something I realized, like when my daughter started preschool, the preschool that she went to was, I thought it was a little nuts, but they were practically manic about hand washing. And this is all just, this is so anecdotal that it hurts, but it's, this is very anecdotal. But the whole time that she was in preschool, she very rarely got sick because every time there was any transition, by which I mean, you go to lunch, you go to classes, you go outside, no matter what, every single transition on both sides of it, you would wash your hands. She did not get sick very much. When she started going to elementary

school, when hand washing was not enforced, purely anecdotally, she started getting sick a lot more. And further to your point with the hot hands of 2018, I have been washing the shit out of my hands for the same terrifying reason that I didn't want to get anything. And this is the first time in a pretty long while I did not get sick at all.

MaxDr. Don, I don't know if this is like this is probably too big of a question for for there to be like a like a I guess like a scientific answer. But like, is this a thing like should people in general be washing their hands like way more than?

Speaker AWell, yeah. So what I would say, what I often like to say is hand washing is not magic, right? Like, in other words, you're not going to sterilize your hands. But thinking about back to my earlier comments about orders of magnitude, what we do know is that if you wash your hands poorly, you're going to have a 90 percent reduction. If you wash your hands well, you're going to have maybe a 99 percent reduction. That's a that's a significant reduction in risk, even though it doesn't it's not it doesn't take it to the level of ninety nine point nine nine nine nine. Right. And so, yes, there is a benefit to that.

I think what I'm often arguing is in restaurants, if you look at what the FDA code says, it's asking people to wash their hands after every possible scenario where their hands might be contaminated. And there's some evidence that indicates that if people in restaurants actually did that, they'd spend 20% of their day literally at the sink washing their hands.

MerlinI'm fine with that. I'm so fine with that.

MaxWell, but here's the thing.

Speaker AThat's because you're in the pocket of big productivity.

MerlinExactly, exactly.

Speaker ABut mostly what I want people to do is to think about, like, when have I done something that's really, truly risky, right? Have I touched poop? Have I touched raw chicken? Have I put my hands into something? Have I cleaned a sinker and really scrubbed down in there, right?

MerlinHave I touched toilet seats and shoes and keyboards and phones and door handles? Have I touched all of those things and then put it right next to my coffee like I just did?

Speaker AWell, but how dirty were those things when you tested them, Marlon?

MerlinThat's a good point. Again, we're back to the Talmud. But it's very unsettling because this is a coffee cup from 1991 that I have washed at least four times at this point. So I don't think about that. Did you test it? Are we going to get to the real bangers here?

MaxBecause I've got a couple I really want to share. I want to save. I have a couple of more procedures. Whatever. Fine. Get into it. What do you want to talk about?

MerlinNo, no. Do you have another handwashing question?

MaxWell, let's see.

MerlinRemember, Max, he knows a lot about sous vide.

MaxYes, that is true. Okay, well, I just have another, I just have a sort of one final, like, food safety question. So when you do, so, like, for me, like, a big one is, like, the Thanksgiving turkey. Like, I'm led to believe that the turkey is an especially, well, I guess it's, like, the same as chicken, right? But it's, like, way bigger and its juice goes everywhere when you're, like, dealing with the brine and the dry rub and everything. um what is the what what so i have like like uh sort of um i'll try and use a plastic cutting board and then you know really wash the shit out of that but uh what what should else should i be

doing like one step that i do is i have we make a we have a spray bottle and we have a diluted bleach that we will spray spray onto and everything that came into contact and then sort of you know soap and water and then the bleach and wipe that down like is that i mean for the home is that like an appropriate level of precaution?

Speaker AYeah, that sounds really good. I mean, just be careful what you're spraying the bleach on because you could stain it. But absolutely. No worse than my AirPod speaker. Yeah.

MaxIt's actually HomePod. HomePod, Apple Balls, whatever. Seriously?

Speaker AThat sounds fine. From the hot hands perspective, think about the turkey as also being a source of contamination. So anything that that turkey touches, that's going to be contaminated.

MerlinIt's a hot hands passing on. Exactly. I just put my carving. We've got a bunch of boards. We've got the one like you got, Max, the overpriced wooden one with the mystery oil. But one I got because we don't actually use it that much because my wife likes it too much. So I got the OXO Good Grips cutting and carving board. And I put that in notes. Is it wood or plastic?

MaxHuh? Plastic or wood? Plastic. I believe that's the one I have. and I got it because the wire cutter said it was the number one cutting board to get. And I got, I liked it so much I got like four of them.

MerlinYeah, yeah. And it's got, well, you flip it on either side. One side has a blood gutter and the other side doesn't. And it stands real nice and it cleans up good.

MaxThat's very funny. Okay. Another thing I hear food service people talk about.

MerlinYou could also call it a chicken juice sluice. The juice. Hi. Hi. I'm Robert Oxo Have you tried my juice sluice?

MaxIt's a juice moat Rejoice You want to get a juice? You have to get a juice moat on your cutting board

MerlinHi, I'm Robert Oxo Are you tired of having your juices run all over your more costly cutting board? Try my less costly cutting board It's got a juice caboose Get on that turkey train You turkey? Hi, I'm Robert Oxo

AlexOh god

MaxI hear a thing that I hear chefs talk about a lot And food service people talk a lot about Is the idea that it's okay to eat

MerlinI'm going to be here until 4

MaxOh, it's going to be a long ass podcast Oh my god We do need to get out of here at 2pm Alright, this will be my last one So I hear people say it's okay to eat raw beef and fish Because when those things, I guess, go bad They go bad from the inside out. So as long as you like clean, like take away the outside, make sure the outside is clean or I don't know, or sear the outside of like a, like a, like a steak, right? Like the inside can be rare, but that is not true for things like pork and chicken, which

is why you would not eat, you know, a rare pork or a rare chicken because those would go bad from the inside out. Now I hear that all the time and it sounds to me like complete bullshit. Is there, do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker AIs that a thing? The fish rods from the head, right? No, it's all bullshit.

MerlinWell, I mean, just as a scientist, if people were interested in eating raw pork, how would you recommend they do it? I mean, as a scientific perspective.

Speaker AShould they eat the inside first? Well, they're all, in my mind, they're all equal risk, right? Raw chicken, raw pork, raw fish, raw beef. They're all, there is no difference in those organisms. That can't be true. That cannot possibly be. Are you sure about that?

MerlinBecause when I make my pho, I put in nearly raw meat. It's basically raw ribeye. And then the hot broth is what kind of cooks it up a little bit.

Speaker AWell, that's fine. So I guess the question is how hot is the broth and how hot is the – I mean what you should realize about all of those foods, if it's intact – I heat it for three and a half minutes after they deliver it. Okay. So we have to collect some data.

MerlinBecause it's going to be cooled off. You've got the bowl. The bowl is going to take off some of the heat plus all your cool ingredients. It's like a McDLT, you know, Vietnamese style.

AlexWhenever the doctor pauses, I just get a shudder. I'm sorry. Please continue. Oh, God.

Speaker ASo you're saying beef, chicken, pork. Right. The inside of those tissues should be sterile, right, unless it's been tenderized with needles or something, which is a thing that sometimes happens. But they can all still have parasites, right? So, again, the good news is that we typically don't have parasites, especially in the pork supply because the industry has worked to clean that up. But, yeah, so the contamination is going to be on the outside. Yeah, yeah.

MaxThat's because Alex is part of the big pool. Can I just ask you your own practices on this? Do you eat sushi?

Speaker AMy personal preference is for the kind of sushi that has cooked ingredients because I like it better. I have eaten the raw fish kind, and as far as I know, I've not gotten sick. I just don't particularly like it. But you're also not pregnant or nursing.

MerlinExactly, or elderly or an infant, yes.

MaxBut I don't have to worry about eating. I mean, well, I guess I'm I mean, is that a high risk thing to go out to a sushi restaurant and have raw fish? Oh, we'll get emails, but it's a higher risk than a cooked fish restaurant. Oh, Jesus. What about when you go to a diner? When you go to us, when you when you have dinner with Donald Trump, how do you order your steak? I don't have dinner with Donald Trump.

Speaker ASo I will have a steak that is medium. OK, I will always order my burgers. well done and absolutely for my when my kid my kids are grown but when my kids were small i would absolutely not let them eat a a medium or a rare burger right because that's risky because the meat's chopped up steak steak is also multiple cows right yeah is that true when they say the

Merlinmultiple cow part like increases the chance you need one bad apple in the bunch and it messes up everybody well yeah so from from the one bad apple perspective yes now i went to uh this is a long

Maxstory that I won't tell the whole thing but I found myself a couple years ago I went to America's Test Kitchen and I was doing like a film shoot there with our friends at tested.com and they were making the recipe that they were showing us on camera was they were making Wisconsin butter burgers and they had a whole bunch of America's Test Kitchen you guys know America's Test Kitchen right yes they had a whole bunch of staff people there sort of watching and supervising and then the on-camera guy and the guy got out the ground beef and someone said from the sort of peanut gallery like oh you didn't have that ground at the grocery store did you and the guy said no no

i'm not going to take my life into my own hands and we asked about that and he and they were like well we've actually tested um a bunch of ground beef and um having your ground your beef buying ground beef from the grocery store that was grounded the grocery store is one of the riskiest food items that you can like get at a grocery store because i guess because those meat grinders process so much meat that if there's any sort of bacteria or pathogen or whatever, it just gets mixed in. So they are a big advocate of like owning your own meat grinder, making your own

Speaker Aground beef at home. Well, I guess what's the difference then? I mean, except for maybe the amount. I mean, I guess I would have to say, Max, I would like to see the peer-reviewed research on that because there's a lot of people that go out and do experiments and then talk about them on the internet um see this show for example just maybe and and please don't peer review yeah exactly so i so i mean i i would that's that could be true max but i would like to see the peer-reviewed research about that i mean the bottom line is that if the if the meat is ground then the outside's

on the inside and the inside's on the outside yeah and and then what's the quality of the meat that you're grinding and then how often do you clean the grinder those are all important questions it

MaxIt makes sense to me that if you have a clean meat grinder at home and you put, you know, one piece of chuck through it, that you have less of a risk from that than if you're at the grocery store and you have a big industrial grinder and you put 50 pounds of chuck through it. Because you're rolling the dice once for your piece of chuck, but 50 times. You know, it's like, let's say that you're rolling a D20 and if you roll a 20.

MerlinPlus just the dirtiness of the device that maybe they're not making that for their own food. They may not be as fastidious as you are.

MaxLet's just say that when you have the ground beef, right, every time you eat ground beef, you're rolling the D20. And if it rolls a one, that's a critical fail and you get diarrhea. Now, I would rather do that roll once than 50 times. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Speaker ANo, it absolutely is a probability thing. And I agree with what you're saying. and none of my friends from Big Grocery will probably listen to this podcast and call me out. But I mean, again, it depends upon the grocery store and the quality of their meat, et cetera, et cetera. But your point is well taken, Max.

MaxOkay, so we talked about raw meat, raw fish. Any other grocery store, like common traps or, I don't know, things that we should be looking out for that we haven't mentioned?

Speaker AWell, one thing just to circle back to the turkey for a minute. And the recommendation is you should not – a lot of people think you should wash off your chicken or your turkey in the sink. That's a really bad idea because all you're doing then is spreading the contamination into the sink.

AlexWhoa. Wait. Then what's the alternative?

Speaker AWell, you just should like drain the juices carefully and then just cook it, right? Because any contamination is – you're not going to – here's the thing. Like hand washing, right? If you wash that chicken or that turkey, you're not really going to do a very good job of washing off the bacteria. You're going to do a great job of spreading the bacteria. And then really what you want to do is cook that turkey, cook that chicken. That's what's going to really kill the bacteria for you.

AlexThank you so much.

Speaker AOkay, I'm so sorry, Alex.

AlexWhat about when you go and you get your cart? Haven't died yet?

MaxYou put the little red seat down. I like when there's one sticky napkin from a sample and like a used condom. You know, you pull the cart out and there's just like a child's diaper in there.

AlexYou know, good place to fuck Target.

MerlinYou're touching every diaper that's ever been in there. Oh, here, have this little Lysol thing. That'll help. Anyway, I just wanted to say, I just think it's disgusting. That's all I'm going to wait for.

MaxI really have more to comment on that question. You just go ahead and throw your bananas and avocados right in that cart, right next to the diaper.

MerlinOh, sure, just put them right in that little red seat where little Jeremy was sitting for 20 minutes. Oh, God. eat right off the tray on the airplane well this is this is why we bring our reusable uh

Speaker Anpr tote bags into the grocery store with us right and then we wash them on occasion

Maxoh all things considered right yeah all right i want to get into our samples um so we talked about so i i did clean hands dirty hands veronica did clean hands dirty hands our dirty hands were both pretty dirty we got for me i only really got the mold for the most part but we got substantial mold growth on our dirty hands. The clean hands looks pretty good. I can see a few little spots of something or another, but it's very clear otherwise. You guys have similar results?

MerlinI got a gal on clean hands. It's weird. My control is pretty clean. I did one that was just control. It makes me think the process mostly worked because my control, which you'll see in some of these, is pretty good. Clean hands? These should be chronologically reversed. The constellation of dirty hands. You can see the galaxy in my dirty hands. Then I went and I thought I did a pretty good job washing my hands to do clean hands. But again, now I'm sitting at this disgusting table, touching all the things. But I got a galaxy out of dirty hands, but no spot, hardly any splotches.

AlexWhat'd you get, Alex? I mean, you got perspiration. Let's say in theory, I did it right. My both of my before and after hands are immaculate. Yep, we're just gonna go with that. Yeah. And I, Alex,

Speaker AI got similar results, relatively small number on the the quote unquote dirty hands, and then also on the clean hands as well. So, you know, it's just, the problem is it's not a well-designed experiment. Each person was swabbing in a different way. When we do these experiments in the laboratory, we, again, we deliberately load up people's hands with lots and lots of non-pathogenic bacteria. And then we use a sampling method called glove juice, where we basically put some buffer into a glove and then give them a massage. Did you use the phrase glove juice? Glove juice.

Say glove juice? Glove juice method. Glove juice method.

MaxIt's just okay where you work to say things like that? Yes, yes. Jesus Christ. My control came out crystal clear. I mean, I would eat off of that control.

MerlinOh, God.

Speaker AThe other thing, did you guys notice, I should have mentioned this in the after show prep stuff, if you pour a little too aggressively, you can get some bubbles in your auger, and those are not colonies, but they're kind of round and they look like colonies,

Merlinand so you have to be careful about that. Oh, that's why you said to pour. Okay, that's why you directed us to do it the way we did. Okay. I might have done that in some of mine.

MaxI got very little bubble.

MerlinCan I call your attention to one of mine I just texted to you guys? Mm-hmm. I mean, I'm jumping ahead a little bit. I went a little bit rogue. You may recall a little bit before Christmas, December 14, 2017, we had an episode called I Better Have a Balloon Coming, where the challenge was to eat like the president.

And so we had McDonald's delivered to our places, and we took the challenge of trying to eat some Big Macs and Filet-O-Fish. Now, mine also, I guess I also got a coffee drink. I don't know what it was. I got a McD coffee drink. And the thing is, I'm a busy businessman. I have a lot of things that I need to do during the day. So I haven't had a chance to clean up my office fridge in a while. That did mean I had a McD drink from December.

No! Oh, my God. In my refrigerator. And so I swabbed that. And it's hardly any galaxy at all. So, I mean, I think I could probably keep it for maybe until Christmas. What I did was I went through, so on the top I had like a kind of a foam, like a whipped cream that was, let's be honest, it had a lot of blue parts on it. I tried to get in around the blue and into the white and really plunge deep into where the chocolatey coffee beverage would be. And that gave me just a little bit of a galaxy.

MaxNow, what do you think? Is that because the cold, it sort of retards the growth of the bacteria?

MerlinWell, obviously I do, yes. What do you think, Dr. Don? Why is my McD dirtier? Well, yeah, I guess it depends on—

Speaker AYou think McD's dirty? Well, it seems puzzling because there are organisms that will—not the ones that make us sick, but there are organisms that will spoil those food products. And so I've got to suspect that there were some bacteria. And then even in the refrigerator since December, I've got to—I can't—it makes no sense to me. It's a really nice—it's from Costco.

MerlinIt's a really nice refrigerator.

MaxWell, there's that art project or whatever where this woman bought a McDonald's hamburger and has just left it sitting out for six years, and it looks basically the same as when she bought it. Oh. Oh, my God, Max. Your shoes. Yeah. Oh, talk about your shoes. Let's talk about that. So I sent you two pictures. The first one is my very dirty boys. It's Max's keyboard and Max's shoes. Now, these are – I do not see – and now there's one other one. i sent you which is the kombucha now on the kombucha what you observe is a little galaxy

of dark dots and i think that that's bacteria those little pointy those little pointy guys

Merlinlike glitter right that's bacteria yeah they're you've got you've got alex's condensation

Maxyou got some mold you got some definitely got some moldy boys but on my shoes and my keyboard I do not observe any of the little glittery galaxy patterns.

MerlinYou don't have a galaxy.

MaxNo galaxy. What I have instead are these big dark mold growths. Well, scroll down a little bit and look at my shoe sole.

AlexOh, whoa.

MaxWhoa.

MerlinWhat the hell?

Speaker AThat's, and that's, I bet that smells delicious. That is bacillus.

MerlinIt's the sole of a fairly new shoe, but San Francisco's a dirty, dirty city. Now, do I win anything for this? Because mine made in a medulla oblongata of mold.

Speaker ADr. Don, what is that? I would say that's probably bacillus, and it was one that ended up on the top of the auger, and it just spreads like that, and that's a very characteristic pattern. What is that? And it smells pretty gross.

MerlinWhat is that? Oh, it's weird, because the soles, if you looked at a photo of them, I'll take a photo of my shoes. They're really clean. They look clean, but I got a bacillus.

Speaker AWhat is bacillus? It's just a spore-forming bacteria. It's one that you would expect to find on a sidewalk or on a shoe. They form spores. They're very long-lasting and persistent in the environment. and they're in a lot of things but they just have that very characteristic kind of lobe shaped colony, they grow very quickly and so they'll spread over the top of the plate so that was probably all from one or two colonies that just got near the top of the plate and then just overgrew the surface

Maxand what do you make of oh look, I think I might have a bacilla too on my shoes, look at my shoes wait, so if you go up to my where it says Max's shoes I'll send you a better picture, hang on, you can't see it

Merlinyou got some good smudgy boys in here for sure You got this live photo thing on. I have to wait till it stops. You got a lot of smudgy mold boys. Oh, I see what you're seeing. You're seeing the cloudy ones.

Speaker AYes. What is that, Dr. Don? Sorry, I'm looking for it. I don't see it.

MaxIt's the one that's turned wrong. Yeah, it's the one that's rotated wrong.

MerlinIt's a live photo.

MaxSo it says Max Shoes on the top and then Max Keyboard on the bottom. It's like four pictures up. Oh, got it.

Speaker AYeah, sorry. Sorry, I see it. Yeah, so you got a lot of stuff on those shoes and maybe some bacillus too. Do you have butterfly keys, Max?

MerlinYes.

MaxNo, I have the new Apple keyboard. Oh, interesting.

MerlinThe full one with the number pad on it. You might need to blow it.

MaxBut look at, so I just sent you a larger picture of Max's shoes. And you see on the top around 10 or 11 o'clock. I think that's a big bacillus colony You got the lobe Oh yeah yeah yeah

MerlinIt's kind of blurred out but yeah I see it Okay that's because it keeps moving It's a live photo I don't know if you know this Max it's a live photo Be careful I can hear you guys talking

MaxSo what does it mean though That I didn't get the bacteria But I do have all this mold What does that mean You're in a galaxy Harry Sorry Sorry, can you repeat the question, Max? Yeah, what does it mean? Why is it that I got, that I didn't get, on all my environmental ones, I didn't get any bacteria, but I did get lots of mold.

Speaker AWell, it could be that you contaminated the plates when you were making them. But because they weren't on the control samples, that kind of rules that out. You may just live in a very moldy part of Chicago, Max.

MaxMaybe this building, I mean, this building is old as hell. Maybe there's just mold everywhere in the building. The ones I did at home, so the ones I did at home did not grow the mold. and interesting and the ones um that i did like so here's an example the kombucha right i sent you a picture of the kombucha no mold in that that i did get the bacterial pattern just like dr don's

Merlinum i mean this is this obviously i'm gonna ask you about humidity did did you uh do you have a hygrometer in your server room do you know like if there i guess what i'm asking is would relative humidity change the likelihood of the moldy stuff i think we need to change all the filters on the

Maxhvac i bet there's some mold happening i want to do this whole thing again i really do because i

Merlinmean i look at my my control okay interesting my keyboard i've got like five tiny blotches but no galaxies my door handle has fucking nothing the filthy door handle of my personal private office

Maxhas like nothing so i'm thinking i might have done this wrong so on my door handle i have a number of of small black dots that I think are mold, but, but they're just not advanced yet. Is that possible?

Speaker AYeah. And I'm going to, I'm just sending you guys the bathroom inside bathroom door door knob from, from my house. And there's not really much there as well. So, and the other one that I sent that might be interesting is I opened a plate and I put it, um, uh, my near in the window of my home office and then just let like, I didn't,

MerlinI didn't. Oh, Oh, it's just like the environment.

Speaker AAnd then I have another one, which was like probably three feet away, but not near the open window, which was just sort of sitting in a place where there wasn't much airflow behind my monitor in my office. And like literally three feet away and much less contamination on that. Interesting. So obviously, you know.

MerlinSo you got a little sourdough culture going here.

Speaker AYeah, or something.

MerlinI did my toilet seat and I really, really got in there. I did the full 360 swab on the underside of my toilet seat. We were going to get splattered.

AlexOh, no.

MerlinAnd what's interesting is my McD drink and my dirty hands were way worse than the toilet seat. Now, like I said last week, I had recently bleached it. I bleached the shit out of it once a week whether I need it or not. But I really thought the toilet seat would have more splatter on it. The toilet seat that I swabbed is immaculate.

MaxIt looks like my control. Nothing.

MerlinThis McD drink is not something I should be eating, though.

MaxDirty.

MerlinYou did some other ones. Now, Max, you did a whole complement of these. Did you do any more weird ones? Let's see.

MaxDo you have any interesting results in your weirdos? Not really. So one that I expected to be really interesting was I swabbed the inside of my cat's mouth. So I got way up in there with the little cotton swab. And she was sort of trying to close her mouth. And she was like, ah, ah.

MerlinYeah.

MaxYeah, she was not happy that I had that swab in her mouth. But I got way in there. And she licked all up on that swab. What have I done? And that's what you call a dry swab. I didn't put the total count on there. And then what I did was I swirled it all up in the total count. I got the cat saliva away in there. And I thought something would happen there. And I got to say, nothing happened. It's very boring.

MerlinMy Glow Germ 1003 Gel Products Experiment Kit is arriving tonight. So I'm going to be getting on that as well. Dog licked plate. Yeah, what is it?

Speaker ASo I put a plate out, as I often do, and I let my dog lick it.

MerlinWhat kind of dog is it, Don? Well, there's two.

Speaker AThere's two. And they're both mutts. but I think this was Gibbs who's the pit mix. He's a sweetheart. I'll send you a picture.

MerlinYeah, send a picture.

Speaker ABut yeah, like he has, like you can see on that there's a bunch of tiny little colonies and then there's one giant which is probably a bacillus colony. And so, yeah, and it took, and that was like several days to get that to develop. And so, yeah, I mean, it's just, sometimes the results are just not what you think.

MaxMy, so I swabbed, do we all do our iPhone? I have to say my iPhone, which I had never clean. I mean, I never think about my phone. My phone, that's as dirty.

MerlinYou always hear about this, the dirtiest thing in the house. Everybody says your iPhone's the dirtiest thing there. I really didn't get anything off of the iPhone. I mean, it looks pretty clear. I don't have anything that couldn't be Agar bubbles. Yeah. What about Alex? You're being awfully quiet. Do you have any interesting results in yours or is it all perspiration?

AlexNo, yes. I totally fucked it up. I'm trying to see. Dr. Don, have you, there's got to be, phones must be filthy, right? Because people use them in the bathroom. They're shitting. They're putting it right back in their pocket before they've washed their hands. I just can't imagine them ever being clean unless you use an alcohol wipe on it or something.

Speaker ASo in preparation for this show, I was doing some Googling on the scholar.google.com. And I found an article entitled, and I think it's in the links, bacteria on smartphone touchscreens in a German university setting and evaluation of two popular cleaning methods using commercially available cleaning products. But the most important thing that I noticed is that in fact, the level on these German smartphone screens prior to using

those cleaning methods was very low on the order of one to two colonies per square centimeter. So So smartphone screens are actually not that dirty.

MaxAlso, there's one thing.

MerlinCan I peer review that? Because I feel like they should control for Germany.

Speaker AWell, I knew you were going to say something about Germany.

MerlinWhat do we need to know about German people? I'm not going to say it here. I'm not going to say it. But we know what Germans do with things. And then they probably clean it real good because they're real tidy. But they get a little bit of glove juice on it, and then they just get it all nice and tidy. They take to school for the experiment.

MaxIs there something about the iPhone that makes it not a good place for germs to grow?

Speaker AYou know, I think it's mostly that you're probably always taking it in and out of your pocket. You're probably – it's probably just sort of naturally cleaning itself to a certain extent. Right.

MerlinYeah. But like Tony Stark's flip-flip.

Speaker AAnd is there anything of like – It's real smooth, right? And so it's not like a keyboard where it's got like cracks. You know, what might be interesting is to take the cover off and then swab around the – if you wear a cover on your phone.

MerlinOh, you know what I didn't think to do? I scrubbed right on – actually, it was my iPad. at the end of the day per the directions. As I said to you guys in the channel, I was doing it the night before. But you know what I didn't think to do is it would be fun to check the right button on an iPhone. That might be the really interesting one. Because if you think about the dispersal and the smearing on the screen, I wonder what the button, you know what I mean? The on-off button on the side, I bet that thing's filthy. I hadn't even thought of that. Here's a good one. I'm going to prepare a sample. I'm going to do it right now.

MaxSo in our office, we have a concrete floor. And when you have a big concrete floor, you have to do the cuts in the concrete. Because concrete is kind of living and it sort of shifts. It creates invaginations. Yeah, it kind of shifts and changes over time. So by giving it cuts, it has room to adapt. That's why they do it to sidewalks.

MerlinSo it's replaceable and also if it cracks,

Maxit won't take out the whole sidewalk. Exactly. So I went in with the swab and I swabbed the crack in the floor right behind Alex's desk. And that's the one that I just attached.

AlexOh, great.

MerlinOh, look at that, the office crack Oh, look at that sweet doggy, Dr. Don That's a sweet doggy Yeah, he's very sweet Oh, the office crack has got some serious bacillus boy on it And it looks like maybe a human hair Is that Alex's hair? I'm going to zoom in I'm going to zoom into the photo By the way, this is a live photo It's a live photo, just so you know

AlexIt's a live photo

MerlinOh, God Rejoice I bet that's one of your hairs, Alex

AlexIs this time theft? Have you been grooming at your desk? Yeah, as one does. All right.

MaxDid anyone else have any interesting results that they want to share? I mean, I feel like I covered all of mine. I did. Go ahead.

AlexNo, it's just really interesting how badly I fucked this up.

MaxAlex, yours are all... They're all wrong. Alex's are all liquid. They're all... Somehow, they're all liquidy. Like, the gel never set. Did you maybe pour it into the wrong... I would say bang it around.

MerlinTry a couple more again. Yeah, I'm going to.

MaxReally bang it around in the bottle. Oh, Dr. Don, you had an interesting one to tell us about. Is this suet? Yeah. As in like fat?

Speaker AYeah, like for feeding the birds, right? And then I also tested some bird seed, and I just sort of dumped some bird seed in there. And then another one I tested was just a tiny little tomato.

MaxOh, my God. What is wrong with that bird seed?

Speaker AThat's what all bird seed is like, right? It's just like – I mean what's over kind of up at 2 and 3 o'clock, that's the actual seed itself.

MaxOh, I see. I see. You put the seed right in there.

Speaker AWell, no. I put the seed into the bottle and then swirled it around, and then I accidentally poured it out onto the plate. I tried to not, but it ended up pouring out. And so you can see the bird seed's pretty contaminated. I also tested like a tomato, just a little fresh tomato from the grocery store. And that's further up in the stream there. But it also got some good galaxies there. And it was pretty, you know, whatever. There were bacteria on the tomato. No surprise.

MaxThat is TMTC on that tomato. That's what we say in the business.

MerlinI have other things in my fridge. I have a salad from three weeks ago.

MaxI think you should test that romaine lettuce. Because that's not good.

MerlinThis might have from the before times might be the lettuce. I'll check.

MaxBoy, if you follow Dr. Don on Twitter, you've been talking about this romaine lettuce for a long time. I was not surprised when we had this big romaine lettuce.

Speaker AYeah, so the good news is that probably the outbreak is over, although we might still see some cases. But yeah, romaine lettuce can make you sick, especially if it comes from Europe.

MaxNo, I know. The other thing I know from following Dr. Don on Twitter is you should not order the raw sprouts on a Jimmy John's sandwich, which I used to do all the time, every time. Interesting. And they pop up. Jimmy John's pops up a little thing saying, warning, you are adding raw sprouts to your sandwich and it may kill you. Do you accept this liability? And you have to click a little window to be like, yes, I accept that I'm going to eat the raw sprouts.

Speaker ATell us why. Oh, so sprouts are an interesting one. So basically there is no way to turn seeds into sprouts without growing bacteria because the conditions that you need to germinate those seeds into sprouts are the same identical conditions you need for growing bacteria. Now, the good news is if you start with seeds that don't have pathogens, you're A-OK, right? But if you start with seeds that even have a small number of salmonella or pathogenic E. coli, by the time you like three days have gone by and you've turned those seeds into sprouts, you've also cultured very high concentrations of salmonella and or E. coli if they were there to start with.

So, yeah. Sorry, guys. Oh, but the good news is the risks of not eating still outweigh the risks of eating. So keep eating food, please.

MaxI'll try. Okay, so I just want to go. So before we end, and I do think we need to release Dr. Don back to his life and responsibilities. People are listening to this. This might be sort of the first introduction that some of our audience is getting into the exciting world of food safety and obsessively washing your hands and all of this.

It seems like, so first of all, it seems like the big takeaways are people should be washing their hands probably more than the average person is. and that there's a difference. I like the idea that there's a difference between cleaning and sanitizing. And then, I mean, what are the, are there any sort of like top level, you know, headline level food safety things that you wish every person knew?

Speaker AOh, yeah. Wow. I would say, you know, a really good one would be if you don't have a thermometer in your home fridge, you should get one. Because one thing that's going to affect safety and quality is how cold your cold is in your fridge. And so that's really good. I would think everybody should have a meat thermometer.

MaxHow cold should your refrigerator be?

Speaker AMy recommendation is 40 degrees or below. Obviously not so cold that things freeze, right?

MerlinBecause that's not good. You don't want frozen eggs, right? That's like colder than they recommend for beer, right? I mean, that's pretty damn cold.

Speaker AWell, the recommendation for restaurants is 41 or below or 42 depending upon your state. So I would say it should be 40 degrees or less. The other thing is everybody should buy a meat thermometer if you cook meats or if you cook any dishes that require heat. And I would suggest there's a pretty good one out there made by a company called Thermopen. They're a little bit less than $100, but it's a tip-sensitive digital thermometer. It's really a top-of-the-line piece of hardware.

I would definitely recommend that.

MaxI've fully endorsed that thermometer, as well as I also am a big fan of the Thermo Pop by Thermapen, which is their lower end one. But it's an instant read digital thermometer, very accurate. You can get it at cooking stores like Surlataub or Amazon.

MerlinCan I ask a question for a friend, Dr. Don? Sure. Okay. Let's say for the sake of argument, you've gone to the store and you brought home some meats. And you're a busy businessman. You haven't had time to prepare the meats in a way that you might like. and you're pretty sure that the meat is right on the edge of going bad, is it a good idea to put that in the freezer because it might freshen it up again when you thaw it later? Well, putting it in... Like if you were going to make a stroganoff next month and you thought the meat might be going bad now, is it a good idea? Would you, for example, serve that to say like a Ken Jennings? Just hypothetically.

Is it safe if the meat, if it's edge meat, if you've got edge meat or an edge beef and you know it's right almost there, it's stored next to your batteries and your mashed potatoes and noodles, like you've got that, you're pretty sure... Okay, let's be honest. You might even think it's gone bad. Is it like a D-cell battery or a 9-volt battery where if you put it into deep refrigeration, it could rejuvenate some of the performance characteristics of the beef and not poison the Jeopardy boy?

Speaker AIs that a safe thing to do? So please tell your friend who is not John that when you put the food in the freezer, it doesn't freshen it up. But what it does—

MerlinNow, hang on. Is that big freezer talking or are you giving a science? I have no money. This is pure unadulterated science. I have no money for a big freezer. I don't know how we'd even tell at this point. You seem like you're really, really deep in with these industries. You're in the pocket of fresh meat.

Speaker AIf you put the food in the freezer, it stops the clock, but it doesn't reset or freshen anything. At all? No.

MerlinI mean, freezing may kill—

Speaker AIs that opinion or science? Because I like it when you separate those. So freezing may kill bacteria, but it's not a reliable way of killing bacteria. And that's supported by science.

MaxAll right. Let me ask another—I'm sorry. We do need to wrap this up. But which products should most people be using to wash their hands? Like, does it matter? Does it matter what kind of soap? Does it matter what kind of soap?

MerlinYou're driven by an engine. I have to know.

MaxYou think about this so much. I do. I'm upset. I need to know. What soap product should we buy for our office for people to use? Now, does it matter if it has a pumice in it?

Speaker ADepends how dirty your hands are. I've been working closely

Merlinwith the people over at the pumice industry for quite a while and I would have to say pumice is an excellent product that should be included in every soap

Speaker AI like bar soap my wife likes pumice soap

Maxit's disgusting you just have a wet soap oh my god Dr. Don

Speaker Anot for your office Max for your office you should get some of those non-refillable non-bulk soap dispensers. What about if it foams versus non-foaming? You know, I don't care for the foam, but that's my opinion. I think in terms of the effectiveness, you're probably going to save a little bit of money with the foaming because you actually use less when you dispense it. We've studied both types in the laboratory, although not head-to-head. I mean, the foam soaps work just fine. So it's an aesthetic choice.

Mostly it comes down to that.

MaxBut when you go to the hospital or a doctor's office and you wash your hand in the little sink in the waiting room there, it's always the foam soap. It's like some sort of medical grade.

AlexI think we're just saving money.

MaxYou're a fan of the foam, aren't you, Max? Well, I feel like it's doing something.

Speaker AA good thing about the foam soaps is that most of the dispensers that dispense the foaming soaps are not the refillable kind. They are the enclosed kind. So from a sanitary perspective, they're better.

MaxYes. All right. And so you – so for the – it doesn't really matter what kind of soap you – like have you had any findings of like, wow, this kind of soap works way better or works way worse?

Speaker AIn my opinion or based on the science that we've done, the antibacterial kinds work better. But I don't think people can buy those in the grocery store anymore because the FDA has not – is not allowing them.

MaxOkay.

AlexFuck them.

MaxAll right. And now you think I should not be – I should not do what Merlin does and pour 60 percent alcohol on my hands, that I should actually go to Purell Corporation and I should get some sort of napalm defoliant product.

Speaker AWell, remember that 60 percent works better than 90 percent. And what kind – what brand and what kind – buy something that you like, right? Buy something that is a name brand that smells good, that feels good on your hands.

MerlinThis sounds like opinion. Is there one of these? You had mentioned earlier offline in our super secret private channel that it might be fun to pour hydrogen peroxide. I don't know if you know I'm a huge fan of hydrogen peroxide. I know you are.

Speaker AI haven't done it. Oh, no. Oh, God.

MerlinSo which one should I do? Should I do it in the shoe?

Speaker AShould I do it in the shoe sole? You want me to do it first just so in case there's any liability? No, fuck that. I'm a scientist.

MerlinI can do this. It's going to foam a lot probably, right?

Speaker AI think it will.

MerlinYeah. Okay, so the single dirtiest one. Keep it away from your keyboard. Well, it's right here. I need that for my work.

Speaker AWell, but be careful. Be safe.

MerlinOkay. Well, I'll keep my bucket nearby. In case I need to put my bucket. You know what I'll do? I had some potato salad earlier. What does hydrogen peroxide do?

MaxI feel like that's something that my – what is that? It's like old people would use that.

MerlinWhen you swish around and it burns.

Speaker AYeah. So the science is that the bacteria have something called catalase. So hydrogen peroxide is toxic to bacteria. It's a debridging agent. And so they have catalase. And so the catalase takes the H2O2 and turns it into H2O and O2. And it bubbles. right because oxygen so it's pretty cool little johnny took a drink but now he drinks no more

Merlinfor what he thought was h2o was h2so4 which would be sulfuric acid i don't recommend that you pour that on your plate okay here we go pouring it into the shoe sample ready let's see if i get it on mic oh is it bubbling well it sure doesn't smell good inside the potato salad i got a deli i got a deli tainer uh from which i ate a deli tainer of potato salad for my breakfast And now boy, this is gonna be really hard to explain on a forum someday I'm gonna close that

I'm gonna close all of that and I'm gonna put this over here and Don did you have final thoughts?

MaxBecause I know a lot of people are gonna be doing this experiment. Should I be washing my hands with hydrogen peroxide?

MerlinShould that be part of my routine? Put it on a wound Max put it on a wound and if you swish around with it, it makes your mouth feel very clean Listen to this listen to this so should you be swishing with hydrogen peroxide are you fucking with us i have no idea is this

Alexreal i don't know what's happening and this is radio theater nope hydrogen peroxide i first

Merlingot it for like if you got a canker sore it really burns and it closes it up it actually like closes up the wound of the canker sore i now i now use hydrogen peroxide because of john roderick uh i use hydrogen peroxide probably three to five times a day just every time i go in the bathroom i do a swish it makes you feel so clean and you can feel it burning on your gums anywhere you're abraded anywhere like you floss too hard it just it burns like an acid on there am i right dr don i don't i

Speaker Adon't do that with hydrogen peroxide i mostly like to put it on bacteria but yeah well actually from my perspective what it works pretty well is is on on pimples and stuff like that i find that it's a pretty good way to kind of resolve those more quickly it makes your wound whatever wound You got it.

MaxSo do or do not put it on my hands.

Speaker AI wouldn't recommend it, Max. I don't think you're going to. I think soap and sanitizer.

MaxDo you have any sort of tricks? I'm looking for something here. What can I buy to put on my hands? Yeah. Give him something to buy. I need a hand here.

Speaker AOh, you know what? He's got hot hands, Dr. Don. Here's one that you can research, okay? So there, again, I'm going to show for Gojo Corporation. So there is a formulation of Purell called VF, okay? VF definitely does not stand for virus formulation because they're not allowed to make that claim but if they could the VF might actually work better against the normal now we're talking

Maxoh okay now let me tell you something that I heard god it's so fucking late I'm so sorry now Merlin and I have gone on this thing called the Jonathan Colton cruise oh my god and I really worry about when I'm on this cruise. Now, a cruise ship is already a high-risk environment for viruses, right? You're going to have the norovirus, whatever.

MerlinIt's basically a norovirus with cheap antihistamines.

MaxAnd people are going to get on this cruise from wherever, and you're in close proximity to everyone, just farting and sneezing all into each other's food and the buffet. A fart boat full of long. And now you mix in the Jonathan Colton cruise, and you're going to have a subset of people whose hygiene practices are not, they're sort of below average hygiene individuals. And it has risen to the level where I believe that Paul and Storm, who organized the cruise, have actually needed to make an announcement to the attendees to remind them that they do need to bathe and that swimming in the pool does not count as a substitute for bathing during the week-long cruise experience.

Now, when I go on that cruise, for me, I'm doing a lot of signing. I'm handling people's stuff. I'm shaking a lot of hands. And I am so, so worried. And someone told me that the normal hand sanitizer really does nothing against norovirus. That's true. That's scientifically factual. And so a big thing about doing signings is that you're trying to sanitize your hands after you're shaking everyone's hands so you're not also spreading whatever you get on your hands. and someone told me about this special kind of hand sanitizer

and actually the one I got actually came as a moisturizer product and it had hydro something something in it and it was supposed to kill norovirus. What was the ingredient again? Hydro something something. Hydro hydro something?

Hydro, do you know what I'm talking about? It had the hydro in it.

AlexWas there a skull and some snakes around there? What was happening?

MerlinAnd I, hydroflexa, hydro. Oh, hydroflexicocneum. That could be it. It's an anaerobic. It's an anaerobic hydrophilic.

MaxThat could be it.

MerlinThat performs the deep, deep riding. Is that such a thing?

Speaker ADr. Don, I think what Max might be trying to ask is, is there a super sanitizer you're just not fucking telling us about? This is the one I'm telling you about, right?

MerlinYou're talking about the TFX instant hand sanitizer, Purell 549604, VF481 TFX instant hand sanitizer? I think that might be it. Okay.

Speaker AOkay.

MaxOkay. I found it. I found the product that I purchased and I recommended to Merlin before going on the Joko Cruise. It's the Hydro Hydro. It's called the Gold Bond Hand Sanitizer and Moisturizer. Same people that make Gold Bond medicated powder?

MerlinMm-hmm. Moisturizer.

MaxI love that stuff.

MerlinNow, what is that? It's got the Hydro in it. Ultimate Shear Moisture Hanitizer. That's Gold Bond Ultimate. It has benzothorium chloride. Oh, benzolconium chloride? Yeah, that's the one. Hydro Hydro.

Maxit kills 99.9% of germs it says you're alcohol free it has hydroxyethyluria

Speaker Aso benzalconium chloride is a different kind of sanitizer it works on a different principle than alcohol the thing that I've been talking about and I put a link in the the google doc as well as in the text chat you can take the alcohol based hand sanitizer and then add special ingredients that kind of help it work you can juice it up

MaxHack your sanitizer. Now this is what I'm here for. I'm fucking showing up for this.

MerlinYes. Fuck yes. Juice it up. What do we do if we want to juice our performance, Dr. Don? Give a science not opinion on this. What should we be adding to make a bespoke sanitizer mix?

Speaker ADo not try this at home. Leave it to the professionals. Oh, here we go.

MerlinWho told you that? Oxo? You in the pocket of big Oxo? Who told you that? Stop washing your chicken, says Dr. Don. Opinion or fact? He won't say. Dr. Don, if you want people to find you on the internet, which is entirely your choice, where would people find you on the internet? We'll have it in show notes, but tell us here for our listeners.

Speaker ASo you can find me on Twitter at Bug Counter. And then mostly I would just like people to listen to my podcast, which is called Food Safety Talk. We talk about nerdy stuff like this every couple of weeks. I sit down with my buddy Ben Chapman from North Carolina State University, and we talk about these kind of things all the time.

MerlinI hope it doesn't sound like I'm damning you with faint praise but it's perhaps as interesting and informative as you'd expect but it's also funnier than you might expect it's a fun visit and you guys have a nice as you say chemistry

MaxI just want to second that I think Merlin mentioned food safety talk on one of his other shows and when I heard about that I thought at first I thought maybe it was a bit or a joke I was like there's no way there's a whole podcast about food safety I was just like and of course I immediately went to check it out because Merlin recommended it and it is so it is it is the best possible kind it's what I'm looking for anytime I pick up any kind of media which is it's a very gracious introduction into a whole world that is really kind of cool and

exciting and nerdy and you guys are very welcoming to new people and you're very good hosts and you really open up this whole world and I really really love it and I'm very grateful that you do that and put it out for all of us and strongly recommend it for all of our all of our thanks and

Speaker Ai think a couple people have uh found it uh already because of the uh the after show and i really appreciate that um we did have somebody that found us because of an interview that ben did on npr and they listened for five minutes and they said we talked too much about audio problems and that they were never going to listen again i just read the show notes uh that was me i thought

Merlinalso also why does ben have that vocal fry of course you can talk

Thank you.

Show notes

Transcript

77. Hot Hands!

Show notes

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