What Is Collagen All About?

Do collagen pills live up to their promises for skin and joints and healthy ageing? In this episode, Hannah and Michael examine what collagen actually is and how the body makes and uses it, before looking closely at whether collagen supplements survive digestion and reach the skin in any meaningful form. ------------------- For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit ⁠https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/our-research/rest-is-science Cancer Research UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (1089464), Scotland (SC041666), the Isle of Man (1103) and Jersey (247). A company limited by guarantee. Registered company in England and Wales (4325234) and the Isle of Man (5713F). Registered address: 2 Redman Place, London, E20 1JQ. ------------------- Find The Rest Is Science all over the internet by ⁠⁠clicking here.⁠⁠ ------------------- Video Producer: Adam Thornton + Oli Oakley + Jack Meek Animator: Sam Benson Video & Social: Bex Tyrrell Assistant Producer: Lucy Lipscombe Producer: Simona Rata Senior Producer: Lauren Armstrong-Carter Chief Digital Officer: Samuel Oakley Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Science. I am Michael Stevens.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  And I am Hannah Frye, and I'm here to entertain Michael. You know, do you think that audience knows that we genuinely don't tell each other what the Field Notes is going to be about until we start?

• 0:14Speaker 00

  I don't know. That's a good question, because we don't. I don't know what you're about to show me, which makes it so, it's so fun. I enjoy this. I enjoy knowing that I have no pressure, no responsibility, you know? If what you have to show me isn't cool, I can just take a little nap and I'm still doing my job.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  How dare you? How very dare you. Yeah, except the thing is, is that what ends up happening every single time, Michael, is that you always have loads of really interesting stuff to contribute and hopefully vice versa. Okay, we're going to come to your questions later on, as we do in every Field Notes, but for the first half, I have brought you, Michael, for Field Notes, I've brought you one of these.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Oh, it looks like a pill.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  It is, it is. Oh, do, should I do that beauty influencer thing where they put their hand up to the camera?

• 1:01Speaker 00

  Do the beauty thing and try to tap your nails on it. Okay, so it's just a beige, like pill. It looks like the size of a typical vitamin, like a supplement type pill.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  It is. I am holding a collagen supplement, Michael, and I thought that I would do a little episode for you about, well, what on earth is going on with these things? Why is everyone trying to sell them and whether or not they actually work?

• 1:27Speaker 00

  And where do they get the collagen from?

• 1:29Speaker 01

  And where do they get the collagen from? Now, okay, for this, I have a very good friend of mine called Zan Van Tullikin, who has just written this amazing book called Make Me Well. And the book is essentially, he is a trained doctor, has worked as a doctor for many years, and he has gone through all of the evidence on all of the various wellness fads that exist in the world, and has written this really brilliant, very funny, very entertaining book that goes through all of it and just cuts through everything to try and separate the fact from the fiction. And collagen supplements, I have to tell you, is the one thing that

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I get so many requests from people to like, start selling these things. And I have thus far refused. And you will see why. You will see why over the course of the next 15 minutes or so, as to why.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  Okay, I love this because I don't know anything about collagen and its nutritional value, but I know a lot about collagen when it comes to barbecuing.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.

• 2:46Speaker 00

  Do you remember when we discussed why feet are so weird? Well, one particular foot bone holds an even stranger surprise. It's helping shape our understanding of cancer timelines.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  And for that, we're going to need to go all the way back, before neandertals even existed, to a 1.7 million year old foot bone. Researchers have identified a tumor in it in the oldest known example of cancer in people.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  Which really shows that cancer is far from a modern disease. Beating a disease so deeply rooted in our biology won't happen overnight.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  But today, Cancer Research UK scientists are discovering incredible ways to turn our biology against cancer.

• 3:29Speaker 00

  In fact, Cancer Research UK has helped double UK cancer survival over the past 50 years. And their world-class research is driving even more discoveries to tackle over 200 types of cancer.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research, breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org/RestIsScience.

• 3:52Speaker 02

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• 4:24Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior-like beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Go on, what temperature it has to be at?

• 5:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it doesn't even matter what temperature. Collagen is always kind of breaking down, but when it's hotter, it happens more quickly. So it's a big part of a slow cook. You know, one of my dreams is to get pit master added to my description on Wikipedia. And so I'm thinking of opening a barbecue restaurant, maybe in New Zealand. But yeah, I've really practiced like keeping certain temperatures going without drying out, drying out the meat, but you want that collagen to all liquefy and it's delicious. And again, it doesn't matter. At 100 degrees, you know, it'll, it'll be breaking down, but also bacteria will be growing. So it's a, it's a whole chemistry experiment. But I've, so I'm eating collagen, but what's happening to me? Should I be supplementing

• 5:49Speaker 00

  my collagen intake?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  The point that you're making is exactly the correct one, which is that actually across biological bodies, a phenomenal amount of protein is collagen, so 30% when it's, when it comes to the human body. I mean, all of your, your, your skin's toughness and stretchiness comes from, from collagen. If you, if you kind of take your elbow and you, you pull the skin on your elbow, you feel that sort of resistance. That's basically what collagen is doing.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  Okay, so yeah, you're going to have to tell me what collagen is, because I just know the word and I know that it's in bodies. But you say it's a, it's a protein?

• 6:24Speaker 01

  It's a protein and it's the thing that gives a physical structure to your body. So the ends of your ears, the tip of your nose, your gums, you know, lots of the flexible strength in your bones, you know, the end of your tendons, the, in your joints, all of those things is, is, is where you will find collagen. It's incredibly important to maintaining healthy joints, I mean, a healthy body in total. And you'll find it everywhere. But what's also true is that as you age, your ability to make collagen starts to degrade in your body. So you have this, this protein in your body that is extremely,

• 7:06Speaker 01

  I mean, fundamental to healthy living, that starts to decay as you age. And so of course, it would make sense that you would want to try and start to supplement some of this stuff. And people have done this for ages, by the way, right? This is like, this is not a new thing that people have, have thought about ingesting collagen in order to improve, improve how they're feeling. If you go back to the 12th century, this is, this is from Zan's book, by the way, according to several collagen industry websites, the abbess and scholar Hildegard von Bingen wrote about the use of animal extracts for treating joint pain. Which is kind of a nice idea, but that if you're sort of giving people a broth because they're feeling aches and pains. But then I think also at the same time, if

• 7:50Speaker 01

  you're sort of a 12th century peasant, I would imagine that a meaty broth would, would, I mean, probably do you quite, quite a lot of good.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, if I was a 12th century peasant, I'd be like, hey, give me a Crunchwrap Supreme.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Right, totally. But here is the thing, if eating collagen was the thing that allowed you to make collagen, then babies and vegans would have a problem, because they're not, if you do not have any meat in your diet, then you are eating no collagen whatsoever, right? And the thing is, is that actually, your body is extremely good at constructing the proteins that you need for life and to live healthily, sort of irrespective of, of the, of the type of things that you're eating.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  That was my suspicion, that collagen is probably too complex of a molecule for our digestive system to just say, hey, we got some pork collagen, put it in the knees. It's probably like, hey, we got some carbon and some hydrogen and we're going to assemble a collagen protein to put in the knees.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Okay, so you definitely can do that. So that's what babies are doing, that's what vegans are doing, is that they're taking those molecules and assembling them. It's also, you're absolutely right, the collagen is a really complex molecule. And then when it hits your stomach, the enzymes in your stomach are kind of breaking it up from this like really complex protein into little short chains of amino acids, these peptides. And then they do, those little peptides do end up in your bloodstream. And what the collagen supplement industry say is that, yeah, okay, maybe you're not like ingesting a collagen protein from a bit of pork and then suddenly it ends up making you like embedded in your face, making you look so much younger.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  But what they're saying is that, okay, actually, these peptides can be signaling molecules. So that, and it sort of makes some sense, right, mechanistically, that let's say you got injured in some way and there were like broken bits of collagen that were floating around in your body. It sort of would make sense that that could be a signal that would then send to your body to say, okay, no, you need to make more collagen, right? So it's almost like, it's not that the collagen itself is the thing that's getting there, but it's sending the signal to make more.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  But having the digested, broken up collagens in your body makes your body go, hey, let's make some that aren't broken.

• 10:09Speaker 01

  And the thing is, is that these claims about what it can do, I mean, are phenomenal, right? So if you look at the various collagen supplement brands that say what they can do, hang on, let me see if there's anything on this one. This says that it harnesses innovative technology. And, well, whatever, there's some science jargon here.

• 10:28Speaker 00

  Read me the science jargon, I want to hear it.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  It's an advanced triple active formula operates internally, supporting the appearance of hair, skin and nails. But I mean, the claims of this are really extraordinary, that collagen can give you glowing skin. It can boost the smoothness of your skin, the elasticity of your skin. It can reduce fine lines and wrinkles and oiliness and sensitivity and dryness, and then reduce dark patches and puffiness around the eyes. And then also keep your bones in optimal health and help repair the lining of the digestive tract. And then promote gut integrity and then clear brain fog and support deep restorative sleep and help you move better and like reduce joint pain and so on and so on and so on, right?

• 11:09Speaker 00

  And invent flying cars and yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Exactly, safe for the whole family, completely natural, right? Like, these are the things that-

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Batteries included.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Batteries included. Okay, so I am going to get to the evidence of whether this stuff works or not, okay? But first, I just want to, I want to just tell you a little bit more about the industry that sort of the collagen supplement industry, because I think it is actually, actually pretty interesting. Because the thing is, is that, as I've said, people have been ingesting collagen, I mean, they've been ingesting collagen as long as they've been eating meat, which is essentially forever. But people have been like seeking out collagen for a really long time. But actually, you have also probably, if you eat any sort of gummy sweet, like if you've eaten a Haribo, you're also kind of eating collagen.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Because gelatin and collagen are essentially sister molecules, right? It's like a slightly different process to make one than the other, but it's the same thing, right? If you're eating jelly sweets, you're just, you're just ingesting some good old, some good old collagen too. And as people who are vegan will know, that you can't eat Haribo as a vegan because gelatin is derived from animal products. Collagen is also very much derived from animal products. So in his book, Zand talks about going to a factory in China where they boil up donkey skins and donkey bones in order to extract the collagen from it.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  The meat industry across the world has an unimaginable amount of waste that you can extract collagen from. So, you know, globally, we're talking about hundreds of millions of cows, billions of pigs, billions of chickens. You end up with so many hooves and trotters and feet from the chicken that actually it's really good if it can go somewhere. And that is essentially what is being boiled with hydrochloric acid and high pressure steam in order to make these things. That's essentially what you're getting.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  There's marine collagen as well, which is the same thing, but with fish instead. Like, it's actually, it's sort of, it's a little bit on the grim side.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  It is kind of grim. In another way, it's sort of nice that we're not wasting as much. You know, the slaughterhouses take the meat and then the rendering plants are like, look, we can still get more out of this animal, we can make its life do more.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm okay with that, you know, I'm not vegetarian.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  There are vegan, you know, gelatins, right? You can use agar, agar or pectin, but they, they don't have the same chemical formula exactly as collagen.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Right, and so if this theory about the fact that the collagen molecule gets broken down and then acts as a signaler inside of your body is correct, then agar won't do the same thing, right? It sort of mimics the macro level properties of collagen, but on the micro level won't be doing the same thing. You know, and I agree with you, by the way, actually, if this does end up being a miracle cure, I'm kind of fine with it. But I think that knowing where it comes from is important to think about where the incentives of this are lying.

• 14:32Speaker 00

  Interesting, yes.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  If you've got all of this waste products and, you know, by, sort of even by the 1600s, people were making gelatin from it and selling gelatin. But, you know, this much gelatin is really not worth very much money at all. But this much in a collagen pill, suddenly you're talking about you're sitting on an absolute gold mine, really, right?

• 14:54Speaker 00

  Right, so it's a brilliant business because that much collagen might even have a negative cost. Like, there are meat processing companies that might pay you to take the waste away. And then you get to turn it into a product, donkey collagen pills. And by the way, that's, that's a whole psychological thing too, that like if the collagen comes from donkeys, suddenly it's worse than if it came from a cow, simply because of our cultural attitudes towards both of those animals.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, although I think actually the stuff from donkeys is like considered really sort of like elite level.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  Oh, is it? Okay, so, but that's the thing, yeah, sometimes if it's weird, it can be more sophisticated and elite. Like, this is collagen from a kitten and it's the best. People would believe that.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't want to eat kitten collagen, I don't want to eat kitten collagen. But you're right, you're right, you're right, that it's like the sort of the mystique that comes with it. The thing is about all of this stuff, once again, if this stuff really works, I'm kind of okay with it. If we're just eating, you know, animal byproducts, sort of an offshoot of the meat industry. There have been lots of different studies that look into this. And essentially, there is a little bit of evidence that some specific collagen peptides can stimulate, it's called extracellular matrix synthesis, okay? So this is the scaffolding for every part of the tissue in our, in our bodies.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  There is some evidence that it can stimulate more collagen production within your bodies. They've done this as animal studies as well, so they've sort of taken mice and rats and they have given them digested collagen, right? Like the sort of the kind of chunky little bits of the collagen molecule. And they have found that the digestive collagen does travel to the skin of the mice and the rats, right? So it's sort of, it does find its way there. There have been some randomized controlled trials on collagen too, where they have taken people, given some people placebos, given some people collagen

• 17:05Speaker 01

  and have shown that there is a marginal improvement in the appearance of things like crow's feet and skin elasticity compared to if somebody just took a placebo alone. The thing is, right, so, I mean, there is some evidence that this works, right? There's about a dozen papers, good papers, well, good-ish papers that report on objective measures of skin quality and have found that collagen does seem to make a difference. Also, on joint pain, there was a 2024 study that looked at loads of different trials, it was like a meta-study, so like 3,000 participants in total, and did find improvements in pain

• 17:50Speaker 01

  and the amount that you can move your joints versus the control group. Okay, so that all sounds great, I mean, give me the pills, sign me up, right? However, I think there is a bit of a however here. Which is that when you are in a situation where there is a lot of money to be made and the incentives are really strong, sometimes academic papers can end up not being quite as robust as they might initially seem. They can be funded by particular groups. There have been examples before where people have run a trial over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, because you know that actually with randomness on your side, if you

• 18:31Speaker 01

  only publish the ones that end up showing the positive result that you want, it can make it look like your product or whatever it might be, has a stronger, uh, stronger impact than it actually does. So I think I would take this stuff with a bit of a pinch of salt. Um, my conclusion overall, so having looked into this, right? I think that it probably does do a little bit. It probably does do a little bit, but you're not going to be able to take a collagen supplement and then suddenly reverse the clock by 50 years, you know? It's not, if that's what you're hoping for, it's just not, it's not gonna happen. But I also think that this is something that basically

• 19:14Speaker 01

  doesn't really have any adverse side effects, because our bodies are completely designed to process these kind of proteins, right? We have a meat eating pest, uh, and I think that that's generally fine. My only sort of caveat again on that is like, they're crazy expensive, man. Like, and when they wrap them up in posh boxes, you're not, you're not, you're paying for boiled chicken feet, you know? Like, just remember that that is what, that is what you're doing.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  You can buy like powdered collagen, I think, and it's always super fancy. It's never like at the, you know, Save-A-Lot store for, for families. It's always in the really fancy store and it's so expensive. And you're like, man, just boil all your chicken bones.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Boil all your chicken bones and drink the soup. I mean, that you would get essentially the same impact. You would get the same impact. But at the same time, you know, I like, I have to say, I have to confess, I get that. I do actually, I like, I do take collagen supplements, not very regularly. I'm sort of quite forgetful about them. But you know what? Like, there's no side effects. I get the cheap ones, but yeah, you might as well. Uh, I mean, why not? It may only have a really small impact, but lots of small impacts put together do end up making a bit of a difference.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Sure, sure.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  It just sort of makes me feel a bit better. And I'm fine with that. I'm fine with my, my powdered chicken feet.

• 20:36Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, there's also the psychological effect of just feeling like you've got some control. You're doing something. You remembered to take the thing that you wanted to take. And like, that can also improve your life, even if it's a placebo, even if the effect is really, really small.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Even if the effect is really small. Um, but that is the reason why you would not find me, um, selling fancy pants collagen supplements that cost sixty pounds a month, at least for the time being. We'll see, uh, we'll see how the next, you know, if I get, if I get really desperate.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  Whereas for me, this is a perfect segue into my ad segment. I've got fifty nine ninety nine donkey collagen pills. Use code TRIS, uh, to, um, I'll autograph each pill for you.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Imagine, imagine. What a twist, what a twist.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  What a twist, yeah.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Um, but yeah, if you, if you do wanna find out more about, um, wellness, uh, this book is really great.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, what's it, what's it called again?

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Make Me Well. It's, um, and it's by Zan Van Telleken. It's a really great read.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  It's probably a very crowded space, books about wellness and the science behind them. So, what makes, what makes this one stand out to you?

• 21:49Speaker 01

  It's mainly because Zan Van Telleken is my friend, so.

• 21:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, you trust him, he's a good.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  I trust him. I trust him. He's a very good egg, yeah. He's a very good egg.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  I was gonna say that I've got to read Make Me Well and watch Sliding Doors, but the Sliding Doors reference might be out of order.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  It was in a previous episode. It was, it's true. It's very true.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Dentist appointments, MOTs, routine checkups, help us to spot faults early before we need a root canal or breakdown at the side of the road. And cancer screening is the same idea.

• 22:35Speaker 00

  It's about aiming to spot cancer early before symptoms show and when treatment works best. The UK's breast, bowel, and cervical cancer screening programs, developed with Cancer Research UK, save thousands of lives every year.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Today, Cancer Research UK is backing innovations that could transform the future of screening. Picture a smart bra that could one day detect breast changes as it's worn, making screening more accessible.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  And AI trained on a database of over 10 million mammograms that helps doctors spot early signs of cancer.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Research like this saves and improves lives.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research and breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org/restisscience.

• 23:24Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Good times mean competitions between you and your friends, like seeing who can throw some pigskin the farthest, or rush the field the fastest. Winner gets an ultra. Because it's not just a superior light beer, it's also giving fans superior access to their favorite sporting events. Superior is worth playing for. Visit michelobultra.com/superioraccess to enter. Enjoy responsibly. Copyright 2026 Anheuser-Busch InBev Michelob Ultra Beer, St. Louis, Missouri.

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• 24:31Speaker 01

  Should we do some questions? What do you think?

• 24:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, our first question came in from email from Felix, who asks us, who is your favorite Ig Nobel Prize winner? It's a good question. So for those of you who don't know, the Ig Nobel Prize is like a Nobel Prize, except it's for science that they say makes you laugh, but then makes you think. Okay, so it's, it's real science, but it's somewhat silly. Um, and I don't remember if this was a winner of the Ig Nobel Prize or not, but there was one study that, that the, the title of the paper was something like, people routinely underestimate the weight of their hands. And it was like, whoa, I never would have thought people did that, but now we know that they do. And now I wanna know why we do that. And that's a, a

• 25:18Speaker 00

  prime candidate for the Ig Nobel Prize. It's real, and it does, it does make you think. Do, do you have a favorite?

• 25:25Speaker 01

  The thing is, why, why, why do you imagine? When you hear about Ig Nobel Prizes, and I think that the hand people knew what they were doing, right? I think that they, they, they went into that thinking it was a silly idea. There's, there's some really amazing ones, like someone who's made a bra that can, uh, that can double as a gas mask in an emergency, right? Like, come on, guys, you're just, you're just obviously being silly. But sometimes people are just doing their normal, their normal, serious research and don't even realize that it's something that's completely absurd to, to outside observers. My favorite example of that is, um, uh, about the drip on a teapot. So there was some fluid dynamics researchers who spent an astonishing

• 26:07Speaker 01

  amount of time trying to understand why teapots drip and ended up coming up with the design for a dripless teapot that, uh, I think, I don't know whether it won the Ig Nobel Prize, but was certainly in the running for it. Um, and people thought it was, uh, that it was, it was purely for their amusement. But actually, no, that was, it was actually quite, quite a nice little bit of fluid dynamics there. Quite a nice bit.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think sometimes I imagine it starts serious, like with the, the how much do your hands weigh thing, you know, people, they may have been looking into our proprioception, uh, could have helped people who have, um, limited mobility or need accessibility devices. And then they're like, you know what? Let's call the paper. People don't know how much their hands weigh. And that's, that's gonna be fun.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  There are some amazingly silly science papers, though. There are, that people have done some amazing stuff. One of my favorites was where they, um, I'm gonna let me get the exact title of the paper. Sildhenophyll accelerates re-entrainment of circadian rhythms after advancing life, life schedules. Okay?

• 27:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 27:11Speaker 01

  I mean, that sounds like a great paper. No, no, what they did is they gave hamsters jet lag and then cured them with Viagra.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, but see, that's how you phrase it, you know?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Don't pretend you're all important, you guys. Don't pretend you're all serious and important. You're there turning the lights on and off again for the poor little hamsters in their cage. We know what you're up to.

• 27:37Speaker 00

  It's, it sounds like a good way to study Viagra's effect on jet lag, okay, which are too profitable.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  First world concerns, okay?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  This is very true. Go on, what's your one?

• 27:51Speaker 00

  Here's one that I've actually talked to my daughter about a lot. And funny enough, the people who won this Ig Nobel Prize have actually won two. The first Ig Nobel Prize they won, who are they? I should tell you that it's David Hu and Patricia Yang. They have won the Ig Nobel Prize for Physics twice. I think the first was in 2015 where they determined that it's actually true that all mammals urinate for about the same amount of time as each other.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I love this paper. This is, I love this paper.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  Now, how long mammals urinate for? Turns out to be 21 seconds plus or minus 13 seconds. So there's a big range. But obviously, what's going on here is that some animals have much larger bladders and they've got a lot more liquid to evacuate. But and and they have a much like heavier stream, but there's more. So the small animals with the little bit of bit of fluid, they have a thinner stream and it all winds up taking them about the same amount of time. So that was funny. The one that I've me and my daughter talk about a lot is that four years later in 2019, they pretty much solved the problem of of why the heck is wombat poop cubic?

• 29:07Speaker 00

  If you've ever seen a turd from a wombat, it's like almost a perfect cube. And even even biologists and zoologists will look at wombat poop and be like, I don't think this is natural, but it is. Somehow they plop out cubes of poop. And it's hilarious. It's not. It's not like it kind of looks like a cube. It's a cube. And they studied the intestines of the wombat. And they found that there's sort of two things going on. First, wombats absorb a lot of liquid from their stool before they pass it. And so it gets basically like cooked like a kiln. Not really, it's not hot in there, but it gets it's like air dried clay.

• 29:50Speaker 00

  When it's put into the cube shape, it retains it even after it comes out of the orifice. It doesn't get, you know, tubified. But why does it get turned into a cube in the first place? As it turns out, they found that the wombat intestine, which is like a tube, it has these thicker, the tissue is thicker on two opposite sides. And if you take a rubber band is better. I have a string right now and I'm I've got like a loop of string and I'm going to hold it tight on two opposite sides. And then I'm going to push it together to make room and you'll see what shape it makes. It's somewhat of a square shape because the two ends that are tight, because the tissue is thicker, are pinched together. And that causes these these pinches 90 degrees in either other direction.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  So you get this rectangular prism of fecal matter. And then as it breaks off, that completes the cube shape. So there, that's how wombats do it. Thank you, David Hu and Patricia Yang.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Michael, you really are one of the classiest humans I've ever met to be able to to be able to do a little demonstration of a wombat sphincter. And it not be weird. I that's this is why I like it very much.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  This is a wombat intestine. Their sphincters are holes, round holes. I can do a whole demonstration on that if you'd like.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Save for another episode, sorry. Okay, after that joy. The next question was from Siddharth. And this came in on email. Dear Hannah and Michael, could the number two exist without the existence of the number one? Can you think of a society or situation where humans would conceive of two before they realize that one exists? Yes, basically, absolutely, yes. Um, you know, the and it has happened. The ancient Greeks, when they were counting, ancient Greeks weren't that great with numbers. They were. They were much better with sort of triangles and things. But they didn't count one as a number. They sort of to them, one was like the unit that you were counting with.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  So if it was, you know, one wombat, right? That the one wombat was like, oh, well, that's the thing I'm counting. So then two wombats, that's where the numbers start. So for them, the first real number was a two, right? Then this is, you know, a very sophisticated society that treated one as like a separate entity from two. Didn't have zero at all instantly. Also, I think that there is an argument that you have a similar thing in the way that language works. Because a sort of single object on its own doesn't feel like it's a quantity of something. So it's like an apple, right? Or not one apple. You're sort of doing that already, I think, with your head.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  And actually, lots of languages have this this special form for exactly two. So in ancient Greek, in Arabic, lots of different languages where a pair is sort of such a basic idea that it has its own grammar, that you're not like one and two. It's sort of like, oh, there it is, and there it is as a pair. So, yes, many, many situations in which you could imagine. Maths itself, though, certainly modern mathematics, no. Two very much definitely comes after one. And we've mentioned before the the John Russell books. We should have you on your on your shelf, don't you?

• 33:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I do. I'm not going to go grab it because it's three huge volumes. But you have them spent trying to prove that one plus one equals two. Like, what do we mean by that? How do we define the successor function which allows us to reach the next integer? But you also need to even to tell us what one is. But yeah, I think you're right. I think that we already know that there are existing human languages where there's a word for one and two, and then there's a word for more than two. And that's it. Those are the number words. That's I made that example up. But there are languages like that that really exist. I could imagine there being a human society where they had a term for can fill the hands, which basically meant two.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  If you have the property of two-ness, then I need one in each hand. I can put one in each hand. And they may just say either it's going to fill both hands or it isn't. They've got two words. They've got pair and not pair. And not pair can mean one, but it can also mean 18 million. So, again, yeah, it's it's it's entirely possible. But with with mathematics today, based on the piano axioms, like, no, we very much say that two is the successor function applied to one and you can keep going. Or or you could say, you know, two is like the set of one. But wait, now we've got one and we have the set of one. Those are two things. Oh, shoot, we've just invented two. So that's how we we're doing it today.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  And I think I strongly suspect that's how we're going to be doing it for for long into the future. But nonetheless, I totally agree that there is definitely an intuitive way to do that. Okay, here's the last question. This is by putspecific5731 from Reddit. You can can tell it's from Reddit before you even start, right? With the usernames. Okay. I find it amusing how by combining oxygen and hydrogen, you get both a massive flame and plain water at the same time. What are your favorite interesting uses of periodic elements, Michael?

• 35:22Speaker 00

  I mean, my favorite is always going to be indium. Like, that element is a metal, but it's not only a soft metal like sodium or lithium, but it is a soft metal that is safe to put in your mouth.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  It doesn't react in a harmful way with your body. You shouldn't swallow it because it again, it won't react with your body. It's it could cause a blockage or a clog. It could cut your insides. But and I don't know if my piece of indium is nearby, but I have a bar of indium. And it's a silvery bar, but you can take a bite out of it. It's like a really cold piece of chewing gum. It's quite hard, but you can bite a piece off and then it warms up in your mouth and you can chew it like bubble gum. So it's the element that can be and is safe to chew like bubble gum. If you want to see it happen, I made a short years ago where I took a bite out of my indium bar

• 36:23Speaker 00

  and chewed it up. There's some great close up shots of me chewing it. It doesn't fall apart in your mouth. You can hear the crystals tinning or twinning. So you hear this like it's like you're chewing on aluminum foil a little bit. You can hear them scraping, but it's not unpleasant.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Wow, where did you first discover that you could chew? How did this come up?

• 36:44Speaker 00

  You know, I think that I read it probably on like the Wikipedia page for indium. And I immediately went online and bought myself a piece of it so I could try this. And this this would have been a long time ago, like at least 10 years ago.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  Right, okay. I mean, guess what I'm going to be doing this afternoon? Going straight online and buying some because that's an experience that I also want to have.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Go get some indium. Well, yeah, and then I mean, it came in really handy. Like, I've used it to make gallenstan. Indium has a pretty low melting point. And if you mix it with gallium and tin, you can make gallenstan, which has a much lower melting point than gallium. So it has to get a lot colder before it turns solid. So if you want to have a bunch of liquid metal that's like safe and you don't want mercury, gallenstan is a good one.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Isn't there also, is it, what's the one that that's in Pepto Bismol? That's like another one.

• 37:42Speaker 00

  Oh, Bismuth.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  You would think, yeah, because isn't that supposed to be? Okay, look, my chemistry knowledge is, I would say, limited at best. But isn't that one surrounded by extremely toxic? Oh, it's next to lead, isn't it? And like polonium. It's kind of down there, but you can but but actually ends up being so non toxic that you can ingest it and it's completely fine. And it turns out it just is really good at smoothing smoothing over when your stomach acid is going crazy.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Oh, I know. It's it's it's wild the difference one proton can make.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 38:16Speaker 00

  Like, where is Bismuth? Bismuth, yeah, Bismuth has one more proton than lead. That's it. Like, okay, you're going to eat some lead. So lead has 82 protons in its nucleus. You consume that stuff, boom, your brain.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Game over, game over.

• 38:31Speaker 00

  Game over. Put one more proton in that atom. Now it's Bismuth. Now it's Pepto Bismol. Now it's a beautiful crystal that you can melt on your stove and make this cool thing. And then one more proton, it's polonium.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 38:44Speaker 00

  It's sandwiched right in between two famously bad things. And it's just like, hey, guys, uh, my friend group is weird.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  It's not me, it's them. If, um, if I ever did, uh, find myself in a situation where a genie granted me one wish and I wanted to wreak as much havoc as I possibly could, my wish would be to add

• 39:08Speaker 01

  one proton to every, to every nucleus in the universe. I think that would, um.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  That should be a future episode.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Oh, maybe we should.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  Because, I mean, the first thing I think of is that, like, every star is gonna become like twice as heavy.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  All that hydrogen goes from having one proton to two. Now they're all like, all helium, all the helium in the stars becomes lithium.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Lithium and it's gonna be bad.

• 39:40Speaker 00

  Ooh.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  It's gonna be bad. But also, suddenly, water will become helium, which wouldn't react to anything. What's one off from oxygen?

• 39:49Speaker 00

  One off from oxygen is fluorine. So with the fluorine, fluorine is really reactive. My, my chemistry isn't very good either. But if an H2O molecule became FHE2.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, although it wouldn't bond, it wouldn't bond.

• 40:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, HHE2F would not stay together as a molecule.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  No, but also fluorine is so reactive. I think you can set water on fire with fluorine. I think if you spray fluorine at steam, it will, it will catch fire.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. I've seen people blow fluorine onto a brick and the brick started burning. I mean, fluorine is what they use to remove, um, uranium from yellow cake. You just blow fluorine at it and the fluorine grabs the uranium. You get this uranium hexafluoride gas and that's what you put into the centrifuges in order to en- enrich it, to grab out the, the heavier isotopes. Not that I've been studying how to make a nuclear bomb or anything, but, uh, you know, I'm just saying.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's what someone who was studying to make a nuclear bomb would say. Yeah, okay, maybe we will do an episode. What would happen, what would happen across the board?

• 41:04Speaker 00

  What would happen if you added one neutron to every atom? That's like part two of the episode.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Although that would be less dramatic, wouldn't it? I mean, you'd probably get a bit more radioactive decay.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  The isotope universe, um, all the water becomes heavy water.

• 41:20Speaker 00

  Um, no, but it looks super heavy because we're adding neutrons even to the oxygen. Anyway, yeah, well, well, well, let's look into this. And in fact, in fact, we'd love to hear what you guys, uh, think. Do, do the writing for us. Just kidding, or am I?

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, look, you're sort of doing the writing for us when you're asking us questions. You're, you're the ones who are generating the content. Um, but as ever, if you, uh, if you would like to send us any more questions in, you can send them in the rest of science at gohanger.com or put them on the Reddit. We're loving, loving the stuff that's going on at Reddit at the moment. Or leave them as a comment on the video, wherever you are watching or listening to this.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  Please do that. Please follow us wherever you listen and stay curious. We'll see you next time.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Bye bye.

• 42:12Speaker 06

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