What Is Collagen All About?

0:00Hello and welcome to the rest is science. I am Michael Stevens. And I am Hannah Fry. 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 film is going to be about until we start? 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, if what you have to show me isn't cool, I can just take it. Take a little nap and I'm still doing my job. How dare you. How very dare you. Yeah, you said 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 to you, Michael, four fields notes. I've brought you one of these. Oh, it looks like a pill. It is. Oh, do you try to do that? It's a beauty influencer thing where they put their hand up to the camera.

1:01Do the beauty thing and try to tap your nails on it. Okay. So it's just a beige pill. It looks like the size of a typical vitamin, like a supplement type pill. 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? And where do they get the collagen from? And where do they get the collagen from? Now, okay, for this, I have a very good friend of mine called Zanvantelikan, who's just written this amazing book called Make Me Well. And the book is essentially, he's a trained doctor, as works 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

2:02that 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 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. 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. Ha! This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. 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. And for that, we're gonna need to go all the way back before Neanderthals even existed to a 1.7 million year old foot bone.

3:05Researchers have identified a tumor in it in the oldest known example of cancer in people, which really shows that cancer is far from a modern disease. Beated a disease so deeply rooted in our biology won't happen overnight. But today, Cancer Research UK scientists are discovering incredible ways to turn our biology against cancer. 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. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit canterresearchuk.org-restescience. What temperature it has to be at? Yeah, well, it doesn't even matter what temperature.

4:07Collagen 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 I've really practiced keeping certain temperatures going without 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, it'll be breaking down. But also, bacteria will be growing. So it's a whole chemistry experiment. But I've... So I'm eating collagen. But what's happening to me? Should I be supplementing my collagen intake? The point they were making is exactly the correct one, which is that actually across biological bodies, a phenomenal amount of protein is collagen. So 30% when it comes to the human body. I mean, all of your skin's toughness and stretch, you know, comes from collagen.

5:07If you kind of take your elbow and you pull the skin on your elbow, you feel that sort of resistance. That's basically what collagen is doing. OK, 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 it's a protein. 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, lots of the flexible strength in your bones, the end of your tendons, in your joints, all of those things is where you'll 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 protein in your body that is extremely fundamental to healthy living

6:09that 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 who have done this for ages, by the way, right? This is not a new thing that people have thought about ingesting collagen in order to improve how they're feeling. If you go back to the 12th century, this is from Zanzburg, by the way, according to several collagen industry websites, the Abyss and Scholar, Hildgard von Bingen, wrote about the use of animal extracts for treating joint pain. It was kind of a nice idea that if you're giving people a broth because they're feeling aches and pains. But then I think also at the same time, if you're sort of a 12th century peasant, I would imagine that a meaty broth would probably do quite a lot of good. Yeah, if I was a 12th century peasant, I'd be like, hey, give me a cruntrap supreme. Right, totally. But here is the thing. If eating collagen was the thing that allowed you to make collagen,

7:09then 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. And the thing 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 the type of things that you're eating. 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 in the knees. It's probably like, hey, we got some carbon and some hydrogen and we're gonna assemble a collagen protein to put in the knees. 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 this molecule 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 really complex protein into little short chains of amino acids, these peptides. And then they do, those little peptides

8:11do end up in your bloodstream. And what the collagen supplement industry say is that, yeah, okay, maybe you're not ingesting a collagen protein from a bit of pork and then suddenly it ends up making your embedded in your face, making you look so much younger. 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. But having the digested broken up collagen in your body makes your body go, hey, let's make some that aren't broken. And the thing is, is that these claims about what it can do are phenomenal, right?

9:13So 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. But read me the science jargon, I want to hear it. 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 the collagen 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 and 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. And invent flying cars and yeah. Is that exactly, say for the whole family,

10:14completely natural, right? Like these are the things that... Batteries included. Batteries included. Okay, so I'm going to get to the evidence of whether this stuff works or not, okay? But first, I just want to tell you a little bit more about the industry that's sort of the collagen stuff from an industry, because I think it is actually pretty interesting. Because the thing is, 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 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 eat in a hamburger, you're also kind of eating collagen because gelatin and collagen are essentially system molecules, 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 ingesting some good old collagen too.

11:16And 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. The meat industry across the world has an unimaginable amount of waste that you can extract collagen from. So 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

12:17with hydrochloric acids and high pressure steam in order to make these things, that's essentially what you're getting. There's marine collagen as well, which is the same thing, but with fish instead. It's actually, it's a little bit on the grim size. 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. Yeah, and I'm okay with that. You know, I'm not vegetarian. There are vegan, you know, gelatin, right? You can use agar, agar or pectin, but they don't have the same chemical formula exactly as collagen. 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,

13:19actually, 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. Interesting, yes. If you've got all of this waste products and, you know, even by the 1600s, people were making gelatin from it and selling gelatin. But, you know, this much gelatin isn't 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? 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 a whole psychological thing too, that like if the collagen comes from donkeys, suddenly it's worse than if it came from a cow,

14:19simply because of our cultural attitudes towards both of those animals. Yeah, although I think actually the stuff from donkeys is like considered really sort of like a leap level. 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. Oh, I don't want to eat kitten collagen. I don't want to eat gank 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 an 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

15:21of the tissue in our bodies. There is some evidence that it can stimulate more collagen production within your bodies. They've done this as animals 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 digested collagen the digestive collagen does travel to the skin of the mice and the rats, right? So it sort of does find its way there. There have been some randomized control trials on collagen two, where they have taken people, some given some people, Prasibos, given some people collagen, and have shown that there is a marginal improvement in the appearance of things like crows feet and skin elasticity, compared to if somebody just took a placebo alone. The thing is, right, so there is some evidence

16:21that 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 and the amount that you can move your joints versus the control group. Okay, so that all sounds great. I mean, giving 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 fun to have particular groups,

17:22there have been examples before where people have run a trial over and 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 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 impact than it actually does. So I think I would take this stuff with a bit of a pinch of salt. 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 college and 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 going to happen. But I also think that this is something that basically doesn't really have any adverse side effects because our bodies are completely designed to process these kinds of proteins, right?

18:24We have a meeting passed and I think that that's generally fine. My only sort of caveat again on that is like, they're crazy expensive, man. When they wrap them up in posh boxes, you're not, you're paying for boiled chicken feet. You know, just remember that that is what you're doing. You can buy powdered collagen, I think, and it's always super fancy. It's never like at the, you know, save a lot store 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. And 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, like I have to say, I have to confess, I do actually, I like, I do take collagen supplements, I'm 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.

19:24I 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. Sure, sure. It just sort of makes me feel a bit better. And I'm fine with that. I'm fine with my powdered chicken feet. Okay, yeah, there's lots of psychological effect of just feeling like you've got some control. You're doing something. You remember 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. Even if the effect is really small. But that is the reason why you would not find me selling fancy pants, collagen supplements that cost 60 pounds a month. At least for the time being, we'll see how the next, if I get really desperate. Whereas for me, this is a perfect segue into my ad segment, I've got 59.99 donkey collagen pills, use code Triss to autograph each pill for you. Imagine what a twist. What a twist, yeah.

20:25But yeah, if you do want to find out more about wellness, this book is really great. Yeah, what's it called again? Make me well. It's, and it's by Zan Van Telekens, it's a really great read. It's probably a very crowded space. Books about wellness and the science behind them. So what makes this one stand out to you? I smell it because Zan Van Telekens my friend. So, yeah, you trust him, he's a good. I trust him. I trust him. He's a very good egg. Yeah. He's a very good egg. I was going to say that I've got to read, make me well and watch sliding doors, but the sliding doors reference might be out of order. It was an previous ever site. It was. It's true. It's very true. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. Think of some things that glow. Okay, fireflies, glow sticks, the Northern Lights.

21:29They're very cool, but what if we could replicate that glow inside our bodies and what if doing so could help us save lives? Because Cancer Research UK scientists, they're investigating whether a special fluorescent dye that sticks to prostate cancer cells could tackle an ongoing challenge in the operating room removing every single trace of cancer. Because when cancer cells are glowing and easy to spot, surgeons can precisely remove them, leaving healthy cells untouched, meaning there's less chance of the cancer returning and fewer nasty side effects. Cancer Research UK's vision is a world where everybody lives longer, better lives free from the fear of cancer, with breakthroughs like this leading to kinder, more effective treatments. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research and breakthroughs, and how you can support them, visit canterresearchuk.org slash restistice.

22:32Should we do some questions? What do you think? 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. So it's real science, but it's somewhat silly. I don't remember if this was a winner of the Ig Nobel Prize or not, but there was one study that 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 want to know why we do that. And that's a prime candidate for the Ig Nobel Prize. It's real. It does make you think, do you have a favorite? The thing is, why do I imagine? When you hear about Ig Nobel prizes, and I think that the hand people knew what they were doing,

23:33right? I think that they went into that thinking it was a silly idea. There's some really amazing ones like someone who's made a bra that can double as a gas mask and an emergency, right? Like, come on guys, it's 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 outside of service. My favorite example of that is about the drip on a teapot. So there was some fluid dynamics researches who spent a astonishing amount of time trying to understand why teapot's drip and ended up coming up with the design for a drip-less teapot. I didn't know whether it won the Ig Nobel Prize, but it was certainly in the running for it. And people thought it was purely for their amusement, but actually, no, that was such quite a nice little bit of fluid dynamics. Got a nice bit. Yeah, exactly, exactly. I think sometimes I imagine it starts serious

24:33like with the how much do your hands weigh, thing? People that may have been looking into our proprioception, could have helped people who have 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 gonna be fun. There are some amazingly silly science papers, though. There are, people have done some amazing stuff. One of my favorites was where, I'm gonna let me get the exact title of the paper, SilDenifil accelerates re-entrainment of circadian rhythms after advancing light schedules. Okay? Sure. 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. Yeah, but see, that's how you phrase it. You know, don't pretend you're all important, you guys, don't pretend you're all seriously important. You're there turning the lights on and off again

25:34for the poor little hamsters in their cage. We know what you're up to. It sounds like a good way to study viagra's effect on jet lag. Okay, which are two profitable first world concerns, okay? This is very interesting. Go on, what's your one? Here's one that I've actually talked to my daughter about a lot. And funny enough, the people who won this ignoble prize have actually won two. The first ignoble prize they won, who are they? I should tell you that. It's David, who, and Patricia Yang. They have won the ignoble 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. Oh my god, I love this paper. This is, I love this paper. 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

26:35is that some animals have much larger bladders and they've got a lot more liquid to evacuate. But, and they have a much heavier stream, but there's more. So the small animals with a little 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 why the heck is wombat poop cubic. 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.

27:37First, wombat's absorb a lot of liquid from their stool before they pass it. And so it gets basically like, it cooked like a kiln. Not really, it's not hot in there, but it gets, it's like air-dried clay. 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've got like a loop of string and I'm gonna hold it tight on two opposite sides. And then I'm gonna 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 tissues thicker are pinched together and that causes these, these pinches 90 degrees and either other directions. So you get this rectangular prism of fecal matter

28:39and then as it breaks off, that completes the cube shape. So there, that's how wombat's do it. Thank you, David Hue and Patricia Yang. Michael, you really are one of the classiest humans I've ever met to be able to do a little demonstration of a wombat sphincter and it not be weird. This is why I like it very much. You enjoy working with me. This is a wombat in testin', their sphincters are holes, round holes. I can do a whole demonstration on that if you'd like. This is a different other way of saying sorry. Okay, right? After that joy, the next question was from Sidoth 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.

29:42And it has happened, the ancient Greeks, when they were counting, ancient Greeks weren't that great with numbers, they were much better with 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. So if it was one wombat, right? The one wombat was like, oh, well, that's the thing I'm counting. So then two womats, that's where the numbers start. So for them, the first real number was a two, right? Then this is 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.

30:42And actually, lots of languages have 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, too, very much definitely comes after one. And we've mentioned before the virtue and Russell works. Would you have on your shelf, don't you? Yeah, I do. I'm not gonna go grab it because it's three huge volumes. But you have from 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 tell us what one is. But yeah, I think you're right. I think that we already know that there are

31:43existing 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. If you have the property of tunas, then I need one in each hand. I can put one in each hand. And they may just say, either it's gonna 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 entirely possible. But with mathematics today, based on the piano app, axioms like, no, we very much say that two is the successor function applied to one and you can keep going. Or you could say, two is like the set of one. But wait, now we've got one and we have the set of one.

32:43Those are two things. Oh shoot, we've just invented two. So that's how we're doing it today. And I think I strongly suspect that's how we're gonna be doing it for long into the future. But nonetheless, I totally agree that there is definitely an intuitive way to do that. Okay, here's last question. This is by Putt Specific 5731 from Reddit. You 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? I mean, my favorite is always going to be Indian. 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. Right. It doesn't react in a harmful way with your body.

33:44You shouldn't swallow it because it, again, it won't react with your body. It could cause a blockage or a clog. It could cut your insides. But, and I don't know if my piece of India is nearby, but I have a bar of India, 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 not an 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 Indian bar 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 twining. So you hear this like, it's like your chewing on aluminum foil a little bit. You can hear them scraping, but it's not unpleasant. Wow, why did you first discover that you could chew? How did this come up?

34:44You know, I think that I read it probably on the Wikipedia page for India, and I immediately went online and bought myself a piece of it so I could try this. And this would have been a long time ago, like at least 10 years ago. Right, okay. I mean, guess what I'm gonna be doing this afternoon, going straight online and buying some because that's an experience that I also want to have. Go get some India. Oh yeah, and then it came in really handy. Like I've used it to make Galen Stan. India has a pretty low melting point, and if you mix it with gallium and tin, you can make Galen Stan, which has a much lower melting point than gallium. So it has to get a lot colder before it turns solid. So if you wanna have a bunch of liquid metal that's like safe and you don't want mercury, Galen Stan is a good one. Isn't there also, is it what's the one that's in Pepto Bismol? That's like another one. Oh, business. I think, yeah, because isn't that supposed to be,

35:46okay, 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 actually ends up being so non-toxic that you can ingest in, it's completely fine. And it turns out it's just, it's really good. It's smoothing, smoothing over when you are, stomach acid is going crazy. Oh, I know, it's wild. The difference one proton can make. Dytally. Like, where is Bismuth? Bismuth, yeah, Bismuth has one more proton than lead. That's it. Like, okay, you're gonna eat some lead. So lead has 82 protons and it's nucleus. You consume that stuff. Boom, your brain. Gammaiva. Gammaiva. Gammaiva. 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. Oh my God. It's sandwiched right in between two famously bad things.

36:49And it's just like, hey guys, my friend group is weird. Hehehe. It's not me. It's them. If I ever did 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 one proton to every nucleus in the universe. I think that would, um, that should be a future episode. Oh, man, we should. Because, I mean, the first thing I think of this that like every star is gonna become like twice as heavy. Yeah. 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. Like lithium and it's gonna be bad. It's gonna be bad. But also suddenly water will become a damage when it reactor thing. What's one of them from oxygen?

37:50One off from oxygen is fluorine. So with the fluorine, fluorine is really reactive. My chemistry isn't very good either. But if an H2O molecule became F-H-E2, yeah, although it wouldn't bond, it wouldn't bond. Yeah, H-E2F would not stay together as a molecule. 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 catch fire. 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 uranium from yellow cake. You just blow fluorine at it. The fluorine grabs the uranium. You get this uranium hexafluoride gas and that's what you put into the centrifuges in order to enrich it to grab out the heavier isotopes.

38:51Not that I've been studying how to make a nuclear bomb or anything, but, you know, just saying. Yeah, that's what someone who was studying to make a nuclear bomb would say. Yeah, okay, maybe we'll do an episode. What would happen? What would happen across the board? What would happen if you added one neutron to every atom? That's like part two of the episode. Well, that would be less dramatic, wouldn't it? I mean, you probably get a bit more radioactive decay. The isotope universe, all the water becomes heavy water. No, but it looks super heavy because we're adding neutrons even to the oxygen. Anyway, yeah, well, let's look into this. And in fact, in fact, we'd love to hear what you guys think. Do the writing for us, just kidding, or am I? Well, I mean, look, you've sort of doing the writing for us when you're asking us questions. You're the one who's generating the content. But as ever, if you would like to send us any more questions in, you can send them in to restassignance.gohangon.com or put them on the Reddit. We're loving, loving the stuff that's going on at the Reddit at the moment. Or leave them as a comment on the video wherever you are

39:51watching or listening to this. Please do that. Please follow us wherever you listen and stay curious. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Ramon, Calm Heel, لمman chi. Listen, say good-bye and keep2017 you boring. And without getting even statement from the 10th. At that flight. With 350 passengers covered. Ard. The Great Game. We are just reaching struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian. Holden Derussians accountable is world war. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. Man in the Kremlin is playing Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not. You're the Prime Minister. If done, not me!

40:55We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. And disseminated into an operation order or frago. A frago that says to kill the president of Russia. Yes. New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're lying, soldier! Are you Sergeant Tom McDuff? Duffy! An audio drama journey like no other. Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons. Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action forever. We're Britain plays its strongest arm against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy! Bear hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.