Bacteria Overlords: The Invisible Power Within Us

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), co-hosts Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole dive into the fascinating world of bacteria. From the trillions of bacteria that live within us to the ones found in the harshest environments on Earth, they explore the vital role bacteria play in ecosystems and human health. With humor and a sprinkle of existential crisis, they also tackle topics like antibiotic resistance, gut health, and how bacteria may even influence our behavior. Tune in to discover why bacteria are more than just the "bad guys" and how they truly rule the world.

Perfect for microbiology enthusiasts, nature lovers, and anyone curious about the unseen organisms that shape life as we know it.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to know about nature and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura.
And I'm Katy. And today, we are going to do another episode where we talk about, what are we, we should really call this series something. It's the one, we're gonna break down.
Yeah, we're gonna break down another taxonomy and make it a lot more fun than what we're saying right now.
Yeah, yeah, we're gonna talk about taxonomy.
No, but today we're gonna talk about bacteria, which is actually a pretty cool topic. And like we said before, a lot of our audience, they are nature novices, they have an interest in science or whatever, but they either didn't go to school for it, they don't have the background that Laura and I do, and so we just figure some of these basic 101s going a little bit deeper than what you would get in a normal class is worth it.
We dive down the rabbit hole so you don't have to.
Yeah, yeah, cause that is definitely what happens.
Yes, oh my God. And this one, for sure, I-
I can't wait to hear what you found out.
And nothing even exciting, cause half the time my rabbit holes are pointless. Like I just get on a single strain of thought, especially with this one. I went down a big rabbit hole about like reproduction rates.
Like, you'll see why, but yeah, I just go down some useless rabbit holes. Useful for me, but you know, that's about it.
Okay, well, before we get started, I do have some nature news. This one is, we actually talked about this earlier, with this episode, earlier in the season, when we talked about, or I talked about like gut flora and stuff, and we're actually gonna talk about it more today. But this news article is the preclinical study finds gut fungi influence neuroimmunity and behavior.
Say that one more time.
Yeah. Say what? Basically, that there are fungi in your intestine that can not only protect it from injury, but can actually influence your behavior.
So-
Okay, so I know gut health is very important, but hold on, wait, question here. Protect your gut or protect itself like-
Against intestinal injury.
Did you just say against?
Against. How do you say it? Against?
Against, yeah.
Protect you against. Yeah, I guess I normally say it that way. I think as I was gonna, I had an I coming next, against intestinal, so my authors are like, eh.
Anyway, so like we had mentioned in a previous episode, your brain is connected to your gut and vice versa, and you'd like to think you're an independent thinker, listener, but secretly, you are being controlled by fungi and bacteria, and your autonomy is an illusion. So, gut stuff, we could talk about an entire episode just about that, but this one is specifically talking about fungi in the gut of the host, and they've linked it between a major immune pathway in the landing of the intestine and signals in the nervous system that impact the animal's behavior, specifically social behavior, and they were testing this in a mouse.
I mean, I wouldn't be too surprised, because I mean, you think about, like, if your gut health is really off, like, I mean, you get cranky quick. Like, I mean, so it does...
Well, and the other fungi we know definitely control certain things, like the ones that control ants, like, straight out of control. Yeah. This one just kind of maybe control.
Weird. Weird.
Yeah, but I mean, it's still, I mean, just like, I mean, not to get too philosophical here, but just like ecosystems are connected, you know, you pull one thing out, and it has a ripple effect. I mean, your body is very much so, or the same way that, you know, you might feel pain here or there, but really what's causing the injury is like way over here, you know what I mean? And so, I mean, your body's connected.
It's, human bodies are just weird, dude.
We are weird. Every once in a while, I take a step back, and I think about that, like...
I can't too much, or else I have like a mind crisis. I know what you mean. I'm becoming like too self-aware of my awareness, and then I'm like, shit, I need to stop.
It's become too meta. I remember specifically thinking one time about how freaky my fingers must be to horses. Don't you think, like animals without fingers must be like, they have creepy tentacles, like on their hands.
Yeah, that would be weird. That would be weird.
Like your naked fingers.
Canned.
Just weird.
Like you're naked. It's how I feel about like the cats, or like a naked mole rat is just like a gross, and they look at us and they're like, you guys are gross, you know?
So as Katy said, this is going to be another deep dive. And we had done one before on Fungi.
So we kind of did like, we did like a geology 101. I mean, that wasn't like in the taxonomy, but that was like another one where we kind of like did a 101 course. What is wrong with my chair?
Like the bottom of it. I got like this thing. You know how like whenever your sock isn't sitting right, and you're like, this is just not comfortable.
That is the situation I am in right now, right? Like the legs are just spun funny. Anyway, I am good now.
That was so abrupt.
Just like, I couldn't get it to spin right. I don't know what the problem was. Fracteria 101.
Right. But that we decided that it would be kind of fun to dive into all the taxonomy. We're just gonna get more and more specific as time goes on.
And before we talk about the bacteria specifically, I just kind of wanted to explain what is taxonomy, because we mentioned it multiple times, and listeners might be like, eh? So, taxonomy is the classification of organisms based on shared characteristics. I talk about this at work all the time, about like what makes a reptile a reptile, and things like that.
I wish I had your brain, though, for memorizing the taxonomy like that, because you are really good. No, but you are really good at peace. And again, we talked about this in last week's episode, like the wow child, you very much so grew up with your mom who fostered that, and family who fostered that with you, where I just never got that.
Humans love to organize things. They love to put things into groups, and it helps us make sense of the world. And scientists are no different.
In fact, we're probably the most anal about it. And so a long time ago, scientists looked at the living things around us and said, hey, some of them are looking alike, and some of them look different. So they started making groups.
You might remember some of this from your high school biology class, depends on how far away that was. But all life can be categorized into eight levels. Each gets more and more specific.
So remember this, what do you call this? An idiom, an acronym? I don't, anyway, it's dignified kings play chess on fat girls' stools.
Acronym.
But is that just the letters? What's when you put words to them? I don't know.
Wow, this makes us not sound smart at all. We're talking about time-saving, and we're like, what do you call that? Hey, we're talking about science, not English.
Yeah. But also, this is, again, and we brought this up in another episode. We were like, oh my God, I had a flashback to college.
This is, like, taxonomy is that for me, because remember how much taxonomy you had to know in college, and you learn it, and then you freeze because you start second-guessing yourself.
Well, it was in my brain, and then immediately gone after the class. I would not hold on to those scientific names.
No.
So anyway, the acronym stands for the first level's domain, then kingdom, then phylum, then class, order, and what was your sentence? Dignified kings play chess on fat green stools.
Is that the one you've always used?
No, I've never learned the D before.
Oh.
He said.
As soon as I said it, I was like.
He said it was such a straight face too. Yeah, cause I was always keep pots clean or family gets sick.
Keep pots clean. No, I never learned that one. In a high school, I remember learning.
We did, I did Kings play cards on fat green stools.
Interesting.
But we never talked about domains.
Clean or family gets sick.
That's it.
Yeah, that's right, right?
Is so appropriate for today's topic.
Yeah, very true.
It really is.
Yeah, that's what I've always learned. Even in college, I think that was the one that I remember you using all the time.
I'm also loving reading my own outline here because my brain was obviously thinking of this acronym. And as I'm labeling out domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and that it's supposed to be species, but I just wrote stools.
Stools.
Stools. So each level, each of those eight levels is called a taxon. And in between all of them, there's lots of supra and subs and all that.
There's no way to ever remember all of that unless we're truly your taxonomist by career.
And love it. Like you have to have a weird passion for taxonomy to remember all this.
So in the past, like I said, we have discussed fungi in detail. So in that context, fungi are in the domain eukarya, which means they have a nucleus with DNA inside of it. And the kingdom is fungi.
So that's all the further we went. Today, we're going to do an overview of bacteria. And that's freaking huge because the domain is bacteria and that's it.
So it's completely different than things that have DNA inside and all that stuff in their nucleus.
And I'll get into a little more. Yeah, I'll get a little bit into that too. But yeah, it is, yeah, it is just so, so different.
Right, like we are different from bacteria at the highest of levels.
Oh my goodness, yeah.
We could be more different. Yeah. And that's taxonomy.
So hopefully like that's just the, the super little scratch of the surface.
That's what we're gonna do in these episodes. Yeah, just to put it in, yeah, and to put it, kind of put it into perspective of where we are. Cause they say like all the time, like your DNA is, you know, certain percentage of the same as a banana.
And it's like, what the heck?
Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Well, it depends on how high in the taxonomic tree of life you are.
Yes.
And so we're gonna start real broad with these episodes. We're gonna go through the domains, then the kingdoms, then the phylums, and we'll see how far we get and if anyone's still interested.
Listen, if we make it all the way to like a species, we're like stools. We are doing a school episode.
I mean, we've already gotten requests for specific species, bats. We have, yeah. But it'd be kind of fun to work our way down.
Yeah, it will be. That's what she said.
That's a good one.
You walked right into it. All righty.
Like I constantly do.
All right, so Laura went over the taxonomy a little bit. And she did mention about the, you mentioned eukaryotes and how they're at the, in the domain, they're completely different. We have bacteria.
So, all right, so what is bacteria then? Well, they are single-celled organisms that are found pretty much everywhere on Earth. Now, single-celled meaning that, like Laura said, they have no nucleus in a single cell.
So.
Really get much more contemporary than that. I guess nucleus is a weird word for some people, but.
Yeah, so, and I'm gonna get into why that is important here because that is literally the key. Like Laura said, at the domain level, it is something completely different. So we as humans, our body, just go back again to whatever high school class you just came from and Laura's, you know, situation of taxonomy class, go back to that same class and think about your human body.
Our body is made up of like so many cells that carry out all of our different functions. Scientists estimate that to do what humans need to do, that we have approximately 30 trillion cells in the human body, 30 trillion. I don't even know how they estimate that.
And apparently, it fluctuates a little bit, but like how?
Well, right, because you're always dying and you're always making new ones.
Right, but, and so that is 30 trillion cells. And so a bacterium is literally one. Like one of those, because it's a single cell, so it's literally one.
Well, we're made up of 30 trillion. Okay, and see, this is where I have like my, my very self-aware when I start thinking of this kind of stuff where I'm like, oh my God, like the desk in front of me is made of anna, like, I can't like. So yeah, yeah, yeah, like suddenly I am very aware that I'm just made of 30 trillion cells and like nothing else is keeping me together, but those 30 trillion cells, creepy as all heck anyway.
So bacteria then is just is just literally a single cell. And like Laura said, it lacks a nucleus and other key internal structures that we have. And therefore, bacteria are called prokaryotes.
So and like we said, there's prokaryotes and eukaryotes right at the top. Eukaryotes make up what we typically think of when we think of animals, plants, humans, of course, anything that has more than one cell. Prokaryotes, however, are the dominant living creatures on Earth.
There's way more, way, way, way more of them than eukaryotes or multi-cell organisms. Bacteria and their single cell cells contain a cell wall, cell membrane.
Single cell cells.
Well, that's a lot.
Single cell cells.
Single cell cells. They contain a cell wall, a cell membrane, a cytoplasm, which is just like the gel in it.
The gooey bit.
Yeah. Ew, the gooey bits. Ribosomes and chromosome, although some bacteria, of course, have exceptions to these because it's science, and so there's always exceptions.
But we're not going to get into the exceptions of those because they'll just be way too boring.
And Laura, I was going to say nobody wants to hear about cell biology right now.
No, I don't even. So what is so important about the nucleus that it is like, that is what makes it so, so, so different. So if you go back into one, again, childhood science classes, you'll remember that the more complex the organism, the nucleus controls and regulates the activities of the cell.
Example, like the growth and metabolism and carries out, carries the genes or the hereditary information. And it's like the brain of the cell, like the brain of the cell. Yeah, it's where everything is relayed.
All the information is relayed. Bacteria don't need a nucleus to help them reproduce because instead of doing the fun stuff while reproducing, bacteria reproduce during binary fission. So binary fission is just a replication process that copies the bacteria DNA that's just kind of floating around, splits that single cell into two identical daughter cells, and I say daughter cells in quotes because in this case in science, it's not talking about like gendering the cells per se, but females are the only things that can reproduce asexually.
So sorry guys, without us you would be in fact dead. So the simplification of a bacteria's reproductive process then allows bacteria to replicate at an extremely fast process because it doesn't have the coding. I don't know if there's another easier way you could explain it, Laura, but like the nucleus, there's so much of a process that happens in there, it's almost like it slows it down to reproduce it.
Like you're copying a brain.
Yeah, every single cell needs to have that whole thing, the whole function, whatever that cell is meant to do, is completely being duplicated with all your genetic information again and again and again. Whereas a bacteria is just like, bloop, split, like let's split, bloop. I love that sound effect.
It's exactly how I picture it.
Yeah, bloop, just every time. I wish that that's how it would be like, what is that sound? Oh, it's just bacteria reproducing.
But because of how fast it can reproduce, a bacterium cell can replicate into as many as 1 billion individual bacteria in just 10 hours.
Holy crap.
Which is insane. But again, like if it doesn't have a nucleus, it doesn't, it's not very complex. It's got one cell, one job, like without the nucleus, most bacteria's DNA is just chilling in a circular ring.
Yeah, it's very short, it's all right here, there's not a whole lot of complexity to it. It simplifies the reproduction of that and the duplication of the DNA to make very cell because it's just so simple. And so that's what makes the binary fission for the asexual reproduction so quick, so efficient that it can get to what, a billion individuals in 10 hours and some of these faster ones.
So I mean, imagine if like any multicellular organism could produce that fast and that much.
It'd be terrifying. It would be sustainable.
No, there would have to be so many errors, like so many errors in duplicating that DNA. Like we don't have like 80 eyes, like somebody would have to have, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It would be so messed up because they're so simple, and it's just one cell, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, they're going to reproduce. There's going to be mutations and stuff, but not a whole lot. Anyway, I did try to look up what is the fastest reproducing eukaryote, but I really honestly couldn't find much.
It's got to be something with not very many cells, but like a sample of eukaryote.
Yeah, but I couldn't really find much because I mean cells themselves.
I don't know.
But I mean you think about like cells themselves can reproduce quickly. It's the cells that can reproduce quickly, but like the sexual reproduction of part of it, like that is, you know what I mean, like that is slow. Like it can't divide.
Like sex is slow.
Not very many eukaryotes. Like sponges and a couple other things, but not many.
Yeah, and not quickly, not that quickly. Grief. So bacteria, though, and I think Laura's gonna go into this a little bit later, but bacteria are vital to the plant's ecosystems, and their characteristics help them to do so.
Like all of this, because they can reproduce so quickly. They do play an important role. So while some species can live under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure, which they can literally be found everywhere, from like soil, rocks, ocean, even arctic and Antarctic snow, and I was reading a bunch of news articles, this was a rabbit hole I went down, that we have been finding single cell bacteria on the outside of the International Space Station.
Whoa. Yeah, talk about terrifying. Yeah, that was a rabbit hole I went down.
Just looking up what we all found.
Like our bacteria from Earth?
Stuff that we've never found before. Whether it's from Earth, but I mean, you figure the International Space Station has been up there for a while. Something.
Yes, they've been zapped by radiation, radiation, radiation, making crazy. Oh my gosh. That's terrifying.
That is. So anyway, that'll keep you up at night.
So bacteria really, I mean, they can live and adapt to pretty much anywhere, but because they are so simple, like, it doesn't take much. So like anything else, species-wise, that, you know, we consider animals and everything, there are several different types, each with their own descriptions. While most other multicellular organisms or eukaryotes have many characteristics that divide them from one another, like you think of all the birds we've talked about, or you know what I mean?
Like they're so different on how they divide and how you know which is which. Bacteria, being single-celled organisms, you only have so much to go with. You know what I mean?
Like, as far as like how to divide them up, you're working with very little. So to divide bacteria into types, they're divided by shapes and gram-positive versus negative. So dividing them by shapes is great.
Or microflashback.
Right? Just vomit in my seat right now. I hated that glass.
But dividing them by shapes is good, because that means even like my 6-year-old could do it if he really needed to.
It's not these bacteria, Lou.
Could you, buddy?
Thanks.
So there are several different groups. Some sources say that there are 3 different types. 10, 5, there are so many.
I think that there are always, yeah, at this level of stuff, they're still discovering things or deciding what they wanna call things.
Because it's so small. So who knows? I just picked the 3 ones that you're always going to see in all of these lists.
And because it just makes it, it simplifies it. So these are the 3 most common ones. And they're spherical or coquiae, rhod, bacilli, or spirosporilla.
And they can exist as single, just floating by itself. They can come in pairs, chains, or in clusters.
They're just hanging out together. It's like a flock, a flock of bacteria. I mean, I guess a cluster.
I was going to say, what do you call a group of bacteria?
Yeah, it must be a cluster.
Apparently a cluster. Anyway, so the other way that bacteria is divided, as I said earlier, is through the gram staining. Now hang on with me here, because this is terrifying, but also another way that we characterize them.
So gram stain is basically a test that you run with violet dye, iodine, and a counter stain. And depending on the outcome, it will either fall into two groups, gram positive or gram negative. So why does that matter?
Because while this test can't tell you the exact species of bacteria you're dealing with, gram negative bacteria tend to be more resistant to antibodies because of the makeup of their cell wall. Gram negatives can build resistance very quickly, too. So that's terrifying.
Because remember, how fast can any bacteria reproduce? We used the example from earlier. One billion individuals in ten hours.
Gram negative reproduce quickly, therefore becoming resistant to antibodies very, very quickly. So while some bacteria do not respond to gram staining, of course, again, always exceptions, for the most part, if you look at a bacteria under the microscope, the shape and the gram stain can help you kind of narrow down what you're dealing with for the most part. Which of course is helpful whenever you're talking about bacteria in let's say a hospital setting or something, because then you can kind of know what antibiotics and stuff to try, especially when it comes to the gram stain, which is why that one is so important.
So let's look at a few examples of bacteria and break them down into groups real quick here. So some of the more popular gram-positive bacteria, which are the ones that typically respond well to antibodies, they do have a thicker cell wall, they don't build up quite the same resistance, but there's staphylococci, streptococci, pneumococci, and the bacteriums that are responsible for things like diphtheria, which are coronabacterium diphtheriae and anthrax, which is bacillus anthrax. I just blew through that with confidence.
I don't even know if that's how you say everything.
You definitely need the first three, right?
For sure. Okay. All right.
We're just going to keep going then. Because that's right.
And I think, I mean, listeners, even if you're not familiar with streptococci, you are familiar with strep throat.
Pneumonicocci, pneumonia. And so as the scientific names apply, streptococci, okay, cocci, what was that earlier, it tells you the shape. And, you know, so it already gives away.
And so you can kind of start to group with, at least with most of the grand positive ones, at least scientists have made it easy in that, like, as you go through the scientific name, it kind of, it tells you what they are. Yeah, it is convenient. Yeah, it is convenient.
So any scientist naming bacteria is like, they have their craft together, and then...
They didn't show up in our badly named episode.
Right? With so many other... Oh, gosh.
Anyway. So again, there are exceptions, like I keep saying, because, like, Staphylococci includes Staphylococcus aureus, or more commonly called MRSA, which we all have probably have heard of MRSA and it can be extremely difficult to treat because it can gain quite a resistance to antibodies. So, just like anything else, resistance can happen in a variety of ways, but just like anything, if you train to defeat something, eventually it can happen, and that's kind of what the gram-positive ones have done.
So, like, looking at some gram-negative examples, Klebsiella pneumoniae, I don't know, but it's a rod shape, which also could cause a different type of pneumonia. Bloodstream infections, wound or surgical site infections, and meningitis. Ascineobacter, and specifically Ascineobacter bumani, which are also rod shape, which, again, their names don't really tell you.
So I feel like the ones who are naming gram-positives kind of have their crap together. The ones naming all the gram-negatives don't know.
And you said the gram-negatives are the ones that are usually more resistant.
Yes, because if you think of all the ones that I just said, they are typically the ones that are going to be found in hospital settings that are super resistant to drugs. Or, yeah, the antibiotics, whatever. And these are like the...
The gram-negative ones are the scary ones. They don't have... If you're looking at it at like a cellular level, like the gram-negative ones, they have...
They don't have as thick of a cell wall as the other ones do. It's made up of different layers of a couple different things, and so it's much more resistant, almost like it has its own little armor put on there, whereas the gram-positive...
But the armor's thinner?
Yes, but better. Yeah, so it's like the other one is thicker of the same stuff.
Gotcha.
You know what I mean? And so this is like a layered approach. So it would almost be like if you took paper and layered it with steel, obviously that's better than like a hundred sheets of paper kind of thing.
So if we look at gram-negative in the hospital, like I said, these are typically going to be the ones that are more resistant. You know, in hospitals, as clean as the facilities try to stay, you figure if you're going to be at a hospital, typically you're sick. So there are tons of things causing infection there already.
And a lot of people come into there with their own bacteria on their skin because we all have bacteria all over us anyway.
Which we talked about in one of the previous episodes.
We did, yep. And so you come in there with all the bacteria on your body, you're exposed to everybody else's bacteria that you're not normally used to, whether it's dirt, water, you know, that somebody brought in, whatever.
It's like hospitals are just like a collecting duct for, and it happens to be the gram-negative because a lot of the time the gram-negative ones, they won't react to even like bleach or most cleaning, which is terrifying. I will say, when my dad passed away from cancer, we did an autopsy on him, and he actually had some sort of infection from a bacteria, and I can't remember exactly what it was. I have his paperwork around here somewhere, I should look it up.
But he actually caught some sort of gram-negative bacterial infection from being in the hospital.
Yeah.
And people are like, well, you've signed paperwork. Whenever you're admitted, if you look at your paperwork, if you read through it, it says there is a strong chance that you could get something. And it's because no matter how hard you clean, these little buggers are resistant to it.
That and it's like the whole, like, they are evolving, too. Like, we're killing off the weak ones, only the strong ones survive.
Only the strong ones are surviving. Stronger and stronger and stronger. So anyway, so basically, if you're gonna look at bacterium, I mean, while it is very simple, you have your shapes, and then they're divided by whether you're more resistant, least resistant, which have to do with the cell wall.
And two, whenever you say gram-negative versus positive, whenever you put the dye on them, they actually do... Is it positive turns purple and negative turns red?
I would assume.
Or I think that's what it is. I can't remember. Or it might be vice versa.
I don't remember. But whenever you do look at them under a microscope, I mean, whenever you do the gram staining, you physically see they're a different color, so that's how you know which one is which.
I can actually picture it.
Yeah, because we did that in college and stuff too. So anyway, regardless of how simple they are, they're simple, but there's also a crap ton of them. So while there's not a whole lot to characterize them with, they're also very different.
Other than looking at the DNA of each cell, I don't know how they divide these things up. Yeah, because by physical, that's the only shape, and then the gram staining, and that's it, everything else. You would have to look at it at a DNA level.
Yeah, you would have to. So anyway, that's just breaking down the characteristics and the different types of bacteria that you can have.
Cool. Well, I'm going to touch on why they matter, for the good or the bad.
Because believe it or not, they do.
You might notice a trend here when we discuss functions and purpose of any taxa. They're all essential to life on this planet.
Believe it or not.
All ecosystems. Yeah. Everything is entwined.
Nothing can live without something else. Fungi, which we already talked about, essential. Bacteria, also essential.
So most of the time when you hear about bacteria, you're associating it with something bad or harmful. But poor bacteria, they get a bad rap, because most of them are actually beneficial. In fact, Katy, this is going to like send you in a spiral.
So you just said...
Okay, here we go again.
You said we have one trillion cells in our body, right?
30 trillion.
30 trillion, 30 trillion, okay. So... Uh-oh.
Your body is mostly bacteria. There are 10 times more bacteria than human cells in and on you.
That's just like not even fair. You know what I mean? Like we're outnumbered.
I'm outnumbered.
By the way you're put together, there are 10 times more of these cells than there are cells of you. How are you even you when there's 10 times more something else in you at all?
I'm a walking bacterium. Really, that's all we are. We're just walking bacteria.
Yes.
Okay, guys, that has been For the Love of Nature. Laura and I are going to go breathe in a paper bag now. We're just walking bacteria, guys.
That's all that we are.
Walking bacteria. Ten times? Twice, maybe, but ten?
Okay, so you figured it out. Okay, hold on, hold on.
I'm trying to even picture such a thing in my head. I'm imagining that you're so jammed packed, like at the cellular level. I know.
It's like you, bacteria, bacteria, you, bacteria, you. Like, you're like, like, like, outnumbered, I'm outnumbered, I'm outnumbered. You're expanding foamed with bacteria.
Yes, yes.
I get, well, like, I mean, so it covers our skin. It covers our intestines.
Yeah. I think your intestines not just cover it, I think they're pretty thick with it.
Yeah, yeah. And so that's what I'm thinking, like, I guess, is that, because I mean, your intestines are really long.
Is that where they, most of them are? I mean, right, because they're not going to live one, maybe in your stomach, but definitely not like in your, they're not supposed to be in your blood, and they're not supposed to be in a lot of other places. So I would assume gut, like, just digestive tract.
Okay, so your, together your small and large intestines are about 15 feet or more in length. So if most of that, and that's, it is a lot of surface area, plus like floating room, you know what I mean? Like it's surface area.
Yeah.
And it's rippled. It's, you know what I mean? Like it's not...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but like...
It's not like that. Your intestines aren't like a slight, like a slide. You know what I mean?
It's like a whoo!
Well, right. But at the same time, like, I still don't understand how there's 10 times more because your intestines are made out of cells. You'd think it's just a one for one, like, but it's gotta be...
We're just walking bacteria.
I'm just gonna accept it.
I'm gonna accept my bacteria overlords and just accept my defeat.
And just like that news article, you know, what's us and what's the bacteria making us do things?
It's officially... You heard it here, folks. We are not human at all.
We are just bacteria controlling us. It's like the Men in Black episode where his head opens up and it's just like that little guy controlling... It's just bacteria.
It's fine. It's fine. Everything's fine here, guys.
Well, the good news is that, like I said, the most of them are not harmful. Thank goodness. Which is thank God.
Yeah. So, beneficial overlords are benevolent overlords.
Thank you. Thank you, gracious overlords.
Oh, benevolent overlords.
That needs to be a T-shirt.
That needs something.
It needs to be the bacterial overlords here.
With like a little cilia in a chair, like with controllers.
With a little crown on.
So, the good bacteria, what do they do? Lots of stuff. They help you absorb nutrients in both plants and animals.
So, bacteria are responsible for the breakdown of food in animals that helps then you absorb those nutrients and actually live. So, without bacteria, you would not be alive. And then plants, they don't eat food, but they do need nitrogen from the soil, and bacteria allows them to get that nitrogen.
They can't get it on their own. Bacteria can neutralize toxins. They can protect you from infection by both taking up space and attacking harmful bacteria, which we talked about in our symbiosis episode.
They are responsible for yogurt, cheese, soy sauce, vinegar, pickles, alcohol, and many more amazing foods and drinks.
All right, I will give them credit for alcohol, pickles, and cheese.
Right. Yes.
Everything else, I'm okay. Yogurt, no, I can live without. But pickles, cheese, not together, mind you.
Pickles, cheese, alcohol.
Pickles and cheese is good together. Cheez-its and pickles. What?
Pickles and cheese? What?
You would think pickles and cheez-its would be gross, but I promise you it's not.
What kind of cheese?
Oh, not cheese. Cheez-its.
Oh, okay. I'm thinking, I was like, who dips their pickle in cheese?
They are super useful. They are super useful. They are super useful.
They are super useful. They are super useful.
Can you imagine all the dead animals? Yikes. Yeah.
People. They're used to clean up toxic waste, human sewage, and oil spills.
Yeah, cause I mean, the water utilities, I mean, we have bacteria that-
The purpose. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
To eat it.
Yeah, to eat it all.
Eat that sewage.
They are used in papermaking. They are used in pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics, which seems weird, but okay, cool. Well, I mean, you think, okay, I, I, some bacteria have to fight other bacteria.
I have to fight other bacteria. I can't remember what medicine I was on that I took, and then I found out that it was like bacteria in the medicine. I was like, I felt like I was sending in the cavalry to like attack, attack the bad bacteria.
I don't remember what it was, though. Send them in, boys.
Yeah, as you're like popping a pill, get them. We're in the generation that watched, I mean, you watched Osmosis Jones, right?
Oh, heck yeah.
I mean, I, my entire body, every time I'm sick, I think of my body being like that. They're also used as alternatives to pesticides. So lots of jobs for good bacteria.
There's also the baddies. There are some that can cause diseases, also known as pathogens. We're talking tuberculosis, cholera, bubonic plague, pneumonia, tetanus, salmonella, syphilis, Lyme, and many more.
TB is a bacteria causing? I didn't know that.
Or maybe there are different types of TB.
So, yeah, it's caused by mycobacterium tuberculosis.
Uh, named after what it causes? They, they, they can cause your immune system to inflame. Well, they, they cause your immune system to react, which produces inflammation.
Which causes inflammation, yeah.
Which is harmful to your body. Um, some are becoming, like Katy said, resistant to antibiotics.
Well, okay, hold on, wait. Let's go back to the inflammation here for a second. A lot of people do say that that is like a lot of your body's issues with your gut health is causing inflammation.
Or right.
And any inflammation in general, yeah, that can damage you. Like any...
Which makes sense, I mean.
It's just like an insane response that damages tissues, I guess. Gut bacteria, like we talked about in the news, can affect mental health.
Are you yawning and boring yourself?
I'm too... It's late. I'm not boring myself, it's just like...
I mean, it's micro. You would have a pass. Like, this is all microbiology.
I would give you a pass.
I'm too amped up and scared to be tired.
I mean, we're talking about, like, one of my worst fears here.
Yeah, very true. I'll check it on you later. Make sure you're not hyperventilating somewhere.
Gut bacteria can have a negative impact on your mental health as well as good. And like I said, all of these bacteria, it depends on what type they are, where they're located, on you or in you, and how many of them there are. That determines whether they're, because some good guys can become bad guys depending on type, location, or quantity.
But that's also, like, I mean, you talk about your gut health too, but that's also why they, like, encourage you to take a probiotic after you are on an antibiotic because you're.
On an antibiotic, and it can, like, you know, slick as a whistle your intestines there.
I was going to say, yeah, you're Lyme disease.
What has that done to me, mental health-wise? Like I took a probiotic the whole time.
Hi, and welcome to Katy and Laura's crisis mode, crisis hour, where we just have complete meltdowns.
Like, what have I done to my brain and mental health from that year? Because I was reading something- But you need it.
I mean, it was either that or Lyme.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, pick and choose your battle. Because you had some insane medical issues from Lyme, yeah, from Lyme disease.
I sure hope it was Lyme and not something else.
Yeah, right?
Just me having a mental breakdown, which I sometimes wonder about. I wonder, did I go crazy? No, no, no, surely.
I couldn't help it. Anyway.
We're just living in a bacterial world. Like, all of this is a figment of our bacteria-
We're a bacteria girl in a bacterial world.
If that doesn't become a song after this, I will be highly disappointed.
Yeah, yeah. So that's all the different functions and purposes of bacteria. And interestingly enough, this is all new information to us, really, because we only just started learning about bacteria at all in the 17th century, when the microscope was first invented.
And we didn't even see the connection with the disease until germ theory, which, if you remember from a previous episode, wasn't until the late 19th century. So not until the late 1800s have we even been like, ah, germs.
Yeah, right. It's not like, oh, you know, you got sick. You're not possessed by, you know, you're not a witch.
You actually have germs.
Go back and listen to our old school nature theories episode.
Yeah, yeah. I was trying to think which episode we talked about that.
Man.
Well, we're just gonna go, we're gonna sign off and just go freak out about, what if it's like inside out? Okay, you know how it's like inside out? The kids, Pixar, all right?
And they put on those different dreams in your head, like those different plays. What if that's all that reality is? It's just bacteria making us think that the world around us is alive, but really it's just bacteria giving us our perception of reality around us.
But what, like, would we just be meat sacks laying on the floor?
Yeah.
Okay. Essentially.
All right, meat sacks. That's all for today.
Yikes. All right, guys, there's one episode left. Please come back for it.
No, really, it's gonna be really good. We're gonna go out with a bang.
Do we want to just tell them what it is? Because I am so flipping it. Okay, so.
Katy's so excited. I mean, this is so exciting. It's so funny because it's both, it's really at both of our alleys, but in very different ways.
Very, very different ways. So we're gonna be talking about cryptozoology, and we're each gonna pick two. You picked two, right?
Yeah.
So we're each gonna pick two of our favorites from the cryptozoology realm and talk about them. And I'm so excited, because like Laura said, we both love this topic, but from two very different approaches.
All right, guys, thanks for joining us. Please, if you do have an existential crisis, be sure you tweet about it.
We'll help you out through it.
No, we're not gonna help them. We're joining them is what it is, as we're freaking out.
Well, by the time they listen to this, we'll have already worked through it.
I hope so.
This is gonna be one of those things where you're in the shower and it comes back to you and you're like, or tomorrow, I'll be eating a hard-boiled Easter egg and then just thinking about, this is probably covered in bacteria.
I mean, everything is anyway, so I mean.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Salmonella! Or I'll fondly look at the egg and be like, oh, Salmonella!
All right, cryptozoology next week, guys. We look forward to seeing you. Go ahead and make sure you find us on Patreon.
So, you know, we can pay, you can help us pay for mine and Laura's therapy bills after this episode. And we will talk to you next week.
Bye, everybody.