Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Does the five-second rule work?

Episode Date: September 29, 2018

You know when you drop a piece of food and if you pick it up within five seconds it's still good to eat? Researchers have studied whether that's true or not and in doing so have inadvertently shone a light on how utterly covered our world is with bacteria and germs. Prepare to shudder in this episode of Stuff You Should Know. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everyone, it's me, Josh. And for this week's SYS Case Delex, I've chosen this episode on the five second rule. And I wanna point out that my opinion on what constitutes something

that can be eaten off of the floor has narrowed dramatically since this episode came out in January of 2013. And I was also surprised to figure out how many of my cleanliness habits actually came from researching this episode. Maybe it'll have some sort of positive impact on you too. Who knows?

There's only one way to find out and that is to enjoy this episode. Thank you. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, Charles W. Chuck Bryant, consulting his notes. He's wearing his glasses, everybody.

He's getting ready to podcast. So that means this is Stuff You Should Know. Stretching, doing my yoga. You just peed for the fourth time in the last hour. Got more coffee. I drink a lot of coffee. Yeah. Boy, that was exciting.

Yeah, and while I was getting coffee, I was like, I use my elbow to press the buttons to make coffee. Are you doing that now? I have become, I'm trying to think back to what initiated it. But I've definitely become far more germ conscious. I'm not a germaphobe because I can just be like,

oh God, you know, that's fine. Your fingers touched your mouth, stop simpering, right? Like I can get a hold of myself like that. But at the same time, you know what it is? It was flesh-eating bacteria when it was going around Georgia for a little while. And then simultaneously being aware that the gym is lousy with germs.

And I think that that did a one, two number on me. And now all of a sudden, I'm just very, I'm very aware of what I touch. Yeah. I'm not super germ conscious. I have been more so, though, since we've started learning more about this crap. But we have a mutual friend whose girlfriend won't even

keep her toothbrush in the bathroom. Oh, really? Yeah, she said, why would I, among the fecal air, the particulates in the air, why would I keep my toothbrush in the bathroom? Makes sense. Yeah, and she knows who she is. I don't know who she is.

I'll tell you after. OK, good. So you're kind of, you're OK with it? You're OK with the idea of germs? I mean, there is this whole thing called the hygiene hypothesis, which makes uttering complete sense to me. What, that if you allow more germs and you'll just learn to fight them and have a more robust

immune system? Yes, especially growing up as a child. Yeah, I believe in that. And then children who develop allergies, it's because they are raised in a sterile, lysol environment. My environment was filthy, dirty. And so when they finally get out into this very filthy, dirty world, e.g. preschool, they don't have any antibodies

built up for it. It makes a lot of sense. I don't know that there's any hard science that backs it up, but I don't know that it's ever been disproven. But it's called the hygiene hypothesis. It appeals to me. It appeals to me. I don't have allergies.

I don't get sick that much. No. And I'm unhealthy as it gets. I wouldn't call you that. No, I'm in the middle. Yes, I appreciate that. OK, I guess really the division line between a germaphobe and a non-germaphobe would probably

be found somewhere in the five-second rule, wouldn't you think? Sure. So if I drop something, depending on what it was and where I dropped it, I would possibly eat it. There's a comedian here in Atlanta who's pretty good. It seems no garden shorts. And he's saying that it means no black garden, I think.

And he was saying that the five-second rule is basically it exists on a sliding scale. Like if it's a piece of broccoli, it's like a 0 second. Agreed. If it's like a cheeto, it's like a whenever I find it rule. Whenever I find it and pick it up and eat it rule. He does it way better than me, but he had a great observation about the five-second rule.

The point is, for me, it depends on what it is, where it is. Not really even how long it's been there. I mean, if it's been there so long and it's under the couch and there's like dust bunnies accumulated on it, I won't eat it. No, no, no, you wouldn't eat anything that you didn't recently drop, would you? If you just found a cookie on the floor, you would eat it?

Again, it depends on where it was found. Some places seem far cleaner to me than others. Like mine and Yumi's apartment is very, very clean. So if it fell and was just slightly under the couch. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'd eat it. It depends. I mean, if it were a piece of salami or something,

I wouldn't. But if it were like a very dry cookie, perhaps a good potato chip that wasn't stale yet, it's very clean, I would blow it off and eat it. Yeah, since we're talking about our sliding scales, I would eat nothing that I didn't recently drop unless it was a little bit sweet. The King, their candy bar, the King.

If I found one of those that I'd just forgotten that was under my couch, unwrapped on the floor, I would eat that no matter how long it had been there. I would maybe rinse it off, or I would melt it down, and reform it, or do something. Deconstruct it. That's all the rage now. That's what I would do that.

You know, they released a box, a selection of carmels called Stuff You Should Eat, a little bit sweet stuff. Really? Yeah. And it says specifically on the website that it's in honor of us. Thank you, Liz and Jen. OK, so I feel like we've gone in-depth on what we do

with the five-second rule. The question still remains, Chuck, is it viable? Is that a real thing? Like, if you are an adherent to the five-second rule, and you're like, I'm a very clean person, I only eat stuff that's been on the floor for five seconds or less, are you full of it? Well, you're sort of full of it.

You're totally full of it. There's a high school student in 2003, Jillian Clark. And she was doing her internship fighting Eli and I at the University of Illinois. And she said, you know what? We should do a little study, because it's the old wives' tale about the five-second rule. And she coded these tiles with E. coli, which is really gross,

and dropped cookies and gummy bears and things onto the surface for certain amounts of time, and then studied what kind of bacteria it picked up. And of course, no matter how long it had been down there, bacteria did jump onto the food. Within five seconds. What is important to point out, though, is the longer you left it there, the more it picked up.

So the five seconds are under is important. Like, it's usually not five seconds for me. If I drop a piece of food, I've got it back within my hand in like two seconds. I've seen it. You're like a ninja. And it matters, because the longer it's there, the more bacteria it's going to pick up, right?

Yeah. So Jillian Clark just did this very initial preliminary investigation, but she was a pioneer and received the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize for public health for her efforts. Really? Yeah. Good for her.

And so she kind of, she established this trail. She blazed the trail. And then about four years later, some Clemson University researchers really kind of dug in to figure out what was going on with this five-second rule and built on Clark's work. Go Tigers. Yeah.

I mean, we got to say it. I don't feel like we do. OK. Let's create you Tigers. All right, so what did they find out? They found out the same thing. Right. If you thought the E. coli bacteria and the tiles was gross.

I know where you're going. These guys created a broth of salmonella. Yeah, they call it salmonella soup, which is so nasty. Yeah. And they applied it to three different types of material, because I mean like, sure, maybe five seconds, you're going to get some bacteria on it, but what doesn't it depend on the kind of food?

Doesn't it depend on the kind of surface it comes in contact with? So these investigators, they're pros. They were at Clemson. They applied the salmonella soup to tile, wood, surface, and carpet. Right. And then they started dropping bread and bologna on it.

Good choice. Sure. Why not? And they found what Clark found that in less than five seconds, no matter how short the time, there was a bacterial transfer. Yeah, between 150 and 8,000 bacteria, if under five seconds. Under five seconds.

Or under. And consider this with salmonella, you only need 10 individual bacterium. Wow. To for what's called an infectious dose. OK. So that is five seconds or under. If you left it down there for a minute,

it was going to be 10 times that. And there are 10 strains of salmonella. I mean, besides just the bacteria, there's a lot of stuff going on down there on your floor, most notably poop on your shoes. Yeah, that's another thing too, man. There's poop everywhere. But you should take your shoes off.

My wife is of Japanese ancestry. Do you guys do that? One of the things I definitely picked up from her is you take your shoes off when you come in the house. So you just walk around without shoes on all the time? Or slippers or something? Yeah, sure. Yeah, because especially if you're germ conscious,

man, if you go into a public bathroom and you walk out of there, the bottom of your shoes are just like a nightmare. You don't want to track that all over your house because you may find a cookie on your couch that you want to eat. You have to plan for the future, basically, and that starts with taking your shoes off in your house.

For some reason, I don't think the Japanese culture is rooted in the hopes that you'll find a cookie on your floor and be able to eat it. No, maybe not, but they are big into taking their shoes off. My friend, Jason, then in Tokyo, that he is married to a woman in Keiko. And years ago, when we were living in Athens, they started that tradition of removing your shoes.

And he was like, hey, you mind? I was like, of course not. Watch this. Well, sometimes they'll even provide slippers and stuff for guests if you're in a Japanese home. So you're still wearing shoes in there. But shoes that have never left your house. So that's the deal.

Yes, and in a controlled environment, you're all good. Yeah, and I won't wear my slippers in the bathroom either. I got to tell you, I just got some new slippers. What do you go barefoot in there, in the bathroom? They're socks or whatever, yeah. But I don't want to. Then you burn the socks. I cut my feet off.

I bought some new slippers, dude. I'm not usually one to plug things on the air. But if you're a grown man and you want some of the best slippers you've ever had, and you don't mind throwing down a little cash, Ugg's men's slippers. My friend, what do you think I wear? Oh, is that what you wear? Yes.

I wonder if they're the same ones. They look like little loafers, sort of, suede. Mine don't have a back. They just have the sole. Oh, OK, mine have a back. And they have the hard bottoms. You can go out and get in the mail. If you're me, go to the grocery store.

Man, it's so comfortable. Yeah, that's nice. And all the, what is it, sheep wool? The sherpa or whatever. It's not the sherpa. It's called sherpa lining. Oh, is it? Yeah, the sheep shear wool.

It's called sherpa lining. That's what some people call it. It's so cozy. OK, so slippers. I need to start plugging these things and getting them for free. I'm a sucker. I always buy them and then plug them. Right, I know.

It's not a sucker, Chuck, here, above the boards. OK. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help.

This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yeah, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So back to it. Oh, oh, so the longer the stuff stayed in contact, the more it was, the more bacteria that came upon it. But surprisingly, what they found

was that the transfer was the least for carpet, the type of surface it came in contact with made a difference. I thought it was the most for carpet. It was the least? It was the least transferred, but the stuff survived in the carpet longer, so it all washed out. Gotcha. So it made some difference, but not really.

Whether it's wood, tile, or carpet, when you drop something on it, there's going to be a lot of bacteria transfer. But this stuff survives on these surfaces. Carpet, you're kind of like, OK, yeah, there's a lot to it. There's pile, and there's some sort of Berber factor and all that. Can't forget the Berber factor.

Right. So of course, carpet, that's not much of a surprise that there's a lot of bacteria in there, but wood or tile, not only do they find that this stuff can survive for a while, it survives for up to a month, a month, after they put the stuff on there. A month later, there was still living bacteria, enough for an infectious dose on all three surfaces.

A month, dude. OK, I'm becoming more of a germaphobe. And yeah, we're all turning into David Putty right now. And David Putty, was he a germaphobe? Yeah. Remember he and Peggy, who called Elaine Suzee? They both turned out to be germaphobes. They had like a little bacteria necklace on them.

Yeah. Remember Kramer made a radish rose in his shower? He had a garbage disposal in his shower, so he could cook and bathe at the same time? It was that episode. OK. So I know earlier you mentioned, you just kind of offhandedly said,

well, if it's something dry, like a cookie, or that actually makes a difference. You found out that moisture can be the key to more bacteria transfer. So a dry cookie versus a piece of like wet baloney or salami or moist baloney. I said moist baloney. We'll have more bacteria.

And that's why they say when you go to the restroom and you wash your hands, the drying is just as important if not more important than the washing. Yeah, they found that this transfer of bacteria seems to be facilitated by moisture, right? So when you touch something with your wet hands, you're going to get a bunch of bacteria transferred onto your hands.

If you wash your hands and then use one of those hands-free paper towels and spinters and dry your hands, you can touch that same surface that you would have touched with your wet hands. And you're going to have far less bacteria transferred to it. Yeah, or nowadays the air dryers in the bathroom have you noticed in the past few years or just like, for 50 years, it was the same air dryer.

Oh, now there's the accelerator. Now there's the accelerator and the Dyson blade dryer. I like the accelerator because the Dyson blade, you have to stick your hands down in there. I like that. And it's almost like playing operation. Like, it's almost impossible not to touch the sides. Yeah, that's true.

And then like, does anyone clean the bottom of those things? Like, I don't think so. The accelerator, it's all just like blowing your hands and you're done. And you cannot touch things more easily. That's true. I like the accelerator because the way it makes your skin ripple like the G-forces is pretty amazing.

Like, we were in the indoor skydiving thing? Oh, yeah, exactly. And let's talk about hands real quick, Chuck. So there's a study that came out of the University of Colorado at Boulder. And they found some really surprising things using this technique called metagenomics, where they take a swab of like a sample of your hands.

And then rather than doing culture, they do basically a DNA profile for everything found in that swab. What they find? Well, they did 51 participants. They found 4,700 different bacteria species across the 51 participants. And what I found was particularly interesting.

They found that only 5% of these species were found in all 51 participants. No, 5 period, not even percent. Oh, yeah, 5 period. So out of all these species, the only one we're sharing, so that means there's just way more out there than we thought, I guess, huh? Yeah.

And it's just luck of the draw as to what leaps to your hands. I guess so. And not only your hands, but specific hands, too. They found that the right and left palms of a single person shared only 17% of the bacterial species. So that means there's different species on different hands of the same person. That's weird.

And then women tend to have a higher diversity of bacteria on their hands than men. Not necessarily more bacteria total, but more diversity among species. Interesting. So depending on which hand you shake, you're going to be getting a different type of bacteria from someone.

Yeah. And if somebody shakes your hand and is like, oh, it's just water, I washed my hand, punch them in the head. Yeah. Because that's bacterial transfer, jerk. Dry your hands. Yeah. And since you mentioned women, I think the study

by the girl in 2003 found that women are more likely to eat something off the floor than men, which surprised me. What surprised me is where the person who wrote this article got that. I couldn't find it anyway. I couldn't either. I saw that women were more familiar with the concept of the five-second rule, but not that they used it more.

Yeah, you know what? I'm going to call that a dubious statement, then. Dubious indeed. OK, so you've eaten something off the floor. Are we good on hands? Yeah, thanks for that. OK. I like in the article they pointed out that out of the 51

participants, there were 102 hands. Yeah. This is like, all right, so good. You didn't have any amputees in the study. Right. What was funny is I didn't think it added up. And then I realized that's why I stopped for a second a minute again.

All right, so you've picked up a cookie off the floor. It's dry. It's been down there for three seconds. And you think, you know what? I'm going to roll the dice and eat it, because my stomach acids and the acids and my saliva is going to kill all this stuff. Factor fiction.

That is fiction. That is very much fiction. So it says the germ guru of the University of Arizona. Go. Are they wildcats? Sun devils? Or is that Arizona State? That's Arizona State.

Arizona's wildcats. Wildcats. Go, wildcats. Charles Gerba. His name almost looks like germ. Yeah. Close. Or Gerber.

It's closer than Clark. Like he's the adult version of the Gerber baby. So he says that viruses actually survive the low pH. In fact, a lot of them like it. And that pretty much any bacteria that you can infect your intestine with is going to stay alive long enough to get to your intestine. Right.

It's going to survive that acidity in your stomach. Yeah, look for our podcast on digestion. That was a good one. Man, that was great. If you want to learn how that works. And it does make a difference on where it's landed, like you said. Some floors are more dangerous than others.

And bathrooms are the worst place on earth. Yeah. And kitchens. Actually, kitchens are the worst. They're supposedly dirtier than bathrooms. It depends on the bathroom. But yeah, Gerber points out that of all the shoes that he's ever analyzed.

And this guy runs around on Good Morning America and the Today Show and analyzes stuff and just freaks people out. Like kind of his trade. Sure. He's calling. Yeah. He said that fecal matter appears on about 93%

of the shoes he's ever analyzed. Of course it does. Yeah. Like I said, there's poop everywhere. Poop everywhere. Especially in my house. So yeah, you'd think a public restroom's pretty bad. And it is.

But it depends on what part of the public restroom you're talking about. And sometimes, compared to other places, it doesn't hold a candle. There's some surprising germ statistics that we're about to unleash on you. Let's start with, let's just jump all over then. I got the kitchen floor, the area on the kitchen floor

just in front of your sink, where you're going to be doing your dishes and dropping food and poop, has more bacteria than your trash can, 830 per square inch, as opposed to 411. So double. And your kitchen sponge, I know everyone knows it. That's a really filthy thing to have. Yeah, remember that one.

It's necessary, but filthy. Remember the, I think, the Clorox wipes or Lysol wipes commercial, where the lady was using a sponge? Or like, if you're using a sponge, you might as well be doing this. And she was just rubbing like a raw chicken breast on her counter, like it was a sponge? That's basically true, though.

It's so gross. Like you should be really careful with your sponge. What you clean with it, what you don't clean with it, letting it dry out, changing it like regularly. Like, if you've got a two-month-old kitchen sponge, and you're using that to wipe your counter, you are spreading bacteria all over the place. You don't love your family.

So you can use it at first, is what I do, because I'm a clean guy. My wife is not. I will clean up after her with the sponge, and then I'll go back with my organic spray, and then do the paper towel wipe after that. So that's the final step in the process, is always the dry paper towel with my 7th Heaven stuff,

is what I use. And then a little bit of lighter fluid. Yep. Steralize the counter. All right, so your kitchen floor is dirtier than your trash can. Your sponge holds 60 times more bacteria than your pet food bowl, even though pet food bowls

are pretty gross too, supposedly, because you don't clean them out as much. Sure. And all of this is germier than a toilet seat. Yeah, you always hear that, the old toilet seat. Yeah, and I think the reason why the toilet seat is surprisingly cleaner in comparison, or surprisingly germ-free compared to other things

like your kitchen sink and all that, is because people clean the toilet seat more frequently because they think of it as a dirty place. And this is kind of born out in another study that Gerba carried out on behalf of the Clorox Corporation who make lice all wipes, and he found that one of the dirtiest places in the universe is a person's desk. Yeah.

And he found that apparently the average desk has 100 times more bacteria than a kitchen table and 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet. And one of the reasons is because people don't ever wipe this down. So he did this study where he divided workers into two groups. One group used these sanitizing wipes once or twice a day,

and then the other group didn't. And after two days, there was a 99.9% reduction in bacteria on the desk of the people who are using the wipes. So wiping down your telephone handset, your desk. Mouse is a big one. Your mouse, your keyboard. Apparently where you typically rest your hand on your desk,

mine's on my mouse, has about 10 million bacteria on average. But he also found that over the course of a day, if you don't wipe your stuff down, you actually increase your bacteria from 19% to 31% on telephone mouse keyboard desktop surfaces. Throughout a day, it increases that much more. Man, I haven't cleaned my desk in so long. It's been a while for me, too.

I don't use the phone, though. I don't either. Yeah, no one calls us. I don't even know my number to give out. And anytime if somebody asks for, I'm like, just email. Yeah, that's what I do. Molly Edmonds, the former co-host of Stuff Mom Never Told You back in the day, she wrote about cubicle death

and specifically germs in the workplace like we were just talking about. And she points out that if you're a restaurant and you have more than 700 bacteria per square inch, you're going to be considered unsanitary. But you will come into contact with 10 million bacteria a day in your office. And statistics like 20% of people eat at their desk

and don't clean. I eat at my desk occasionally. I don't clean. 75% of people only occasionally will wipe down their work area. And your desktop itself, not the computer desktop, but your desk, it's going to be 100 times germier than a kitchen table.

Right. And again, 400 times germier than a toilet seat. And presenteeism, which is a big problem. 75% of workers, I'm sorry, 1 third of workers. That's not 75%. It's close. Reported to the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases that they felt like they were obligated to go to work

even when they were sick. Yeah, that's a problem. It's not OK. And I know around here, especially Tracy from Pop Stuff, she takes it pretty serious. She's like, she gets pissed off when people are in here sick. She'll yell. Yeah.

She'll say, if you're sick, please stay home because the office is dirty, your bathroom's dirty, your kitchen's dirty. That cutting board that you're cutting your vegetables on, filthy. Yeah. It's all dirty. It's all gross.

Well, I can't remember. I was trying to think of what episode biofilm came up. You were telling everybody about biofilm. Oh, yeah. What was that? I can't for the life of me remember. But that's how bacteria survive. That's how they can survive on stainless steel.

That's how they can survive on wood, on tile, on non-porous surfaces, on synthetic surfaces that are designed to keep bacteria from thriving. These things can survive because they live in biofilm. Yeah. It's this protective film on any surface. And if a surface has grooves or things like that, that where a biofilm can hide, there's

going to be a lot more bacteria. And a cutting board, apparently, is one of those great examples. Yeah, especially a wood cutting board, I think. Yeah. Which I prefer. Me too. Got to clean them well, though. Yeah, because I'd rather have some bacteria in my food

than like shards of plastic, you know? Yeah, that's a good point. Cheers. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster?

Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts

flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life.

Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So before you freak out and jump in a pool of Purell, most of these germs are benign.

Like we've coated all these tens of thousands and millions of germs and things. Most of them are benign, and your body's going to take care of most of it too. But it only takes, like, you know, when you find yourself retching over the toilet with a stomach virus, it might have just been one little bacteria that got through.

And all it takes is 10 for salmonella to get you and 100 for E. coli. Wow. 10. 10 little guys. The bottom of a woman's purse, randomly. Randomly, Gerba, again, just ran up to some people and was like, let me test your purse.

And he found, from the hundreds to 6.7 million on the bottom of one woman's purse. And all it takes is 10 or 100. He didn't say that that also had, like, pieces of pot pie. And, like, there were probably reasons. Yeah. But I think that was a good thing to go out on. Chuck, you did good by reassuring everybody

that as long as your immune system is in order, you're probably OK as far as these bacteria go. Don't keep your toothbrush in your bathroom. So says our friend's girlfriend. Let's see. Before we say anything like listener mail or go find this article, I want to do a quick shout out, OK? Do it.

Our Kiva team, Chuck, recently hit a very significant milestone. $1.5 million in loans. Wow. That's enormous. What's Kiva? No, say it. Oh, yeah.

Kiva is the kiva.org is a microlending site where you can make loans and little $25 increments to people in the developing world to use for entrepreneurship, to have their taxi license, to buy oxen, to retail clothes. What have you? Farming, whatever. And our Kiva team has doled out $1.5 million

in these $25 loans. That's just such an amazing accomplishment. Yeah, when we started this, we had no idea that it was going to have legs like this. And I mean, we're going to keep it going in perpetuity, so. We are. One of the reasons I wanted to shout out is because we are resetting our goals.

We're setting our goal to $2 million by the summer solstice, June 21. It's an international date, right? Yeah. And Glenn, the team leader at Kiva, came up with this. I think it's a sound idea. Yeah, thank you to Glenn and Sonja, as always. So we're going to $2 million by June 21.

And if you want to join us in this, we are not the least bit exclusive. We're a very inclusive and welcoming group of people. You can go to www.KivaKiva.org-team-stuff-you-should-know. OK, and if you want to know anything more about the 5-second rule, type 5-second rule in the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com, I said search bar, so it's time for listener mail.

It is, Josh. We are just a few days away from our TV show premiere, though, when we would be remiss. I know you're probably tired of hearing about it by now. I'm not. I'm buzzing. We would be remiss if we didn't remind everyone that on Saturday night at 10 PM Eastern, on Science Channel,

you're going to get two episodes of Stuff You Should Know, Back to Back, the premiere episode 2, following the season premiere of Ricky Gervais' Idiot Abroad with Carl Pilkington. That comes on first, and then we come on at 10 with two brand new, the first two episodes of Stuff You Should Know, the TV show. That's right, and if you do not have cable, fear not,

because as we have announced, you can purchase these episodes on iTunes after they are released the next day. And because we love everyone so much in the world, you can get the premiere episode for free on iTunes. So just seek it out, download it, watch it, and make some noise over at Science Channel folks. And on Twitter, too. And we think you're going to like it.

It's us, and we play ourselves, but it's set in like a kind of a fictionalized version of the office, our office. And there's podcasting, and action, and adventure, and all sorts of goodness. So it should be, hopefully, everybody likes it. Yeah, as we have said before, it's the real us in a fictional world with spelling factual information.

Yes, that's what we tag-line you. All right, I hope you stuck around for this with Sir Mail, because it's pretty good. This is from Ben. Guys, my name is Ben. I'm a 30-year-old husband and father. Never consider myself a very smart man. I did mediocre in high school, not because of lack of trying,

but because of being viewed as a lazy student. And I was just socially awkward, to be honest. My wife has talked me into catching up with your podcast. And since then, I've gotten a smartphone and done so. And all I can say is thank you guys from the bottom of my heart. It has helped me become a better husband and father. Let me explain. After high school, I became a father to a beautiful boy

with an ex-girlfriend who was not the best person. Due to some heart complications, my son, Logan, passed away four days after his first birthday. This resulted in me not following through with college, shutting down emotionally, basically becoming angry at the world and God for my son's passing. To put it bluntly, I became someone who I said I never would become.

I was full of hate. The years that followed in my life was just gray as I went through the motions of life. Things turned around when I met my wife, Jordan, got married and had our son, Raiden. And yes, I did name him Raiden after Mortal Kombat. And then I was turned on to your podcast after listening to over 200 of them.

You two have opened a hard spot in my heart. After listening to you guys and hearing how good-natured you are, I myself have been trying to give everything in life a fair chance and have become more of a good-hearted person who no longer battles something bad within myself. Wow. I know, right? I'm happier in life than ever before.

And I have my wife and son, and now Chuck and Josh, to thank for helping. I'm trying to further my education. I can't stop reading and learning. And I save your show so when my one-year-old son is old enough, he can experience something that changes daddy's life for the better, just like he and his mommy did. So I can't thank you guys enough for all you've done

without even knowing it. Sometimes all it takes is good hearts and a good podcast to make even a small difference. If you guys are ever in Ohio, I would like to buy you both a drink. That is from Ben Chilton. Man, Ben, thank you for that. Good one.

We're not even trying. I know, dude. I read this stuff, and I'm just like, are you kidding me? That's pretty cool. What are you supposed to say to that? Thank you. So thanks, Ben. If you want to get in touch with Chuck and me

about five-second rule, how about this? We want to know the nastiest thing you've ever eaten, whether it was something that was prepared, something that touched the ground. Tell us your nasty eating story. Yeah, and if you're one of those kids, I had friends in elementary school that would have gross eating contests that

would throw mashed potatoes on the floor and then eat them. I explored that once. I was like, you know what? Maybe I am that kid. Let's find out. And I ate a sticker that was on the ground with some hair attached to it, and I was like, nope. I need to keep seeking my persona, because that one's not me.

Not me. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Well, we want to know about them, right? Yeah, I can't believe you've held out. I mean, that long of that story. Tweet to us at S-Y-S-K podcast.

Join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And as always, you can send us an email. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, hey dude, the 90s called David Lashman. Sure, in Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast,

Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy, teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast

and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.