Are humans naturally clean and tidy?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2020
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
From dumping raw sewage into rivers to littering the streets with our trash, humans don’t have a great track record when it comes to dealing with our waste. It’s something that CrowdScience listener and civil engineer Marc has noticed: he wonders if humans are particularly prone to messing up our surroundings, while other species are instinctively more hygienic and well-organised.
Are we, by nature, really less clean and tidy than other animals? Farming and technology have allowed us to live more densely and generate more rubbish - maybe our cleaning instincts just aren’t up to the vast quantities of waste we spew out? CrowdScience digs into the past to see if early human rubbish heaps can turn up any answers. We follow a sewer down to the River Thames to hear about The Great Stink of Victorian London; turn to ants for housekeeping inspiration; and find out how to raise hygiene standards by tapping into our feelings of disgust and our desire to follow rules.
Presented by Marnie Chesterton and produced by Cathy Edwards for the BBC World Service.
[Image: Man on beach with rubbish. Credit: Getty Images]
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism. |
| 0:09.0 | In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero? |
| 0:16.0 | Simply doing your job, being a decent human being. |
| 0:20.0 | A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by |
| 0:23.1 | their own light and that light is to be recognized by others. The Long History of Heroism |
| 0:27.8 | with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. That is cathedral-like. It's got these beautiful arches with three different colours of brickwork |
| 0:41.4 | and these rows on rows of arched windows. |
| 0:45.5 | It's a palace of filth is what it is. |
| 0:48.6 | Yeah, the Victorians are obviously pretty serious about their sewage. |
| 0:53.6 | Welcome to Crowd Science, the science show that's led by your curiosity. |
| 0:58.4 | I'm Marnie Chesterton and I'm out with my producer Cathy in a part of London that really |
| 1:03.2 | doesn't feature on most tourist routes. |
| 1:05.8 | We're in the east, marvelling at Abbey Mills Pumping Station, built in the 19th century by engineer Joseph Basilgett |
| 1:13.3 | to shunt the city's waist down to the River Thames. And that's where we're heading to. |
| 1:19.1 | We're going to follow this path, and this is the path of the sewer that leads the poo of |
| 1:23.7 | North London to the Thames. Luckily for us, these days, it's a pleasant cycle path, albeit with the occasional whiff |
| 1:32.1 | of drains. But the reason we're following this sewer, designed by a 19th century civil engineer, |
| 1:38.8 | is because of a question from a 21st century civil engineer. |
| 1:43.0 | Crowd science listener Mark in Malta. |
| 1:45.8 | My question for crowd science is, |
| 1:48.9 | are humans naturally clean and tidy, |
| 1:52.8 | or is it something that we develop through nurture rather than nature? |
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