Living in a Bacterial World
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week we’re exploring our microbial metropolis.
Smitha Mundasad heads into the lab to meet the bacteria that live on her skin – and on her family’s dirty laundry – to understand what’s there, and why. She goes antibiotic-hunting around her house to find out whether bacteria on a washing up sponge, a fluffy cushion, the bottom of a shoe – and even some of her kids’ play slime – could hold the key to helping scientists find new medicines. Next, Smitha wants to find out the answer to how often we should wash ourselves – and our clothes – for good health, but, as she finds out, this question is not as simple as it sounds. It turns out there's a big difference between cleanliness and hygiene – and the confusion between these two rather important words could be having an impact on our health…
Presenter: Dr Smitha Mundasad Producer: Gerry Holt Editor: Holly Squire
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Greg Jenna and good news, Your Dead to Me is back for a new series. Here we go. Yes, we'll explore Emperor Nero's notorious reign with Professor Marybeard and Patton Oswald. I would not want my daughter having the remote control, not alone an empire. We'll dissect the decadent life of Philippe Duke-Dor-Leon with Tom Allen. I've often tried to pretend I'm an aristocrat and being very |
| 0:21.7 | quickly knocked down. And there'll be so much more with comedians like Olga Koch, Mike Mosniak and Ria |
| 0:26.5 | I'm excited. You're dead to me, the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Listen first |
| 0:31.6 | on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to Inside Health. |
| 0:41.4 | I'm Smythamundasid. |
| 0:43.4 | Now we've all heard about good bacteria, bad bacteria, friendly bacteria. |
| 0:48.6 | Well, in this episode, we're going to take a closer look at that microbial metropolis, |
| 0:54.1 | the trillions of bacteria that |
| 0:55.8 | live on our skin and in our homes. And we'll meet some of the scientists who spend their time |
| 1:00.9 | trying to work out how we can stay protected from the nasty ones while getting enough of the |
| 1:05.7 | good stuff. We'll ask some questions that might seem quite obvious at first. How often do we need to wash ourselves and our clothes? |
| 1:14.0 | Can we get away without doing much of it at all? |
| 1:16.5 | Let's start by meeting the microbes on me. |
| 1:24.0 | I'm here at Cardiff Metropolitan University |
| 1:27.1 | and I'm going to meet microbiologist Dr Sarah Hooper, |
| 1:30.3 | who's going to help us understand the microbes that call our bodies home. |
| 1:36.0 | Hi Sarah, thank you for having us. |
| 1:38.0 | That's all right. Do you want to grab a lab coat before we head in? |
| 1:41.9 | Perfect, let's head to the lab. |
| 1:44.0 | What are we going to do here? |
| 1:45.7 | We're going to do some tests to try and identify the different bacteria that are likely to be on your skin, on different parts of your body. |
| 1:53.3 | And I brought a bunch of dirty laundry with me. |
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