This is an I-Hart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Howdy, Extraordinaries? Today we're discussing human lice.

If you're a parent, you may be at the stage in your life where you're worried about kids bringing home lice from school.

But back in your wilder days, if you had wilder days, there may have been another kind of lice, found out a different

part of the body that you worried about. Maybe it made you feel, let's say, crabby. We're talking

about both kinds of lice today and some historically catastrophic diseases that lice frequently caused in the past.

So decide if this episode is appropriate for you or young ears that might also be listening.

Thanks.

When you grab a lice comb and spend hours picking through your kid's hair to remove those little buggers,

you're engaging in a time-honored human tradition that stretches for millennia.

Direct evidence of human head lice goes back 10,000 years, and we found 6,500-year-old head lice combs in Egypt.

But we've probably had head lice even earlier than that, perhaps even since the dawn of our species.

So if this pest has been with us during our entire journey as a species,

then can studying it tell us anything about our past?

Or can studying it at least tell us how to get rid of it better?

Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's lousy universe.

Music universe.

Hi, I'm Daniel.

I'm a particle physicist who likes to think about aliens, and my family has had lice more times than I can count.

Hello, I'm Kelly Weiner-Smith. I study parasites and space. And my family has never

had lice, but we have had fleas. Not even once in a lice time.

...