This is going to be

This winter is going to be brutal. I mean it is just going to suck.

And if you're like me, you've been spending a lot of time at home since March.

And it's starting to feel a little claustrophobic, maybe more than a little, a lot claustrophobic.

Though if you think about it, were you actually going outside all that much

before the pandemic. Modern humans are essentially an indoor species. We spend

roughly 90% of our time indoors and that was before the pandemic hit.

This is author Emily Anthus and my book is The Great Indoors, the surprising science of how buildings shape our behavior, health, and

happiness. Emily's book looks at how our indoor spaces are actually a giant

mystery.

There is so much we don't know.

Like there are thousands of bacteria and microbes living inside our homes and we haven't really

studied them.

So you know we spend so much time in these places that we don't think of them as exotic or

interesting.

You know, if you're an ecologist, you want to go to the Amazon or to Antarctica and maybe

are not that interested in the ecosystems that are in our homes.

So there's all this complexity that we're just scratching the surface of.

Today as we head into a winter lockdown, we'll talk to Emily about how sunlight and ventilation

and the tiny creepy-crawly things in our homes can influence our health and well-being,

and how we can use design to make our indoor spaces so much better.

So let's talk about these microbes, which is the creepy-crawly as part of your book.

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