Halloween special episode: spooky microbes

October is Hallowe’en month, so we did a special spooky episode with Rob Dunn from North Carolina State University!
Microbes are everywhere and they are an indivisible part of us, influencing from our health, to the way we smell to even our behaviour.
There are around 200 000 species of microbes in your house! In home hot water heaters there are bacteria similar to those found in hot springs in Iceland, tap water in each city has different microbes depending on where the water comes from and how it is treated. Species in your freezer are similar to those in the Arctic and there are even some that love to live in the microwave!
Cleaning your house too much actually results in selecting for the 2% that are the bad ones. So...Since microbes are here to stay and are an integral part of us, we need to make peace with that and start acknowledging them as such. Have you tried talking to the microbes in your belly button?
Scary can take many forms, so here is a scary ending note: one of the microbes historically commonly found in breast milk and the gut of babies is becoming rarer and rarer and we don’t know why.