Why do bright lights make me sneeze?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 985 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week’s CrowdScience is dedicated to bodily fluids – and why humans spend so much time spraying them all over the place. From snot and vomit to sweat and sneezes, listeners have been positively drenching our inbox with queries. Now presenter Marnie Chesterton and a panel of unsqueamish expert guests prepare themselves to wade through…
One listener has found that as he ages, bright light seems to make him sneeze more and more – with his current record sitting at 14 sneezes in a row. He’d like to know if light has the same effect on other people and why?
Sticking with nasal fluids, another listener wants to know why she’s always reaching for a tissue to blow her endlessly dripping nose and yet her family seem to produce hardly any snot at all. Could it be because she moved from a hotter climate to a colder one?
CrowdScience reveals the answers to these and other sticky questions… if you can find the stomach to listen.
Produced by Melanie Brown Contributors: Jagdish Chaturvedi – ENT Surgeon Åsmund Eikenes – Author Prof. Lydia Bourouiba - Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT Rubiaya Hussain – PhD student, optics and photonics, ICFO
[Image: Woman sneezing. Credit: Getty Images]
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.4 | What goes into making the Business Daily Podcast from the BBC World Service? |
| 0:36.3 | Well first we take a cupful of business news, naturally. |
| 0:39.6 | Then we add a healthy measure of technology, with a pinch of exciting innovation. |
| 0:45.6 | Business Daily from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:48.6 | Find out more at the end of this |
| 0:53.0 | end of this podcast. It's bodily, |
| 0:55.0 | It's bodily, It's bodily fluid-a-clock people, |
| 1:00.0 | so I really hope you aren't squeamish |
| 1:02.0 | because this episode of crowd science from the BBC World Service is all about spit, snot and sneezes. |
| 1:09.0 | I'm Marnie Chesterton and you, judging from the questions gushing into the inbox, are obsessed by the fluids that come out of our face. |
| 1:18.0 | Joining me in the studio to help us navigate these viscous waters are two experts and I'll be putting your questions |
| 1:25.5 | to them throughout this episode. |
| 1:27.9 | One spends his day looking at our fluid-filled vessels, full-time E.N.T. Doctor and part-time comedian Jugdish Chaturvedi, on the line from Bangalore in India. |
| 1:37.0 | Hello, Jugdish? |
| 1:38.0 | Hello, everyone. How are you doing? |
... |
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