Bonus Episode: ICYMI Moments of 2025 with newly beloved Ologists

Oh hey, it's the bobby pin hiding in your hair overnight. Oh hey, it's the woman on the swamp tour who won't stop screaming yeehaw. Oh hey, it's a 13-year-old poodle in a baby Bjorn. Oh hey, it's yesterday's medication in your jeans pocket. Oops. Oh hey, it's that festival bracelet you're still wearing on Monday. Oh hey, it's the fish soup that you spilled all over the kitchen, which actually did happen to me. Oh hey, it's your aunt who always carries Kleenex. Oh hey, it's the bowl that's chipped but not chipped enough to throw it away. Oh, hey, it's the guy at the falafel truck who gives you extra hummus, Allie Ward. What the hell was all that? It was a year's worth of openings. And if you hadn't memorized all of them, you are definitely in the right place for an episode of In Case You Missed It. This one is like tapas. It's small plates that will leave you hungry for more. So we wanted to put this out because 2025 was a bit of a blur. And we're in kind of a storm of distraction. There's so much good science and really charming, heartwarming stories that you may not have heard. So our esteemed editors, Jake and Mercedes, pulled the best bits from last year. So you can refresh your memory, catch up. You can send this to a friend who maybe needs a sample of Ologies to get hooked. Oh, and if you need kid-friendly episodes, we have them in their own feed. They're called Smologies, S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S. And you can get them for free wherever you get podcasts. So we'll get right into it. But first, thank you so much to patrons of the show who submitted questions for all of these episodes and who support Ologies for as little as a dollar a month via patreon.com slash Ologies. Thank you to everyone out there in Ologies merch from Ologiesmerch.com. We have a special announcement this episode about some new merch. And thanks always to folks who for zero dollars just make my day, usually by leaving reviews for me to read, such as this fresh one from Goodshot Jansen, who wrote, I hope for a future where everyone embraces the active science championed by good old AdWord. Good shot, Jansen. Good review. I thank you. Onward. Let's get into some of the best bits with the loveliest guests, because it's not just what we learned, but you know what? It's the friends we made along the way in this 2025 best of episode of In Case You Missed It with 10 of your favorite or soon to be favored ologists. So ethno-synologist David Ian Howe told us how wolves become things like poodles, from loitering to nibble our mastodon leftovers, and then evolving from wild beasts into our hairy, stinky little children. Now on that topic, Ruben Plasmo, Minty McGee, Stacey Pinkowitz, Harper Atlas, and Jaden Guildenstern want to know, what is the deal with the smell of dog paws? It brings me instant joy and calm. Why do they smell like corn chips? Why do they smell like Fritos? Why, why, why? Everyone wants to know. An ex of mine called it puppy crack because it's just such an addicting smell. Apparently it's like a fungus or something that like some kind of chemical that's emitted. But yeah, the corn, like the Frito feet, it just, I love that smell. And then the inside of their ears too is like a very distinct smell. It's like a yeasty smell that you're like, that's my doggy. Yeah, exactly. And then everyone loves their own dog's like smell, but then other people are like, your dog stinks, dude. And I'm like, no, he does not. He smells amazing. And yes, listener Ren S., whose special interest is dogs, they say That corn chip foot flavor is due to a combination of bacteria, Pseudomonas, and Proteus, which combine with spit and sweat to produce a yeasty smell. And I read up on it, it tends to be harmless, although those bacteria can sometimes be present in UTIs in dogs. And you can wipe down your pup's feet and trim the hair on the paw pads to keep them fresh. But in general, huffing their little mitts while you spoon them should be harmless. Not a harmless canoodle, you can ask Dr. Tim Bean, who is an erythrozenologist. What's the most annoying misconception about porcupines? That they shoot their quills. That's number one. Yeah, so they don't shoot quills. Yeah, no, porcupines shoot their quills. You have to be pretty aggressive to get quilled. When the quills come out in a predator, do they just kind of pop out easily like a Lego snapping off or is it like painful, like getting, um, getting your mustache waxed for the porcupine? They have this special mechanism where like, they're not just going to come out day to day. You actually have to push into the skin. So like something pushes on the top of the quill and then that like releases the muscle that's holding it in and then they come out. Oh, so it is sort of like waxing your, your mustache or legs or whatever. If you just pull the quill out, that would probably be super painful. But if they take their tail and like thwack a dog's face, that like engages this release mechanism that I think probably does not hurt. The porcupines, at least. The dog would like to have a word. And then number two, I guess I would say is the confusion over hedgehogs versus porcupines. Yeah. So, you know, hedgehogs are not even rodents. And so it totally evolved independently and same physical structure. They're also keratinized, but yeah, totally different species. So yes, a porcupine is a rodent. Can you believe that? Also, if you love rodents, if you are a person who can't get enough of rodents, especially the ones of unusual size, please enjoy our beaver and capybara episodes. We also have one on urban rodentology about sewer rats, not to be missed. I cry during it. We also have a very recent groundhog deep dive. So you know what, though? don't listen to our Luternology otters episode because A, they're not rodents. But if you want incredibly juicy otter gossip and shit talking that will change your life and come up in every subsequent first date conversation, then otters is for you. Oh, speaking of shit talking. Boy, hippo poop spring, discuss. Do they have middens? Do they just go wherever? There must be so much of it. That is definitely true. There is so much of it. And we actually think that hippo poop and not just the poop itself, but like all of the compounds like silica and silicon that's in there are really important nutrients for the water areas, the wetlands, the rivers, the lakes where they live. And there's some evidence that like when hippo populations decline, like fish populations also decline. Thank you, patron and first time question asker Alison Ludwig for asking, do tilapia really swim behind them and eat their poo? Allison Ludwig, they do. So to Gits and Shiggles and Emma Henson, who asked, I have to befriend one before I die. How do I go about this? The answer is to become a tilapia. You're never going to be bored. You're never going to be hungry. Every day is a feast. It is true that hippos, when we ask, like, where does a hippo poop? The answer is anywhere it wants. Mostly it is in the water. But with males, we do see that marking behavior. Another crazy thing. you ready for this? Not really. So what males do is they come out of the water, they start peeing, and then they spray it backwards. And then with their tail, use that to spread with the stream of the pee and the poop coming out. It's gross and yet extremely effective. And I think it's territory marking, although we don't really know this because we've really only seen males do that. So we think they're marking their territory. You'll see it as they come out of the water. They kind of do this at a couple places. Sometimes they'll smush it against like a tree or, you know, a rock. And we think, again, we don't know those for sure, but we think it's dominant males marking their territory. Oh, my God. Yeah. Which I've seen it in people's like horrified zoo videos. Oh, there he goes. But I hope that that's like a blessing. It's just spreading the love, right? They're spreading what they do best. And it is one of the things they do best. They're really important nutrient movers and ecosystem engineers in that way. Really the most environmentally friendly graffiti you can ask for. So do enjoy that hippopotamology episode with Dr. Rebecca Lewison, because you'll learn about cocaine hippos living in the wrong part of the world, why pygmy hippos are so elusive. And if a hippo does want to commit homicide on you. Also, if you do like graffiti that's made out of paint, you can enjoy the modern toicographology episode with Conrad Benner about graffiti art and history and why Philadelphia of all places is the mural and the public art capital of the world. What were we talking about? Okay, we were talking about hippo tails as a piss sprinkler and it makes rattlesnake tail etiquette seem just downright cordial in comparison. Actually, in case you missed it, here's a sample of the crotillology episode with rattlesnake enthusiast and advocate and I would dare say friend, Dr. Emily Taylor, who kind of ushers us into a den of some riveting, quivering knowledge. Lots of snakes shake their tails and they do it when they're stressed out. And that's actually evolutionarily ancient, that snakes shake their little tails when they're stressed out. But rattlesnakes basically evolved kind of a maraca on the end of it to make a big ruckus. It's a defensive mechanism. And so rattlesnakes are specifically two genera, cordless and sisterus, two types of vipers. And they are different from all other snakes because they have a rattle on their tail, which is like modified keratin, some modified scales. It's made like your fingernails. And it makes that rattling noise saying, back the heck away. Please go. And are the rattles rattling against each other or are there little beans in there making the noise? I'm going to explain it my best, but it is not filled with little things. It's actually insane. Like what you're seeing from the outside is each segment is just a part of the actual segment on the inside. And it's the most intricate thing you've ever seen. Like forget, you know, seashell shape like being intricate. This is just incredible. There's like a cross section you can look at where you can see how they loosely hook into one another. So when the snake shakes its tail shaker muscle, which is four times faster than hummingbird wings can beat. No. Yeah. What? They bang against each other and make that high-pitched noise. And then one hypothesis is that ancient ancestors of rattlesnakes would use their little tails as a lure to bring in maybe small birds or other rodents that thought it was a worm. No. Yeah. And eventually this thing was co-opted for defense. So we don't really know for sure, except that it's been pretty recent. Rattlesnakes have evolved in the past 12 to 14 million years. Oh, okay. And how long have snakes been around? A lot longer than that. Many, many, many, many millions of years more than that. But certainly the ancestors of rattlesnakes were shaking those little tails when they were stressed out for many millions of years before that. Is it kind of like how squirrels shake their tails when they're threatened? Well, it's funny that you say that because squirrels in particular will shake their tails in a specific way when they see a rattlesnake. What? How? Yeah. So actually, when I'm out in the field, I can see a California ground squirrel from a distance and I can tell if it's shaking its tail at a snake. No. What does it do? So they have this really specific tail flagging behavior where it will waggle back and forth and then stop, waggle back and forth and then stop, kind of sticking up. And are you ready to have your mind blown? Yes. Because this is crazy. They'll do it to both gopher snakes and rattlesnakes because both of them could eat the squirrel. And they're basically saying to the gopher snake or rattlesnake, I see you. Don't even bother hunting. You're not going to sneak up on me. Well, somebody had the brilliant idea of filming the squirrel shaking its tail using a heat-sensitive infrared camera. And as people out there might know, rattlesnakes actually have heat-sensitive pits on their face so they can see this infrared radiation. Gopher snakes don't. The squirrels know this instinctively, and they shunt blood to their tails, and it lights up like a lightsaber in the rattlesnake's face only when it's a rattlesnake. When it's a gopher snake, they don't bother doing that. The tail stays cold. No. Incredible. And so that heat definitely shows up for the pit viper Yes And it saying all right all right you see me I can sneak up on you Yeah and they leave Usually they leave after that and go hunt somewhere else where they can have that element of surprise So the pit viper, they're seeing this like hot little tail and they just move on? Yeah, they'll basically pick up and move on and hunt somewhere else because they're ambush foragers. They're waiting for some unsuspecting rodent to run by. Surprise, surprise. And if the squirrel already knows they're there, then they might as well not bother. Plus, the squirrels can get in their face. They throw dirt at them. They kick them. And sometimes they even bite them. Sometimes they even kill them. And again, if you're like, feed me all the ground squirrel trivia, we have a scuridiology episode with squirrel expert Dr. Karen Monroe, as well as that recent groundhog episode with Dr. Daniel Blumstein. Because yes, groundhogs are whistle pigs, are land beavers, are woodchucks, and they are all ground squirrels. Now, if those facts make you want to go into a field to critter spot and touch actual grass because you need more joy and you could better your mental health and you feel like you are digging your fingernails into a crumbling ledge of a cliff in terms of your sanity, I'm right there with you. Jules Hatz, author of the book, The Connection Cure, is here to change your life for the better, help you get back in a better place with her Salyugenology episode about why you as a human on earth require hobbies to live and thrive, like required to be alive longer and better. And in this episode, which was our most popular of 2025, I asked Jules if doctors actually prescribe hobbies, like if they write it down on a pad so that you take it seriously, because it's easy to listen and go, yeah, like I've got to stay vigilant of modern horrors and I got to doom scroll through nonsense and algorithmic ads. Hobbies and pastimes sounds nice, but how do we make it work? First, let me talk about the different kinds of social prescriptions that there are and why they are what they are. So I've written this book, The Connection Cure, which is all about how doctors in 30 countries around the world, including the U.S., more on that, are actually prescribing this. And it's not just doctors, it's therapists, it's nursers, it's community health workers, it's social workers. And we can also talk about why, like why now are they doing this? But you'd asked about like the kinds of prescriptions. And from my research, it pretty much comes down to five core ingredients, let's say. It comes down to movement, nature, art, service, and belonging. Oh, wow. Once again, movement, nature, art, service, and belonging. By the end of the episode, you're going to be applying for a personalized license plate that reads MNASB4EV. I got it. Thanks. And so there's a couple of reasons for that. And the first one is like in these 30 countries, you know, these were the types of social prescriptions that people kind of kept organically, independently landing on. And we know this from the data that part of this has to do with the way we as humans are wired to be in these kinds of environments, right? Like think about us tens of thousands of years ago, we were out there trying to survive in the big bad world. We had to move our bodies. And so it was adaptive for us to be able to move our bodies well. And our bodies respond to that kind of movement, right? We increase our levels of serotonin. We increase our endorphins, right? It's not just, you know, Elle Woods. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands. They just don't. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don't shoot their husbands. That whole line. Like, That's true. You sure about that? Movement. And that's not that controversial, right? Doctors have been saying for 50 years, exercise more, exercise more. Nature, same is true there. It actually restores our attention such that when we leave a natural setting, we feel more calm. We feel more restored. We feel like we're actually better at focusing. That's so funny because I love running and walking. And if I do it on a treadmill inside of a gym, it feels really different than me going to the local lake and seeing people and seeing dogs. And I always see that guy running at the same time. And there's spiders in the trees. And I never put a lot of weight into that. I just think it's a preference, but it's actually probably chemically like helping my brain. And you find that, wow, it's not just in our heads. like there's some serious antidepressant anxiety-relieving effects of being in nature. And I think it comes down to the way we evolve to love and pay attention to nature. So this was a 2015 study titled, Nature Experience Reduces Rumination and Subgenual Prefrontal Cortex Activation in the Journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. And it notes that more than half of the world's population lives in urban settings. And while urbanization has many benefits, it's also associated with increased levels of mental illness, including depression. And in fact, it says city dwellers have a 20% higher risk of anxiety disorders and a 40% higher risk of mood disorders as compared to people in rural areas. And I thought maybe that was all just having cheaper rent. But the paper details that those 90-minute walks and the effects on rumination centers of the brain, and it concludes that nature experience may improve mental well-being and accessible natural areas within cities may be a critical resource for mental health in our rapidly urbanizing world. So city dwellers, give us parks or give us death, like for real. But what else do all human animals need for enrichment? So there's movement, there's nature, there's belonging, there's art. There's belonging, there's art. Art's another one I love. People think, oh, art, you know, that's nice. But like, really, doctors are going to prescribe that? Researchers from Drexel University looked at what happened after just 45 minutes of engaging subjects in an artistic activity and found that they had significantly reduced their levels of cortisol, of stress. No way. And this is not that novel. I mean, art therapy has been around as a discipline. There's something about the way engaging with art sort of helps us shift our perspective and realize like, hey, we're not alone. But yeah, that also comes down to the way I think we as humans trying to make it in the big, bad, wild. We told stories with each other. We painted on caves. We made jewelry. We tried to seek out and talk about the beauty of the world. So there's something very primal about that, too. Well, let's get depressed. How are we living that is not hitting these bases? Because I don't know a lot of people who are like thriving at the moment, TBH. I know people who are succeeding, but on a day-to-day, how is your mental health doing? It's a struggle. Absolutely. Well, you're asking the great question because that's exactly how I felt when I wrote this book, sort of in the throes of the pandemic, especially. really. And I think it was no coincidence that rates of stress, rates of loneliness, rates of anxiety, depression, all these things going up, up, up, up, up, up. You could see the recent long COVID episode too. Now we go back to like our evolutionary needs for survival, movement, nature, art, service, and belonging. They weren't just a nice to have. If I have time, you needed to do this to survive. And importantly, you couldn't do it alone. Like, yeah, you try to survive out there in the big, bad wild on your own, good luck. But now, of course, as I talk to you from my Brooklyn apartment, I can have all of my basic needs met without leaving. I need food. I can order it. I want entertainment. I can stream it. I want to feel a sense of belonging. Maybe I'll turn on a TV show where I'm feeling a connection to the characters. So I think it's become easier and easier for us to choose an environment that disconnects us from these things. And yet, when you describe to me the difference between running outside and running, you know, on a treadmill, intuitively, you know that these things are good for us. And it's not just intuitive, right? There's a ton, a ton, a ton of data showing that these five things in particular have profound effects for our mood, our energy, our attention levels, our longevity. So listen to the Saliogenology episode with Julia Hatz on how to implement hobbies to keep yourself alive and continuing to destroy your foes and improve your mental health. And since the cellulogenology episode came out last year, I started walking and running outside again. I've joined some ukulele meetups with strangers I never would have met, which has gotten me out of my head and phone. And those slumps that sneak up on us when we neglect to live are easier to get through. Because life, hopefully, it's a long game. You have to pace yourself to stay in it. And just like you need breaks, let's take a quick one now for sponsors of the show who enable us to donate to a cause each week. And I'm so excited to finally announce some new merch to keep you inspired and vocal in support of human rights. We collaborated with artist, author, and Los Angeles County public defender, Andrea Diaz. And this new merch honors whistles, markers, megaphones, cameras, documenting ice raids and other human rights abuses, first aid kits and masking up against crowd dispersal aerosols. These have become vital tools for protest work. And in this new design, those objects of resistance surround a passage from our revolutionology episode with scholar Dr. Jack Goldstone. And the quote from Dr. Goldstone reads, one day with a million people in the streets, that's a holiday. That's not a campaign. What you need is to have people in the streets for months on end, despite rain, despite snow, past revolutions, that's how they showed their resolve to stand against the government. Proceeds from this brand new merch benefit the cause of Andy's choosing, which is the National Immigration Law Center, which advances laws and policies that center human dignity and benefit us all, such as a health care and safety net system that allows everyone to thrive, labor laws that empower all workers to fulfill their potential, and federal policies that recognize migration as a global phenomenon that transforms societies for the better. And the National Immigration Law Center fights for a society where everyone has the freedom to thrive, no matter how much money we have, what we look like, or where we were born. And they work at the intersection of immigrant economic, gender, and racial justice. So get a shirt or tote with that quote and design and support that work while inspiring others and keeping yourself going while you are fighting the good fight. And for more on Andy Diaz and her work, including a kid's book about the judicial system, She's amazing. It's titled Jury Trial ABC. You can find her on Instagram and TikTok at afternoon underscore recess or afternoon dash recess dot com. Thank you so much, Andy Diaz, for doing that. And yes, we will put a link to that new merch in our show notes, or you can go to ologiesmerch.com. Also, thanks to sponsors of the show who let us donate to a community and or a global cause every week. Okay, so now that we have done a little something for our heart and our courage, let's move on to our immune system. So we had a really great post-viral epidemiology episode with the lovely and caring Dr. Wes Ely, who is a world expert in long COVID treatment and research. So if you know anyone who's dealing with chronic illness or long COVID or struggling after a virus, he's your guy. But as a doctor, you're very patient-centered, and you wrote a whole book about how the way that we look at how we treat patients needs to shift a little bit. And you don't hear a lot of doctors being like, I went to a patient's bedside and talked to her for a while. I feel like that doesn't happen very often. How do you approach this kind of care, especially for a disease that is still, our knowledge is still developing, and you might be the fifth doctor that someone's seen because no one believes them? What's your philosophy and how to care for patients with this? All I can say, Ali, is that a lot happens in my mind when you ask me that question, but I just approach it on my knees. And what I mean by that is actually on my knees, kneel down before this person because I am there to serve them and to try and make them big and me small. And by that I mean that there nothing I can ever do to earn the privilege of being with people who are suffering in this regard And our patients who are suffering with long COVID have been through so much and not listened to that the way I want to start this relationship is to listen. I want to hear who are you? How are you suffering? What makes you, you? I start oftentimes by simple questions like, can you just tell me, I call them Ely's four questions. What are your favorite hobbies, your favorite music your favorite food and your pets names because once i know these things about people you know that they love bob dylan and you know they love chinese fusion and their dog's name is bacchus the god of wine and uh their favorite hobbies is that they work on cars in their spare time or something i then i have a i go oh my gosh this is an entire person mind body and spirit But Wes, never allow yourself to think of this person as a diseased heart or kidneys or stomach or brain. This is a whole person, Wes. I see who I can and we love it. I'm an ICU doctor. I started at the bedside and I love taking care of critically ill people. And that was why I got it wrong at the very beginning with long COVID because we had all these COVID patients in the ICU on the ventilators. And no doubt they left with tremendously bad post-intensive care syndrome picks. But it's a really beautiful thing to be able to be let in. People let you into their life. If you suspect you have long COVID and you go to a doctor, how do you feel like doctors should approach this? If there are any doctors listening or if there's any patients who could have some kind of game plan, what is the arc of treatment or seeing a patient like in an idealized way? The first thing that the doctor, the nurse practitioner, the PA, the nurse, anybody needs to do is say, let me get rid of my biases, get rid of my presuppositions and any judgments of you at all. I'm talking to the patient. I mean, you don't have to say this out loud. This is just a mental approach. And let me just see who you are and tell me your story. So I need to be a sleuth here. Let's understand when did you get COVID exactly? And what documentation do you have of that COVID? So let's see, you know, okay, in January of 2022, you got COVID. That was your second bout. Before that, you had no symptoms. But on the second round of COVID, you're telling me that in late February, eight weeks later, you got, wham, hit. You couldn't go back to work. You were bed bound and you couldn't think clearly. Okay, that's a seven to eight week timeframe. That fits perfectly for the disease stable on COVID. Now tell me, how did your symptoms evolve? What did you try to do to fix it? How did it get worse or better? and what have you tried since? And so it's just being a good history taker and a good listener. I'm not a Buddhist, but this great Tao Te Ching, number 65 in Buddhism says, the ancient masters taught the student to not know because if the student thinks they know, they cannot be taught. But if you know, you don't know. So when you come to me with your complaints, I don't know how you're suffering yet. I have to suspend judgment and listen to you. And that's where we start. And all good clinicians should start with that. So yeah, that's a great post-viral epidemiology episode with a doctor who approaches his work and his patients with such a warm heart. Another doctor we love, Dr. Herman Taylor, approaches your heart with warmth in our cardiology episode in case you missed it. It's such a good one. So many great questions. Jenna Congdon wanted to know. Hey, so my question is regarding EKG tracings in the wild. You see them on logos, on people's tattoos, kind of everywhere. and very often they're really inaccurate and pretty funny if you know what you're looking at. My husband and I both work in healthcare and we play a little game of pointing out these really wrong EKG tracings and trying to diagnose them. Do you notice when you see really wacky EKG lines and try to make up in your head what they could be if they were in real life? I have seen one that just didn't make any sense and was so inaccurate on the side of an ambulance. So let me know if you play this game too? Oh, all the time. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's in Logos. It's where, you know, the critical parts of the waveforms are missing that would either not exist in nature or be totally alarming. But we're okay. In terms of not getting too upset about that. Actually, So we kind of like the attention that people are thinking about their hearts in that way. And if you're like, hey, yes, but you have no idea what Jenna or Dr. Taylor are talking about, congratulations. You are Allie Ward. Come along as I figure out what those waves mean. OK, so on an EKG, there's a little bump above the baseline, followed by that big spike, which then comes down, dips a little below the baseline. and then another bump, like the first one, but a little bigger. Very, very simply, that first small bump is a P wave, and that represents the electrical activity in the atria, the two atriums. And the big spike, or QRS complex is what that big spike is called, is the ventricle electrical activity. And then the third bump, a little bigger than that P wave, is called a T wave, and that's when the heart is at rest. And if these rhythms are off, then that could indicate an issue under the hood, buddy. You got something going on. And an irregular beat is called an arrhythmia. An AFib or atrial fibrillation is an irregular and some say chaotic heart rhythm that needs to be monitored to make sure that it doesn't cause blood clots or a stroke down the line. Now, how many beats a minute should you have? What's the good tempo you want to shoot for? So 60 to 100 is in the healthy range, but consistently over 100 is what's known as tachycardia, which means fast heart. And if you're in good cardiovascular shape, you might have a lower resting heart rate because your myocardium is strong enough where a heartbeat blasts enough blood out so it can kind of slow down the pace. It's breezing along. Conversely, a weaker heart has to kind of frantically beat faster to get blood to where it needs to go. If you're thinking about your heart beating and you're thinking too hard about it, just take a deep breath. Get some oxygen in your blood. You're good and safe. If you do want to pump up that cardiac muscle, again, see our Salugenology episode, which will convince you to start riding your bike again or taking neighborhood walks or joining a Zumba class or doing what you can. All of that is good for the heart and brain. And for people who have had deep struggles with their brain, I get it. I'm with you. especially if we're talking OCD or even a blush of it or maybe someone you love might have it. Dr. Wayne Goodman is the guy when it comes to research on this condition. Like he invented the scale by which OCD is diagnosed. He's great. We learned so much. And how about for people who are verbal and aware of their own rituals? Is there ever an overlap that gets misdiagnosed where people maybe don't realize they have OCD or don't realize that they have autism, like eating the same meal, say, or sitting in the same spot. Somebody who's very ritualized. Yeah. Yeah. That isn't necessarily OCD. The other thing I would say is, although you can have a monosymptomatic picture, meaning that maybe just one type of OCD, most patients with OCD check off different boxes. Sometimes when I'm not sure myself, I have more confidence in the diagnosis when I find that over time, some of their obsessions and compulsions have changed and that they check off different ones. What about executive function and perfectionism or avoidance? Things like that. People who might have trouble, yeah, like for example, me getting set into work or work avoidance. Patrons, Matt Sekofian, Cox Jimber, Issa, a perfectionist but not OCD haver, and Alex Rose, first-time question asker, who asked quite simply, why is perfection OCD such a bitch? Where is the line between perfectionism and OCD? There is another condition, obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, that sometimes it's hard to distinguish that from OCD, but that diagnosis implies more perfectionism and insistence that Others kind of follow rules. And generally speaking, people with OCPD don't have a lot of insight. Generally, what I've found is that it's their family members who say, you really need to see somebody because you're driving me crazy with wanting to do things in your way all the time or in a certain way all the time. So there is some connection, but I think they're distinct most of the time. And other experts note that the core difference lies in the motivation behind perfectionist tendencies. Is it a high standard? Is there a certain goal in mind? OCD-related perfectionism, however, may come from a place of extreme anxiety, catastrophizing, self-criticism, and doubt. So one compulsion is avoidance. And a 1994 study titled Procrastination Tendencies Among Obsessive Compulsives and Their Relatives did find a correlation between OCD and task avoidance. The author of that study is world-renowned procrastination expert, Dr. Joseph Ferrari. And if you're like, you should do an episode with him, I did. Volitional psychology. We did it. It's linked in the show notes. His big advice is like, just do the thing. He even signed my copy of his book, Still Procrastinating, The No Regrets Guide to Getting It Done, with the scrawl, just do it now, all caps. At the time, I was like, Joe, I can't, so fuck me, I guess. And then I learned much later that just do it now was just a little brusque and a less gentle type of exposure response prevention, essentially. So until you stop procrastinating, you will not realize that procrastinating and compulsive avoidance is worse than the thing you're afraid to do poorly. And because of a therapist who understood ERP, I have since adopted two phrases, which are essentially like bite-sized takeaways that have helped me more than anything else to tackle my decades-long plague of putting off the highest stakes tasks and avoiding them. So I used to know myself as a last minute person, that was just like my vibe. Now, when I see an email or a form or a thing I have to write and I avoid it, because what if I do it wrong? I tell myself, I'm a person who does things at the first minute so that when a task or email or decision or a draft of something comes up, I decide or I start at that first minute or that first day. Do not let it grow mold. So I just say, I'm a person who does things at the first minute to have me just jump right into something. The other thing that exposure response prevention has taught me to say to myself all the time is worst things first. So what do you dread the most? Do it first. If you don't want to do it, well, it's therapy to get it done. And after a while you say, wow, okay, I did a bunch of things I would have otherwise avoid. They did not kill me and I did not do such a bad job that my whole life collapsed. So look, I made this episode and so far I have not died or killed anyone in the process. Hooray. So yeah, if you have to confront something you want to avoid, I'm sorry, the best clinical therapy is do it, do it quickly. Like it's bad news because it's exactly what you don't want to hear. I know, but that's good news because it's so straightforward, effective, and it's simple. So yeah, exposure response prevention. It's a bitch, but it works. Not timely, however, is medieval manuscript drafting, especially when what you're bedazzling in the margins are snails. Bitch, what are you talking about? You're asking me. I'm talking about scholar Evan Pridmore, who studies 700-year-old books and researchers why so many of them feature snails. But in general. What medieval memes are some of your favorites? Obviously cupping your own eyeballs in each palm. Yeah, classic. Solid. What are some that are going around right now that you really enjoy getting some light of day? Ooh okay So I would say nuns harvesting dicks off of trees always a good one What story was that telling It basically a symbol of fertility etc Yeah it a good one Take for example the 14th century illustrations for a medieval love handbook called Romance of the Rose which features a nun in a brown robe and a veil reaching upwards toward a branch to pluck a hefty dong from among the leaves. And she's carrying a basket. It's also filled with dogs. And it reminds me of like the opening credits of some celebrity cooking show. Just our star walking through a sun-drenched orchard harvesting goodies, only it's a nun and their dicks. And this wasn't just in the romance of the rose. There was an absolute bumper crop of this imagery at the time. There's an incredible calendar that you can get, like a wall calendar that just has different medieval penis trees for every month. And frankly, I need that in wallpaper. Forget your books in the background. Yeah, exactly. That's where it's at. We've got a better idea. What are some other ones going around? So one of my favorites, this always comes up, is medieval artists didn't know how to draw animals. And to be fair, a lot of the animals do look completely silly. Medieval dogs, medieval cats. My favorite one is a medieval oyster because it just looks like it has like a frowny face, which I didn't even think oysters had faces. But, you know, interpretation, creative license. If you just look at them on the surface, yeah, they look hysterical. Yeah. They don't make any sense. I feel like a lot of the animals have like human faces in a way that's unsettling. Maybe, I mean, to the point of oysters having mouths. Yeah. Part of my research is why a lot of animals have human features and vice versa. And it was very much a common trend to assign animal features to or assign human behaviorisms to animals. Therefore, you would depict them that way. So of course, we still have some of these things like peacocks being proud or lions for bravery, so things like that. How are snails on that scale? How did people look upon snails? I mean, they're slow and they are gooey. They are. They're slimy. Yeah, they can retract, but they're also romantic. They toss darts at each other. That's sweet. Yeah. So snails in medieval art, when did this become a motif? So first of all, as a preface, medieval art, a lot of it is symbolic or non-literal. Now, the actual theme of snails being used as what we would call barbaje imagery, which means bottom of the page imagery, which is kind of where that marginal illumination really comes into play. That and that whole theme of like grotesques or the sort of funny motifs didn't really start until around the 11th, 12th centuries. And it didn't really take off until the 13th and 14th centuries. So the 13th century, especially the late 13th century was like 1270 to about 1320 was like the high period for snails. And there's a lot of different reasons for that. But the main one, the most predominant theory and the one that's most widely accepted is that it is unfortunately a xenophobic response to a group of people living in Europe at that time. How were they depicted in that way? How did that signify a group of people? And what group? The group is called the Lombards. So it's a group of people from the Lombardi region. And there was a lot of sour grapes against them because they successfully sacked Rome multiple times to the point that they were only actually driven off by Charlemagne in the 9th century. And a side note, the Lombards came from the small tribe of Germanic origin. And between the mid-500s to late 700s, about 75 years after the fall of the Roman Empire, the Lombards absolutely kicked ass in what is now Italy. So because of that, a lot of people hated the Lombards. They were not legally allowed to own land. They were ostracized. And they were barred from most professions because they couldn't go into things like apprenticeships or schools, etc. So one of the things that they were able to turn to was usury and money lending, which was seen as a greedy, frowned upon practice. In other words, they were slimy. Got it. So a lot of drama, a lot of historical context and gossip about people who are now bones. So make sure to listen to that medieval cotecology episode with Evan Pridmore. And as long as we are hitting the books, the famed Dr. Allie Lukes, who went viral a few years back for her dissertation on olfactory descriptions in books, finally joined to talk about enlisting our nose when we are reading with our eyes. And what about some other smells in novels and in poetry? The way that people are portrayed, do you find that that goes through their bodily smells or their food smells or their perfumes? Like what types of notes? What do those notes draw on a lot? Gosh, big question. The nice thing about literature is that very often it kind of replicates but also intensifies life so all of those things can be found in literature um you know comments on people's bodily smells comments on people's food especially when that food is kind of new to someone the whole point of smell really is for us to notice new things in our environment. So my former supervisor, Steve Connor, says that smell is the sense of discrimination. It helps us distinguish the ripe from the rotten and the good from the bad. And that's its kind of function for us. So very often in real life, as in literature, smell kind of acts as a way of sometimes othering people, but also kind of registering discomfort with the otherness of people and their weird ways and behaviors and foods. And a few people, Fran, Izzy B and Aaron White wanted to know about food. And Fran said, why do so many white Americans especially claim to hate the smell of garlic or garlic breath? They've never noticed anyone with bad garlic breath and garlic is delicious. However, coffee breath is terrible. And Izzy B wanted to know, I'm curious about if there's connections between the smells of cultural cuisines. mentioned Indian or Mexican cuisine, for example, or diet culture and racism, classism, other prejudices. So yeah, the different smells of different types of cuisine and how that gets mentioned. Oh gosh, there's so much interesting stuff there. So I've actually read, not recently, but read quite a lot of academic work on the smell of garlic and the kind of particular sociopolitical and historical situations in which people being averse to the smell of garlic arises and how it relates to not always necessarily racism, but certainly xenophobia. So against, for example, Italians, I think is maybe the most obvious now, but also the Jewish community where garlic and onions were used in their kind of traditional cooking. Okay, so I'm mostly Italian, like 75%. So I honestly did not know that the waft of simmering onions or garlic could possibly be perceived poorly. Like, what else does food taste like? I do like it. I like it very much. I think, did we add salt and pepper? I think we needed salt and pepper. No, there's no salt and pepper in it. And there's this 2016 paper out of the History Department of King's College London titled Grease and Sweat, Race and Smell in 18th Century English Culture. And it notes that at the heart of bristling at a so-called difference in odor was essentially the fear of otherness. And given our two-part vampirology episode about Eastern European folklore and garlic as a repellent for the undead, there were likely deep fears and associations made with certain food smells. And the paper mentions that under oppression, any group associated with poverty is associated with contamination. It brought up this enormous discourse about the smell of garlic and it became this kind of foundational derogatory feature of that group and became a bit of a trope, basically. so that's that coffee breath the coffee breath reminded me of this novel called come join our disease by sam byers who writes so wonderfully about the smells associated with the commute kind of the work commute and the like long incubated farts and like dehydrated spit And it's just so precise, the way he's able to evoke these particular smells. And I think stale coffee breath is one of those things that he locates as well as a kind of pervasive feature of the London commute, especially. We have a whole episode about coffee. And yes, we delve into coffee breath in it. And it turns out it's not so much the coffee itself, but it's the things that you are splashing into the coffee, like creamers and milks and sugars. And by you, I mean me. And by splashing, I mean pouring liberally. And those are what make your mouth a mid-morning stink bog. But that whole episode is stellar. Now, what about lunch, though? And then the other question was about kind of racism and ethnic cuisines. We actually talk about this a fair amount, I think, in public discourse, the kind of the idea that people will go to school or to their workplace and they'll bring with them a lunch that is specific to their culture. You know, the food that they grew up eating, which is really comforting to them. And other people will kind of turn their nose up and make them feel bad about eating it. And we've seen actually like bans on this kind of thing in public libraries, you know, where you'll say like, don't bring in smelly foods. And sometimes they'll specify what kind of smelly foods they mean. And they'll say things like, you know, samosas. And you think, well, you know, fish and chips are really smelly as well. But you're not isolating that as a thing that you're not allowed to bring into this public space. So that clearly has some kind of racial component to it. I think we should take it seriously, actually. It's worth having those conversations, I think. So ask a collection of experts your curious questions, and please do catch up on any one of the stellar ologists that you may have missed in 2025. They're all absolute bangers of episodes. I loved each one of the ologists. To find those episodes, just check the show notes, which will take you to more info about the guest and their research. We also have that new merch designed by Andy Diaz up at ologiesmerch.com are in the link in the show notes with proceeds going to the National Immigration Law Center. So get one for a friend too, if you can, or consider donating what you can to that cause. We are at Ologies on Blue Sky and Instagram. I'm at Allie Ward with one L on both. That new Ologies merch, again, ologiesmerch.com. Smologies are our G-rated, shorter versions. They're in their own podcast feed. Just look for S-M-O-L-O-G-I-E-S or hit the link in the show notes. Thank you again to patrons of the show who support for as little as a dollar a month via patreon.com slash ologies. Thank you also to Aaron Talbert, who admins the ologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malek makes our professional transcripts. Kelly R. Dwyer does the website. Noelle Dilworth scheduling produced all of these episodes. Our best of managing directors is Susan Hale. Jake Chafee and lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio made these episodes happen, each one, and they pulled the clips and put them together for this bonus episode. Nick Thorburn made the theme music. And if you stick around until the very end. You know, I may tell you a secret this week. The secret is that this episode was supposed to go up at the end of the year in 2025, and I just kept putting it off. So it went from a best of 2025 to an in case you missed it episode. Also, I didn't know that in case you missed it meant in case you missed it. Like, I see, why am I? I didn't know what that meant on the internet for like years, and it always annoyed me. And then I was like, I should just look it up. Also, I thought Chinga la Migra meant know your rights for like a long time. And then I was like, oh, that's not what it means. And I like it even more. Look it up. Okay, bye-bye. Bye-bye. Some great stuff in there.