From the brains behind Brains On, this is the Moment of Um.
Moment of Um comes to you from APM Studios.
I'm Sandon Totten's large intestine.
Hey, you, small intestine, a.k.a. mini-me.
You okay?
You're always so happy and gurgly, but today you kind of seem bummed out.
Ugh, it's just I'm so bored.
Bored?
What's boring you?
Every day it's the same.
Eat, excrete, repeat.
We get Santa's overnight oats, his chickpea salad sandwiches, his vegan pizza and it's all in and out in less than three days.
I'm a digestion artist.
I can't work like this.
I just...
I need a change.
Is there a way to slow our system down?
Add some twists and turns?
Something.
Hmm.
I wonder.
What if we got Sandin to stand on his head?
No, he did that meditative handstand yoga retreat last summer, remember?
Didn't change a thing.
Or we could put him somewhere really cold.
Would that do it?
He used to live in Minnesota.
Gah!
I know.
What if we put him in a rocket and send him into space?
Oh, like an astronaut.
Which reminds me, a Moment of Um listener was actually wondering about space digestion recently.
Amir wondered, do astronauts in space digest food at the same rate as when they're on Earth?
Yeah, this is an interesting question, because when you're on the International Space Station, one of the things that astronauts do experience is they're living in that microgravity environment.
So it's not that gravity has dropped off or anything, because the drop off at that distance we're only talking about 350 kilometres above the Earth's surface.
So gravity is still definitely there, but they're constantly falling towards the Earth, but actually never landing.
And so they experience what people call weightlessness.
But it's actually this microgravity environment where you actually float around.
My name is Dr. Maggie Adairin-Pocock and I'm a space scientist and a science communicator.
We're used to living in an environment and our bodies are designed for an environment where we are weighted down towards our feet, because that's the way gravity is pulling.
But I think, although the digestive tract would probably act in a similar way, there are probably slight changes because of you know the orientation and the fact that you know you haven't got that sort of constant gravitational force in one direction.
So we know that astronauts will eat food quite happily up there, but I know that for the first few days they feel quite nauseous just because of that sort of change on the body.
Um, um, um.
So she's saying our digestion speed won't change much in space, but Sandon would just feel kind of queasy for a few days.
Dang, that's not really the change I'm looking for.
Well, my little buddy, maybe you just need to rediscover the purpose of your job.
Come on, you're the small intestine.
You're amazing.
Think about it.
They call you small, but you're actually the longest part of the digestive tract.
That's true.
And without you, Sandin wouldn't get any nutrients.
You absorb all the good stuff in the food he eats before passing the rest along to me to make poop.
You are absolutely essential, my guy.
I guess you're right.
Oh, here comes breakfast.
Let's do this.
If you like this episode, take a second to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
And if you want to learn more about what astronauts go through, take a listen to our forever ago podcast, where we have a whole episode about the history of women astronauts.
If you have a moment of unquestioned, we'd love to help you answer it.
Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact.
See you next time and the next day and every weekday.
Until then.
I'm a digestion artist.
