Description

Do farts contain dangerous bacteria? Should you avoid being flatulent near food?

Can pre-workout supplements help you lift more weights at the gym? Should you drink beet juice and coffee before your workouts?

In this episode, Lu and Tirth honor some of their favorite winners of the Darwin Award (an award even more prestigious than the Nobel Prize), debate whether breaking wind during surgery also breaks the sterile field of the operating room, and discuss whether nitrates and caffeine make good pre-workout supplements to maximize gains at the gym.

Timestamps:

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:53 Darwin awards
• 9:15 Fart culturing study
• 21:38 Pre-workout supplement study
• 33:09 Let’s read some mail
• 37:26 What did you learn today, outro

Article link:

• 2001. Hot air? British Medical Journal. https://www.bmj.com/content/323/7327/1449
• Montalvo-Alonso et al., 2025. Single and combined effect of beetroot juice and caffeine intake on muscular strength, power and endurance performance in resistance-trained males. Scientific Report. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-02021-y

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Theme music by Dasein: https://open.spotify.com/artist/77H3GPgYigeKNlZKGx11KZ

Recreational Science is produced by Scientafic (https://www.scientafic.com/recscipod)